Well, be it so," cried he, as he sank heavily into a seat. "She's playing a bold game when she goes thus far." He leaned his head on the table, and sat thus so long that he appeared to have fallen asleep; indeed, the servant who came to tell him that tea was served feared to disturb him, and retired without speaking. Far from sleeping, however, his head was racked with a maddening pain, and he kept on muttering to himself, "This is the second time-the second time she has taunted me with cowardice. Let her beware! Is there no one will warn her against what she is doing? "Missis says, please, sir, won't you have a cup of tea?" said the maid timidly at the door.

"No; I'll not take any."

"Missis says too, sir, that Miss Cary is tuk poorly, and has a shiverin' over her, and a bad headache, and she hopes you'll send in for Dr. Tobin."

"Is she in bed?" "Yes, sir, please."

"I'll go up and see her;" and with this he arose and passed up the little stair that led to the nursery. In one bed a little darkhaired girl of about three years old lay fast asleep in the adjoining bed a bright blueeyed child of two years or less lay wide awake, her cheeks crimson, and the expression of her features anxious and excited. Her mother was bathing her temples with cold water as Sewell entered, and was talking in a voice of kind and gentle meaning to the child.

"That stupid woman of yours said it was Cary," said Sewell pettishly, as he gazed at the little girl.

"I told her it was Blanche; she has been heavy all day, and eaten nothing. No, pet -no, darling," said she, stooping over the sick child, " pa is not angry, he is only sorry that little Blanche is ill."

66 I suppose you'd better have Tobin to see her," said he, coldly. "I'll tell George to take the tax-cart and fetch him out. It's well it wasn't Cary," muttered be, as he sauntered out of the room. His wife's eyes followed him as he went, and never did a human face exhibit a stronger show of repressed passion than hers, as, with closely-compressed lips and staring eyes, she watched him as he passed out.

"The fool frightened me she said it was Cary," were the words he continued to mutter as he went down the stairs.

"Have you seen Colonel Sewell?" said Mrs. Sewell, as she accompanied the doctor down-stairs.

"Yes; I told him just what I've said to you."

"And what reply did he make?"

"He said, 'All right! I have business in town, and must start to-morrow. My wife and the chicks can follow by the end of the week.'"

"It's so like him! - so like him!" said she, as though the pent-up passion could no longer be restrained.

CHAPTER XL.

MR. BALFOUR'S OFFICE.

ON arriving in Dublin Sewell repaired at once to Balfour's office in the Castle-yard; he wanted to "hear the news," and it was here that every one went who wanted to "hear the news." There are in all cities, but more especially in cities of the second order, certain haunts where the men about town repair; where, like the changing-houses of bankers, people exchange their "credits"-take up their own notes, and give up those of their neighbours.

Sewell arrived before the usual time when people dropped in, and found Balfour alone and at breakfast. The Under-Secretary's manner was dry, so much Sewell saw as he entered; he met him as though he had seen him the day before, and this, when men have not seen each other for some time, has a certain significance. Nor did he ask when he had come up, nor in any way recognise that his appearance was matter of surprise or pleasure.

"Well, what's going on here?" said Sewell, as he flung himself into an easy-chair, and turned towards the fire. Anything new?"

66

66

Nothing particular. I don't suppose you care for the Cattle Show, or the Royal Irish Academy?"

"Not much - at least I can postpone my inquiries about them. How about my place here? are you going to give me trouble about it?"

"The truth, of course, if such a novel

And," continued he in the same tone, and as though no interruption had occurred, "that's the opinion of Halkett, and Doyle, and Jocelyn, and the rest."

"Confidentially, of course," said Sewell, with a sneer so slight as not to be detected. "I may say confidentially, because it was at dinner we talked it over, and we were only the household -no guests but Byam Herries and Barrington."

"And you all agreed?"

6

"Yes, there was not a dissentient voice but Jocelyn's, who said, if he were in your place, he'd insist on having all the papers and letters given up to him. His view is this. 'What security have I that the same charges are not to be renewed again and again? I submit now, but am I always to submit? Are my Indian'. (what shall I call them? I forget what he called them; I believe it was escapades) —' my Indian escapades to declare me unfit to hold anything under the Crown?' He said a good deal in that strain, but we did not see it. It was hard, to be sure, but we did not see it. As Halkett said, Sewell has had his innings already in India. If, with a pretty wife and a neat turn for billiards, he did not lay by enough to make his declining years comfortable, I must say that he was not provident.' Doyle, however, remarked that after that affair with Loftus up at Agrawasn't it Agra? Sewell nodded "it wasn't so easy for you to get along as many might think, and that you were a devilish clever fellow to do what you had done. Doyle likes you, I think." Sewell nodded again, and, after a slight pause, Balfour proceeded-"And it was Doyle, too, said, 'Why not try for something in the colonies? There are lots of places a man can go and nothing be ever heard of him. If I was Sewell, I'd say, Make me a barrack-master in the Sandwich Islands, or a consul in the Caraccas.'

"They all concurred in one thing, that you never did so weak a thing in your whole life as to have any dealings with Trafford.

6

into the private office at the Horse Guards and got Clifford's appoinment cancelled, just for a miserable five hundred pounds Jack won off the elder brother, that fellow who died last year at Madeira. She's the most dangerous woman in Europe. She does not care what she says, nor to whom she says it. She'd go up to the Queen at a drawing-room and make a complaint as soon as she'd speak to you or me. As it is, she told their Excellencies here all that went on in your house, and I suppose scores of things that did not go on either, and said, And are you going to permit this man to be' she did not remember what, but she said 'a high official under the Crown - and are you going to receive his wife amongst your intimates? What a woman she is! To hear her you'd think her dear child,' instead of being a strapping fellow of six feet two, was a brat in knickerbockers, with a hat and feather. The fellow himself must be a consummate muff to be bullied by her; but then the estate is not entailed, they say, and there's a younger brother may come into it all. His chances look well just now, for Lionel has got a relapse, and the doctors think very ill of him."

"I had not heard that," said Sewell, calmly.

"Oh, he was getting on most favourably was able to sit up at the window, and move a little about the room when, one morning Lady Trafford had driven over to the Lodge to luncheon, he stepped down stairs in his dressing-gown as he was, got into a cab, and drove off into the country. All the cabman could tell was that he ordered him to take the road to Rathfarnham, and said, 'I'll tell you by-and-by where to;' and at last he said,Where does Sir William Lendrick live?' and though the man knew the Priory, he had taken a wrong turn and got down to ask the road. Just at this moment a carriage drove by with two greys and a postilion. A young lady was inside with an elderly gentleman, and the moment Trafford saw her he cried out, There she is that is she!' As hard as they could they hastened after; but they smashed a trace, and lost several minutes in repairing it, and as many more in finding out which way the carriage had taken. It was to Kingstown, and, as the cabman suspected, to catch the packet for Holyhead; for just as they drove up, the steamer edged away from the pier, and the carriage with the greys drove off with only the old man. Trafford fell back in a faint, and continued so, for when they took him

เ

་

From the Spectator, 3 March. MR. BANCROFT AS THE "YOUNG

COLUMBIAN."

AMERICA does great things, but is too apt to say small and silly ones. This is certainly, we fear, the case with the great oration of Mr. Bancroft before the House of Representatives on the birthday of the late President, and it is the more to be regretted because Mr. Lincoln of all American statesmen, showed the most power of maintaining the dignity and reserve of his country, by reticence of feeling, and luminous impartiality of thought. There was something singularly fatuous in celebrating the birth of so simply great and so humorously wise a man as Mr. Lincoln, by bombastic panegyrics on the greatness of America, and thrilling invectives against the iniquity of England and France. It is, we know, nearly the unforgivable sin in America to maintain that any part of Mr. Dickens's caricature is founded in truth; and we are well aware that our able and instructive New York Correspondent will convict us of showing ignorance so gross in what we are about to say, that Mr. Thompson, pointing to our bewilderment, may obtain a fresh chance of carrying his point with the University of Cambridge, getting the recent vote rescinded, and a Professor ship of American history, literature, and institutions, founded out of hand. Still even with this deep moral conviction of our doom before our eyes, we cannot help saying that Mr. Bancroft has apparently proved Mr. Dickens's "Young Columbian "to be a real and not a fictitious person. Was it not he who engaged in an imaginary struggle with the British lion, very much like that in which Mr. Bancroft engaged heart and soul before the House of Representatives and the Senate the Senatus populusque Americanus of Washington? Bring forth that lion," said the Young Columbian; "I dare that lion, I taunt that lion; I tell that lion, that Freedom's hand once twisted in his mane he lies a corse before me, and the eagles of the great Republic laugh ha! ha!" Mr. Bancroft was almost as impassioned. He indeed divided his metaphors, and kept the wild laughter of nature for the rebellious Southerners, and the corse' for the British Constitution. Of the Slaveowners he said that they maintained that "the slavery of the black man is good in itself — he shall serve the white man for ever. And nature, which better understood the quality of fleeting interest and passion, laughed, as it caught the echo 'man' and

'for ever."" Did Mr. Bancroft's audience laugh when they caught the echo 'man and for ever?' We fear that Mr. Bancroft understood his audience too well. But then why do American politicians like rant so very silly as this? When Mr. Roebuck the Cassius Clay of England, as he has been called-speaks of England driving every American flag from the sea for ever, the House of Commons does laugh as it catches the echo of these tremendous words, and Mr. Roebuck is aware that he is esteemed a goose. But let us see the equally impressive language which Mr. Bancroft uses of our dead Constitution. After he has fairly got "the mighty winds blowing from every quarter to fan the flame of the sacred and unquenchable fire" of liberty,

a very curious meteorological phenomenon by the way, by the side of which the spiral hurricanes of the tropics seem devoid of all interest, Mr. Bancroft artfully introduces England looking coldly on at this curious convergence of the winds. "There was a kingdom," he says, with a grand indefiniteness," whose people had in an eminent degree attained to freedom of industry and the security of person and property," but a people whose "grasping ambition had dotted the world with military ports, kept watch over our boundaries on the NorthEast, at the Bermudas, in the West Indies, held the gates of the Pacific, of the Southern and the Indian Ocean, hovered on our North-West at Vancouver, held the whole of the newest continent, and the entrance to the old Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and garrisoned forts all the way from Madras to China. That aristocracy" [which we conclude is the English] "had gazed with terror on the growth of a commonwealth where freeholds existed by the million, and religion was not in bondage to the State, and now they could not repress their joy at its perils." Then, Lord Russell as Foreign Secretary had spoken of the "late Union," and this gives our " Young Columbian" his opportunity for his grand burst of invective; "but it is written, 'Let the dead bury the dead.' They may not bury the living. Let the dead bury their dead. Let a Bill of Reform remove the worn-out government of a class, and infuse new life into the British Constitution by confiding rightful power to the people." It was no doubt well that Mr. Bancroft pointed out the impropriety of the dead burying the living, as the difficult and recondite character of the suggestion itself might otherwise have prevented the gross impropriety involved in that procedure from being clearly