on the following Sunday. He made a was the tallest of the three: she had a very happy speech in the capacity of ama- certain commanding air that went well teur cabman, magnified the difficulty and with her impetuous speech and .noble responsibility of the profession, alluded stature; her eyes were bright, her face to the frequent newspaper reports of wife- sparkled with intellect, and there was a beating, condemned the practice as un- singular charm in her manner which the manly as well as cruel, and declared that cabman was unable to resist. Maisie cabmen never appeared to answer such was smaller, younger, and less intellectual charges; upon which one or two looked than her sisters, while in her lips the out of the corner of their eyes in a sheep- sweet voice common to all three became ish way, not unmarked by their reverend superlatively sweet. It would have been friend. evident to a less acute perception than Mr. Forrester's, that the three were ladies whose breeding was equal to any occasion.

66

"Alan," he observed, when the two were returning in the private hansom, you are a Radical and a philanthropist, and a liberty and fraternity man, and He sat on the extreme edge of a chair everything you ought not to be, in short. as near the door as possible, and deliberWhat would you say if a man in my posiately got into difficulties with his hat in a tion were to marry a clever, well educated daughter of a― small tradesman?"

"I should say, Mark," returned the Honorable and Reverend leveller quickly, "that you were an unmitigated ass."

"And you would say right,” mused the other. For blood is thicker than water.

CHAPTER III.

WHEN the evening dusk was gathering on the following Sunday, Mr. Forrester, arrayed from head to foot in such attire as he had observed upon the persons of younger cabmen, stood on the steps of Normandy Villa and knocked three slow, loud knocks on the door, feeling at the same time a succession of more aristocratic raps from within upon his own ribs.

The door was opened by a servant, who directed him to the second floor, upon the landing of which stood his hostess, all smiles to welcome him, though he observed that she did not offer her hand. He went through a good deal of puffing, and blowing, and scraping upon the mat in the narrow passage, and then entered a pretty little room, plainly furnished, but abounding in photographs, prints, and other objects of art, and having some tastefully arranged fresh flowers here and there. An easel and a piano stood in different parts of the room; it was full of books, and tea was laid upon the table.

It was the first time that he had seen the three sisters indoors and in a full light, and he was struck by their grace, and the easy manner in which they did the honors of their simple home. Neither of them was exactly pretty. Geraldine was a slim, graceful girl, with large, clear eyes, a bright manner, and a ready turn of speech; she was dressed in the high-art style, and looked like a picture. Olivia

sufficiently comic manner, which evoked no smile from the bright lips of the sisters, although their eyes were not unexpressive of mirth. Geraldine, however, suggested a place of repose for the hat upon a chair: he felt that her manner in doing so would have put the clumsiest real cabman at his ease in a moment.

You will have some tea, won't you, Forster?" Geraldine asked, pouring out the perfumed drink. "Greek is dreadfully dry to begin upon, whatever my sister may say, especially when one is grown up. Have you a father? And is he a cabman too? Perhaps he is old, and you support him, or help to do so?"

"We want to hear all about your people," added Olivia, with her usual earnest. ness, "and then we will tell you all about ourselves."

Thus the cabman was led to confess a father, whose profession was that of gamekeeper, though he bad now retired from active business, and was fairly well off. On being pressed as to his present occupation, he said that he kept pigs, and a cow or two on a bit of land of his own, all of which was literally true.

"I wonder, Forster, that you didn't follow your father's calling, which is a very pleasant one," said the innocent Olivia, with the earnestness which made him long to speak to her as one with equal pretensions to culture with herself might have done.

CHAPTER IV.

THE amateur cabman rushed home, tore off his disguise, and puffed fiercely at a cigar to assist his meditations. The only solace for such a misfortune as fall ing in love is a similar mischance to the cause of such dolor. The question now arose how to entangle poor Olivia in the meshes of such a bewilderment. He thought of Miss Hardcastle, and decided that a neat waiting-maid is a far more fascinating object than a Sunday cabman disguised in pomatum and false English. He remembered Zeus - -the various disguises in which he had won the hearts of feminine mortals; but he doubted if even Zeus, in the guise of a cabman, would have made much impression upon the delicate female fancy. As for carrying on a regular siege in his proper person to Miss Olivia, that was quite out of the question after her expressed opinion upon his character. Besides, he had learned a good deal more than the Greek alphabet that evening: to see himself in other people's eyes (a thing that rarely ministers to vanity); to understand something of the position of women from their own point of view; and finally, to arrive at some solution of the dark mystery of husband-hunting, that last degradation of civilized humanity. How he envied Olivia her decided convictions! What would he give to share them! He would then no longer be a drone. Olivia in his position! What a world of good or of mischief she would do!

quences. He even consoled himself for the sublime misery of which Olivia was the innocent cause, by the opinion of the great Goethe, that to be in love with a woman is the only successful way of studying female character; though Goethe's affliction was always temporary, and though he usually contrived that that of the woman should be permanent, thus securing himself noble opportunities for human vivisection.

Now Lady M Whymper was a distant kinswoman of Mr. Forrester's, and she frequently reproached him for visiting her so rarely, and had given him a general invitation to dine with her on any night. She was an eccentric old woman, and had, as he knew, rebellious notions upon the subjection of her sex; and he sometimes reproached himself for caring so little for one who thought in some degree with his Olivia. Therefore one day he sent a note to say that he would dine with her, if quite convenient, and requested her to telegraph to his club in case his presence should be superfluous. Having been out shopping all day, Lady M'Whymper did not receive the missive till late in the afternoon, when it was too late to write ; and nothing short of life-and-death urgency, or the prospect of losing large moneys, would have induced her to commit the extravagance of a telegram. She therefore ordered an extra cover to be laid, and shrugging her shoulders at the thought of her previously invited guest's objection to meet people, made herself happy in an armchair, and waited for her visitors. He had some thoughts of taking Lady The late Sir Dugald had been a firm Jane into his confidence; but unfortu-upholder of marital authority, as well as nately, Lady Jane, though one of the a strict Calvinist; and though his lady sweetest of human beings, had never yet had been twenty years a widow, she still thought for herself, and was governed by sometimes shudderingly recalled the termaxims and prejudices the most anti-rible joy with which she had seen Sir quated. She would certainly condemn the rebellious De Wynters. Meanwhile the cab-driving and Greek lessons went merrily on, and Mr. Forrester loved Sunday as dearly as the hero of "Sally in our Alley." Like most persons afflicted with love, his principal solace was to aggravate his malady, and he took a melancholy satisfaction in feeling much worse every Sunday. But every affliction has its consolation; and however deeply one may be in love, it is a comfort to think that it can only be with one person at a time: thus the blow having once descended, there is nothing more to fear. He was able, therefore, to study human nature, as revealed in Geraldine and Maisie, without dreading any pernicious conse

Dugald's eyes close and her own chains snap. Nevertheless she had been good to him in his life, and mourned him with pity after death. In her the De Wynters had confided, and to her alone was their incognito known; and further, as fate would have it, Olivia had promised to dine with her on this very evening, and arrived, all unsuspecting, five minutes before the appointed hour.

"And now, dear cousin," said Olivia, with her little imperial air, as she sank upon an ottoman by the old lady's side, I must tell you all about our cabman. He is the most charming creature in the world, intelligent, but with a mind which is yet virgin soil; and I am teaching him Oh dear!"

Lady M'Whymper had listened but indifferently her thoughts being preoccupied with the hope that any accident short of a broken limb might keep her other relative from his engagement- when the dreadful sound of a carriage stopping at the door, followed by the yet more dreadful announcement of Mr. Forrester, reduced her to a state of temporary idiocy, in which she did not observe the horror and amazement of her guests, and in which she sought some comfort in the reflection that she had saved the telegram money. In her confusion the miserable old woman introduced Olivia by her proper name. "But surely, Livy, you remember Mark Forrester?" she added, by way of making things pleasanter. "You must have met at Northcourt. Or was it Lord Woodman? Northwynd and he were at Oxford together."

Din

The dinner was not a success. ners of three seldom are; particularly when one of the three assumes the office of a refrigerator, and makes the ice-pail a superfluity. Poor Lady M'Whymper, in her efforts to conciliate Olivia and put the young people on a pleasant footing, only made things worse. All her little artifices for drawing them into conversation merely served to confirm Olivia in her impression that the whole thing was a conspiracy, in which her hostess was arch-plotter, for effecting matrimony between herself and the unworthy Forrester, whose pleading glances and pathetic humility were yet further evidence of the crime.

When the dreary festivity came to an end, and the unfortunate Mark found himself alone with his reflections, Olivia, after some minutes' indignant silence, Olivia stood at her full height, looking charged her hostess with her treachery, like a princess in her black velvet, dia- to the amazement of the innocent old lady, monds, and rich old lace; her nostrils who was completely bewildered by her quivered, and there was a dangerous flash young friend's references to cabmen with in her eye. Having first levelled a direct, matrimonial designs, and who stoutly steady, and indignant glance of three maintained that she had quite forgotten seconds' duration at the unfortunate Mark, the proposed alliance with Mark Forresshe made him a ceremonious salutation, ter. They were still playing wildly at and then turned and walked up to a table, cross-purposes, though Olivia had satis where she began examining some prints. fied herself that Lady M'Whymper was The whole thing seemed to flash through not guilty of complicity with her kins her mind at once, - her cousin's treachery, the plot concocted between Northwynd and Forrester, carried on for weeks, and now brought to a crisis in the house of the traitress. Though it was at least five seconds before she recognized her pet cabman with his clumsy gestures, bad English, and pomatumed hair plastered down over his forehead-in the gentleman before her, severely spotless and neat, with sable coat and snowy shirt, with short, crisp, waved hair innocent of grease, and nicely pointed moustache, with feet in slim, shining boots, so different from the clumsy high-lows in which he was wont to stump heavily up the stairs at Normandy Villa; but the eyes, the square brow, and, above all, the voice, were unmistakable.

The hostess attributed these tokens of indignation on Olivia's part to her anger at meeting a guest, but Mark's apparent dismay she was quite unable to account for. Macbeth's discomfiture at the sight of Banquo's ghost in his own chair was nothing to this. The only parallel Mark could think of was the tender anguish of Tancred when Clorinda's helmet fell off, and he found himself in mortal combat with the lady of his affections.

man's designs, when Mark, instead of seizing, as his hostess devoutly hoped he would, this opportunity for evanishing, reappeared in the drawing-room.

It was an unlucky moment; for Olivia's indignation was then at its hottest, and she was seeking some object upon which to pour out the vials of her wrath. "Cousin," she exclaimed, with a wave of her hand in the culprit's direction, "beware of that man! He is a falsehood! He is a cabman! He creeps into people's houses on false pretences! He gets people to teach him Greek. Does he look as if he needed to learn Greek? His father is a retired gamekeeper, and keeps a few pigs and poultry on a little bit of land of his own. His brother George is a gamekeeper. His brother Alan is a Methodist preacher. His sister Jane milks the cows. Does he look like a inilkmaid's brother and a retired gamekeeper's son? Does he look as if he earned his living by cab-driving? Oh, he is a consummate actor! You should see him drinking tea out of a saucer, and hear him talking bad English! Beware of him, for there is no knowing what disguise he may assume next!"

So saying, the indignant Olivia van