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I know! seven feet high, and weighing tre of the scene, and made a variety with twelve stone." talk of horses and feats in the hunting"Yes, that is odd too," said Mrs. field. Frederick was left in the backEastwood "people like that kind of ground, to his intense misery. He heard huge woman. In my days now, a light one of the other visitors asked in easy elastic figureterms to dinner that evening, with again They all died of consumption," said the thrilling prospect of the play after it. Nelly. She was herself exactly the kind He himself, it would seem, had had his of being whom her mother described; day. The only crumb of comfort he probut she took up the cause of the other cured from the visit was the name of the with natural perverseness. A curious theatre they were going to. He rushel sense of possible help gleamed across to Covent Garden after this, poor wretch, Frederick's mind as he listened. He would not allow himself to realize under what possible circumstances Nelly's championship might be useful to him; but his mind jumped at the thought, with a sudden perception of possibilities which he by no means wished to follow out at once to their full length and breadth. When he went to the office he congratulated himself secretly on his skill in having thus introduced the subject so as to awaken no suspicion - and he went into the conservatory, and cut a lovely little white camelia bud, which Nelly had been saving up for quite another button-hole. It was just after the exciting moment of Nelly's betrothal, and the house was full of a certain suggestion of love-making, which, perhaps, helped to stimulate Frederick's thoughts; but his blaze of sudden passion was very different from the sentiments of the others. He went to the office first, feeling it too early to be admitted to Amanda's beautiful presence. Happily, there was not very much to do at the Sealing Wax Office. He spent an hour or two there, in a feverish flutter, disturbing the others (who, fortunately, were not very hard at work), and throwing all his own occupations into confusion. At twelve, he went out, and made his way to the hotel. He found Batty there, but not his daughter.

and bought the costliest bouquet he could find, and sent it to her. Then he dined, miserable and solitary, at his club, speaking no word to any man, and went afterwards to the blessed theatre in which she was to exhibit her beauty to the world. He saw her from the first moment of her arrival, and watched with horrible sensations from his stall the comfortable arrangement of Lord Hunterston in his corner beside her, and the large figure of the father behind dropping into a gentle doze. He sat and gazed at them in tortures of adoration and jealousy, wondering if she was saying the same things to his successor as she had said to him; wondering if Hunterston, too, was being invited to Sterborne, and ridiculed about the necessity of getting "leave"- for, Frederick reflected with some satisfaction, "leave" was necessary also to that distinguished Guardsman. As soon as it was practicable, he made his way up to the box; but gained little by it, since Mr. Batty insisted upon waking up, and entertaining him, which he did chiefly by chuckling references to their previous meeting in Paris, and the amusements of that gay place. Frederick went home half wild to the calm house where his mother and sister were sleeping quietly; and where poor little Innocent alone heard his step coming upstairs, and longed to get up and say good night to him, though he had "scolded" her. Had she known it, Innocent was deeply avenged. Amanda Batty had not spared the rash adorer. She had “made fun” of him in a hundred refined and elegant ways, joking about his gravity and serious Frederick winced at this free-and-easy looks, about his fondness for the theatre, address, and hastened to explain that he and his kindness in coming to speak to was on his way to keep a pressing en- herself. "When I am sure you might gagement, and would return in the after- have gone behind the scenes if you liked,” noon, to pay his respects to Miss Batty. she said, with a laugh that showed all her At three o'clock he went back, and found pearly teeth. "You, who know so much her indeed; but found also Lord Hun- about the theatres: how I should like to terston and another visitor, with whom go behind the scenes!"

"Manda?" Oh, she's all right," said the father; "but the laziest girl in Christendom. Pretty women are all lazy. I haven't seen her yet, and don't expect to for an hour or more. Have a glass of something, Eastwood, just to fill up the time?"

Miss Amanda kept up a very lively con- Frederick, who had made so many sacversation. Batty himself filled up the cen-'rifices to appearances, and who was dis

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tinguished in society for the stateliness of his demeanour, would have been infinitely insulted had any one else said this all the more insulted for his own consciousness of those moments of aberration in which he had been behind a great many scenes though never, so far as he was aware, where he could be found out. But a man in love is compelled, when the lady of his affections is like Miss Amanda, to put up with insults, and does so in scores of cases with a meekness which is nowhere apparent in his domestic character. Frederick felt himself punctured by shafts of ridicule not too finely pointed. He was laughed at, he was rallied, jokes were made upon him. He was even treated with absolute rudeness, Amanda turning her beautiful shoulders upon him, and addressing Lord Hunterston, in the very midst of something Frederick was saying to her. A thrill of momentary fury went through him, but next moment he was abject in his endeavours to get a glance from her - a word of reply.

and enjoyed her own cleverness in pit ting one admirer against another-perhaps because the misery and earnestness in the eyes of her new slave softened her, she was friendly to him for the rest of the evening, and wrapped his foolish soul in happiness. Before they parted he was made happy by another invitation. They were but to be two nights more in town, and one of these evenings Frederick was to spend with them.

"Be sure and find out for me the very nicest thing that is to be played in London," she said, turning round to him as she left the theatre, though the rival had her hand on his arm. The sweetness of this preference, the sign she made to him as the carriage drove away, contented. and more than contented, Frederick. He went home happy; he got through-he did not know how-the intervening time. Next afternoon he went to call on her, at one moment gaining a few words, which made him blessed, at another turning away with his pride lacerated and his heart bleeding. The succession of ups and downs was enough to have given variety to months of ordinary love-making. Frederick was tossed from delight to despair, and back again. He was jibed at, flattered, made use of, tormented, and consoled. Had he been a man of finer mind, he might possibly have been disgusted;

"Don't you mind her-it's 'Manda's way," said Batty, laughing as he saw the gloom on Frederick's face. "The more insulting she is one evening, the nicer she'll be the next. Don't you pay any attention it's his turn to-night, and yours to-morrow. Don't take it too serious, Eastwood; if you'll be guided by me "but it is astonishing what even men of "I fear I don't quite understand you, Mr. Batty," said poor Frederick, writhing in impotent pride at the liberties taken with him. Upon which Batty laughed again, more insolently good-humoured

than ever.

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"As you like -as you like," he said; you are more likely to want me, I can tell you, than I am to want you."

Frederick answered nothing: his mind was torn in pieces. Could he have had strength to go away, to break those fatal chains which in a day-in a moment had been thrown over him, he would have done it. A sudden impulse to fly came over him; but a hundred past yieldings to temptation had sapped the strength of his nature, and taken away from him all power to make such a strenuous resistance to his own wishes. The self-willed, proud young man put down his head and licked the dust before the coarse beauty who had stolen away his wits, and the coarse man whose familiarity was so odious to him. He turned from the father, and addressed himself with eager adoration to the daughter; and, perhaps because Amanda was a thorough coquette,

the finest minds will submit to under the force of such an imperious passion. They console themselves by the conclusion that all women are the same, and that theirs is the common fate. li Frederick had any time to think in the hurry of emotion and excitement which swept him as into the vortex of a whirlpool, ke excused Miss 'Manda's cruelties and caprices by this explanation. All women who possessed, as she did, those glorious gifts of beauty — all the Cleopatras of existence were like her; they had to be worshipped blindly, not considered reasonable creatures. Reason! what had reason to do with those shoulders, those cheeks, those eyes?

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The evening came at last - the evening of rapture and misery which he was to spend by her side, but which was to be the last. He counted how many hours it could be lengthened out to, and gave himself up to the enjoyment, not daring to forecast to himself what he might say or do before that cycle of happiness was ended. He dressed himself with so much care that Mrs. Eastwood, who had never forgotten that enthusiastic descrip

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tion of Miss Batty, felt an uneasiness for | "Miss Batty Good God, you are which she could give no very distinct ill reason. This time the roses in the con- "You may see that, I think, without servatory were not enough for Frederick. asking," said Amanda; "when one is He had brought one from Covent Garden, well one does not show like this, I hope. carefully wrapped up in cotton wool; and The last night, too-the last time for he spoiled half-a-dozen ties before he could ages I shall have the least chance of entie one to his satisfaction. His mother joying myself, or having a little fun. Oh, peeped at him from the door of her room it is too shocking! When one is at as he went down stairs. In consequence home, with nothing going on, one does of their play-going propensities, the not mind; it is always something to ocBattys had to dine early. It was but cupy one. Oh, go away please. Dine half-past six when Frederick left the somewhere with Papa. He is waiting Elms in his hansom, which he had taken for you outside; never mind me. Oh, the trouble to order beforehand. Mrs. aunty, can't you be still-rustling and Eastwood opened her window, with a rustling for ever and ever, and setting faint hope that perhaps the wind might all my nerves on edge." convey his instructions to the driver, to her anxious ear. She withdrew blushing, poor soul, when this attempt proved unsuccessful. It was almost dishonourable like listening at a door. When one does not succeed in a little wile of this description, one realizes how ignoble was the attempt.

"Of course, if I had asked him where he was going, he would have told me," she said to herself.

But the truth was that Frederick had so often returned disagreeable answers to such questions, and had made so many remarks upon the curiosity of women, &c., that the household had ceased to inquire into his movements. He was the only one of the family whose comings and goings were not open as daylight to whomsoever cared to see.

His heart beat higher and higher as he threaded the streets and approached the second-rate London inn which was to him the centre of the world. When he was shown into the room, however, in which dinner was prepared as usual, he went in upon a scene for which he was totally unprepared. Seated by the fire, which had suddenly become unnecessary by a change in the weather, and which made the little room very stuffy and hot, was Amanda, wrapped in a great shawl. Her usual sublime evening toilette had been exchanged for a white dressinggown, all frills and bows of ribbon. High up on her cheeks, just under her eyes, were two blazing spots of pink. Her face, except for these, was pale and drawn. The sound of her voice, fretful and impatient, was the first thing Frederick heard. By her sat a middle-aged woman in an elaborate cap with flowers. There was a medicine bottle on the mantel-piece. Frederick rushed forward, in wonder and dismay.

A sudden blackness came over Frederick's soul. "Dine somewhere with Papa." Good heavens! was that the entertainment offered to him after all his hopes? He stood transfixed as it were, immovable in a blank and horrible pause of disappointment. The close room and the sudden revulsion of feeling made him sick and faint. His perfect and faultless costume, the delicate rosebud in his coat, his tie which it had taken him so much trouble to bring to perfection, his boots upon which he had been so careful not to have a speck-all struck Amanda with relenting as she looked at him, and finally roused her a little out of her absorption in her own troubles. He looked such a gentleman! Miss Batty belonged to that class which is given to describe its heroes as "looking like gentlemen," with often an uneasy sense that the looks are the only things gentlemanlike about them. Frederick impressed her profoundly and suddenly by this means. She relented as she looked at him.

"Dinner was laid here," he said, "as you see - but I don't think I could stand it, and then when one is not dressed or anything-it would not be nice for you

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that once more fell upon Frederick's, thing that a man in love could do. He face; then added suddenly, "On sec- told his adoration by a hundred signs and ond thoughts, after all, it might amuse inferences. And he went home in such a me. Aunty, ring the bell. If you are whirl of sentiment and emotion as I cansure you don't mind my dressing-gown- not attempt to describe. His love was and the room being so warm, and aunty frantic, yet so tinged and imbued with a being here, and the medicine bottle, sense of the virtuous and domestic charand the big fire, - well, perhaps," she acter of this evening of complete happisaid, pausing to laugh in a breathlessness, that he felt as good as he was blesway, 'you may stay."

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sed. She was going away; that was the only drawback to his rapture; and even that impressed a certain intense and ecstatic character upon it, as of a flower snatched from the edge of a precipice of despair.

If the Queen had created him Earl of Eastwood with corresponding revenues, it would have been nothing to the bliss of this moment. He drew a footstool to her feet and sat down on it, half kneeling, and made his inquiries. What was it? How was it? was she suffering? did she feel ill? had she a doctor, the best doctor that London could produce, Jenner, Gull, somebody that could be trusted? Amanda informed him that it was heart disease LOUIS NAPOLEON PAINTED BY A CONfrom which she was suffering, an intimation which she made not without complacency, but which Frederick felt to pierce him like a horrible, sudden arrow-and that "Aunty" here present, whom she introduced with a careless wave of her hand, knew exactly what to do.

From The Cornhill Magazine.

TEMPORARY.

IN the year 1863, shortly after the last visit paid by Mr. Senior to Paris, he selected from his journals the conversations which threw most light upon the character of Louis Napoleon.

Many of them were with statesmen "It is dreadful, isn't it, to think I might who are still playing a distinguished part die any moment?" she said with a smile. in public life, and could not therefore be "Good God!" Frederick said, with published with the names of the speak unaffected horror, "it cannot be true!"ers. Thus their chief value would be and he sat, stricken dumb, gazing at her, lost. But the same objection does not the tears forcing themselves to his eyes. apply to the most interesting portion of Mr. Batty entered at this moment, and the book: the conversations with Mathe man who was human, and a father, dame R., a lady who was brought up as a was touched by this evidence of emotion. sister with the Emperor, and who conHe wrung Frederick's hand, and whis-tinued her intimacy with him till the Coup pered him aside.

"It ain't as bad as it seems," he said. "We daren't cross her. If she wanted the moon I'd have to tell her we'd get it somehow. We've known for years that she wasn't to be crossed; but barring that, I hope all's pretty safe. It's bad for her temper, poor girl, but I'm not afraid of her life."

d'état, which she, as a woman of integrity, and a staunch Republican, could not forgive.

Mr. Senior made her acquaintance in 1854, shortly before the Crimean War.

February 17, 1854.-I went in the evening to Mdme. Mohl's and found there Madame R. We began, of course, with the letter of Louis Napoleon to the Czar:

meditation.

Frederick spent such an evening as he had never spent in his life. He sat at Amanda's feet and read to her, and talked "It was Louis Philippe," said Madame to her, and listened to her chatter, which R., "that made Louis Napoleon un was soft and subdued, for she was lan-homme de lettres. It was at Ham that he guid after her spasms. Mr. Batty sat by acquired the habit of solitary study and most part of the evening admiring, and so did the person called Aunty, who kept in constant attendance. Frederick could not throw himself at Miss 'Manda's feet according to conventional form; he could not declare his love and entreat her to marry him, as he was burning to do, for he was not permitted a minute alone with her.

The lesson was a useful one, but it lasted too long. For five years his health and mental activity were unimpaired, but in the sixth he began to droop. He would have become stupid, perhaps mad, if it had continued."

"I have always suspected,” I said, "that the French Government connived

But short of that, he said every-at his escape."

"Your suspicion," she said, "was perfectly unfounded. The French Government took every precaution in its power to prevent it. If you like I will tell you the whole story.

three times a day, came to pay his first visit at seven o'clock. Louis Napoleon had been complaining of illness for some days, and his physician, who was in the plot, stopped the Commandant in the ante-chamber, and begged him to go no further, as his patient, after a very bad night, was sleeping. The Commandant acquiesced, and returned at two for his second visit. The same answer was given: Louis Napoleon was still sleeping. This is very serious,' said the Commandant. Do you apprehend danger?' 'I do,' said the physician, ‘I do not think that he is quite safe.' 'Then,' said the Commandant, I must send a telegraphic message to Paris; what would become of us if he were to die in our hands? And for that purpose I must actually see him.' You can see him, of course,' said the physician, but, what

"His apartment was at the bottom of a court; on each side of the door was a bench on which sat a gendarme. The sentinels at the gate of the fortress allowed no one to pass without calling for the concierge to examine him. The gendarmes and the concierge were well acquainted with his features. When he had formed his plans, he did all the damage he could to his rooms, and then complained of their dilapidated state. Some workmen were sent in to repair them. His servant was allowed to go to a neighbouring town, about a couple of miles off, to buy books and execute commissions, and for that purpose to hire a one horse carriage, which he drove himself. Through ever the danger may be, and I have not him Louis Napoleon obtained a workman's much fear, it will be increased if you dress, and could have a carriage to meet wake him.' * 'Then,' said the Commandhim. The workmen were to be twenty- ant, I will sit by his bedside till he four days at work. He waited till the wakes naturally, that no time may be lost twenty-third to accustom, as he says, the in sending to Paris.' They went into the guards to see the workmen coming and room and sat at the side and the foot of going, but also, I think, from his habit of the bed, in which lay a figure wrapped in procrastination. At length, about a quar-bed-clothes and a nightcap, with its face ter to seven in the morning, at the time to the wall. After a quarter of an hour, when he supposed the two gendarmes the Commandant exclaimed, 'I do not would be at breakfast, sitting with their see him breathe, he must be dead.' The sides to the door, he went out with a physician was silent, the Commandant plank on his shoulder. But he was five turned down the clothes, and found a minutes too late. They had finished, and stuffed figure. their faces were towards him. He thought himself lost, and intentionally let the plank strike the head of the man on his right. This succeeded; the man who was struck thought only of his head the other ran to assist him, and while they were abusing him for his awkwardness he walked on, knowing that they would not quit their posts to follow and recognize him. The soldier at the gate His story to her was, that at seven in knew him, smiled, and, without calling the morning of Good Friday, the Fmthe concierge, said, 'Passez.' A hun-peror and the Empress met him at the dred yards from the gate his servant met him with the carriage and his dog. The dog, not being in the secret, leapt on him with great demonstrations of joy. This was seen by a sentinel on the rampart, who knew the dog, but he was as discreet as the man at the gate had been. They drove straight towards the Belgian frontier, and reached it in about five hours.

"In the meantime the Commandant, whose duty it was to see Louis Napoleon

This workman's name was Badinguay, hence one of the nicknames of Louis Napoleon. -M. C. M. S.

"Of course the telegraph was set to work, and pursuit was made on every road- but Louis Napoleon had been in Belgium an hour before he was missed."

Wednesday, April 19, 1854. — I called early this morning on Madame R. Her brother is the architect who superintends the works at the Elysée.

Elysée, and she told him that she must give a ball on Monday to the Duke of Cambridge, that there was a difficulty in doing so at the Tuileries, and that he must get ready the Elysée for it.

"But," he said, "there are 3,000 cubic yards of stone in the court, there is no staircase, the walls are mere wet stone and mortar, nothing in fact is finished, except the roof; it is impossible; and he looked towards the Emperor for protection. "C'est un caprice de femme,” said the Emperor. "I am sure," said the Empress, “that nothing is impossible to

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