Women move in a more contracted sphere; their virtues and vices are less conspicuous; that is all. There are other kinds of cheating beside defrauding of money. Shakespeare did not draw Lear cheating Goneril and Regan, but Goneril and Regan cheat. ing Lear.

'Non-Resident' cries out 'how often do we hear the sad story of helpless and inexperienced women entrusting their whole property to men in whom they placed implicit confidence, and finding themselves suddenly left penniless, destitute of the little provision they had saved for old age or sickness ! How often do we hear of female wards (even here Non-Resident' cannot compel himself to include male wards; the condition of both are precisely similar) finding that their inheritance has, somehow or other, melted away under the manipulation of its supposed guardians? No doubt such cases do occur; it is true that no one with the most moderate knowledge of the world will deny it.' But here, as usual-nay as invariable with Non-Resident,' the 'shield' has but one side. Here he forgets his own homily,' and does fail 'to balance his fault finding with a frank and cordial recognition of all that he can endorse and approve.' Can it really be possible that Non-Resident' is not aware that such cases are immeasurably-aye immeasurably -out-numbered by those in which guardians and trustees faithfully discharge their duty, always an onerous and thankless one (let us judge from this outcry against them how thankless)—how often, at their own trouble, loss of time, cost, and sometimes serious loss of money, they steadfastly protect the interests of helpless and inexperienced women,' of female

wards,' of 'widows and orphans?' Crimes are dragged to light; faithful performances have no record. Banks will break; trustees will be criminal or weak, they may yield to urgent entreaties to choose investments bear

ing higher interest, which means

worse security. All this is part of human nature, just as murders and robberies are part of human nature. But we do not lose our faith in our fellow men for all that, however it may be with 'Non-Resident.' There is no distrust, there is no panic; men still die happier to think that they will leave the interests of all that they hold most near and dear in the safe and faithful charge of their brother or their friend. Marriage settlements and trusteeships are expressly devised by men for the benefit and protection of women, and, if we enquire of lawyers, I take it that we shall not find them less frequent than formerly. It is most surely so in Newfangie. this we may be certain-that 'higher education' of women will ever prevent the occasional defalcations or weaknesses of trustees, will ever make themselves cease to crave for higher interest and more money.

Of

no

We are told of the almost incredible meanness and injustice on the part of men towards women,' which has so often justly stirred the indig nation of Non-Resident.' Such indignation is righteous and admirable. But what do we hear of all the acts of kindness and beneficence done in secret, or of which no note is taken. What do we hear of the multitude of magnificent institutions-almost exclusively the work of men-by which the poverty, the affliction, the suffering, the insanity, the idiocy, the blindness of women has been alleviated from generation to generation? Nay, who have been the founders of these very women's colleges? Have they been men or women? Is it Mr. or Mrs. Holloway who is, at this very moment, founding a college for women, at a cost to himself of £250,000 sterling If the vices of men are more conspicuous, so certainly are their virBefore all things, let us be just; let us hold the unweighted balance even. I shall be happy myself to accept a brief for women; I will do my best for them, but it will not be by

tues.

calling men cheats.' Depend upon it, you will never lift women up by pulling men down. Only endorse the brief with a good fee and I am your

woman.

I am sorely tempted to transgress, to tax the patience or at least the space of the Editor of the CANADIAN MONTHLY. I have the audacity, after all my professions of brevity, to ask for yet another column. I have only this moment come into possession of an extract from Mr. Anthony Trollope's 'Victoria and Tasmania,' and I cannot resist the temptation to transcribe it. All readers may not have seen it :'Women, all the world over, are entitled to everything that chivalry can give them. They should sit while men stand. They should be served while men wait. Men should be silent while they speak. They should be praised,

-even without desert. They should be courted-even when having neither wit nor beauty. They should be worshipped-even without love. They should be kept harmless while men suffer. They should be kept warm while men are cold. They should be kept safe while men are in danger. They should be enabled to live while men die in their defence. All this chivalry should do for women and should do as a matter of course.'

Pretty well, I think, for a beginning. There is no stint there. And now, ladies, let me entreat your most particular attention to what follows. Let me ask you, in all seriousness, shall all this, that this generous, chivalrous gentlemen offers you, be blotted out of the scroll, to make room for one odious word?

'But there is a reason for all this deference,' continues Mr. Trollope, 'one human being does not render all these services to another-who cannot be more than his equal before Godwithout a cause.'

One pauses here for a moment and holds one's breath, in reverence for that indisputable truth, so grandly because so simply put.

'A man will serve a woman, will suffer for her-if it come to that, will die for her because she is weaker than he and needs protection. Let her show herself to be as strong, let her prove by her prowess and hardihood that the old ideas of her comparative weakness have been an error from the beginning, and the very idea of chivalry, though it may live for awhile by the strength of custom, must perish and die out of mens' hearts.'

'Perish and die out of mens' hearts." I could imagine-not easily though — that some some very few-of these modern writers might say, 'let it perish, what does it do for us?' dear girls, Young says

My

'We take no note of time but from its loss."

All this once lost (and if lost gone, it is to be dreaded, for ever) you will take note enough of it then, I will warrant you. When all that makes the charm between men and women shall have perished and died out of men's hearts, you will take note enough of it then to your bitter and lasting sorrow, to your irredeemable loss. Let us hear Mr. Trollope farther.

'I have often felt this in listening to the bold self-assertion of American woman-not without a doubt whether chivalry was needed for the protection of beings so excellent in their own gifts, so superabundant in their own strength. And the same thought has crept over me when I have been among the ladies of Victoria. No doubt they demand all that chivalry can give them. No ladies with whom I am acquainted are more determined to enforce their rights in that direction. But they make the claim with arms in their hands-at the very point of the bodkin. Stand aside that I may pass on. Be silent that I may speak. Lay your coat down upon the mud, and perish in the cold, lest my silken slippers be soiled in the mire. Be wounded that I may be whole. Die that I may live. And for the nonce they are obeyed. That

strength of custom still prevails, and women in Victoria enjoy for awhile all that weakness gives and all that strength gives also. But this, I think, can only be for a day. They must choose between the two, not only in Victoria but elsewhere. As long as they will put up with that which is theirs on the score of feminine weakness they are safe. There is no tendency on the part of men to lessen their privileges. Whether they can make good their position in the other direction may be doubtful. I feel sure that they cannot long have both, and I think it unfair that they should make such demand. For the sake of those who are to come after meboth men and women-I hope that there will be no change in the oldestablished fashion.'

What follows comes from a private source, and, as I am not authorized to name the writer, I can claim for it no further weight than internal evidence may furnish. The writer, however, is a gentleman at the English Bar, a man of letters, who moves, and has always moved, in good society. 'It deals with what is a crying evil of the age, but I cannot but hope and think that it will die out sooner or later. Women will be made to feel that their interest lies in occupations and in personal qualities which are purely feminine, and in accordance with God's Will, when He created them. Most men, I should imagine, like a woman because she is not a counterpart of himself, and the folly of dressing like men, talking like men, and thinking like men, will, sooner or later, become apparent.' In a letter just received, he says, 'I have cut out a page or two of Trollope's "Victoria and Tasmania,"

as I think, if you have not before seen what he says, you will be pleased to find that he agrees with you in all you say and write about women. To me it is only wonderful that their own instinct and natural shrewdness has not, long before this, convinced them of its truth. If it be "Women's Mission (to use their own phrase) to be a wife and mother, they certainly have less chance now of becoming the first than they had years ago. Mothers they may become, for temporary connections are much more frequent, and considered much less discreditable, than formerly. Society now winks at them, and almost recognizes their necessity. This is what it has come

to.'

It is impossible to get over this, which is notoriously true. It is impossible to get over other things to which the most distant allusion is all that can be ventured upon, but which indisputably forms links in the same chain. There is no smoke without fire; it may be only a preliminary puff of a smoulder; but the smoulder is there. You ask a mariner if the land is in sight. He answers. 'no, but we can see the loom of the land.' Can we be confident that we do not see in all these signs the loom of a land which will shortly appear on the horizon, a land which will fall disastrously short of the happy land we have lived in hitherto.

My dears, I have been carried away, but I can hardly wish a word of it unsaid even to you. I could not too earnestly implore you to take it all— all that Mr. Trollope has said-to your young hearts, and may Heaven's blessing rest upon it and upon you!

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A NIGHT CHASE.

IX days out of the seven had

SIX

elapsed without any tidings from Sir Robert reaching Halcombe, and two at least of the little household were growing very impatient to discover the mystery that had gathered round him. It was with difficulty, as we have seen, that Gresham had been persuaded to suffer so considerable a time to pass in inaction, and to Lady Arden this passiveness was well nigh intolerable. To her Sir Robert's silence appeared absolutely unaccountable, except on the ground of his being too ill to write, or on that of his letters having been intercepted. To have suddenly changed his intention of leaving one hemisphere for the other, and then to have even returned to England without informing her of the fact, was an act of neglect and even cruelty, with which she refused to credit him. That he was not, morally speaking, his own master, was true enough, but no malign influence of a mere moral kind could, she felt, have induced him to thus behave to her. He must be under not only dictation but restraint; or he must be utterly prostrated by illness.

As time went on, these convictions began to be more and more shared by the rest of the family, and even Gresham, notwithstanding Mr. Bevill's concurrence with his own judgment, began to doubt of its wisdom.

On the seventh morning, it had been arranged that the detective was to come over to the all to receive his last instructions, and so impatient were the two young men that on his not putting in an appearance immediately after breakfast they set out in the dog-cart to meet him. They had passed through the Wilderness and reached the moorland, when they saw a horseman coming from the direction of Mirton, and at once concluded that it was he; but on his coming nearer they saw that he was a stranger; he had an olive complexion with long and pointed moustachios, and except that he had so good a seat on his horse, might have been taken for a Frenchman. He raised his hat, too, in a foreign fashion as they met, and then passed on. It seemed unlikely that he should be bound for any place but the Hall, and no sooner had they parted, than it struck them that he might be the bearer of some message which might relieve the common anxiety. Gresham accordingly pulled and was about to hail him, when he saw that the stranger had also reigned his steed and was turning back.

Merely that I am ready to start for Weymouth,' answered the supposed foreigner, with a suppressed grin. 'Confound the fellow, it's Bevill,' cried Mayne. Why you would deceive the very devil.'

I hope to deceive my gentleman, who is next kin to him,' answered the agent dryly. I thought it was inexpedient to come to the Hall in my own proper person; and now that I have met you I will, with your permission, not go there at all; it is better to be on the safe side.'

'But how will you get back to Mirton, without being recognised?'

'A handful of water from the first pool and a twitch at these moustachios will make Richard himself again,' returned Mr. Bevill coolly. In the meantime I wait your instructions.'

These were soon given; indeed, they consisted mainly in impressing on him the anxiety that prevailed in the family, and the necessity of relieving it as soon as possible. He was to telegraph to them, though in guarded terms, every point that seemed of importance; and Gresham would hold himself in readiness to join him at a moment's notice.

It is a vulgar error to ascribe any great intelligence to the mimetic art, even when displayed in its higher walks; like the business of the conjuror, and of the statesman, it is magnified by the majority of mankind, because they are necessarily unacquainted with it, but the effect of Mr. Bevill's masquerading was to impress both

the

young men with a sense of his sagacity, and to convince them that he would leave nothing undone through lack of strategy and prudence in the matter entrusted to him. When he had left them they began to feel that sort of complacency which we experience even under the most menacing circumstances, when we know that we have at least taken every precaution

possible, and if things go wrong, it must be owing to the malignity of fate. And this feeling they imparted in some measure to the rest of the household.

For the first time for many days, Lady Arden was able to listen to the words of wisdom that fell from the Great Baba with something like her old appreciation; for the pretty prattle of the nursery, though it never loses its music for the mother's ear, has, when her heart is sore and sad, a pathos that melts what is wax already, and gives to grief its hesitating tear.

With an inopportuneness characteristic of its age, the child, too, would generally choose Sir Robert for the topic of its talk, and this his deserted consort found intolerable.

That evening, however, Lady Arden joined the rest of the family (which included, it should be mentioned, that newly-joined devotee, Mr. Frederic Mayne), in their usual acts of idolatry; and the Great Baba, in the drawingroom before the late dinner, was more adorable than ever.

His brother Frank had a tame starling, and he stated at immense length how he too intended to procure a feathered pet, and by what means. Salt, as a device for placing on birds' tails, and so securing them, he had, he explained, hitherto found illusory; the birds were too rapid in their movements; but he (Baba) had observed [this with all the grave simplicity of a White of Selborne describing a fact in Natural History] that the goose was the most slow moving of all birds, and a goose he accordingly meant to catch, and put it in a cage to sing to dear Papa when he came home.

This statement, delivered with the most unconscious comicality, was supplemented by a request that Georgie dear' (Gresham) should indicate upon the instant which goose in Gilbert Holme's collection he considered would be most eligible for this experiment.

In vain did Gresham aver with much emotion (he was half suffocated with