got over it, sir, never! You are a young fellow entering into life-let me give you a word of counsel. Always be inferior to the man you are, for the time being, in contact with. Outbid him, outjockey him, overreach him, but never forget to make him believe he knows more of the game than you do. If you have any success over him, ascribe it to 'luck,' mere 'luck.' The most envious of men will forgive 'luck,' all the more if they despise the fellow who has profited by it. Therefore, I say, if the intellectual standard of your rival is only four feet, take care that with your tallest heels on, you don't stand above three feet eleven! No harm if only three ten and a half."

The little applauding ha! ha! ha! with which his lordship ended, was faintly chorussed by the secretary.

"And what is your news from home; you've had letters, haven't you? "Yes. Augustus writes me in great confusion. They have not found the will, and they begin to fear that the very informal scrap of paper I already mentioned is all that represents one."

"What! do you mean that memorandum stating that your father bequeathed all he had to Augustus, and trusted he would make a suitable provision for his brothers and sisters?"

"Yes; that is all that has been found. Augustus says in his last letter, my poor father would seem to have been most painfully affected for some time back by a claim put forward to the title of all his landed property, by a person assuming to be the heir of my grandfather, and this claim is actually about to be asserted at law. The weight of this charge and all its consequent publicity and exposure appear to have crushed him for some months before his death, and he had made great efforts to effect a compromise."

A long, low, plaintive whistle from Lord Culduff arrested Temple's speech, and for a few seconds there was a dead silence in the room.

"This, then, would have left you all ruined-eh ?" asked Culduff, after a pause.

"I don't exactly see to what extent we should have been liable,— whether only the estated property, or also all funded monies."

"Everything; every stick and stone; every scrip and debenture, you may swear. The rental of the estates for years back would have to be accounted for-with interest."

"Sedley does not say so," said Temple, in a tone of considerable irritation.

"These fellows never do; they always imply there is a game to be played, an issue to be waited for, else their occupation were gone. How much of all this story was known to your sister Marion ?”

Nothing. Neither she nor any of us ever suspected it."

"It's always the same thing," said the viscount, as he arose and settled his wig before the glass. "The same episode goes on repeating itself for ever. These trade fortunes are just card-houses; they are raised

in a night, and blown away in the morning."

L

"You forget, my lord, that my father inherited an entailed estate."

"Which turns out not to have been his," replied he, with a grin. "You are going too fast, my lord, faster than judge and jury. Sedley never took a very serious view of this claim, and he only concurred in the attempt to compromise it out of deference to my father's dislike to public scandal."

"And a very wise antipathy it was, I must say. No gentleman ever consulted his self-respect by inviting the world to criticize his private affairs. And how does this pleasing incident stand now? In which act of the drama are we at this moment? Is there an action at law or are we in the stage of compromise?"

"This is what Augustus says," said Temple, taking the letter from his pocket and reading: "Sedley thinks that a handsome offer of a sum down,-say twenty thousand pounds, might possibly be accepted; but to meet this would require a united effort by all of us. Would Lord Culduff be disposed to accept his share in this liability? Would he, I mean, be willing to devote a portion of Marion's fortune to this object, seeing that he is now one of us? I have engaged Cutbill to go over to Paris and confer with him, and he will probably arrive there by Tuesday. Nelly has placed at my disposal the only sum over which she has exclusive control,—it is but two thousand pounds. As for Jack, matters have gone very ill with him, and rather than accept a court-martial, he has thrown up his commission and left the service. We are expecting him here to-night, but only to say good-by, as he sails for China on Thursday.'"

Lord Culduff walked quietly towards the chimney-piece as Temple concluded, and took up a small tobacco-box of chased silver, from which he proceeded to manufacture a cigarette-a process on which he displayed considerable skill and patience; having lighted which, and taken a couple of puffs, he said, "You'll have to go to Bogotà, Temple, that's clear." "Go to Bogotà! I declare I don't see why."

"Yes; you'll have to go; every man has to take his turn of some objectionable post, his Gaboon and yellow-fever days. I myself passed a year at Stuttgard. The Bramleighs are now events of the past. There's no use in fighting against these things. They were, and they are not, that's the whole story. It's very hard on every one, especially hard upon me. Reverses in life sit easily enough on the class that furnishes adventurers, but in my condition there are no adventurers. You and others like you descend to the ranks, and nobody thinks the worse of you. We,-we cannot! that's the pull you have. We are born with our epaulettes, and

we must wear them till we die."

"It does not seem a very logical consequence, notwithstanding, to me, that because my brother may have to defend his title to his estate, that I must accept a post that is highly distasteful to me."

"And yet it is the direct consequence. Will you do me the favour to touch that bell. I should like some claret-cup. The fact is, we all of us take too little out of our prosperity! Where we err is, we experiment on good fortune: now we shouldn't do that, we should realize. You for VOL. XVII. No. 97.

5.

instance ought to have made your 'running' while your father was entertaining all the world in Belgravia. The people couldn't have ignored you, and dined with him; at least, you need not have let them."

"So that your lordship already looks upon us, as bygones, as things of the past?"

"I am forced to take this very disagreeable view. Will you try that cup? it is scarcely iced enough for my liking. Have you remarked that they never make cup properly in a hotel? The clubs alone have the secret."

"I suppose you will confer with Cutbill before you return an answer to Augustus?" said Temple stiffly.

"I may—that is, I may listen to what that very plausible but not very polished individual has to say, before I frame the exact terms of my reply. We are all of us, so to say, dans les marvais draps. You are going where you hate to go, and I, who really should have had no share in this general disaster, have taken my ticket in the lottery when the last prize has just been paid over the counter."

"It is very hard on you indeed," said the other scornfully.

"Nothing less than your sympathy would make it endurable," and as he spoke he lighted a bed-room candle and moved towards the door. "Don't tell them at F. O. that you are going out unwillingly, or they'll keep you there. Trust to some irregularity when you are there, to get recalled, and be injured. If a man can only be injured and brought before the House, it's worth ten years' active service to him. The first time I was injured I was made secretary of embassy. The second gave me my K. C. B., and I look to my next misfortune for the Grand Cross. Goodby. Don't take the yellow-fever, don't marry a squaw." And with a graceful move of the hand he motioned an adieu, and disappeared.

CHAPTER XXX.

ON THE ROAD.

L'ESTRANGE and his sister were on their way to Italy. The curate had been appointed to the church at Albano, and he was proceeding to his destination with as much happiness as is permitted to a man who, with a very humble opinion of himself, feels called on to assume a position of some importance.

Wishing, partly from motives of enjoyment, partly from economy, to avoid the route most frequented by travellers, they had taken the road through Zurich and the valley of the upper Rhine, and had now reached the little village of Dornbirn in the Vorarlberg-a spot of singular beauty, in the midst of a completely pastoral country. High mountains, snowcapped above, pine-clad lower down, descended by grassy slopes into rich pasture-lands, traversed by innumerable streams, and dotted over with those cottages of framed wood, which, with their ornamented gables and quaint galleries, are the most picturesque peasant-houses in existence. Beautiful cattle covered the hills, their tinkling bells ringing out in the

clear air, and blending their tones with the ceaseless flow of falling water, imparting just that amount of sound that relieved the solemn character of the scene, and gave it vitality.

Day after day found our two travellers still lingering here. There was a charm in the spot, which each felt, without confessing it to the other, and it was already the fourth evening of their sojourn as they were sitting by the side of a little rivulet, watching the dipping flies along the stream, that Julia said, suddenly,-

"You'd like to live your life here, George; isn't that so?"

"What makes you think so, Julia?" said he, colouring slightly as he spoke.

"First tell me if I have not read you aright? You like this quiet dreamy landscape. You want no other changes than in the varying effects of cloud, and shadow, and mist; and you'd like to think this a little haven against the storms and shipwrecks of life?"

"And if I really did think all this, would my choice of an existence be a very bad one, Julia ?

"No. Not if one could ensure the same frame of mind in which first he tasted the enjoyment. I, for instance, like what is called the world very much. I like society, life, and gaiety. I like the attentions, I like the flatteries one meets with, but if I could be always as happy, always as tranquil as we have felt since we came here, I'd be quite willing to sign a bond to live and die here."

"So that you mean our present enjoyment of the place could not last?" "I am sure it could not. I am sure a great deal of the pleasure we now feel is in the relief of escaping from the turmoil and bustle of a world that we don't belong to. The first sense of this relief is repose, the next would be ennui."

"I don't agree with you, Julia. There is a calm acceptance of a humble lot in life, quite apart from ennui."

"Don't believe it. There is no such philosophy. A great part of your happiness here is in the fact that you can afford to live here. Oh, hold up your hands, and be horrified. It is very shocking to have a sister who will say such vulgar things, but I watched you, George, after you paid the bill this morning, and I marked the delighted smile in which you pointed out some effect of light on the Sentis,' and I said to myself, 'It is the landlord has touched up the landscape.'

"I declare, Julia, you make me angry. Why will you say such things?" "Why are we so poor, George? Tell me that, brother mine. Why are we so poor?"

"There are hundreds as poor; thousands poorer."

"Perhaps they don't care, don't fret about it, don't dwell on all the things they are debarred from, don't want this or that appliance to make life easier. Now look there, what a difference in one's existence to travel that way."

As she spoke, she pointed to a travelling carriage which swept over the

bridge, with all the speed of four posters, and, with all the clatter of cracking whips and sounding horns, made for the inn of the village.

"How few travel with post now, in these days of railroad," said he, not sorry to turn the conversation into another channel.

"I hope they are going on. I trust they'll not stop here. We have been the great folk of the place up to this, but you'll see how completely the courier or the femme-de-chambre will eclipse us now," said she, rising. "Let us go back, or perhaps they'll give our very rooms away." "How can you be so silly, Julia ?"

"All because we are poor, George. Let me be rich, and you'll be surprised, not only how generous I shall be, but how disposed to think well of every one. Poverty is the very mother of distrust."

"I never heard you rail at our narrow fortune like this before."

"Don't be angry with me, dear George, and I'll make a confession to you. I was not thinking of ourselves, nor of our humble lot all this while; it was a letter I got this morning from Nelly Bramleigh was running in my mind. It has never been out of my thoughts since I received it." "You never told me of this."

"No. She begged me not to speak of it; and I meant to have obeyed her, but my temper has betrayed me. What Nelly said was, 'Don't tell your brother about these things till he can hear the whole story, which Augustus will write to him as soon as he is able.

"Just so.

They were worth millions-at least they thought so—a few weeks back, and now they have next to nothing."

"This has come of over-speculation."

"No. Nothing of the kind. It is a claimant to the estate has arisen, an heir whose rights take precedence of their father's; in fact, the grandfather had been privately married early in life, and had a son of whom nothing was heard for years, but who married and left a boy, who, on attaining manhood, preferred his claim to the property. All this mysterious claim was well known to Colonel Bramleigh; indeed, it would appear that for years he was engaged in negotiations with this man's lawyers, sometimes defiantly challenging an appeal to the law, and sometimes entertaining projects of compromise. The correspondence was very lengthy, and, from its nature, must have weighed heavily on the Colonel's mind and spirits, and ended, as Nelly suspects, by breaking up his health.

"It was almost the very first news that met Augustus on his accession to his fortune, and so stunned was he that he wrote to Mr. Sedley to say, -'I have such perfect reliance on both your integrity and ability, that if you assure me this claim is well-founded and this demand a just one, I will not contest it.' He added, I am not afraid of poverty, but a public shame and a scandal would be my death.' "Just what I should expect from him.

What did Sedley say?"