Events have happened, dear friend,' he wrote, which will make my mother's home miserable to me (I little knew when I went to town about your business, what caused her wonderful complaisance to me). She would have broken my heart, Charles (my Christian name is Charles), but its wounds have found a consoler !'

Now, in this little chapter, there are some little mysteries propounded, upon which, were I not above any such artifice, I might easily leave the reader to ponder for

a month.

1. Why did Mrs. Prior, at the lodgings, persist in calling the theatre at which her daughter danced the academy? 2. What were the special reasons why Mrs. Lovel should be very gracious with her son, and give him 150l. as soon as he asked for the money?

3. Why was Fred Lovel's heart nearly broken? and 4. Who was his consoler ?

I answer these at once, and without the slightest attempt at delay or circumlocution. 1. Mrs. Prior, who had repeatedly received money from her brother, John Erasmus Sargent, D.D., Master of St. Boniface College, knew perfectly well that if the master (whom she already pestered out of his life) heard that she had sent a niece of his on the stage, he would never give her another shilling.

2. The reason why Emma, widow of the late Adolphus Loeffel, of Whitechapel Road, sugar-baker, was so particularly gracious to her son, Adolphus Frederick Lovel, Esq., of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and principal partner in the house of Loeffel aforesaid, an infant, was that she, Emma, was about to contract a second marriage with the Rev. Samuel Bonnington.

3. Fred Lovel's heart was so very much broken by this intelligence, that he gave himself airs of Hamlet, dressed in black, wore his long fair hair over his eyes, and exhibited a hundred signs of grief and desperation: until

4. Louisa (widow of the late Sir Popham Baker, of Bakerstown, Co. Kilkenny, Baronet) induced Mr. Lovel to take a trip on the Rhine with her and Cecilia, fourth and only unmarried daughter of the aforesaid Sir Popham Baker, deceased.

My opinion of Cecilia I have candidly given in a previous page. I adhere to that opinion. I shall not repeat it. The subject is disagreeable to me, as the woman herself

was in life. What Fred found in her to admire, I cannot tell: lucky for us all that tastes, men, women, vary. You will never see her alive in this history. That is her picture, painted by the late Mr. Gandish. She stands fingering that harp with which she has often driven me half mad with her 'Tara's Halls' and her 'Poor Marianne'. She used to bully Fred so, and be so rude to his guests, that in order to pacify her, he would meanly say, 'Do, my love, let us have a little music!' and thrumpty-thrumpty, off would go her gloves, and 'Tara's Halls' would begin. 'The harp that once,' indeed! the accursed catgut scarce knew any other music, and 'once' was a hundred times at least in my hearing. Then came the period when I was treated to the cold joint which I have mentioned; and, not liking it, I gave up going to Shrublands.

So, too, did my Lady Baker, but not of her own free will, mind you. She did not quit the premises because her reception was too cold, but because the house was made a great deal too hot for her. I remember Fred coming to me in high spirits, and describing to me, with no little humour, a great battle between Cecilia and Lady Baker, and her ladyship's defeat and flight. She fled, however, only as far as Putney village, where she formed again, as it were, and fortified herself in a lodging. Next day she made a desperate and feeble attack, presenting herself at Shrublands lodge-gate, and threatening that she and sorrow would sit down before it; and that all the world should know how a daughter treated her mother. But the gate was locked, and Barnet, the gardener, appeared behind it, saying, 'Since you are come, my lady, perhaps you will pay my missis the four-and-twenty shillings you borrowed of her.' And he grinned at her through the bars, until she fled before him, cowering. Lovel paid the little forgotten account; the best four-andtwenty shillings he had ever laid out, he said.

Eight years passed away; during the last four of which I scarce saw my old friend, except at clubs and taverns, where we met privily, and renewed, not old warmth and hilarity, but old kindness. One winter he took his family abroad; Cecilia's health was delicate, Lovel told me, and the doctor had advised that she should spend a winter in the south. He did not stay with them : he had pressing affairs at home; he had embarked in many businesses

besides the paternal sugar-bakery; was concerned in companies, a director of a joint-stock bank, a man in whose fire were many irons. A faithful governess was with the children; a faithful man and maid were in attendance on the invalid; and Lovel, adoring his wife, as he certainly did, yet supported her absence with great equanimity.

In the spring I was not a little scared to read amongst the deaths in the newspaper At Naples, of scarlet fever, on the 25th ult., Cecilia, wife of Frederick Lovel, Esq., and daughter of the late Sir Popham Baker, Bart.' I knew what my friend's grief would be. He had hurried abroad at the news of her illness; he did not reach Naples in time to receive the last words of his poor Cecilia.

Some months after the catastrophe, I had a note from Shrublands. Lovel wrote quite in the old affectionate tone. He begged his dear old friend to go to him, and console him in his solitude. Would I come to dinner that evening?

Of course I went off to him straightway. I found him in deep sables in the drawing-room with his children, and I confess I was not astonished to see my Lady Baker once more in that room.

'You seem surprised to see me here, Mr. Batchelor! says her ladyship, with that grace and good breeding which she generally exhibited; for if she accepted benefits, she took care to insult those from whom she received them.

'Indeed, no,' said I, looking at Lovel, who piteously hung down his head. He had his little Cissy 2 at his knee: he was sitting under the portrait of the defunct musician, whose harp, now muffled in leather, stood dimly in the corner of the room.

'I am here not at my own wish, but from a feeling of duty towards that departed-angel!' says Lady Baker, pointing to the picture.

'I am sure when mamma was here, you were always quarrelling,' says little Popham, with a scowl.

This is the way those innocent children have been taught to regard me,' cries grandmamma.

'Silence, Pop,' says papa, and don't be a rude boy.' 'Isn't Pop a rude boy? echoes Cissy. 'Silence, Pop,' continues papa, Miss Prior.'

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