society in a blaze, or even in a smoke, thereby, he certainly caused a good many people to talk about him, and to be curious as to his name. The luminousness of nature which had been sufficient to attract the attention and heart of Geraldine Allenville had, indeed, meant much. That there had been power enough in the presence, speech, mind, and tone of the poor painter's son to fascinate a girl of Geraldine's station was of itself a ground for the presumption that he might do a work in the world if he chose. The ville's words. But into that question it is quite needless for the foreign reader to enter. The Russians may be described, to borrow an idea from Dr. Wendell Holmes, after three fashions. There are the Russians as they really are, the Russians as they themselves think they are, and the Russians as they appear to foreigners. It is enough that the present works represent them graphically after the third fashion. It is possible that no such sweet, fair maiden as Sonia could ever be developed from a barefooted Russian peasant girl. It is possible that into the char-attachment to her was just the stimulus acter of Dosia may have entered something of French espieglerie. But no foreign author has ever before drawn so generally correct a series of Russian female portraits; no one has made so clear to foreign eyes the inner life of Russian homes. With what artistic skill and delicacy these pictures have been drawn and colored all readers of Henri Gréville's works will be able to judge for themselves. .W. R. S. RALSTON. From The New Quarterly Review. AN INDISCRETION IN THE LIFE OF AN HEIRESS. PART II. CHAPTER I. He, like a captain who beleaguers round which such a constitution as his required, and it had at first acted admirably upon him. Afterwards the case was scarcely so happy. He had investigated manners and customs no less than literature; and for a while the experience was exciting enough. But several habits which he had at one time condemned in the ambitious classes now became his own. His original fondness for art, literature, and science was getting quenched by his slowly increasing habit of looking upon each and all of these as machinery wherewith to effect a purpose. A new feeling began to animate all his studies. He had not the old interest in them for their own sakes, but a breathless interest in them as factors in the game of sink or swim. He entered picture-galleries, not, as formerly, because it was his humor to dream pleasantly over the images therein expressed, but to be able to talk on demand about painters and their peculiarities. He examined Correggio to criticise SINCE Egbert Mayne's situation is not his flesh shades; Angelico, to speak techaltogether a new and unprecedented one, nically of the pink faces of his saints; there will be no necessity for detailing in Murillo, to say fastidiously that there was all its minuteness his attempt to scale the a certain silliness in the look of his old steeps of fame. For notwithstanding the men; Rubens for his sensuous women; fact that few, comparatively, have reached Turner for his Turneresqueness. Romthe top, the lower tracts of that trouble-ney was greater than Reynolds because some incline have been trodden by as numerous a company as any allegorical spot in the world. The reader must then imagine five years to have elapsed, during which rather formidable slice of human life Egbert had been constantly striving. It had been drive, drive from month to month; no rest, nothing but effort. He had progressed from newspaper work to criticism, from criticism to independent composition of a mild order, from the latter to the publication of a book which nobody ever heard of, and from this to the production of a work of really sterling merit, which appeared anonymously. Though he did not set Lady Hamilton had been his model, and thereby hung a tale. Bonozzi Gozzoli was better worth study than Raffaelle, since the former's name was a learned sound to utter, and all knowledge got up about him would tell. Whether an intense love for a woman, and that woman Geraldine, was a justifiable reason for this desire to shine it is not easy to say. However, as has been stated, Egbert worked like a slave in these causes, and at the end of five full years was repaid with certain public applause, though, unfortunately, not with much public money. But this he hoped might come soon. seems to only that you are gone at these times, but a heavy creature-blankness stand in your place. - Regarding his love for Geraldine, the most noteworthy fact to be recorded of the period was that all correspondence with her had ceased. In spite of their fear of "But how can I tell you of these her father, letters had passed frequently thoughts now that I am to write no more? between them on his first leaving home, Yet we will hope, and hope. Remember and had been continued with ardor for this, that should anything serious happen, some considerable time. The reason of I will break the bond and write. Obligaits close will be perceived in the follow- tion would end then. Good-bye for a time, ing note, which he received from her two I cannot put into words what I would finyears before the date of the present chap-ish with. Good-bye, good-bye. "MY DEAR EGBERT, "Tollamore House. "How shall I tell you what has happened! and yet how can I keep silence when sooner or later you must know all? "My father has discovered what we feel for each other. He took me into his room and made me promise never to write to you, or seek you, or receive a letter from you. I promised in haste, for I was frightened and excited, and now he trusts me- I wish he did not-for he knows I would not be mean enough to lie. So don't write, poor Egbert, or expect to hear from miserable me. We must try to hope; yet it is a long, dreary thing to do. But I will hope, and not be beaten. How could I help promising, Egbert, when he compelled me? He is my father. I cannot think what we shall do under it all. It is cruel of life to be like this towards us when we have done no wrong. "We are going abroad for a long time. I think it is because of you and me, but I don't know. He does not tell me where we shall go. Just as if a place like Europe could make me forget you. He doesn't know what's in me, and how I can think about you and cry at nights — he cannot. If he did, he must see how silly the plan is. "Remember that you go to church on Sunday mornings, for then I think that perhaps we are reading in the same place at the same moment; and we are sometimes, no doubt. Last Sunday when we came to this in the Psalms, And he shall be like a tree planted by the waterside that will bring forth his fruit in due season: his leaf also shall not wither; and look, whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper,' I thought, 'That's Egbert in London.' I know you were reading that same verse in your church -- I felt that you said it with us. Then I looked up to your old nook under the tower arch. It was a misery to see the wood and the stone just as good as ever, and you not there. It is not "G. A. "P.S. Might we not write just one line at very wide intervals? It is too much never to write at all." On receiving this letter Egbert felt that he could not honorably keep up a regular correspondence with her. But a determination to break it off would have been more than he could have adhered to if he had not been strengthened by the hope that he might soon be able to give a plausible reason for renewing it. He sent her a line bidding her to expect the best results from the prohibition, which, he was sure, would not be for long. Meanwhile, should she think it not wrong to send a line at very wide intervals he would promptly reply. But she was apparently too conscientious to do so, for nothing had reached him since. Yet she was as continually in his thought and heart as before. He felt more misgivings than he had chosen to tell her of on the ultimate effect of the prohibition, but could do nothing to remove it. And then he had learnt that Miss Allenville and her father had gone to Paris, as the commencement of a sojourn abroad. These circumstances had burdened him with long hours of depression, till he had resolved to throw his whole strength into a production which should either give him a fair start towards fame, or make him clearly understand that there was no hope in that direction for such as he. He had begun the attempt, and ended it, and the consequences were fortunate to an unexpected degree. CHAPTER II. Towards the loadstar of my one desire I flitted like a dizzy moth, whose flight Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light. MAYNE'S book having been launched into the world and well received, he found time to emerge from the seclusion he had maintained for several months, and to look into life again. One warm, fashionable day, between | quented gatherings and assemblies of all five and six o'clock, he was walking along sorts he calmly owned as very probable, Piccadilly, absent-minded and unobservant, for she was her father's only daughter, and when an equipage approached whose ap-likely to be made much of. That she had pearance thrilled him through. It was the not written a line to him since their return Allenville landau, newly painted up. Eg was still the grievous point. bert felt almost as if he had been going into battle; and whether he should stand forth visibly before her or keep in the background seemed a question of life or death. "If I had only risen one or two steps further," he thought, "how boldly would I seek her out! But only to have published one successful book in all these years such grounds are slight indeed." For several succeeding days he did nothing but look about the Park, and the streets, and the neighborhood of Chevron Square, where their town house stood, in the hope of seeing her again; but in vain. There were moments when his distress that she might possibly be indifferent about He waited in unobserved retirement, which it was not difficult to do, his aspect having much altered since the old times. Coachman, footman, and carriage advanced, in graceful unity of glide, like a swan. Then he beheld her, Geraldine, after two years of silence, five years of waiting, and nearly three years of separa-him and his affairs was unbearable. He tion; for although he had seen her two or three times in town after he had taken up his residence there, they had not once met since the year preceding her departure for the Continent. fully resolved that he would on some early occasion communicate with her, and know the worst. Years of work remained to be done before he could think of appearing before her father; but he had reached a She came opposite, now passively look- sort of half-way stage at which some asing round, then actively glancing at some-surance from herself that his track was a thing which interested her. Egbert trem- hopeful one was positively needed to keep bled a little, or perhaps a great deal, at him firm. sight of her. But she passed on, and the back of the carriage hid her from his view. So much of the boy was left in him still that he could scarcely withhold himself from rushing after her, and jumping into the carriage. She had appeared to be welling at her windows from a distance, he and blooming, and an instinctive vexation that their long separation had produced no perceptible effect upon her, speedily gave way before a more generous sense of gratification at her well-being. Still, had it been possible, he would have been glad to see some sign upon her face that she yet remembered him. This sudden discovery that they were in town after their years of travel stirred his lassitude into excitement. He went back to his chambers to meditate upon his next step. A trembling on Geraldine's account was disturbing him. She had probably been in London ever since the beginning of the season, but she had not given him a sign to signify that she was so near; and but for this accidental glimpse of her he might have gone on for months without knowing that she had returned from abroad. Whether she was leading a dull or an exciting life Egbert had no means of knowing. That night after night the arms of interesting young men rested upon her waist and whirled her round the ball-room he could not bear to think. That she fre Egbert still kept on the look-out for her at every public place; but nearly a month passed, and she did not appear again. One Sunday evening, when he had been wandering near Chevron Square, and look returned past her house after dusk. The rooms were lighted, but the windows were still open, and as he strolled along he heard notes from a piano within. They were the accompaniment to an air from the "Messiah," though no singer's voice was audible. Egbert readily imagined who the player might be, for the "Messiah was an oratorio which Geraldine often used to wax eloquent upon in days gone by. He had not walked far when he remembered that there was to be an exceptionally fine performance of that stirring composition during the following week, and it instantly occurred to him that Geraldine's mind was running on the same event, and that she intended to be one of the audience. He resolved upon doing something at a venture. The next morning he went to the ticket-office, and boldly asked for a place as near as possible to those taken in the name of Allenville. "There is no vacant one in any of those rows," the office-keeper said, "but you can have one very near their number on the other side of the division." Egbert was astonished that for once in his life he had made a lucky hit. He booked his place, and returned home. The evening arrived, and he went early. On taking his seat he found himself at the left-hand end of a series of benches, and close to a red cord, which divided the group of seats he had entered from stalls of a somewhat superior kind. He was passing the time in looking at the extent of orchestra space, and other things, when he saw two ladies and a gentleman enter and sit down in the stalls diagonally before his own, and on the other side of the division. It delighted and agitated him to find that one of the three was Geraldine; her two companions he did not know. "Policy, don't desert me now," he thought; and immediately sat in such a way that unless she turned round to a very unlikely position she would not see him. There was a certain half-pleasant misery in sitting behind her thus as a possibly despised lover. To-night, at any rate, there would be sights and sounds common to both of them, though they should not communicate to the extent of a word. Even now he could hear the rustle of her garments as she settled down in her seat, and the faint murmur of words that passed between her and her friends. Never, in the many times that he had listened to that rush of harmonies, had they affected him as they did then; and it was no wonder, considering what an influence upon his own life had been and still was exercised by Geraldine, and that she now sat there before him. The varying strains shook and bent him to themselves as a rippling brook shakes and bends a shadow. The music did not show its power by attracting his attention to its subject; it rather dropped its own libretto and took up in place of that the poem of his life and love. There was Geraldine still. They were singing the chorus "Lift up your heads," and he found a new impulse of thought in him. It was towards determination. Should every member of her family be against him he would win her in spite of them. He could now see that Geraldine was moved equally with himself by the tones which entered her ears. "Why do the nations so furiously rage together" filled him with a gnawing thrill, and so changed him to its spirit that he believed he was capable of suffering in silence for his whole lifetime, and of never appearing before her unless she gave a sign. The audience stood up, and the "Hallelujah Chorus began. The deafening harmonies flying from this group and from that seemed to absorb all the love and poetry that his life had produced, to pour it upon that one moment, and upon her who stood so close at hand. “I will force Geraldine to be mine," he thought. "I will make that heart ache of love for me." The chorus continued, and her form trembled under its influence. Egbert was for seeking her the next morning and knowing what his chances were, without waiting for further results. The chorus and the personality of Geraldine still filled the atmosphere. I will seek her to-night-as soon as we get out of this place," he said. The storm of sound now reached its climax, and Geraldine's power was proportionately increased. He would give anything for a glance this minute to look into her eyes, she into his. "If I can but touch her hand, and get one word from her, I will," he murmured. He shifted his position somewhat and saw her face. Tears were in her eyes, and her lips were slightly parted. Stretching a little nearer he whispered, "My love!" Geraldine turned her wet eyes upon him, almost as if she had not been surprised, but had been forewarned by her previous emotion. With the peculiar quickness of grasp that she always showed under sudden circumstances, she had realized the position at a glance. "Oh, Egbert!" she said; and her countenance flagged as if she would have fainted. "Give me your hand," he whispered. She placed her hand in his, under the cord, which it was easy to do without observation; and he held it tight. "Mine, as before?" he asked. "Yours now as then," said she. They were like frail and sorry wrecks upon that sea of symphony, and remained in silent abandonment to the time, till the strains approached their close. "Can you meet me to-night?" said Egbert. She was half frightened at the request, and said, Where?" "At your own front door, at twelve o'clock." He then was at once obliged to gently withdraw himself, for the chorus was ended, and the people were sitting down. The remainder was soon over, and it was time to leave. Egbert watched her and her party out of the house, and, turning to the other doorway, went out like wise.. CHAPTER III. Bright reason will mock thee, WHEN he reached his chambers he sat down and literally did nothing but watch the hand of the mantel-clock minute by minute, till it marked half past eleven, scarcely removing his eyes. Then going again into the street he called a cab, and was driven down Park Lane and on to the corner of Chevron Square. Here he alighted, and went round to the number occupied by the Allenvilles. A lamp stood nearly opposite the doorway, and by receding into the gloom to the railing of the square he could see whatever went on in the porch of the house. The lamps over the doorways were nearly all extinguished, and everything about this part was silent and deserted, except at a house on the opposite side of the square, where a ball was going on. But nothing of that concerned Egbert: his eyes had sought out and remained fixed upon Mr. Allenville's front door, in momentary expectation of seeing it gently open. The dark wood of the door showed a keen and distinct edge upon the pale stone of the porch floor. It must have been about two minutes before the hour he had named when he fancied he saw a slight movement at that point, as of something slipped out from under the door. "It is but fancy," he said to himself. them back again. Some object certainly He turned his eyes away, and turned seemed to have been thrust under the door. At this moment the four quarters of midnight began to strike, and then the hour. Egbert could remain still no longer, and he went into the porch. A note had been slipped under the door from inside. He took it to the lamp, turned it over, and saw that it was directed only with initials, "To E. M." Egbert tore it open and glanced upon the page. With a shiver of disappointment he read these words in her handwriting: "It was when under the influence of much emotion, kindled in me by the power of the music, that I half assented to a meeting with you to-night; and I believe that you also were excited when you asked for one. After some quiet reflection I have decided that it will be much better for us both if we do not see each other. "You will, I know, judge me fairly in this. You have by this time learnt what life is; what particular positions, accidental though they may be, ask, nay, imperatively exact from us. If you say 'not imperatively, you cannot speak from knowledge of the world. "To be woven and tied in with the and external habit, is to a woman to be world by blood, acquaintance, tradition, utterly at the beck of that world's customs. In youth we do not see this. You and I did not see it. We were but a girl and a boy at the time of our meetings at Tollamore. What was our knowledge? A list of other people's words. What was our wisdom? None at all. "It is well for you now to remember that I am not the unsophisticated girl I was when you first knew me. For better or for worse I have become complicated, exclusive, and practised. A woman who can speak, or laugh, or dance, or sing before any number of men with perfect composure may be no sinner, but she is not what I was once. She is what I am now. She is not the girl you loved. That woman is not here. "I wish to write kindly to you, as to one for whom, in spite of the unavoidable division between our paths, I must always entertain a heartfelt respect. Is it, after this, out of place in me to remind you how contrasting are all our associations, how Could anything ever overpower this incongruity? inharmonious our times and seasons? 66 "But I must write plainly, and, though it may grieve you now, it will produce This is my dresses without an entire loss of position ultimately the truest ease. meaning. If I could accept your adI would do so; but, since this cannot be, we must forget each other. "Believe me to be, with wishes and prayers for your happiness, “Your sincere friend, "G. A." still; he walked off rapidly in any direc Egbert could neither go home nor stay tion for the sole sake of vehement motion. His first impulse was to get into darkness. He went towards Kensington; thence threaded across to the Uxbridge Road, thence to Kensal Green, where he turned into a lane and followed it to Kilburn, and the hill beyond, at which spot he halted and looked over the vast haze of light extending to the length and breadth of London. Turning back and wandering among some fields by a way he could never afterwards recollect, sometimes sitting down, sometimes leaning on a stile, he lingered on until the sun had risen. He then slowly walked again towards London, and, feeling by this time very weary, he entered the |