in Bond Street, "we are close to Gunter's, | if you would do me the honor to eat an ice?"

"I will do you the honor with great pleasure," and she thought to herself, "his manner really is like Aunt Anne's this afternoon. If she had only married him instead of that horrid Mr. Wimple we could have called him uncle with pleasure." She sat eating her very large strawberry ice, while he tasted his at intervals as if he were rather afraid of it.

"Did the white cockatoo die?" she asked. He almost started, he was so surprised at the question.

"The white cockatoo ?""

Why did it die?”

"It pulled a door-mat to pieces, and we fear it swallowed some of the fibre. My housekeeper, who is a severe woman, beat it with her gloves and it did not recover." He spoke as if he were recounting a trag edy, and became so silent that Florence felt she had ventured on an unlucky topic. But it was always rather difficult to make conversation for Mr. Fisher when she was alone with him; there were so few things he cared to discuss with a woman. Politics he considered beyond her, on literary matters he thought she could form no opinion, and society was a frivolity it was as well not to encourage her to consider too much. Suddenly a happy thought

struck her.

"I am so happy about our holiday, Mr. Fisher," she said; "it is a long time since Walter and I had a real one together."

"I am delighted that it has been arranged. I feel sure that Walter will enjoy it with so charming a companion," he answered with an effort of gallantry that touched her.

"I wish you were going to have a holiday too, with some one you liked," she said.

"My dear lady," and he gave a little sigh as he spoke, "I fear the only society I am fitted for is my own."

"Oh, no, you are much too modest," and she tried to laugh. "Some day I hope to buy you a butter-dish. I shall like going to get it so much, dear Mr. Fisher."

"I think not," he answered almost sadly.

"Ethel says you have been very kind to her about George," Florence said in a low voice, for she was almost afraid to refer to it, "but you are kind to everybody."

Mr. Fisher turned and looked at her with a grateful expression in his clear, mild eyes; but she knew that he did not want to make any other answer. Gradually he put on his editorial manner as if to ward off more intimate conversation, and when he left her at the door of her house, for he refused to come in, she felt, as she looked after him, that she had been present at the ending of the last little bit of romance in his life.

Florence and Walter were in high spirits when they started for their holiday.

"Two days in Paris," he said as they drove to the hotel, "and then we'll crawl down France towards the south, and I will introduce you to the Mediterranean Sea. It's a pity we can only eat one dinner a night, considering the number of good ones there are to be had here. To be sure, if we manage carefully, we can do a little supper on the Boulevard afterwards; still that hardly counts. But I don't think we can stay any longer, dear Floggie, even to turn you into a Parisian."

Forty-eight hours later saw them in the express for Marseille, where they stayed a night in order to get the coast scenery by daylight, as they went on to Monte Carlo.

"It's a wonderful city," Walter said, with a sigh, as they strolled under the trees on the Prado. "The Jew, and the Turk, and the infidel, and every other manner of man has passed through it in his turn. Doesn't it suggest all sorts of pictures to you, darling?

"Yes," she answered a little absently, "only I was thinking of Monty and Catty."

"We ought to wait a day and go to see Monte Cristo's prison."

"Yes," but she was not very eager. Her thoughts were with her children. Walter was always able to enjoy things, and to garnish them with the right memories. "I wonder if we shall find letters from home when we get to Monte Carlo," she added.

"I hope so," he answered gently, but he said no more about the associations of Marseille.

As they were leaving the big hotel on the Cannebière the next morning, a lady entered it. She had evidently just arrived; her luggage was being carried in.

"I shall be here three nights," they

heard her say to the manageress. "I leave for England on Thursday morning." At the sound of her voice Florence turned round, but she had gone towards the staircase. The Hibberts had to catch their train, and could not wait.

"It was Mrs. North, Walter," Florence said, as they drove to the station; "I wish I could have spoken to her. She looked a lonely little figure entering that big hotel."

"But there was no time,” he answered; "if we lost our train we should virtually lose a day."

"I wonder why she has come here?" "The ways of women are inscrutable." "I meant to have written and told her about Aunt Anne, but I had so much to do before we left London that I really forgot it."

"You might send her a line from Monte Carlo; you heard her say that she was to be at Marseille three days; and then perhaps it would be better to leave her alone." "I should like to write to her just once, for I am afraid I was not very kind that day; but she took me by surprise."

66

Very well, then, write to her from Monte Carlo. It will give her an idea that we are not such terrible patterns of virtue ourselves, and perhaps she'll find that a consolation; but I don't see what more we can do for her. It is very difficult to help a woman in her position. She has put out to sea in an open boat, and even if she doesn't get wrecked every craft she runs against is sure to hurt her."

The letter was duly written and sent to the hotel at Marseille. It found Mrs. North sitting alone in her big room on the first floor. She was beside the open window watching the great lighted cafés, and the happy people gathered in little groups round the tables on the pavement. "Oh, what a pity it is," she said to herself," that we cannot remember. I always feel as if we had lived since the beginning and shall go on till the end if end there is; but if one only had a memory to match how wonderful it would be. If I could but see this place just once as it was hundreds of years ago, with the Greek people walking about and the city rising up about them. Now it looks so thoroughly awake with its great new buildings and horrible improvements, but if it ever sleeps how wonderful its dreams must be. If one could get inside them and see it all as it once was." She turned her face longingly towards the port at the far end of the Cannebière. "I am so hungry to see everything, and to know everything," she

said to herself, "so hungry for all the things I have never had-I wonder if I shall die soon- I can't go on living like this, longing and waiting and hoping and grasping nothing I wish I could see the water. If I had courage I would drive down and look at it or walk past those people sitting out on the pavement, and go down to the sea. There might be a ship sailing by towards England, and I should know how his ship will look if it ever sails by. Or a ship going on towards India, and I could look after it knowing that every moment it was getting nearer and nearer to him. To-morrow I will find out precisely where the P. & O.'s sail from for Bombay; then I shall be able to guess what it all looked like when he set his foot on board a year ago. Oh! thank God, I may think of him now that I am free that it is not wickedness any longer to think of him, or to love him," she added, with almost a sob.

She got up and looked round the room. It was nearly dark. She could see the outline of the furniture and of her own figure dimly reflected in the long glass of the wardrobe.

"The place is so full of shadows they frighten me. But I am frightened at everything." She flung herself down on the couch at the foot of the bed. "I wonder if the people who have always done right ever for a moment imagine that the people who have done wrong can suffer as much-oh, a thousand times more than themselves. They seem to imagine that sin is a sort of armor against suffering, and it does not matter how many blows are administered to those who have gone off the beaten track." She pillowed her head on her arms and watched the moving reflection of the light from the street. In imagination she stared through it at the long years before her, wondering almost in terror how they would be filled. "I am so young," she thought, "and I may live so long "there was a knock at her bedroom door.

"Come in," she cried, thankful for any interruption.

"A letter for madame."

"For me!" She seized it with feverish haste and looked at the direction by the window while the candles were being lighted. "I declare," she said, when the door was closed behind the garçon, “it is from the immaculate Mrs. Hibbert. May the saints have guarded her from contamination while she wrote it to me." Her happy spirits flashed back, and the weary woman of five minutes ago was a light hearted girl again.

From The Nineteenth Century.

THE STORY OF AN UNHAPPY QUEEN. FEW stories embodying so much of interest and romance, and withal so much of historical prominence, have remained more obscure and uncertain in many facts and details than that of the Königsmarck tragedy, which stained the name and fame of the Hanoverian court in the year 1694. Sift matters which way we will, doubt rests upon many of the particulars, and, indeed, principally upon the all-important question of the relations that existed between Königsmarck and Sophia Dorothea, the ill-starred daughter of the duke of Celle, and the consort of George Louis of Hanover, afterwards our George the First. One may always safely assume that the world's ill-nature will outrun any one's misdeeds; therefore, it is no wonder that the general belief was that she was unfaithful to her churlish and cruel husband. Her guilt has, however, not been proved, and, while the cynic and detractor may, if they please, assume the existence of misconduct, it is equally open to the charitable minority to believe that, in spite of her miserable and neglected life, she remained true to her marriage-vow at any rate, there are no more proofs of the one postulate than of the other.

The marriage of the ill-assorted pair was negotiated by the two brothers: Ernst August, then duke of Hanover, on the one hand, desiring that the large fortune possessed by his elder brother, the duke of Celle, should eventually pass to his branch of the family, while the latter, with the brilliant possibility of the British crown glittering on the horizon of the future, longed to secure to his daughter so splendid a position. Ernst August was eagerly seconded in his efforts by his unscrupulous wife, Sophia, afterwards the famous electress of Hanover. It mattered little that ever since the child's birth she had regarded her with jealousy and dislike; these sentiments, she found, had to yield to the exigencies of her greed; and it must be acknowledged that the position was exceptional and peculiar.

In order to make the family arrangements of the brothers plain, it will be as well to state here their relative circumstances. When their father, Duke George, died, he left four sons - viz., Christian Louis, who succeeded to the duchy of Celle; George William, who became duke of Hanover; John Frederick, and Ernst August. Christian Louis died in 1665, when his next brother, George William, became duke of Celle, and John FredVOL. LXXIX. 4082

LIVING AGE.

erick became duke of Hanover, and, when he died, in 1679, Ernst August, in his turn, succeeded to that duchy.

Sophia, Ernst August's wife, was the daughter of Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia that beautiful and unhappy princess who in her own life and person continued to experience the long series of misfor tunes that dogged the footsteps of the Stuarts. She was the youngest child of her parents, and was endowed with rare gifts and intellectual powers. In the days of their early manhood she had won the admiration of both brothers, and George William, then duke of Hanover, had offered her his hand, which she gladly accepted. Very shortly after his betrothal, however, he revolted against the prospec tive bonds of matrimony, and, in his eager desire to escape, bribed his younger brother, Ernst August, to assume them in his stead. Ernst August, who was at this time possessed of neither dukedom nor estates, was by no means loth to listen to his brother's proposal, and Sophia, who was a very clever, practical woman, was quite ready to accommodate herself to any contingency that presented itself to her as an advantageous one. A sceptic in matters religious, of cultivated intellect, discerning, sarcastic, observant, she confronted the intricacies of life with a due regard to expediency rather than to any other consideration. At this crisis, therefore, she showed herself ready to adapt herself to the altered state of the duke of Hanover's mind, and when the suggestion was made by him that Ernst August should take his place as her betrothed, and on this condi tion enjoy the major part of the Hanoverian revenues, he (George William) binding himself never to marry at all, so as to secure the succession to his brother, she not only showed not the smallest pique at thus being allotted and dealt with as a part of the movables, but she assured her brother, the elector palatine, who was somewhat staggered at the arrangement, that as far as she was concerned, so as she obtained a good establishment, it mattered not in the least which of the two brothers she married. Things having arrived at this satisfactory stage, the contract was signed and the marriage was solemnized.

Although George William's affection did not go the length of desiring Sophia in marriage, yet he was sufficiently drawn towards her to find her companionship and a joint home with her and with his brother very pleasant and acceptable. Sophia had always commanded his admi