The old man avoided me, partly, as I imagined, from fear of his wife, and partly from fear of himself. He could not help prattling of his troubles, and the very winds seemed to turn eaves-droppers on Madame's behalf. All circumstances combined to make life in the Rue de Buffon a dreary affair at this time. Madame fed us ill, Henriette's tongue became venomous as the sting of a wasp, Monsieur Colin stayed away altogether, and the threadbare bachelors and shabby spinsters played dominoes and whist without a smile. indeed it were fathomable; a mystery I could neither | suspicion to both Madame Goupil and her daughter. forget by night nor by day; a mystery that made study impossible to me, and sleep unhealthy. From that day I spent all the strategy of which I was master upon Henriette. I fêted, flattered, and provoked her; I dropped hints as to her lover's gallantries; I taunted her with his indifference; I played upon her love of gifts and her love of pleasure. For strong-minded as she was, and self-contained as she was, she had a childish love of fine clothes, sweetmeats, cheap music, and street shows. She did not wholly dislike me. When Monsieur Colin failed to come, she gladly played my favorite songs, mimicked such of her mother's boarders as Félicien still lived, and on one or two occasions were absent for my amusement, and, in fine, relieved was enabled to see me. He had grown fiercely susher ennui without relieving her malice. picious of the two Goupils now, and would fain have One evening, when she had been unusually jeal-set the police upon their track, have charged them ous about Monsieur Colin, and suave to me, I ven- with the murder of Blanche, have done a hundred tured upon a more decided course of action. unconsidered things. I promised to take the initiative, but felt that too much caution could not be used. If, after all, Blanche were living, we might dearly repent such precipitate conduct; and precipitation alone could do no good. We had been talking lightly of love, using without stint or shame what Balzac happily calls the argot de cœur, and recurring again and again to personal experiences. Henriette argued on the side of second love. I opposed whilst I spoke. "Witty and attractive as you are," I said, "you have a rival in Monsieur Colin's heart whom you will not easily supersede. She came first, and will outstay a reign like yours." The girl's eyes flamed. "I defy her power, and deny her claim," she said. "Blanche's?" I asked, quietly. She turned upon me, as if determined to sound my knowledge to the bottom. "I have no secrets," I added, in a voice of cold indifference. "You must be better able to judge of this young lady's hold on your lover's heart." "I?" she faltered. "You." "Monsieur Colin has told me nothing I can repeat, Mademoiselle. If you wish to make the world as if it held no Blanche to him, the way is easy." She looked up eagerly. I bent down and whispered in her ear, - "Reinstate your step-sister in her home, and the game would be in your own hands." Thunderstruck as she was, she never for a single instant lost self-possession. She accepted my knowledge of the family secret as a matter of course, and gave me no clew to the unravelling of it. "Have you forgotten that Blanche is ten years younger than I?" she asked, evidently anticipating a triumph for herself now. She was disappointed. "What of that? Were Blanche beautiful as an angel, her presence could not harm you as her unexplained absence is doing. Monsieur Colin is not a boy of eighteen, and would tire of her after two days' ineffectual courting." "You do not know him." "But why keep this pretty Blanche hidden from us all?" I said, in an altered tone. "You are cruel, Mademoiselle, and will leave us soon. Are we to have no one in your place?" "Monsieur," Henriette answered, very distantly and dryly, "it may be the fashion in England, but in France nothing excuses inquisitiveness as to domestic affairs. Oblige me by changing the subject." Thus it happened that I risked all and gained nothing. I felt utterly powerless now to help my friend Félicien, much as I desired it. I felt even more than powerless, since I became an object of One evening, events were brought to an unlookedfor crisis, without any interference whatever. I had paid up my arrears to Madame, fully intent on quitting the Rue de Buffon next day, which resolution seemed rather satisfactory to the two ladies. Every one else, including Monsieur Colin, expressed unfeigned sorrow, and as to "ce pauvre père Goupil," as my friend the chicken-feeder informed me, he cried whenever he found himself alone. It was the first really autumnal evening, and though the windows of the salon were open still, and Henriette's white muslin dress simulated summer, every one shivered sympathetically. Candles were not yet lighted, for Madame practised every possible economy that could be supported on sentimental grounds. Fruit and vegetables were the food of man before sin came, therefore it was proper and poetic to live on apples and potatoes. The summer was too beautiful to let go too easily; therefore it behooved every one to go without fires till near Christmas. Twilight induced dreaminess and spirituality; therefore her unhappy boarders were doomed to two or three hours of inactivity and darkness. To-night the twilight was unusually deceptive and depressing. The garden lay in deep shadow, unbroken, save when the chestnut boughs tossed like funereal plumes against a cold gray sky. Not a sound broke the stillness, save the murmur of the outlying world of Paris, and the hoarse chant of a blind beggar in the neighboring street. Henriette sat at the piano and played fitfully, as the fancy seized her. Madame dozed on the sofa, rousing herself now and then to praise her daughter's performance, or to beg her dear Goupil to run and see how Jeannette was getting on with her ironing. Monsieur Colin smoked, nibbled chocolate, and took no notice of any one. The pensionnaires, one and all, whispered to each other during the performance of Henriette's loudest passages, and held their peace at other times. I perhaps enjoyed the most cheerful mood. Whatever exertions I might take on Félicien's behalf, however close the future might bring me to the old sordid life in the Rue de Buffon, I felt already removed from it, and the feeling was refreshing. I could but regret, however, my poor old friend Monsieur Goupil, and the little chicken-feeder, and the power I should lose of henceforth brightening their lives. I thought, too, of the shadow among the chestnut-trees, alternately doubting, questioning, believing it. On a sudden, as if the brain were indeed able to clothe its eidolon with shape and substance, I saw before me all I had just before seen in the eyes of fancy only. It was to myself she confided her sad story. Driven from her home, ignorant as to the cause of her lover's silence, fearing the unscrupulous admiration of Monsieur Colin, lacking bread and shelter and love, no wonder body and mind alike broke down. For some weeks, however, she had earned a wretched pittance as a réveilleuse, going weary rounds to wake weary sleepers when the great world of Paris was still. Partly from an instinctive love of her old home, partly from the desire of seeing her father, she had ventured to the Rue de Buffon, bearing in her hand the lantern by which she guided herself up fifty staircases when on duty. A figure clothed in fantastic drapery of light color moved slowly across the lawn. One hand bore a lamp, and the light of it made clear what else would have been phantasmal; a small head weighed down with golden hair, a lissom form crouched as if in fear; a pale, sweet face; large, wondering eyes; all these were as plain to see as if it had been daylight. The rest of the story is told in few words. FéI uttered an exclamation, and started to my feet. licien slowly recovered, and, with Blanche, hired "Look!" I cried; "Madame, Mademoiselle Hen-modest apartments near the once courtly Place riette, look! You at least should not miss this Royale. There, by their joint efforts as playwright sight." and milliner, they maintain themselves and their From that moment I could understand the capa-old father, in peace, if not in plenty. Monsieur bility of blind men to interpret the passions and gestures of those around them. It was perfectly dark in the salon, yet I knew instinctively and momentarily all the emotion that Madame displayed, and Henriette suppressed. The former drew back, shrinking and praying; but I could feel the daughter's breath come and go, and all the white, silent terror of her face. The old ladies almost battled for a place near the gentlemen, and were hiding their faces and crossing themselves in company. The gentlemen called Jeannette to bring lights, and stood still. Monsieur Goupil fell to the ground, prone and speechless. Monsieur Colin's cigar was not even lifted from his mouth. Momentary though it was, every feature of this scene impressed itself so strongly upon my memory as to be recalled without an effort after the lapse of years, Madame's agony of fear, Henriette's self-imposed calm, the cowardice of the little crowd, my own bewilderment, and the circumstances that recalled us to reality with the charm of magic. It was the voice and the gesture of Monsieur Colin. He was sitting in the embrasure of the window, and, as I have said, went on smoking during the first shock that had paralyzed us all. A second later, and he leaned a little forward, flung his cigar upon the gravel path with one hand, and with the other held something poised high above his head in the air. "Ma foi!" he said, coolly; "we want no ghost here." Colin found a prettier face, and never married Henriette, after all. The Pension in the Rue de Buffon is still an admirable institution, where ladies and gentlemen are boarded at twenty-five francs a week. POETS LAUREATE. IN looking down the list of Poets Laureate, from Chaucer to Tennyson, one is at a loss to conceive on what principle of selection they were raised to their office. It is true that some of the earlier amongst them were not known by that precise epithet, but they all held a post as king's versifiers, and received marks of the royal favor. One, like Chaucer at Woodstock, was lodged in a goodly mansion assigned him by the Court, with a comfortable little pension of twenty marks, equalling £240 a year of our money. Another received, with his salary, an annual allowance of ruby wine fresh from the royal cellars; and a third, though he never wore a crown of bay leaves, was chosen, like Skelton, from among the poeta laureati of the "Unyversite of Oxenforde," and called in plain English "laureat poete." Such was the phrase applied by Edward IV. to John Kaye, and by Chaucer to his great contemporary Petrarch, whose crowning in the Capitol at Rome was the talk of all Europe. Princes, nobles, and senators, in the pomp and splendor of mediæval costume, had marched before him; patrician youths arrayed in green and scarlet flung garlands of fragrant flowers on his path; the chief magistrate, one of the Colonna family, seated on a throne with the laurel-crown in his hand, listened to the poet's discourse on Virgil, and then placed on his brows the unfading diadem, of which the very name reminded the wearer of that Laura who had been his inspiration and his theme. To present to the senator a sonnet in praise of Rome, to move in gorgeous procession to the Vatican, and pay homage to its august occupant, and to suspend the laurel-wreath before the shrine of St. Peter, was the natural conclusion of this novel and striking pageant. Two hundred and fifty years later, it would have been It was indeed Blanche; but, as her simple father repeated in honor of Tasso; but just as he had had before said, Blanche, and yet not Blanche. learned from Clement VIII. that this high distincSuffering, cruelty, the deprivation of all she held tion was in store for him, he departed hence to dear, had gone far to wreck a mind naturally cling-receive at other hands a better and brighter crown. ing and timid. She was meek and patient and loving; but she could not think or reason or remember. I removed her at once to an hospital, where she gradually gained mental and bodily health. When she was well enough, I took Félicien to see her, and from that date she recovered. On the heels of his speech came a click, a flash, a report, and then a bullet whizzed straight and swift across the top of the chestnut-grove. The deed and the manner of it would alone have recalled us to our senses; but we were to be recalled in a more enduring and satisfactory way. A low, plaintive cry issued from the darkness, a cry that sent Monsieur Goupil and the little chicken-feeder across the lawn, crying, "Blanche! Blanche!"a cry that reduced Madame to shame and Henriette to silence, a cry that even Monsieur Colin could not hear unmoved. Rome, in those ages, knew which of her sons was worthy of the laurel; and this is precisely what England does not seem to have known till of late. During four centuries it appears to have been purely accidental whether the nation's poet should be a bright genius or a venal scribbler. Chaucer, the soldier, the ambassador, the romancer, the father of English poetry, was succeeded by Scogan, Kaye, and Barnard, whose names are now almost forgotten. John Skelton, the "royal orator," was better known for his learning than his fancy, and, though a priest, he satirized Wolsey and other over-fed churchmen of his time. Edmund Spenser (informally, indeed, but in a way that seems to have been recognized) took his place, richer with his "verses dipped in dew of Castalie," his "Shepherd's Calendar" and "Faery Queene," than with his 3,000 acres out of the forfeited estate of the Earl of Desmond. 66 writing prose comedies, managing a theatre well, and publishing an amusing account of his own life, with all its bustle and frivolity, stage-anecdotes, and graphic sketches of actors and actresses. in one. "Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise; He sleeps among the dull of ancient days. Thou, Cibber! thou his laurel shalt support; Folly, my son, has still a friend at Court." Kings, it was said, used to have both a fool and a poet; but Cibber conveniently united the two offices The honor of the Laureateship was fast declining, Lord Chatham's sister used often to say of that and William Whitehead was not likely to retrieve Faery Queene," that it was the only thing her it. Pity that he had not a place in the "Dunciad," illustrious brother knew accurately. If the lofty where, by the side of Shadwell, he might have "nodand cultivated Daniel had not been made Laureate ded the poppy on his brows"! Thomas Warton just when Shakespeare was in the zenith of his fame, he broke the fall of the Laureates, and enriched our would have formed no unworthy link between Spen- literature with a valuable "History of English Poser and "rare Ben Jonson." Jonson's career as etry"; but the line reached its lowest degradation Laureate began in the year Shakespeare died; and in Henry J. Pye. He was Laureate while, in the it must be granted that "Catiline's Conspiracy" language of Byron, the last hopes of deserted poetry and "Drink to me only with thine Eyes" would slept with pious Cowper, and not then only, but duralone suffice to vindicate their author's claim to the ing the last ten years of Cowper's sad, but poetic life post he held. But what shall we say of his successor? at Olney. Till 1813, he disgraced our century; and Did not Sir William Davenant write tragedies that the meanest rhymer in a poet's corner could ask make one laugh and comedies that make one cry? | with justice,Did he not pen his frivolous masks while Milton composed "Comus," or dictated that immortal epic which, with much difficulty, as Elijah Fenton says, he succeeded in having licensed for the press, and could sell the copy for no more than fifteen pounds? Sir William Davenant fought bravely in the royal cause, and returned from exile at the Restoration | to reap his reward, while Milton died before he had received the whole of the paltry price stipulated for "Paradise Lost." Why should I faint when all with patience hear, And Laureate Pye sings more than twice a year?" Sometimes he was called "Spartan Pye," on account of his translation of the Odes of the Spartan Tyrtaus. They were intended principally to inspire the militia with valor in the event of an invasion, but had no more effect on military minds than the sermon which a clergyman translated from St. Chrysostom, and was surprised to find that the congregation were not struck by its eloquence. The "Glorious John" came next. But Dryden is not experiment, however, was fairly tried. A board of such a favorite with us as with Halcro in the " Pi-general officers agreed that the Odes should be read rate." We have no sympathy with one who cele-aloud at Warley Common and at Barham Downs brated the praises of Cromwell, Charles II., and by the adjutants at the head of five regiments, each James II., by turns, with equal fervor. Of his gein its camp. Great results were expected; but, benius there can be no doubt, and of his obscenity fore the reading was half over, the front ranks and none either. It was far less disgraceful to him to all the men within verse-shot dropped their arms, be beaten by the hired ruffians of Lord Rochester, and were found fast asleep. Thus Spartan Pye lulled when returning from his coffee-house in Covent- England to repose; and, not content with transGarden, than to be dismissed from his office of Poet lating Tyrtæus, he also rendered into his mother Laureate by William of Orange. He would, no tongue a German tale, which was a sort of "Blue doubt, have written birthday odes in his honor, as Beard" full of diablerie Tudesque, and induced Lady readily as for either of his predecessors, and would Diana Beauclerc to illustrate the silly words of a silly certainly have produced much better ones than any subject with her elegant pencil. Laureate who succeeded him during a hundred and "The pie began to open; the birds began to twenty years. But his venality deserved retribu- sing," has been reversed in the case of this maudtion, and found it. His £300 a year took wings lin minstrel. When Henry J. Pye had closed his and fled, and Shadwell, the butt of his satire, the lips forever, a better race of Laureates succeeded. hero of MacFlecknoe," and the Og of " Absalom Southey sang well, Wordsworth better, Tennyson and Achitophel," wore the wreath of laurel that best of all. They have disdained to offer to royalty had been torn from his brows. Shadwell, Dryden's periodical and fulsome birthday odes. They have enemy, was soon succeeded by Nahum Tate, Dry-addressed the reigning prince when and how they den's friend. But friend and foe were alike unwor- pleased, and not the Sovereign only, but any meinthy to stand in his place. Tate had written parts of ber of the royal family who seemed to call for a wel"Absalom and Achitophel," which were evidently come, an epithalamium, or an epitaph. One iminferior to the rest, though revised by the master-perishable book of song was dedicated in the hand; and he has been well called one of those sweetest verse to Victoria, the revered, the bejackalls, that hunt with the lions of literature. The loved, sixteen years ago, when the throstle called poet's crown next fell to Nicholas Rowe. His trag-through wild March, and "the sun-lit almond blosedies are tolerable, if any can be called so which som was shaking all about her palace walls at Osare mere imitations of a classic and unnatural style. borne. The "Idyls of the King" (in a subsequent As to Eusden, another Laureate in the time of George edition to the first) were inscribed to "the silent I., and in the time, be it remarked, of Alexander father of our kings to be," and the "Welcome to Pope, his name is now scarcely known. He be- Alexandra met the daughter of a long line of queathed his laurels to Colley Cibber, whose chief Danish princes ere she touched our shores. Engqualifications for the task of poet consisted in his land has now but two great poets, and the Laureate " 39 - 66 Every Saturday, 46 UNCLE INGOT. UNCLE INGOT. If is one of them. His fame is ever increasing, for he | nephews and nieces felt confident of being provided combines the precision of the correct school of for in the future. In the present, however, as time Queen Anne with much of the fire and freedom of went on, and the education of both girls and boys We shall have no more grew more expensive, Mrs. Isaac's income became the Elizabethan poets. Eusdens and Cibbers; the Laureates henceforth will greatly straitened. Her own family very much be chosen because Nature's own hand has moulded applauded the expensive way in which she was them for the office; and when Tennyson shall resign bringing up her children, and especially her indehis green and stainless wreath, it will, we may be pendence of spirit with relation to her tradesman penny. The young gentleman at Cambridge was pretty sure, be worn by one more resembling Chau- brother-in-law, but they never assisted her with a therefore kept upon very short allowance; and the cer and Spenser than either Whitehead or Pye. young ladies, whose beauty was something remarkable, affected white muslin, and wore no mereIf ever you or yours get five pounds out of me, tricious jewelry. Their pin-money was very limmadam, before I die, I promise you, you shall have ited, poor things, and they made their own clothes five thousand; and I am a man of my word." So at home by the help of a sewing-machine. spoke Mr. Ingot Beardmore, drysalter and common- Uncle Ingot could have seen them thus diligently councilman of the city of London, to Dorothea employed, his heart would perhaps have softened Elizabeth, his widowed sister-in-law, who had ap- towards them, but, as I have said, they now never plied to him for pecuniary succor about three months got that chance. Julia, the elder, had been but after the death of his younger brother Isaac, her six years old when he had last called at their husband. There were harshness and stubborn de- highly-rented but diminutive habitation in Mayfair, termination enough in his reply, but there was no and now she was eighteen, and had never seen him niggard cruelty. Mrs. Isaac wanted money, it is since. Although she had of course grown out of the true, but only in the sense in which we all want it. old man's recollection, she remembered his figureShe was only poor in comparison with the great head, as she wickedly called his rigid features, wealth of this relative by marriage. Her income uncommonly well; and, indeed, nobody who had Mr. Ingot said ever seen it was likely to forget it. His countewas large enough for any ordinary purpose, but not sufficient for send-nance was not so much human as ligneous; and his legitimate' ing her boy to Eton, and finishing him off at the profile Nephew Jack had actually seen upon a universities, as it was the maternal wish to do. Mr. certain nobbly tree in the lime-walk of Clare Hall Ingot hated such genteel intentions; Christ's Hos- at Cambridge, - much more like than any silhouette pital had been a fashionable enough school for him, ever cut out of black paper. They had laughed at and he had "finished off" as a clerk at forty pounds the old gentleman in early days, and snapped their a year in that very respectable house of which he fingers at his churlishness, but it had become no was now the senior partner. With the results of laughing matter now. that education, as exemplified in himself, he was perfectly satisfied, and if his nephews only turned out half as well, their mother, he thought, might think herself uncommonly lucky. Her family had given themselves airs upon the occasion of her marrying Isaac,-"allying herself with commerce,' and Ingot had never forsome of them called it, given them. He gloried in his own profession, although government had never seen fit to ennoble any member of it, and perhaps all the more upon that account; for he was one of those radicals who at heart, but rather aristocrats. are not "snobs He honestly believed that noblemen and gentlemen were the lower orders, and those who toiled and strove, the upper crust of the human pie. When he was told that the former classes often toiled and strove in their own way as much as the others, he made a gesture of contempt, and "blew" like an exasperated whale. It was a vulgar sort of retort, of course, but so eminently expressive, that his opponent rarely pursued the subject. He rather liked his sister-in-law, in spite of her ner, That remark of Uncle Ingot's, "If ever you or yours get five pounds out of me, madam, before I die, I promise you, you shall have five thousand; and I am a man of my word," had become a very Poverty, at least very urgent Want. What it meant serious sentence, condemning all the family to, if not of course was, that he was resolutely determined to give them nothing. In vain the young ladies worked for Uncle Ingot slippers and book-markers for his birthday, and sent to him their best wishes at Christmas in Rimmel's highly-scented envelopes; in vain Jack sent him a pound of the most excellent snuff that Bacon's emporium could furnish, at the beginning of every term. He always wrote back a civil letter of thanks, in a clear and clerkly letter, but there was never any enclosure. When Mrs. Isaac avowing that he did not feel himself comasked him to dinner, he declined in a caustic manfortable at the aristocratic tables of the West End,growing. He had really no ill-feeling towards his and sent her a pine-apple for the dessert, of his own relatives, although he kept himself so estranged from them; but I think this sort of conduct tickled the old gentleman's grim sense of humor. If he could with his sister-in-law, within the first year or two of have found some legitimate excuse for "making up" their falling out, perhaps he would have been glad to do so; but time had now so widened the breach, that it was not to be easily repaired. What he had satirically written when he declined her invitation had grown to be true; he rarely went into society, and almost never into the company of ladies, the elder portion of whom he considered frivolous and vexatious, and the younger positively dangerous. He had a few old-bachelor friends, however, with whom he kept up a cordial intercourse, and spent with them various festivals of the year as regularly | wraps, or ward her off with his muffetees, she had as they came round. On the 31st of December, for instance, he never omitted to go down to Reading, and "see the old year out and the new year in," in the company of Tom Whaffles, with whom he had worn the yellow stockings in these school-days that had passed away more than half a century ago. Tom and Isaac had been even greater cronies as boys than Tom and Ingot, but the latter did not like Tom the less upon that account secretly, I think he esteemed him the more highly as a link between himself and that luckless family whose very existence he yet chose to ignore. Mr. Whaffles had intimate relations with them still; they came down to stay with him whenever his sister paid him a visit, and could act as their hostess; but this never happened in the last week of the year. Tom was never to speak of them to his old friend, that was not only tacitly understood, but had even been laid down in writing, as the basis of their intimacy. On the 31st of December last, Mr. Ingot Beardmore found himself, as usual, at the Paddington Station, looking for an empty compartment, for his own company had got to be very pleasing to him. Having attained his object, and rolled himself up in the corner of the carriage in several greatcoats, with his feet upon a hot tin, and his hands clothed in thick mittens, and looking altogether like a polar bear who liked to make himself comfortable, when everything was arranged, I say, to the old gentleman's complete satisfaction, who should invade his privacy, just as the train was about to start, and the whistle had sounded, but one of the most bewitching young ladies you ever set eyes on! "Madam, this carriage is engaged," growled he, pointing to the umbrella, carpet-bag, and books, which he had distributed upon all the seats, in order to give it that appearance. 66 66 Only engaged to you, I think, sir,” replied the charmer, flippantly. Happy carriage! I wish I Is n't that pretty?" was. Mr. Beardmore had never had anything half so shocking said to him in all his life, and if the train had not been already set in motion, he would have called upon the guard for help, and left the carriage forthwith. As it was, he could only look at this shameless young person with an expression of the severest reprobation. At the same time, his heart sank within him at the reflection, that the train was not to stop till he reached his destination, Reading. What indignities might he not have to suffer before he could obtain protection! She was a modest-looking young lady, too, very simply dressed, and her voice was particularly sweet and prepossessing, notwithstanding the very dreadful remarks in which she had indulged. Perhaps she was out of her mind, and at this idea Mr. Ingot Beardmore broke out, notwithstanding the low temperature, into a very profuse perspiration. "Now, what will you give me for a kiss, you old - you old polar bear?" asked the fair stranger playfully as the train flew by Ealing. "Nothing, madam, nothing; I am astonished at you," answered Mr. Beardmore, looking anxiously round the carriage in the desperate hope of finding one of those newly-patented inventions for affording communication with the guard. "Well, then, I'll take one, and leave it to your honor," continued the young lady with a peal of silver laughter; and with that she lightly rose, and before the old gentleman could free himself from his imprinted a kiss upon his horny cheek. Mr. Beard- "Give me in charge! What for, you curious piece of antiquity?" "For an assault, madam; yes, for an assault. Don't you know that you have no right to kiss people without their consent in this manner?" Here the young lady laughed so violently that the tears came into her eyes. "Do you suppose, you poor old doting creature, that anybody will ever believe such a story as that? Do you ever use such a thing as a looking-glass, you poor dear? Are you aware how very unprepossessing your appearance is, even when you don't frown, as you are doing now, in a manner that is enough to frighten one? You have, of course, a perfect right to your own opinion, but if you suppose the police will agree with you, you will find yourself much mistaken. The idea of anybody wanting to kiss you will reasonably enough appear to them preposterous.' "What is it you require of me, you wicked creature?" cried the old bachelor, in an agony of shame and rage. "I want payment for my kiss. To a gentleman at your time of life, who scarcely could expect to be so favored, surely it is worth, what shall I say? five pounds. What! not so much? Well, then, here's another for your other cheek." Like a flash of lightning, she suited the action to her words. "There, then, five pounds for the two, and I won't take a shilling less. You will have to give it to the poor's box at the police station, if not to me. For I intend, in case you are obstinate, to complain of your disgraceful conduct to the guard, at the first opportunity. I shall give you into custody, sir, as sure as you are alive. You will be put upon your oath, you know, and all you will dare to say will be that I kissed you, and not you me. What roars of laughter' there will be in court, and how funny it will all look in the papers!" Here the young lady began to laugh again, as though she had already read it there. Mr. Beardmore's grim sense of hu mor was, as usual, accompanied by a keen dislike of appearing ridiculous. True, he hated to be imposed upon; still, of the two evils, was it not better to pay five pounds, than to be made the laughing-stock of his bachelor friends, who are not the sort of people to commiserate one in a misfortune of this kind? In short, Mr. Ingot Beardmore paid the money. Mr. Thomas Whaffles found his guest that evening anything but talkative. There was a select party of the male sex invited to meet him, by whom the rich old drysalter was accustomed to be regarded as an oracle; but upon this occasion he had nothing to say; the consciousness of having been "done" oppressed him. His lips were tightly sealed; his cheeks were still glowing from the audacious insult that had been put upon them; his fingers clutched the pocket-book in which there was a five-pound note less than there ought to be. But when his host and himself were left alone that night, "seeing |