ideas, and resolved, during the few hours I had to remain in the town, to show a bold front to all my enemies and detractors, and purposely sought out the busiest and gayest of the throng, wearing a forced smile upon my face. Amongst the rest I soon found the Vicomtesse d'Arcy, who at once beckoned me to her and said very kindly:

"Eh, my poor boy, I told ye, did I not, of the Psalmist's words, that you should put no trust in princes? Ah, but I am sorry for ye. Hortense told me last night that the Prince would no more stand your friend."

"God bless you, madame, for your kindness to me!" I said fervently, for in the dark days the first words of sympathy are very precious to a man. "Did she, did Madame d'Estourville, tell you the reason of the Prince's sudden change of disposition?"

"No, no. She did not tell me, for the reason that she herself did not know it, nor would the Prince himself tell her when she pressed him for his reasons."

"There is one great kindness you could do for me, Madame d'Arcy," I said. "It is that you should arrange for me just once, before I leave Brighton, a chance of meeting Madame d'Estourville, that I may beg her pardon for my rudeness to her-I was for the moment beside myself-on the last occasion of my seeing her."

"Eh, but that's easy done, my poor boy," she replied. "This very afternoon Hortense comes to drive with me. If you should be there-eh?-by a chance-like? Does that suit you now?"

I thanked the good lady from my heart, and some quarter of an hour before the time appointed for their drive I was at the Lady Anne Murray's house, where the servant told me that I was expected. Madame d'Arcy, for whom I asked, was for the mo

ment at her toilette (refreshing, as I might venture to conjecture, her tints of cheek and eyebrow, or, more likely, with kindlier thought of my own wish to be alone with Madame d'Estourville), but would I await her in the withdrawing room? The minutes were leaden while I waited, but my impatience was at length rewarded. When next the door opened it was to usher in not the old Vicomtesse, with her rouged cheeks, her white hair and her air of the old "Marquise," but Hortense d'Estourville, under a wide gipsy hat that sat quaintly, and yet with amazing grace, on her small, erectly carried head. "Ah!" she exclaimed, as she saw me rising to meet her. And it was with none of the anger that I had every reason to expect depicted on her face, but with a look that I could swear to be one of pleasure, that she came to me and shook my hand.

"What!" I said, "will you really, after the way I behaved to you?" for I could hardly dare believe that I might take that proffered hand.

"Why, you silly man," she said, laughing, "you are human, are you not? You have a right to be angry, a little, sometimes, I should think, and with the people you ought not to be angry with. I do not want you to be too logical. I saw that you turned again the instant I had gone away, and I was sorry that I could not come back, so you might beg pardon then and there, and thus set your mind at ease."

Now, was not this a wonderful woman? I at least thought so. I had fancied, in my folly and my ignorance, that she, because she was so proud, would be vexed with me, her pride wounded; but now I seemed to see more clearly how that, because of her very pride, she could not be hurt by such a trifling thing as this, by a trick of bad manners, from me, whom she knew to love her so. For know it she

did, I am very sure, and I do not think she would deny it. And in this again she showed her pride, that she did not want me now to be down on my knees imploring her forgiveness for a rudeness that she knew to be unintentional, and the act of a passing mad moment, but gave me the forgiveness of her free will unasked. Another woman, I think, would like to see a man suing at her feet: it would please her. She was a woman whom such things did not please, she being far above the cajoleries of her sex. I speak of her as I thought, and think.

"Then you will forgive me?" I said, as I held her hand.

"No," she said, "I do not forgive you. I understand you, that is all. I understood you-your feelings-at the moment, exactly. That being so, there was nothing to forgive."

I felt more humble before a woman who could speak like this than I should have felt under the weight of the most condescending forgiveness.

"I have been to see the Prince," I said, finding no more to say of my penitence.

"Ah, that was right-that was the honest, brave thing. And he told you "

"What you told me, precisely. He will do no more for me."

"And he would not tell you the reason."

"Yes, he told me the reason."

"He did? What was it? Oh, I am so curious to hear. It was, of course, Henri."

"Yes," I said, "it was Henri."

She flushed, as I had never seen her flush, in a blaze of wrath.

Longman's Magazine.

"But how did he? What had he said?"

Then I told her all his villany, and she sate still, nodding now and then, as if checking off the points to be scored against him. When I had finished she replied, "I said to you once, my friend, that I hoped the time would never come when we should have to be friends indeed to each other. That time has come now. We have a pact to make together."

She was speaking very seriously, very quietly, without a trace of excitement. She rose as she ceased speaking, and rang the bell for a servant, then scribbled some few lines on a scrap of paper. When the man came she begged him have the note carried to Madame d'Arcy. "I have written a line," she explained, as soon as the door closed behind him, "to beg Madame d'Arcy spare me a quarter of an hour, or else drive without me. I have much that I have to say to you, my friend. You are about to learn to-day the mystery of the Fair Enigma."

Now all this may sound most favorable to the desire that lay nearest to my heart, of making this queen of women my wife; yet at the moment her tone in speaking was so matter of fact, so business-like, indeed, that nothing could be more remote from it than any idea of love-making, and it had the effect of banishing effectually, for the time being, all such ideas from my thoughts. It was a business transaction that was to take place between us, and I gave my attention to keeping a clear head to follow her statement and take in its details.

Horace G. Hutchinson.

Were I a worn-out worker, dependent for my daily bread on the charity of my fellows, I should certainly wish to change my nationality, and to become, without a moment's delay, either a Dane, an Austrian, or a Russian. For of all the nations in Europe these three best understand how to deal with the old and destitute, how to secure peace and comfort in their latter days for the folk who have fallen behind in the race. In England a visit to any of the abodes where the aged poor are housed is, as a rule, more depressing than a visit to a prison: at every turn one sees a troubled, discontented face, or hears a voice that tells of hopeless misery. In Denmark, Austria, and Russia, on the contrary, the homes reserved for the old people are the brightest and cheeriest of resorts; after an hour spent there, it is the outside world that seems gloomy and care. worn. The heartiest burst of laughter I ever heard in St. Petersburg, I heard in an old-age home; while in Vienna working men and women betake themselves instinctively for consolation, when things go wrong with them, to the Versorgungshaus garden. As for

Copenhagen

He

Some little time ago a distinguished Englishman excited great amusement in Copenhagen by solemnly announcing, after a visit to an old-age home, that England could not possibly afford to provide for her worn-out workers as Denmark provides for hers. had noted the many little comforts with which the inmates are surrounded; had noted how well they fare in all respects, how contentedly and happily they live; and he had therefore taken it for granted that such places must be expensive luxuries. Were he to give a little more attention to the

subject, however, he would find-and the fact, let us hope, would set him a-thinking-that although the cost of living is as high in Copenhagen as in London, the average cost per head in Danish old-age homes is considerably lower than in English workhouses. But then Denmark obtains good value for every penny she spends on her poor, whereas England-there are English workhouses where the officials cost more than the paupers.

Although I was never yet in an oldage home, whether Danish, Austrian, or Russian, where life was not well worth living, among old-age homes as among all things else there are better and worse; and the very best are certainly the Danish. No other country. indeed, deals at once so kindly and so wisely with her aged poor as Denmark; there is no clubbing together of the old people there, no herding of the worthy with the worthless. On the contrary, infinite trouble is taken to sift them and sort them, so that the precise treatment he or she merits may be secured for each one of them. In Denmark no respectable old man or woman need ever become a pauper; no respectable old man or woman ever crosses the threshold of a workhouse. Should a man-or a woman-who has completed his sixtieth year, find himself without the wherewithal on which to live, he applies to the local authorities not for pauper relief, but for oldage relief; and this, by the law of 1891, they are bound to grant him, providing he can prove not only that his destitution is owing to no fault of his own, but that he has led a decent life, has worked hard and been thrifty; and that, during the ten previous years, he has neither received a single penny as poor-relief, nor been guilty of va

grancy, nor of begging. The old people who fulfil these conditions are placed in a class apart from ordinary paupers, in the privileged class: they are the veterans of industry, and the position they hold among their fellows is much the same as that held by invalided soldiers. Although they are housed, fed, and clothed at the expense of the nation, they are neither regarded nor treated in any way as paupers. In Denmark the word "pauper" is never applied to anyone above sixty, unless it be a case of Tekel. Infinite trouble is taken, indeed, to keep the members of the privileged class free from everything that smacks of pauperism; local authorities are forbidden by law to house them under the same roof as paupers, or to allow pauper officials to interfere with them. The old men retain their votes, all their other rights as citizens too; and this in itself raises an insuperable bar between them and paupers; for paupers in Denmark have no civic rights worth mentioning-not even the right to get married. Members of the privileged class who have relatives able and willing to take care of them, or who are strong enough to take care of themselves, are each provided with a small annuity, and the rest are lodged in old-age homes.

The mere fact that the doors of the Danish old-age homes are closed inexorably against all excepting those who have led decent honest lives, gives to the inmates of these places a certain standing in the world, which is to them an unfailing source of gratification-gratification, let it be noted, that costs not a single penny. Far from any discredit being attached to living in an old-age home, it is regarded as an honor to be there, as a proof of established respectability and general worthiness. And all that this means to the honest poor, only the poor themselves know. I once found a worthy old couple within hailing distance of

starvation. They had been living for months as the veriest sparrows because they could not face, they said, the disgrace of going to the workhouse. In these Danish homes it is delightful to see how the inmates, especially the old women, plume themselves on being there; there is something quite touching in the dignified, self-important airs they give themselves on the strength of being recognized members of the aged poor class. Evidently they look on mere paupers much as Prussian Junkers look on the rest of humanity -as persons between whom and themselves there lies a deep gulf. I hardly ever passed an hour among them but some old man or woman inquired anxiously whether I was quite sure I understood that paupers were never admitted into old-age homes. What they were given to eat, or wherewithal they were clothed, seemed to be a matter of but little account in their eyes compared with being free from association with the degraded. There is nothing these old people love quite so much as their afternoon cups of coffee; none the less had they to choose between going without their coffee or sitting side by side while they drank it with those pariahs, the paupers, in every old-age home in Denmark there would speedily be one meal less a day -this is a point on which there can be no doubt.

"Yes, I am real glad and thankful to be here," an inmate of a country old-age home once informed me. "I have a better bed to lie on than I ever had in my life before, and I am just as comfortable as I can be. But," she hesitated for a moment and then added, with an odd little flush on her honest weather-beaten face, "I don't think I could ever have made up my mind to come had that lot been here." She pointed as she spoke to the Fattiggaard, the place where the disreputable poor, ex-loafers and drunkards, are

housed in their old age. Her remark was greeted with a little murmur of sympathy by the other old women in the room, who all agreed that the home would be spoilt completely if they must share it with all sorts and conditions.

Not only are these institutions reserved exclusively for the respectable poor, but the respectable poor are taught to look on them as their own special property, as the place where they have a right to be their home in fact. This, too, is an unfailing source of gratification to the old people, and this, too, costs not a single penny. Whoever crosses the threshold of an old-age home, even though it be the Borgmester himself, goes there as the guest of the inmates, and must knock at the door of each room and wait for permission before he enters. Then, when he does enter, what a flutter of delight there is; what a bowing and curtesying and handshaking; for they dearly love to play the host, and regard the entertaining of strangers not only as a duty, but as one of the great pleasures of life. Among these old Danes there is no trace of that dull hopelessness, that "just waiting" which is so marked a characteristic of the London poor in their old age; on the contrary, I always found them, when I paid them a visit, alert, eager for news, and on enjoyment bent. Feeble though they may be, many of them, the old men were evidently keenly interested in politics; they have votes, it must be remembered, and are extremely proud of the fact. Their faces glow with delight as they tell how the rival parties keep them well supplied with newspapers, and send carriages to take them to the votingbooth when the elction day comes round. They were staunch Democrats for the most part-at ministerial doings they were never weary of cavilling-none the less they were all fer

vently loyal, I noticed, devoted to their King, "the very best King in the whole world," as one of them assured me, "although he does make mistakes sometimes." Nor was it only in politics they were interested; they seemed quite in touch with all that was going on both at home and abroad, especially in England, "the country where all the money comes from"; the country, too, as they never failed to tell me, "where our own Princess is going to be Queen one day."

Nothing is more characteristic of the lines on which these homes are worked than the fashion in which the inmates and their official caretakers mutually demean themselves. I shall not easily forget the lofty dignity with which a poor bed-ridden old dame informed me, one day, that her servant of course came at once when she rang! And the officials attached to the homes are not only in theory, but in reality, the servants of the inmates. In one of our model London workhouses several hundred decrepit old men and women are forced to get up at six o'clock in the morning, the same time as the young and strong; and this simply for the sake of saving the officials the trouble of making two breakfasts! In Copenhagen short work would be made of any master or matron who ventured even to suggest such an arrangement. There the officials are never allowed to forget that it is their business in life to make their charges comfortable and happy; that they are in the home, in fact, for no other purpose than to cook for them, tend them, nurse them when they are ill, and give them a helping hand generally. They must watch over them of course and keep them out of harm's way; but they have express orders to interfere with them as little as possible. For Denmark holds, and very sensibly, that as these old people are all worthy old people there is no reason why they should be placed