a man's springing step upon the stairs, followed by a knock at the parlor-door, and the entrance of the object of all Olivia's anger. The indignant flashes of six bright eyes, and the chill stoniness of three once gracious and friendly faces, formed a by no means encouraging reception. ished through the doorway, which she had been gradually approaching during this speech, and, before her dismayed auditors could recover from the first shock of this denunciation, had caused a cab to be called, and had driven home to fall into Geraldine's arms, burst into tears, and exclaim, "Oh, Geraldine, we are undone! Tricked, deceived, and mocked by that "And pray, sir," demanded Olivia, miserable cabman, who is one of North-after a freezing bow, and without inviting wynd's own tools!" her visitor to be seated, "to what are we indebted for the unexpected honor of this visit? We are not by way of receiving gentlemen at our rooms. 66 By George!" exclaimed Forrester, after exchanging glances of mutual stupefaction with his hostess for some moments. "And pray, Mark, what is the meaning of all this?" she exclaimed severely. It means that I'm in as lively a scrape as a man need wish for," he returned, with a melancholy air, as he proceeded to unbosom himself of the cab adventure, and all that it had led to. CHAPTER V. "IT was all Maisie's fault!" cried Olivia, during the adjourned discussion upon the faithless cab-driver. 66 Stupid little thing, to lose her wits and run away from a clumsy, insolent man like that!" "Oh, Livy, I can't help my fears! my heart beats so when men are rude in the streets, especially at night! "Little coward! Why didn't you call a policeman? Miserable pretence of a woman! You had better go back to Northwynd and get married if you want a protector. Pray, what would you do if you were a maidservant, with no knightly blood in your veins, with none of the courage which springs from fifty generations of good feeding, with no sense of noblesse oblige, with no education, no high thoughts of woman's destiny, and nothing to lift you above the natural terrors of crushed womanhood? When will you be a woman, and not a baby, that you must go about in the leading-strings of a deceitful cabman?" "Come, moderate your transports, Livy," cried Geraldine," and remember that Maisie has neither our stamina nor our inches. Let us have no more of the cabman, for pity's sake. Unless you like to make a ballad on the false fellow, and wind up the whole thing with a good laugh." "He was not your cabman," sighed Olivia, with unintentional pathos; and while she was yet speaking, the hour being about two in the afternoon, the leisure moment after the midday meal enjoyed by the three sisters, there came "I came," he replied, displaying a graceful skill in the manipulation of his hat, which constrasted strongly with his performances on the occasion of his first visit, "to offer my best apologies." "Which are certainly needed," said Geraldine severely. "On the contrary," said Olivia," conduct so abominable is beyond apology." 66 My conduct is not so abominable as you imagine, dear ladies," he replied, with gentle pathos. Then he related the incidents that had led to his assumption of the disguise. "And so you had no intention of marrying my sister after all?" asked Geraldine, with a shade of disappointment in her voice. "None whatever." "Oh!" faltered Olivia, with an obvious absence of the satisfaction that she ought to have felt under the circumstances. "You should not have concealed your true name," Maisie said. "Pray, why did you accept my sister's offer of learning Greek? It looks dark, Mr. Forrester." "Pardon me. I gave my name as Mark Forrester; was it my part to correct ladies who chose to pronounce me Forster? I accepted the Greek offer with a view to enriching my experience of character, and before I had seen Miss De Wynter in a full light, or was acquainted with her name." "This casuistry is pitiful," cried Olivia. "You have not acted the part of a gentleman." Quite so: I did the part of cabman instead. You cannot say that it was an unhandsome part." Geraldine here burst out laughing, and vowed that the rôle was perfect. "We accept your apology," she added, “and we confide the secret of our hidden life to your honor, and request that you will molest us no further." "Also that you will cease to rob honest cabmen of their bread," fulminated Olivia, suddenly turning upon him. "Kindly do me the favor of accepting | elegant costume, and who appeared to be the bread," he returned, laying a bracelet "I can't help being an earl's son," he replied, with a melancholy air. "I didn't choose that state of life. I would rather have been Prince of Wales. His is the only rank save one in which a man can neither act, think, or speak as he likes, and in which one really earns his champagne and Havannas. His is the only station in which it is a credit to be jolly." "No one supposes you to be guilty of your own birth, Mr. Forrester," continued Olivia, with unabated majesty; "but I think you might see that it places a bar to your admission here. There are certain conventions with regard to the association of ladies and gentlemen 66 " Exactly. But Olivia Wynter told me that she despised conventionality, as do. And I might perhaps hint that it is not usual for unmarried ladies to have young cabmen to tea with them." 66 Really, Mr. Forrester," interrupted Geraldine, with heat-for she felt that this was ungrateful as coming from the favored cabman himself -"it must be evident to the densest intelligence that a cabman is in a class so far beneath us as to be in quite a different category.' "" Quite so. But then, Miss Wynter has renounced class distinctions. She recognizes a brother in every man she meets, and thinks of his humanity rather than his accidents. Is it possible, Miss Wynter, that your sympathies have only a downward direction, and that the unfortunate minority known as the upper classes has no claim upon your kindness? What a deal of misapplied charity there is in this world, to be sure!" "And misapplied talent," added Geraldine. "What a pity you are not a barrister, Mr. Forrester! Your clients might commit the cruellest murders with a quiet mind!" At this moment another step was heard upon the stair, and was succeeded by a gentle knock at the parlor-door, which Maisie opened, disclosing the form of a young lady with a sweet smile and in an | My sister, Lady Jane Forrester," said Mr. Forrester, introducing her. "What! the milkmaid?" cried Geraldine, laughing. "Yes; Jane the milkmaid," replied the guest, sinking into the lounging-chair that was offered her. "Oh, it was quite true. I do milk the cows sometimes, and make the butter. Mark never fibs. Dear Miss De Wynter, I appreciate your life, and quite believe in women's disabilities, though I never admit it to men, for fear of being thought bold and unfeminine. But I do hope that you will marry Mark the poor fellow is so dreadfully in love." "It happened during the first cup of tea," he explained, looking hard at the ceiling, as if taking that mute object to witness. "The order of things was apparently reversed," commented Geraldine; "the tea stirred the spoon, instead of the spoon stirring the tea." Olivia rebuked her sister's levity with a look of considerable majesty, and then turned a withering glance upon the suitor, whose natural misery was tempered by a sense of humor. "This is quite new to us," she observed; "and pray, which of us does Mr. Forrester intend to honor with his hand?" "Her who showed him the greatest kindness," he replied, promptly. "Dear est Miss Olivia," he added, “my sister has precipitated things. I should never have ventured to put the decisive question so quickly. But it is my firm intention to leave no stone unturned until I have persuaded you to marry me. fact," he added, "I will marry you." In Olivia laughed a defiant little laugh, and motioned to the audacious suitor, who had approached very near to her, while Lady Jane and the other two had withdrawn under pretence of examining a picture on the easel, to keep his distance. | sion in the window, and a slight commo "And do you think," she asked, "that I would marry a mere man?" "Well," he replied thoughtfully, "you could scarcely marry a woman, could you?" Olivia bit her lip, perhaps to conceal a smile, and looked out of the window in the narrow recess of which they were standing, while the group devoted to the fine arts were in the other. "Marriage," she said, "does not enter into our scheme of life. It was partly to avoid it that we hid ourselves from the world. I have already told you of my views and aims in life, and you must see that they are quite incompatible with marriage. How could I renounce my freedom? I will never have a master." "I am your slave." "I require a slave as little as I do a master. Besides, your tastes and habits are quite different from mine. I have told you how I hate the frivolous social life of a woman in our class. I could never amuse the leisure of an idle man." "Our tastes may not be so different as you imagine, and habits may be reformed. Dearest Olivia, believe me it was because you are so different from conventional women that I first loved you. It was then that life began for the first time to be a reality to me. I, too, am sick of frivolity and selfish amusement, and wish to be something more than a mere drone. Won't you help me in this? It was something better than Greek that I came to learn on those sweet, quiet Sunday evenings. Don't leave your task incomplete. Dearest Olivia," he added, with earnestness, "I love you so tremendously!" Olivia had several times changed color during this speech, which, from obvious reasons, was spoken in low tones and very close to the listener's ear. "Pray say no more," she cried, with the expres sion of a thing brought to bay; "it cannot be. The lines of our lives are cast." But Mr. Forrester, who was firmly convinced that the way to win a woman is to make resolute love to her, said a great deal more, and brought tears to his listener's eyes. All this time the other three, making more noise than is exactly expected from ladies-in fact, as the landlady's daughter commented from her post of observation at the keyhole, going on regular rampagious - discussed things in general, and finally performed a duet, the voice parts by Maisie and Lady Jane, and the accompaniment by Geraldine. What with the music, the grave discus tion outside the parlor-door, caused by the rapid flight of the observer of society from the keyhole, the almost simultaneous arrival of Lady M'Whymper was unheard. "Weel!" "said this good lady, entering all smiles and benevolence, "and how does the little comedy end?" "Very lamely," replied the lover, "since, as Biron said on a similar occasion, Jack hath not Jill."" "And is love's labor quite lost?" asked Geraldine, in a melancholy tone. "Was all that solid cake eaten and queen's English mangled for nothing?" "Shall I be a milkmaid, a gamekeeper's daughter, and a cabman's sister for nothing?" continued Lady Jane. "And shall I renounce mee aversion to marriage, and play the matchmaker for nothing?" added Lady M'Whymper. "I'm glad, Mark, that ye bear it like a feelosopher." "Don't imagine, Lady M, Whymper, that I mean to give up,” returned the philosopher stoutly; "I mean to marry her if she can be married." Then it was explained that Mr. Forrester had received permission to improve his acquaintance with the three sisters, on condition that he made no further allusion to marriage until Olivia had taken her degree, and that at the same time he tried to make himself useful to society in some way or other. In the mean time, the De Wynters' incog nito was to be strictly guarded, and the ex-cabman was only to be admitted to the celestial parlor under the charge of a proper chaperon. "It is a peety that ye couldn't have made things straighter," observed Lady M Whymper, who, much as she disliked marriage in the abstract, was too much of a woman not to be disappointed at missing one in the concrete. "Come, lasses, give us a cup of tea. Leddy Jean, poor bit bairn, is just famished, for she ate no lunch for excitement. I'm thinking she would like some of the good solid cake that lay sae heavy on Mark's conscience." Tea was therefore brewed, and the cabman's own special cake appeared, to the joy of Lady Jane, who maintained that a cabman's appetite was nothing to a milkmaid's. "I can scarcely forgive Mr. Forrester for telling us that his father was a gamekeeper, and devoted in his old age to cows and pigs," Maisie said, in the course of a general conversation of a revolutionary character. "If a man who preserves the game of 2 half two counties is not a gamekeeper, I ticians, then known as obstructionists, who "And the brother preacher-the Radi cal, Socialist, and Methodist?" continued Olivia. "How little," said the fortunate legislator on the eve of the wedding, "how little did I dream that my hansom would procure me such a fair!" From The Cornhill Magazine. "I deny the Methodist. The rest are visible any day to the eye of flesh in the FRENCH PRISONS AND CONVICT ESTABvicar of St. Radegunda's." "Ye suld hear the lad preach!” added Lady M Whymper, with enthusiasm. And they did so on the following Sunday. When Lady M'Whymper's sixth cup of tea had vanished, the ex-cabman regret fully rose with the lady guests to take his leave. "What a blank next Sunday will be!" he whispered to Olivia on saying good-bye. "How I shall miss the Greek lesson!" LISHMENTS. TEN years ago a commission was appointed to study the French penal system with a view to remedying a number of abuses which had sprung up in the management of prisons and of convict estabblishments. The labors of the commission were related in a very lengthy and exhaustive report, admirably written, as such works always are in France. The author was an Academician, Count d'Haus "And I too," replied Olivia, with her old impetuous air; "for I did like that cab-sonville, who, having skilfully grouped his man as a cabman, I mean." "And I did love that Greek teacher as a teacher, of course." 66 "The comedy will be quite perfect," Geraldine was then saying to Lady Jane; Jack will have Jill before long, and my sister will have to assert the independence of woman in the domestic circle. How Northwynd will chuckle!" facts to demonstrate in the most readable way possible the evils of the old system, submitted a long series of suggestions which he confidently hoped would result in making France's prisons and convict establishments superior to those of all other nations. The National Assembly lost no time in adopting the suggestions of the report, and passing them into law; Lord Northwynd did chuckle three but the consequences by no means fulyears later, when his long-lost sister re-filled the expectations of the commissionturned to the bosom of her family as Mrs. ers. The French penal system seemed Forrester. all at once to have got into a tangle; and now that the new system has been in operation nearly ten years, one may say that the tangle is worse than ever. This occurrence was immediately preceded by the passing of Mr. Forrester's celebrated Woman Emancipation Bill, which, as the young reader of this present twentieth century may have forgotten, took place in the year 1886, and is justly reckoned as the culminating glory of the glorious period known in history as the nineteenth century. The majority in favor of this bill was overwhelming: there were but three dissentients. Of these, one was a working-man's candidate, who justly feared that the bill might injure one of the most precious privileges of his order that of wife-beating. The second was an atheist, who, with the hyper-sensitive conscience peculiar to atheists, feared to vote lest this action should be construed into an acquiesence in Christianity, the only religion which insists on the rights of women. The third was a relic of a now extinct class of poli By "tangle" we mean this, that the penalties for the most heinous kinds of offences were found to be so much more lenient than those for crimes of the second category that prisoners sentenced to reclusion, which was the second-class punishment, and involved solitary confinement, began to make murderous assaults on their gaolers in order to incur transportation to New Caledonia. Transportation is supposed to be the heavier punishment; but in truth it is incomparably lighter. Parliament grew alarmed at length by the epidemic of crime in the home penitentiaries; and in 1880 an act was passed decreeing that transportation should no longer be inflicted for crimes committed within prison walls. This, however, was only an acknowledgment In a former article on "French Assizes" we alluded to the vagaries of juries in finding "extenuating circumstances" for prisoners on merely sentimental of the fact that transportation had alto- | no doubt, relieve Paris of the greater gether failed as a deterrent; and now this portion of its very large horde of habitual anomaly remains, that a burglar convicted criminals; but it would not affect the of a first offence may get a sentence of question as to the leniency of transportaeight years' solitary confinement, which tion under the present system as comwill almost kill him, whereas a thrice-con-pared with reclusion. So long as men are victed burglar will be treated to a sentence more lightly punished for serious crimes of ten years' transportation, which will be than for those of a less atrocious sort, it no hardship to him at all. If he behaves is evident that justice is not well armed tolerably well, he will in three or four against malefaction. years get a ticket-of-leave enabling him to establish himself as a free colonist in New Caledonia, and to marry. If he be already married, government will send out his wife and children to him free of ex-grounds; and also to the unequal apporpense. So humanitarian a spirit presided tionment of penalties by reason of the over the framing of rules for the penal arbitrary rules which commit certain ofcolony of New Caledonia that many a fenders to be tried before juries, whilst villanous murderer sent out there under a others are sent before the judges of the life sentence found his punishment prac- correctional courts, who sit without juries tically reduced to one of comfortable and scarcely ever acquit because they banishment. The governor was allowed judge according to the strict letter of the absolute discretion as to the award of law. We pointed out that a husband who ticket-of-leave; and human nature being what it is, one may well suppose that well-connected criminals found it easy to bring such influences to bear upon him as considerably lightened their punishment. At this moment several murderers whose crimes appalled the public-but who escaped the guillotine owing to the squeamisliness of juries and of M. Grévy about capital punishment- are pleasantly settled at New Caledonia as free farmers, tradesmen, or artisans. One of them keeps a café; another a poisoner has set up as a schoolmaster. One must not presume to say that the governors of New Caledonia for there have been several during ten years were wrong to treat these men kindly if they showed themselves penitent; but it is quite certain that the prospect of living with one's wife and family on a free grant of land in a healthy climate is not likely to strike terror into the minds of the criminal classes as being an excessive punishment. The A man wishing to steal fowls clambers guillotine and solitary confinement have over a garden wall at night, and breaks much more effectual terrors; and it is an into a fowl-house. He has a bludgeon or undeniable fact that since transportation crowbar in his hands, but makes no use has been rendered so mild crimes of the of it to inflict bodily hurt on those who worst kind, both against person and prop-capture him. Nevertheless, this man is a erty, have alarmingly increased. They have increased so much that M. Gambetta, and a large section of the Republican party, wish to get a law passed by which all criminals convicted for the second time, and no matter what the length of their sentences may be, shall, after the expiration of those sentences, spend the remainder of their lives in New Caledonia. This drastic measure would, gave an unfaithful wife a severe beating would almost certainly be imprisoned by correctional judges, whereas if he killed his wife outright he would assuredly be acquitted by an assize jury. Such anomalies may be witnessed in a multitude of other cases. The French code divides offences against the common law into crimes (felonies) and délits (misdemeanors); but this distinction, which was found inconvenient in England, and which has been practically obliterated there since misdemeanants (e.g. the Tichborne claimant) can be sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude as well as felons - this distinction remains an important one in France, where a misdemeanant can only be tried in a correctional court, whose maximum sentence is five years' imprisonment. And the French legal definitions of felonies and misdemeanors are often most unsatisfactory from the moral point of view. felon who has committed a burglary with the quatre circonstances aggravantes, i.e. in the night, with escalade (climbing over walls), with effraction (breaking open a door), and à main armée (with a weapon in his hand). He can only be tried at the assizes, and, if convicted on the four counts, must get eight years' reclusion, or twenty years' transportation. On the other hand, take a man who by false pre |