And

knew him very well. Yes, she has a look of him, but his complexion was nothing like so dark; he was a fine handsome Englishman." "I have heard I have my mother's complexion," I remonstrated. "Oh no, oh no! not at all; she was a very beautiful woman. now I must take myself off, I have so many to call upon. I make sure I can reckon upon you, dear Mrs. Fortescue, and as for that little minx, she may make a great match yet; dress her, dress her!" My grandmother, neither pledging herself, nor yet demurring to any of Mrs. Mauleverer's conclusions, that lady, as it were, to clinch her argument, stepped back into the room to say-"My son shall call on you himself," and with that left us, my grandmother half-flattered, myself wholly indignant at her impertinence, meant for condescension. One thing she had made sensible to me in her praise of my parents, that I was by comparison to be despised in her eyes, and to that, I made up my mind, her son should be no party, good luck and bright wit favouring me; so I followed the enemy's good counsel, and dressed myself for conquest, crowning the achievement by a most mischievous hat of my own device. Mr. George Augustus Mauleverer came, saw, and was overcome; so true is it that the masculine disposition is to be subdued by a bit of straw and a tuft of feather.

I lay in wait for him in the garden in front of our house, pretending not to expect, or know him when he came; and by this ruse de guerre quite threw him off his pedestal as a man of family and fashion. At first sight of me he gave a start of surprise, doubtless to find me so opposite to the dusky, dwarfish fright I had been described to him. Not content with this satisfaction, I drew him on, after he followed me into my grandmother's drawing-room, into something very like serious admiration; ignorant as I was, yet all the more wise with the cunning in such matters, which, old Montaigne says, comes by nature as the gift of the author of all evil to every daughter of Eve, however young and simple she may be.

Next day, while unconscious of the amount of mischief I had achieved, and ruminating on its possible extent with some alarm, I was

aroused by the mother of my victim sweeping down like a provoked kite upon our dove-cot. With much ostentation of mystery, and the initiation of my grandmother into a mighty secret, she ordered "the little goose," meaning my too quick-witted self out of the room. What she there and then imparted in most solemn confidence to my grandmother I failed not to coax out, word for word, after she was gone, nor shall I by concealing the same run risk of crossing any reader's feminine curiosity, or masculine, rather, compared to which latter our weaker faculty is but "as water unto wine."

In one word I had made a conquest of George Augustus Mauleverer, so that his five thousand a year, prospective title of M.P., and somewhat stumpy person were metaphorically placed at my small feet, always provided that I, by fortune, birth, and connection, could make some decent show of equivalent. This was not to be calculated too rigidly, inasmuch as George had his fancy to please: he might easily marry a girl in his own class of life, she, little minx, for her part, might make a higher match, though that was most improbable; but those two young people would never be so happy as by uniting themselves for life. How old was the chit? Not sixteen. Why, they say she's seventeen all out quite old enough to be married when a gentleman is willing to have her. Wait? No, George Augustus would not wait. It would be an impertinence to ask a gentleman to wait. Five thousand pounds! Not enongh to pay election expenses. No matter: another five thousand on death of grandmother. Very well; five hundred a year should be settled on her, if she survived her husband. But the estate? Oh no! George Augustus would not settle the estate. without a son, and he would have to marry again. consumptive ?

She might die
Was she not

All reflections made, I jumped to the conclusion that if anybody was to be constituted match-maker in my behoof, Mrs. Mauleverer was the very last person in the world whose interference I would suffer, while poor granny proved herself a mere feather to be twisted about the shrewd dowager's thick fingers.

"I won't have him," I blurted out, to dear old granny's consternation.

66

Why, my dear Lily, how can you say so? And why? Tell me why."

"Why, because I won't, and I don't care for him, and I never can, and there's an end of it."

"Why, you seemed to like him so much yourself."

"Like to torment him, you mean."

"Oh, Lily."

"Well, like him in a way, but not to marry him."

"You'll never see such a match again if you miss him; you must marry some time."

"Well, perhaps not."

"My dear, but you must; I would have you marry a duke, if I could."

"And because you cannot, I'm to take the first that comes, whether I like him or not."

"You'll grow to like him if you marry him; you may as well like him as anyone else."

"I don't see that. He's a little tubby figure; and you know you brought me up to admire height in a man. My father was six feet high," I pouted in deprecation.

"As if I could foresee a man of such a position would propose, and you want to refuse him for that."

"Well, and his politics-a Whig and a Radical. When I was a child, you warned me against even dancing with any man who was not a Tory, and now you want me to marry in the teeth of your own principles."

"Women's principles, my love, must give way to paramount necessity; think of the danger of your being left an old maid."

At that I laughed a long and merry laugh, ringing with the bright scorn of sixteen summers.

"Ah, I can see no good to come of this," she feebly remonstrated, and on a renewal of confabulation, between both old ladies, it was decided that George Augustus should speak for himself, who, no doubt, all important preliminaries being once satisfactorily arranged,

would easily overcome the forgotten trifle of my opposition. Accordingly George Augustus came at his leisure, a few days afterwards, to do what he should have done at first-make love to me.

It was the first formal declaration I had ever received from a man, but after the first blush-(literally), which for a moment tinged my cheek-not apt to colour hitherto, the more he prayed and pressed the more indifferent I felt, the more ardent he for my coldness. I could have looked him quietly in the face through it all, and only dropped my eyelids because I thought it was the proper thing to do. It had been enjoined upon me not to be rude to him, to let him kiss my hand; and so much did he abuse this permission that I doubt whether the Queen's hand, in all her life, received a like quantity of kisses to mine, in that one long summer's day.

The first taste of love was sweet to me, if not the lover. While his lips pressed my fingers, and crept up the tiny wrist to print themselves upon the soft smoothness of the rounded arm, I wandered away in imagination towards that other, once seen and now recalled to memory, and thought in envy of the happy woman who should win from him such delicate, tender caresses. He was not married! That flashed upon me; and should I marry now? I broke away from the profaning touch, resolved to suffer it no more.

This was no longer a matter of choice with me, having provoked my assailant too far.

"Lily, my darling, listen to me like a darling," he remonstrated; "say three little words-'I love you,' or, if you cannot, one kiss.”

Before I could struggle he had done it. Angered and ashamed I began to cry. It was the first kiss I had ever had from a man, except once when I was four years old. A painter to whom I sat with my father for our portraits called me "little Chatterbox;" I, not understanding the epithet, asked for an explanation, and received a kiss which I, desiring to return with a decorous slap in the face, mounted upon a footstool with that intent, but found I could not by at least a couple of feet reach up to my purpose. Vexed at this, I burst into tears, and the like did I now.

"Oh, Lily, Lily, your beautiful eyes-don't spoil them like that. I'll kiss away those tears for you, naughty girl! I won't be put away. Why, have I pulled down your hair, and you want to put it up again with your little fingers? What a heap of lovely hair-all fallen down! oh, you poor little thing!"

He did not tell me I was beautiful, but his looks flattered me the more that his tongue was reticent. My eyes, I knew, were something remarkable; nurses and maids from my earliest years having worried me on the subject. My hair, dark with glints of red, was at least rare in tint and luxuriance. George Augustus looked and looked, as if he would devour and swallow me up-little hands, great eyes, hair and all.

Why did I so? Woman He should have persevered, and enjoyed his fancy; I might have

Then I was fair! Sweet it was to be taught that lesson. To be assured I had so much to enrich the eyes, and captivate the heart which should satisfy the love-thirst that grew upon me: but this was not the man. The more he pleaded the more obstinately I put away the deep draught of passion thus thrust upon me in the ugly glass wherefrom I so coyly refused to sip. seldom does reject love that is true. then he might have won me, and lived to content the world-if not myself—a happy woman without a history, and not now be tracing these remorseful lines. Again and again he pleaded with me, "Lily, I am afraid I cannot make you love me," and got no answer but-"I cannot tell; I don't know-wait until I see you again," and, with that cold comfort, he started for London, on business, I was told.

I did not believe it, but gave way to a horrible suspicion, which rose upon me out of some scattered phrases of his. It so happened that some days before, a celebrated singer, Mrs. Forest, had made her appearance at Stormouth, and I, being myself an amateur musician of lofty aspirations, made a point of hearing the famous prima donna. As a woman she bore an evil name, having made a conquest on the stage of a poor lord who suffered her to remain in the path of temptation until she ran away with one of her professional coadjutors, and, being