Mr. Haigh was the cipher that Iris had always remembered him. He sat at the foot of the table and did the principal carving. He kept the gentlemen company when the ladies had retired. He was safe for a partner at whist, unless somebody else wished to make up the party. He could serve as a tolerable second when the boarders happened to be musical and a second was in request. He dabbled a little in art, so as to have the entrée to a few studios, and afford the benefit of his opinion to any amateur artist in the house. He had the same intangible connection with the theatres and opera-houses, so that he could always procure tickets, boxes, and stalls, and predict what a play would turn out, when the mass of the public was helpless and voiceless. Mr. Haigh had been educated abroad, and possessed an additional advantage, of which he was rather vain. He was tol. erably conversant with several European languages. He could serve on a pinch as an amateur courier by anticipation to inexperienced projectors of Continental tours.

When one comes to think of it all," re- | her early vision of his wife, as a lively, flected Mrs. Haigh with a species of handsome young matron, who had petted complacency, "darling Emily was not her and been very affectionate to Miss suited for this world. She was an excel- Burrage. lent creature, but she was painfully plain from a girl. She had ability and accomplishments; but she had no manners that I could see, though, of course, we know she lived in the best society. She could not relish what most people enjoy; to dress what I call well became a bore to her. She was not fond of shopping or calling or dining out, and hardly cared for a box or a stall at the opera or the theatre, unless the play or the opera, as well as the singers and actors, chanced to be exceptional. She pottered about more than she was able among humdrum, fallendown people she had known long ago, or sick or poor people. She had a regard for out-of-the-way churches and eccentric clergymen that few people save herself had heard of or cared for. Put her down with a book she liked and her work, and the world held little more attraction for her. No, poor dear Emily was not a woman for this world. She was a woman to be overlooked and slighted-which she did not mind, for she had rather a lack of spirit and proper pride. She was apt to be smiled at, for she had her little peculiarities, dear soul! though she was my sister and jostled against and trampled upon, as the world goes. I trust she is far better off where she has gone, poor love."

"She was a woman of whom the world was not worthy, Mrs. Haigh," said Iris hotly.

To compare Miss Burrage to Mr. Calcott! To have been capable of thinking of her as a possible burden, and so finding her premature death in one light a boon, instead of wrestling with God that the loved presence might be spared for a season, and yearning to keep it here so long as life lingered in the feeble frame, and sense and love on the peaceful, wasted brow and lips! What would not Iris have given to have seen her old friend's dear face again, though it had come but in a vision of the night, to have heard her wise, gentle counsel, though it had been only in a dream!

Iris was not disappointed in Mr. Haigh as she was in Mrs. Haigh. He was only Miss Burrage's brother-in-law, by Mrs. Haigh's election, not a member of Miss Burrage's family, of the same father and and mother, and of kindred blood. Besides, Iris had retained a dim recollection of him more correct in all respects than

In any other position, Mr. Haigh might have been a purely ornamental member of society, but as the spouse of a lady who kept an upper-class boarding-house, he was almost the right man in the right place while Iris had never imagined she would get anything more than a host's gentlemanlike notice from Mr. Haigh.

But Mrs. Haigh had children who were also Miss Burrage's nephews and nieces. They were all at school save one, Juliana, or Ju-ju, the eldest daughter, a girl of nineteen, to whom Iris turned eagerly. But, alas! Ju-ju was more like her wellbred, lymphatic father than her mother far less her aunt. Ju-ju's chief end in life seemed to be to comply with all the obligations of the most finished young lady. hood in the fashion of the day, under such difficulties as limited means and the necessity for the family's keeping boarders implied. Ju-ju took her stand on her father's and mother's claim to gentility as educated people, the children of a clergy. man of the Church of England on the one hand, and a captain in the army on the other. She ignored the items that Mrs. Haigh had been a governess like her sister, and that Mr. Haigh had failed in succession as a barrister, an operatic singer, an artist, and a playwright. Ju-ju was

11

inclined to make out that her father and mother kept a boarding-house for their private pleasure. She did nothing save sit embroidering the artistic, elaborate embroidery of the hour, and attend to her toilet to the minutest details of the rosette on her French shoe, and the extra button on her profusely buttoned glove.

She was neither pretty nor plain, though she had a good figure, and felt the more persuaded on that account that dress was of the first consequence to her.

much as if she were to propose to borrow money from them.

At the same time Iris found to her dismay that life in a Fitzroy Square board. ing-house, apart from the board, was a deal dearer than life at Lambford. Everybody overdressed, punctiliously, with studied variety for dinner. In the light of Mrs. Judge Penfold's brocade and dia monds the one day and velvet and pearls the next; Mrs. Rugely's diaphanous black and jet, or gold; and Ju-ju Haigh's earnestly thought out, subtle harmonies in strange, wonderful stuffs and tints from art-shops, her beads from Venice, her amber and filigree work from Damascus

had been no traveller Iris was more than outshone. In such a white India muslin, with turquoise ornaments, as had dazzled Sir William Thwaite, or in such a blue silk, festooned with hops, as would have been voted decidedly "swellish " by the Hollises at Thornbrake, and pronounced perfectly exquisite by the Actons at the rectory, she knew she looked shabbily, stalely monotonous in costume.

Iris Compton contemplated Ju ju from a puzzled mental and moral distance, with the puzzle deepened by the fact that the girl was Miss Burrage's niece. How could personal enjoyment and the idlest-all bought in London town, for Ju-ju trifles engross her wholly? What was she thinking of when she sat calmly applying herself for so many hours to this costly fancy work, while her mother, behind backs, was really cumbered with the care of her servants, the burden of housekeeping for a large, disconnected, troublesome family, and the worry of account books which frequently refused to 'square"? And what became of all the splendid and delicate embroidery, of which only a few finished specimens appeared in the shape of table-covers and cushions in the drawing-room? Did Ju-ju simply work it to train and gratify her hand and eye, and then wantonly destroy it, or did she bestow it as presents on all her absent friends?

Iris found out the enigma at the same time that she hit upon a little opening for her own unprovided-for future, which was beginning to weigh heavily upon her mind.

In vain had Iris asked Mrs. Haigh's advice about what she ought to do to earn a little money. Mrs. Haigh was convinced that Iris's illustrious relations would not permit such an indignity. Miss Compton would only require to hint to them that her coffers were becoming empty to have them filled again to overflowing.

In vain Iris frankly approached the subject with some of the other ladies counting on them as a sort of informal woman's friendly society. She was always stopped by their smiling and pooh-poohing her. They would not have their peer's granddaughter pulled down from her pedestal, or else they regarded her prospects with regard to working for her bread as so hopeless, that they preferred not to discuss them with her. In fact they told her it was lowering herself to hint at such an alternative, almost as VOL. XLVIII 2446

LIVING AGE.

Íris had the impression that she was playing at being a grand demoiselle in an effeminate, luxurious, extravagant court. She tried to resist, but she was a young woman without a home, and had to yield something to what Mrs. Haigh called "the rules of the house." She was forced, like the poor ladies, to waste a great deal of time in contriving small transparent devices, for her dress to pass muster among the elaborate shifting toilets of the company.

It was on an errand to procure some not too costly gauzy transformation, that Iris, who had from the first claimed the liberty of walking out by herself without becoming a mutual drag and fetter either on Mrs. Haigh or Ju-ju, visited such a monster shop of all wares as is a remarkable feature of the London of to-day. It was a little of an enterprise even for so fearless a girl as Iris to enter one of the many doors, fall into a stream of purchasers, pass down the streets of counters, and be bewildered by the different departments of the business in story after story, of the blocks of buildings.

Iris felt so small and so swallowed up, that she uttered a little cry of pleasure when she discovered Ju-ju Haigh at a counter on which the exquisite materials for some of her embroidery were displayed.

Ju-ju could not be said to return the compliment by sharing in the gratification. She reddened and had a constrained air

while the girls exchanged half-a-dozen | Monte Carlo, or the payment of wagers, words. Iris would have passed on, but or the prices of books or pictures which the crush of buyers and sellers was great the girls had written or painted. But it here, and she could not advance many is a different thing when working is a nesteps before one of the elder shop-women, or ladies of the establishment as they prefer to be called, came to Miss Haigh and delivered a courteous verbal message, "If the piece be done by next week, madam" (old-fashioned modes of address have acquired fresh life and new associations in connection with London shops), "Mrs. Cree says it will be in time enough for the countess."

Ju-ju received the proposal more gra- | trial of skill; and the third represented ciously and encouragingly than her Minerva looking down in supreme conmother and the other ladies had met Iris's tempt on the humble spider and her web, candid statements of the obligation on all that remained of the presumptuous her to find work and wages. Ju-ju, confi- Arachne" and the product of her loom. dent in her own skill and experience, Long afterwards Iris was wont to view feared no competition in her special prov- that trophy of bold, true, delicate if formal ince, while she was ready to clutch at lines, traced in softest, richest silks, with another example to prove that ladylike many mingled feelings. In the mean girls, even girls connected with the no- time it was a congenial occupation, as bility, freely adopted her calling. well as a bracing effort at independence, for Iris to work faithfully and lovingly at the great artist's fancy.

Ju-ju readily undertook to communicate with Blackburn, and exhibit some specimens of Iris's capability as a nineteenthcentury Arachne. Mrs. Haigh shook her head and was troubled by the anomaly, but Ju-ju had sufficient influence over her mother to prevent her doing more.

Blackburn was a genius in his line, he kept all the strings to his bow and all the arteries of his vast organization under his personal inspection and control. He had found the secret of success, in the path which he had struck out, to lie in universal applicability and novelty. He had

boasted that he could furnish on due no. tice whatever the heart of man or woman could desire-whether the customer were a prince or a princess, a dock laborer or a charwoman, and he had reclaimed his pledge by providing an elephant within four-and-twenty hours of its being asked for on one extraordinary occasion. He was proud of his last development in an aristocratic art region. He magnanimously enjoyed solacing the idleness of rich, the sorrows of poor gentility, that would never recognize him and his, in spite of his celebrity and wealth, as the equals and privileged associates of its members. He relished highly, as Fouché did, counting in his pay sprigs of the nobility, who were also among the chief purchasers of his rarest and costliest adaptations from Worth.

Iris needed this help for her heart and mind, her faith and patience, while the summer was yet young, since every day the weather was growing warmer and the season drawing nearer to its climax. The garden in Fitzroy Square, which had been a pleasant oasis in the dreary desert of stone and lime when Iris came, became prematurely sere, yellow, and brown in its lack of country freshness, country freedom, country wholesomeness of gradual, bountiful growth and decay.

The society of the boarding-house had lost its strangeness to Iris, but it had also become more and more irksome with a constant reminder that she was out of her element among people whom she neither judged, nor condemned, nor despised, but not one of whom bore much more than a human, national, tolerably civilized affinity to her, in her nature, beliefs, and habits.

Many of the residents in the house were going away with Ju-ju Haigh to pay visits to the seaside, to Normandy, or the Engadine. Iris's choice of society, such as it was, began to narrow just as she had a craving for it to widen. She would be left almost alone in the white dusty streets by the time she thirsted intensely for a quiet, sandy-colored country road running along a reddish, purplish green stretch of common or down, the shade of trees, the cool ripple of water, the yellow corn-fields ripening to harvest.

Iris did not know how much she owed again to her grandfather and grandmother, when, to her great relief and some thing like happy bewilderment, she found The figure of an old woman, loveless herself at once approved of and appoint- and unloved in her solitary age, sitting at ed on Blackburn's staff. She was even home in her cheerless great house, or intrusted with very valuable materials, driving out by herself in her close carincluding an idea of a screen in three riage on her monotonous round, had repanels, with a suitable moral, by a well-proached Iris, from the first, many a time. known artist, the cartoon to be destroyed as soon as a single copy was worked. One panel displayed Arachne "in her earlier humanity, carried away by conceit in her weaving; the second gave the cowering, foolish weaver-woman brought face to face with the great goddess Minerva, whom she had dared to challenge to a

The reproach was more than half morbid, for Lady Fermor had never shown that she cared for her granddaughter's company, and she had driven Iris from her, by persecution and panic which might have worn the girl into her grave, or carried her to a mad-house.