My lady had satisfied herself in a moment that the object of the visit was simply to extort money. Finding herself mistaken, she was quite at a loss to understand the man. Could it be possible that he really meant to prefer that dreadful charge against her? At length Carr spoke.

"This is not the first time that your ladyship has done me an injustice. I have come to ask your hand in marriage."

He spoke with the emphasis of one who was asking what he might easily command.

"My hand in marriage, man!" cried the lady passionately. "Are you mad? Will you never understand that I hate you, loathe you, with all the strength of my woman's nature."

"I know it; I have always known it," he said quietly.

"Then why come here, heaping outrage on outrage, with the vainest of all errands ?"

"Because I knew that my errand would not be vain. Letitia Ludlow, beware. You forget that I have the means wherewith to compel your compliance."

Mr. Carr had hitherto been standing; now he took a chair, playfully twirling a small piece of note-paper between the fingers of his right hand.

"I am perfectly aware that your ladyship unfortunately entertains feelings of a disagreeable nature towards your slave. Do not imagine that, at this stage, I feel towards you any other sentiment than that of self-interest. You will be useful to me in my private speculations, and I ask you to become my wife."

"And you have had my answer- -Go!"

She pointed to the door as she spoke; but he only burst into a loud laugh. Then his manner suddenly changed from sarcasm to fierceness and passion.

"I have not done with you yet, Lady Letitia Marlowe. Your husband was poisoned with arsenic, and the poison was given to him in coffee. I have the means of proving that you threatened him; that you had access to his private medicine-chest; that you were in his room previous to his partaking of the coffee; that—"

"Villain!" screamed my lady, "you know that I am innocent." "That is between ourselves. It suits my purpose to put your

cence to the proof. Look here!"

inno

Carr opened out the paper in his hand, and read from it the malicious words written by Marlowe previous to his death. The lady glanced at it for a moment, and then sank back in her chair.

"Hundreds are able to swear to this signature. Now, observe. When I, who was first to ascertain all, released that white little hand from its

captor, carried you to your own room, and alarmed the house, I found this bit of paper, and carefully concealed it on my person. It is not too late to use it. Will you consent to my proposition ?"

"No!" cried the little lady fiercely.

"Is this your final answer?" he asked.

"It is," was the firm response.

"Bien! I must call upon Monsieur the Justice."

The lady rose to her feet, crying,

"Fool! I would die a hundred deaths rather than suffer your polluted touch. Bring this false, unholy charge against me, if you will. I know my danger. But do you know yours? Bring me to the hall of justice, and I will bring you to the scaffold."

"How?"

"By swearing that you were my accomplice and instigator."

Carr started. This was a proposition which he had not anticipated. My lady saw her advantage.

"But I know you too well," she continued, "to fear that you will trouble justice more than you can help. Should I fail in having you hung as the poisoner of Lord Marlowe, I have in my escritoire papers which would procure your conviction as a forger and gambler, and condemn you to the galleys."

Carr was checkmated. He had had no intention of voluntarily confronting justice. He had fancied the simple threat would be sufficient. He would compromise the matter at once; and in attempting to do so he was deterred by no sense of shame.

"Well, I'm not disposed to be malignant," he said. "Let us settle the matter amicably between ourselves. Give me a couple of thousand pounds, and those documents which were in Marlowe's possession."

"No; I will give you one thousand pounds, to get you out of the way, on your handing me that note."

He lifted up his hat, and walked to the door. He touched the handle. He turned.

"Are you determined?" he asked.

"You know I am."

"Give me the money, then," said Carr, biting his thin nether lip.

My lady opened the lid of her desk, and took out a cheque-book. She wrote the order. She handed it to Carr; at the same moment receiving her husband's last note.

Carr now seemed fully satisfied, and became quite sprightly.

"I have the honour to wish your ladyship good evening," he said merrily, as he left the room.

Lady Letitia drew a long sigh of relief. She lit the paper at the fire, and held it between her fingers till it had burnt within an inch of them.

She dropped it into the blazing fire, and watched it turn into ashes. Then she drew forth the lilliput hand, looked at it with a strange smile, and then wrapped her muslin handkerchief around it.

Meanwhile M. Louis Carr walked with a jaunty air into the hall, gave a douceur to the servant who opened the door for him, and passed out into the night. He had only gone a very few steps when two men of strange features and garb seized him in the pleasantest way possible. He was handcuffed in a minute, and put into a cab. That very night he was on his way to Germany. Shortly after, Lady Letitia ascertained from one of the French papers that a man named Carr, who had distinguished himself by numerous gambling exploits, had been sentenced to the galleys.

The little lady had gained a complete victory; but in fighting out the battle she had been compelled to turn her eyes inward, and she saw within her heart a record of shame and sin such as made her cup still more bitter. That night she retired early, but not to sleep. Her brain was in a tumult, and her heart was burning. Vansittart, her lover, was to visit her the next day; and it was on his account that she was struggling with herself. She must renounce him. With the sins of the past upon her head, she was unworthy to become his wife. He was too pure, too noble, for companionship like hers. She loved him far too dearly to make his young life miserable.

The excitement of that terrible interview served at least one purpose. It partly freed her from the torturing stings of conscience. The worst had come to the worst, and she had done her duty by the memory of her husband bad though he was-by spurning the advances of his enemy. Now, more than ever before, she longed for love, for sympathy, such sympathy and love as Vansittart could give, did he continue to love her after she had told him all. But that was impossible. When apprised of her wicked weakness, he would cast her off like a tattered garment, and turn his face from her for evermore.

Vansittart came, and was ushered into Lady Letitia's presence. He would have rushed forward and clasped her to his heart; but she coldly waved him back.

"Hush! this must not be," she said. "We two must part for ever." "Part, Letitia !"

"Yes; I can never be your wife."

He started back. She was quite cold and pale, but her lips quivered convulsively. Their eyes met; and both man and woman trembledthe woman with shame of what she had to tell; the man with fear of something horrible to come.

"Letitia, I beg you to speak; you say you cannot be my wife. Explain."

"I am unworthy. I said so once before; but now I speak more strongly, because I feel my own unworthiness more bitterly. Go, Vansittart; some purer, better woman may win your heart; though, Heaven knows, woman can love you more deeply than I have done."

no

And she drew her left hand from her bosom as she spoke, and freed it from the folds of the muslin kerchief; when Vansittart saw an exquisitely formed false Hand, of some hard substance, covered by a white-kid glove. The blow of the knife had split the Hand in twain, and only the fingers of the glove kept it together.

He gave a cry of wonder, and gazed inquiringly at the lady. She was looking at the hand, with a sad and quiet smile.

"An artist made me this in Florence. It cost me a large sum of money. You see an accident has deprived me of one of my principal attractions. Is it not a pretty piece of workmanship?"

She spoke with affected carelessness; but her whole body was in a tremble.

"What does this mean?" cried Vansittart wildly.

She waved him to a seat.

"Listen," she said, "and I will tell you all."

And she thereupon told to her lover, without sparing herself, the whole true Story of the Lilliput Hand.

"And now, Mr. Vansittart, I must say farewell. In a few days I shall quit England, leaving my secret in the hands of a gentleman who is too good and honourable to cause an exposure which would kill me."

In spite of herself the soft tears forced themselves from under her eyelids, and rained over her beautiful face. In a fit of inspiration Vansittart flung doubt, scandal, the world, to the winds, and (for the second time) threw himself at the Lady Letitia's feet.

cence.

"Hear me, Letitia. This parting must not be. The candour with which you have told me the whole truth proves your goodness and innoYou are dearer to me now than ever. I love you, truly love you, for your past sorrow and for your confidence in him who will make your future life happy."

He arose, and clasped her in his arms. She had no power to resist him then; and his great, noble love transformed her that day into a truer, better woman.

They were married.

"And, by Jove, sir," said Vansittart many years afterwards to the writer hereof," by Jove, sir, a better, truer little lady could not be found in a year's journey from Land's End to John o' Groats. Try that claret. She died a year after our marriage in giving birth to my eldest daughter. Poor little lady! Yes, that's her portrait-a study for Chaucer's Patient Griselda, that fine old story out of Boccaccio. It shows you what she was after marriage. Heaven rest her, for I loved her; and I keep the Lilliput Hand as a memento."

R. W. B.

Out Walking.

EVERY now and then the daily press enlivens the dull seasons by opening up some new question of social politics,-something quite fresh and unhackneyed, that sets all the clubs talking, and every pen, new-nibbed, at work. Now it is the possibilities of happiness and the Queen's Bench evaded by a marriage on three hundred a-year, with domestic contingencies accruing in the place of kid-gloves and an opera-stall; now the culpable negligence of our wives who give us cold mutton weekly, for want of a diligent study of Francatelli and Eliza Acton; sometimes it is a Belgravian lament, which sets forth the low status of the matrimonial market in a threnody of bitter pathos, eloquently suggestive of hidden sores; now it is on the all but universal prevalence of the Social Evil, which wise philanthropists have fostered into rather a favourite topic with the public than otherwise, and exalted its miserable professors into about the most interesting specimens of humanity; quite lately it was on the difficulties of London walking, and the absolute certainty of all goodlooking girls being spoken to and insulted unless under the protection of masculine muscles. One always gets some good out of these discussions, and of course there is always a substratum of truth underlying their more apparent absurdities; but "writers to the Times" have the knack of exaggerating, and generally leave out all the other side, thinking a hodful of bricks quite as good as the whole tower of Siloam intact. This, however, is by the by.

Is it a fact that modest women are continually being spoken to if they walk alone? and that even two well-bred, well-dressed, and wellconducted girls together are not safe, however quiet their demeanour and unalluring their attire? Is the police of this great city of ours in such a shaky state that even daylight and the broadest thoroughfares do nothing for the better regulation of manners, but leave us in the moral condition of the diggings, where the brightest gold to the bravest finder, and the blackest eyes to the boldest wooer, make up the sum of public polity? If it is so, what becomes of all the modest single women of the middle ranks, who, if they walk at all, are obliged to walk alone, yet who never dream that they are thereby reduced to the standard of social evils? What becomes of the daily teachers, art-students, "assistants" of every kind, readers at the British Museum, and the many other instances of unprotected womanhood abounding-creatures that now walk about daily in simple, unstained purity, but who, if perpetually mistaken for the hetaire, would either shut themselves up for ever, self-cloistered by their own shame, or else would harden into indifference and likeness? Sometimes, indeed, such a disagreeable adventure as a strange man's address will happen to the most modest-looking woman, and by no fault of her own; but this is rare. If she knows how to walk in the streets, selfpossessed and quietly, with not too lagging and not too swift a step; if