Let me dispose, once for all, of Mademoiselle Finola, who is of no further importance in this story, and need not appear in it any more. She had troops of admirers and many adorers; and among the latter she soon found an eligible husband. He was a man of large property and with a foreign title. She renounced the stage right joyously, and betook herself to an existence of balls and receptions, in which her soul found higher delight and more fitting sphere than it could have discovered in any triumph of musical art. Her name has been forgotten among singers long ago; and she is not sorry. She carried off at the very outset the only prize she cared about; and she looked back ever after on her artistic career as one remembers the weary progress of a journey which has led him to the warmth and light of a happy home. She lived principally in London, not much caring to go back to Paris while the shoe-shop still stood in the Palais-Royal arcade. I met her several times after her marriage, and she was very friendly and gracious for awhile, until chance and change gradually brought us less and less within each other's sight, and at last extinguished even recognition.

The first season, then, in which Christina and I sang together had come and gone; and this was what it brought. I knew no end of people now, and I doubt if London held a lonelier man. I felt as if I were running to seed; and I longed for a new life- -a new start in life. It came; but not in the way I had planned or expected. The unforeseen, as usual, came to pass.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHRISTINA'S INTERVENTION.

ANOTHER season opens, finding everything with me much the same, to all outward appearance, as the season before. I have not yet carried out my idea of going to America; and just at the present moment the idea is rather in the background. I have been in London since before Christmas, and the spring is now well advanced. I am still lodging under the same roof with Ned Lambert, though we sometimes don't meet for weeks together. I hear rather promising accounts of the poor Lyndons in Paris. I have not seen Christina, or heard from her all the winter; but I know that she has been to Nice, and that Mr. Lyndon, M.P., has been there, without his daughters; and I know what the English colony there said and thought, and, while I believe it to be false as hell, I am maddened by such whispers. I know the common talk here is that Christina is to marry Lyndon; and I wish her husband would abandon his conspiracies, and own his wife, and live with her in the face of day. I have heard something from him too; and news of him. There has been an abortive insurrection in Lombardy, and a few poor fellows have been bayoneted and shot, and some people blame Salaris for it, and say that he was there; and others condemn Mazzini, and say that he was not there.

Christina's engagement here, beginning rather late this year, is near at hand, and she must soon be in town. I have heard that her voice is quite restored, but that her general health is still weak.

One morning I receive a letter addressed to me in her handwriting. I see it with something like a start. The time has been my whole senses would have stirred at the sight of that writing; and even still I cannot look at it unmoved. I believe there are some early feelings one never gets over-never. I shall never conquer my detestation of the smell of certain medicines. The faintest breath of them horrifies me, as if I were again a child about to have a dose forced down my throat. I shall never lose a sense of delight called up by the smell of tar; be cause it brings back all the old memories of the sea and the strand and the boats. I shall never see a scrap of Christina Braun's handwriting without emotion. There are no particular mysteries to be treasured up to the end of this story, and I may say at once that I love another woman now better than I ever loved the idol of my boyhood. But I can look at her writing in a letter without anything of a thrill, while a line of Christina Braun's hand would even still produce at the first glance a sort of electric shock.

Christina's letter was short.

"Jermyn-street.

"MY DEAR EMANUEL,-Greeting! I have returned to town, as you will see, and I want to speak to you frankly, earnestly, as a friend. Do you believe me a true friend, above meanness, and wishing you well? If so, forget any little coldness or ill-humour I may have shown last year, when I was troubled so much mentally and physically, and come to me at once; if you do not thus believe in me, then tear up this letter, and don't come. CHRISTINA."

I went to Jermyn-street immediately. Christina's German companion received me at first; and in a few minutes Christina herself entered. She was looking rather pale, but very handsome, and brighteyed, and splendid.

"I am glad you have come," she said; "it is friendly of you. I wished to speak to you a little." And she glanced at the other woman, who was still in the room.

"First of yourself, Madame Reichstein. You are recovered-really recovered and strong, I hope?"

"O yes, I think so. I was not very well all the winter; and many things made me uneasy and distressed."

She looked at me with such an expression that I knew she referred to her husband. Indeed, I believe her German companion was quite in her confidence on this point.

"But I am better now-much better; quite restored, I think. And Finola is married, and has a title, and is happy! And Ned Lambert is not married, and is not happy! I saw poor Ned the other day in

Paris; dear good Ned! He is not happy-and he is uneasy about some of his friends."

Here Christina lifted her eyes and let them rest full on me, as if she would read my very heart. I don't think I met the gaze quite boldly. "Did you meet many friends in Nice?" I asked, not knowing anything else to say.

"Some; not many. Mr. Lyndon was there part of the time." "So I heard."

I now looked fixedly at Christina in my turn. She did not wince. "I believe," she said quite carelessly, "some people say Mr. Lyndon and I are to be married.-What do you think of that story, Meta ?" Meta smiled a dry smile.

"Herr Lyndon is ein bischen alt-a little old," was her only remark; and in a moment or two, to my great relief, she left the room, and I prepared to hear what Christina had to say.

When Meta was present, Christina had been sitting on a music-stool, while I sat quite away on a chair near the window. When we were left alone, she rose and stood near the fireplace, where, bright spring day though it was, there were blazing embers, and she motioned to me to come near.

I came and stood close beside her.

"I have asked you to come," she said, "to speak of you, not of me." I suppose that was a note of defiance in reply to my look when we spoke of Mr. Lyndon.

There was nothing indeed I wished to say or to hear said on the subject of Mr. Lyndon and his attentions, or the talk they created. I merely bowed my head in token of assent.

Then Christina, throwing back her hair with one hand, and looking fixedly at me for an instant or two, said:

"Now, Emanuel, I have something earnest to say to you. Just a word or two of question and of warning. You will take both question and warning in a friendly spirit, will you not?”

I think I now knew what was coming, although the reader does not. I fear I flushed a little; but I answered calmly,

"Surely, Christina, I could not receive any word from you but as a friend."

"I thank you for the confidence. Now for the word, Emanuel. What about Lilla Lyndon ?"

"About Lilla Lyndon! Which Lilla Lyndon? There are two." Christina shook her head.

"Not worthy of you, Emanuel. Evasion to no purpose. Tell me to mind my own affairs and leave you to yours, and I will do so. But if you allow me to be your friend, and admit confidence, don't evade. I have always confided in you."

"I don't think you have."

"So far as I could just now. I have told you there are certain

things I cannot quite explain even yet, but that they shall be explained. I have never evaded your questions. I once rather anticipated themput them for you and gave the answers, so far as any answer might be given. Now, have you not been evading my question? Did you not understand it? Did I not see in your face that you understood it?"

"Well, Christina, I suppose I did. It is no use trying to evade so keen a questioner; and I wish I had answered you directly at once, and not given an appearance of mystery where there is none, and no need of any. Come, put any question you will-only don't expect that anything mysterious or romantic or interesting is likely to come in the way of answer.”

"Well, then, again: what about Lilla Lyndon ?"

"I can only say, so far as I know, nothing. To Lilla Lyndon I am nothing. To me she is a sweet, calm, pure-hearted creature, who seems to come out of dreamland, or poetry, or some old chronicle of saints— and that is all."

"How long have you known her?"

Comparatively speaking, a short time. The first time I ever saw her, and spoke to her, was before I went to Italy, and I then saw her hardly five minutes. Last season I saw her with you, as you will remember. Since I came back, I-I did meet her again."

"That is, you threw yourself in her way ?"

I did; but not for any purpose of my own. I threw myself in her way because I thought I saw through her a means of helping and serving two dear friends-you know them both-Ned Lambert and Lilla, the other Lilla, Lyndon. Most truly can I say I did not selfishly do this; but I did it, and this was how our acquaintance began." "All that I knew."

"Then that is all."

"No, not nearly all. You have met her lately?"

"I have."

"And often?"

"Yes, often."

"In plain words, you have met this girl regularly, by appointment with her, in Kensington-gardens ?"

“No, Christina, that is not so. Whoever told you that part of the story told you what was not true, what was flatly false; and if it were a man, I should like to have a chance of saying as much to him. One word of this kind never passed between us. We never met by appointment. I am not so mean as to think of such a thing; and if I had suggested it, I must have been answered just as I deserved."

“Well, I hear all this with pleasure—with some pleasure, at least. But you have met several times, quite by accident, as she walked in Kensington-gardens. She has stopped and spoken to you at the railings as she rode in the Row."

"She has; and to many others too."

"Yes; the recognised friends of her family; her father's friends." I felt myself flushing with anger. I wish I could have felt myself clear enough of conscience to reply.

"Come, Emanuel, again let me quote Zwischen uns sei Wahrheit. You have deliberately put yourself in the way of meeting Miss Lyndon?" "I have."

"And you have met her so often and so regularly that you can nearly always count upon meeting her on certain days in the same place. This is true?"

"It is true."

"And she is—well, not to be hard upon your years, which would seem painfully like being hard on my own-she is at least fourteen or fifteen years younger than you-is, in fact, considerably under age?" "She is."

"And you think you are acting honourably in this ?"

"I do not!" I exclaimed, so suddenly and sharply that Christina drew back a little and glanced uneasily at the door, as if fearful lest we should have been overheard. "I do not, Christina! I count it dishonourable-frankly dishonourable. I have been ashamed of myself long enough for doing it. When a poor boy in a small seaport, I would not have done so. But I have changed, and life has been dull and lonely to me, and I did like to meet that sweet pure girl, who seemed to me something so unlike the common world that her very presence brightened life to me. And I am afraid I liked it none the less because I detested that cold-blooded, sensuous, selfish old hypocrite, her father."

“Hush, hush, Emanuel, you don't know Mr. Lyndon—you and he seem, I can't tell how, to have a sort of instinctive aversion to each other."

"No; I don't suppose he even honours me with his aversion-and I don't care."

"Then let him pass; come to his daughter. I think I am satisfied, Emanuel. I think, as you look this thing so fearlessly in the face and don't spare yourself, you need no farther appeal-no appeal from me; still, I meant to give you a warning. Let me give it before you leave; we shall not often have such confidential conversations. Emanuel, do you love this girl?"

I turned away, and walked to the window. Christina came to me, and laid her hand upon my shoulder.

"Speak frankly to me-as to your friend or your sister. Do you 'love her ?"

"Can you ask such a question ?"

"O yes. Gone is gone, my friend, and dead is dead. I don't expect that the past could live for ever in your heart, and I should be sorry if it did. Let us remember nothing but so much as may give us a right to trust in each other. You do, then, love her?"