"And you have considered that in thus fostering your ambition you yourself will lose almost everything? That you will not be lifted thereby, but that you can thenceforth seldom see your child, excepting at a distance? " "But she, my lord, will one day be Queen of England." Again the Premier paused. "I do not know," he muttered; "I think, however, that it can be done." The lawyer gasped, turned pale, half arose from his chair at the speedy culmination of his plans; then endeavored to appear as though it was no unusual assurance that was made, nothing that should unduly bewilder or excite him; then for a moment struggled for breath, and wildly clutching at the empty air, fell lifeless beside his chair. III. He was dead before they had time to lift him from the floor. Here, indeed, was a sad ending to the scene; and, what might be of important public moment, many complications might arise to hinder the great end in view. What perplexities might not now ensue in the shape of collateral or joint heirships, guardianships, and, in fact, any and all manner of legal formalities and restrictions to obstruct the whole project? And yet, upon review of the case, it must surely be understood that Edith Guyndal was her father's sole heir; and though she was under age, no guardian would dare to withstand the proposed royal alliance. And, as is usual in almost all human calculation, the only check came through a consideration which had not in the slightest degree been anticipated. For, when a week had passed away, and the old lawyer had been duly buried, there came to the Premier a slight-built, graceful girl, in deepest black, and raised her veil. Lord Palmerston had never heretofore seen her, but some instinct told him that she was Edith Guyndal, and he arose respectfully; for might he not be in the presence of his future sovereign? "My lord," she said, "what I have to tell you must be in a few words. Only yesterday, from a paper that he left behind him, I have learned the lot which my father had destined for me. Let me now say that I must inflexibly decline it." "Decline! Refuse his Royal Highness?" gasped the Prime Minister. "I am already pledged-have long secretly been so-to one whom I love," she said. "I cannot, I have no wish to retire from my word. Let that suffice." The minister stood thunderstruck. "And does he know the full extent of your wealth?" "He does not know it now, my lord; it may be that he shall never know it," was the response. "Heaven will have to help my thoughts, what to do, seeing that the money must be too much for one person's care-certainly for his needs." "And therefore it may-" The Premier spoke hopefully. Might she not, after all, even while declining a royal bridegroom, be generous to the nation and relinquish the debt? But the lawyer's daughter inherited something of the professional acuteness, and was not minded thus to sacrifice her birthright. "Whether my husband shall or shall not know," she said, "or what further I may do, time alone will show. My lord, farewell." With that she dropped her veil once more over her face, and retired as softly as she had entered. To her so doing, Lord Palmerston made no opposition. How, indeed, could he? Or with what grace could he press a rejected royal alliance upon her? He could merely fall back upon his chair and sigh, and ponder over the mysteries and eccentricities of human nature, and await results. And truly, it was a mark for earnest curiosity what the result might be. Would Edith Guyndal conclude, after all, to bestow her whole inheritance upon her intended, and allow him to flash forth into blazing notoriety of such a fortune as man never yet had owned! Or would she relent and bestow a portion of it, at least, upon the nation, making it grateful to her for assisting it in its necessity? There was nothing to do, however, but to wait and see. There was not long to wait. In a few days it became noticeable that the volume of government bonds for sale at the customary money exchanges began mysteriously to increase. Inquiry elicited the fact that these sales were made on account of sundry churches and hospitals which had received anonymous presentations of these bonds to a heavy amount. After that, different commercial projects in a failing condition were discovered to have been aided with large subscriptions, and evidently in a feigned name. For the most part these assistances came too late, the projects continuing on in their failing career, so that in the end the amounts applied seemed wasted. But no one came forward to complain; and the speculative world naturally wondered, not only at the apparent extent of these losses, but also at the equanimity with which they seemed to be sustained; no one who was not in the secret being able to comprehend that gain or loss in the investment of the bonds was probably a matter of no solicitude to their owner, the only intent being their disposal out of reach, as material that it was burdensome to hold. So for two months; during which the accumulation of bonds upon the market was so excessive as for the time materially to reduce their value, disturb exchanges, and threaten panic. Then came a temporary lull; but just as the Stock Exchange had concluded that the disturbance was at an end, and that all values were ready to settle down again and resume their normal condition, the whole community was startled with the news that upwards of fifty millions of the New Turkish Loan, which had long lain unheeded upon the market, had been taken at par. Taken by secret agents and paid for in British consols, the Turkish stock having been almost immediately thereafter thrown upon the Exchange and sold at less than one-half its nominal value. In a few days the same thing happened with the Spanish, the Mexican, and the Argentine loans: in each case millions of pounds being invested in them at their par value, and the bonds being almost at once resold at nearly a total loss. The excitement became intense, extending into every branch of trade and commerce, not merely in the British islands, but throughout the whole Continent and India. Vast fortunes were everywhere made and lost in the universal depreciation of all government securities. In the annals of the Stock Exchange that year has ever since been looked back upon with wonderment as "Consols Year." There was no firm, however securely established, that failed to feel the effect of the constant vibration in values. It is said that at one time even the Rothschilds tottered for a whole morning over the abyss of ruin, and were only saved through the most superhuman exertions, and that if there had happened to exist a rival house with sufficient capital and a proper realization of the situation, the Rothschild dynasty would have. fallen to rise no more. And all this while, so secretly were these ruinous loans effected, that no inkling of their agency was ever permitted to escape, and only Palmerston and his two confidants had the ability to reveal the slightest glimmer of the truth. Those three gentlemen-the guardians of a secret that they could never suffer themselves to betray -were the only persons who knew that the author of the great financial disturbance was old Thomas Guyndal's daughter; seeking, from some prudential distrust of the wisdom of him whom she had chosen for her husband, to reduce into reasonable limits the fortune which would so soon come to him; and yet with something of a trader's spirit, not rising to the magnanimity of a direct gift to the nation, but rather preferring to squander that vast wealth by going through the empty form of its constantly repeated sale and reinvestment. At length, some two years after old Thomas Guyndal's death, his daughter Edith married the man of her choice. It has been ascertained that she brought him a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds, the sole remains of her magnificent inheritance. This, however, was more than he had been led to expect; and the possession of such a sum by one who had never been accustomed to the use of money, for the time unsettled him. Almost at once he launched out into extravagant expenditures which absorbed nearly one quarter of the whole sum; then, partially recovering himself, he entered into wild speculations with the hope of making good the deficiency. Losing heavily in this, he became more quarrelsome and took to drinking. Other ill-judged expenditures followed, then came increased dissipation, recrimination, jealousies, quarrelling, and ill-treatment of his wife. And so, with giant steps, the customary road to ruin was travelled; and, at last, after only two years longer, ensued poverty and desertion. We will let Basil Dulapoon, from his written memoir, tell the remainder of the story; merely correcting his language and phraseology, which, coming from an uneducated man, are defective in no ordinary degree. "About that time," he says, "I thought that I would like to know what had become of Edith Guyndal. I traced her at last to a small house in a narrow street leading out of the Strand. She had been deserted by her husband and occupied a small room at the top and rear of the house, the rent of which she managed to pay by plain sewing. She was away when I called, having gone across the city to Oxford street, to solicit orders. Therefore I left and strolled off to the park, trusting to look her up some other day. But just as I reached the border of the main drive, I beheld her coming. I had seen her before, upon the occasion of her calling upon the Prime Minister, and I now recognized her at once, though she was greatly altered. Her face was thin, her eyes heavy, her motion slow, her whole appearance that of one who was in quick decline, and had not many months longer to live. Her dress was poor, insufficient and patched, and in her arms she held a roll of material to be made up-an ordinary sized roll, but seemingly a burden all too heavy for her. As she came slowly and wearily to the edge of the drive and would have crossed over, there ensued a sudden stir of carriages drawing up on either side. With that a policeman seized her roughly by the shoulder and bade her stand still. The roll of material fell at her feet, and there lay, as though she lacked the strength to lift it again. And so, immovably she stood, while for a moment the two lines of carriages remained drawn up motionless; and between them and followed by a ripple of loyal cheers, rolled the open barouche that bore the Prince of Wales and the Princess Alexandra of Denmark." T Coates Kinney. BORN in Penn Yan, N. Y., 1826. PESSIM. [Lyrics of the Ideal and the Real. 1887.] think! to think and never rest from thinking! To feel this great globe flying through the sky And reckon by the rising and the sinking Of stars how long to live, how soon to die! This, this is life. Is life, then, worth the living? Our freedom! We are sin-scourged into being, We are walled in by darkness-wall behind us, Out through abysmal depths of heaven round us No ghostly presence, no mysterious voices, Thought follows chaos-nay, without the places |