all my things are in my box. Nettie is going to take me; she loves me best of you all. I'll kick Chatham if he touches me."

"Why can't some one tell Nettie she's to go too?" said the eldest boy. "She's most good of all. What does Nettie want to go away for ? But I don't mind; for we have

feelings disqualified her? She did her best to decipher the pale face which appeared over the breakfast cups and saucers opposite. What did Nettie mean to do? Susan revolved the question in considerable panic, seeing but too clearly that the firm little hand no longer trembled, and that Nettie was absorbed by her own thoughts-thoughts to do what Nettie tells us, and nobody cares with which her present companions had but little to do. Mrs. Fred essayed another stroke.

for Chatham," cried the sweet child, making a triumphant somersault out of his chair. Nettie stood looking on, without attempting "Perhaps I was hasty, Nettie, last night; to stop the tumult that arose. She left them but Richard, you know, poor fellow," said with their mother, after a few minutes, and Susan, " was not to be put off. It wont went out to breathe the outside air, where at make any difference between you and me, least there were quiet and fredom. To think, Nettie dear? We have always been so united, sa she went out into the red morning sunshine, whatever has happened; and the children are that her old life was over, made Nettie's head so fond of you; and as for me," said Mrs. swim with bewildering giddiness. She went Fred, putting back the strings of her cap, up softly, like a creature in a dream, past St. and passing her handkerchief upon her eyes, Roque's, where already the Christmas deco“with my health, and after all I have gone rators had begun their pretty work-that through, how I could ever exist without you, work which, several ages ago, being yesterI can't tell; and Richard will be so pleased." day, Nettie had taken the children in to see. "I don't want to hear anything about Of all things that had happened between that Richard, please," said Nettie" not so far moment and this, perhaps this impulse of esas I am concerned. I should have taken you caping out into the open air without anything out, and taken care of you, had you chosen to do, was one of the most miraculous. Inme; but you can't have two people, you sensibly Nettie's footstep quickened as she know. One is enough for anybody. Never became aware of that extraordinary fact. mind what we are talking about, Freddy. It is only your buttons-nothing else. As long as you were my business, I should have scorned to complain," said Nettie, with a little quiver of her lip. 'Nothing would have made me forsake you, or leave you to your-ner, and that it was as easy to think while self; but now you are somebody else's business; and to speak of it making no difference, and Richard being pleased, and so forth, as if I had nothing else to do in the world, and wanted to go back to the colony! It is simply not my business any longer," cried Nettie, rising impatiently from her chair-" that is all that can be said. But I sha'n't desert you till I deliver you over to my successor, Susan-don't fear."

66

"Then you don't feel any love for us, Nettie! It was only because you could not help it. Children, Nettie is going to leave us," said Mrs. Fred, in a lamentable voice.

"Then who is to be instead of Nettie ? Oh, look here—I know-it's Chatham," said the little girl.

"I hate Chatham," said Freddy, with a little shriek. "I shall go where Nettie goes THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 831

The hour, the temperature, the customs of her life, were equally against such an indulgence. It was a comfort to recollect that, though everything else in the universe was altered, the family must still have some din

walking to the butcher's as while idling and doing nothing. She went up, accordingly, towards Grange Lane, in a kind of wistful solitude, drifted apart from her former life, and not yet definitely attached to any other, feeling as though the few passengers she met must perceive in her face that her whole fortune was changed. It was hard for Nettie to realize that she could do absolutely nothing at this moment, and still harder for her to think that her fate lay undecided in Edward Rider's hands. Though she had not a doubt of him, yet the mere fact that it was he who must take the first step was somewhat galling to the pride and temper of the little autocrat. Before she had reached the butcher, or even come near enough to recognize Lucy Wodehouse where she stood at the garden-gate, setting out for St. Roque's, Nettie heard the headlong wheels of something

well by myself, thank you. You did not contradict me! You were content to submit to what could not be helped. And so am I. An obstacle which is only removed by Richard Chatham," said Nettie, with female cruelty, turning her eyes full and suddenly upon her unhappy lover, "does not count for much. I do not hold you to anything. We are both free."

approaching which had not yet come in sight. | ward," said the wilful creature, withdrawing She wound herself up in a kind of nervous her hand from his arm. "I can walk very desperation for the encounter that was coming. No need to warn her who it was. Nobody but the doctor flying upon wings of haste and love could drive in that breakneck fashion down the respectable streets of Carlingford. Here he came sweeping round that corner at the George, where Nettie herself had once mounted the drag, and plunged down Grange Lane in a maze of speed which confused horse, vehicle, and driver in one indistinct gleaming circle to the excited eyes of the spectator, who forced herself to go on, facing them with an exertion of all her powers, and strenuous resistance of the impulse to turn and escape. Why should Nettie escape ?-it must be decided one way or other. She held on dimly, with rapid trembling steps. To her own agitated mind, Nettie herself, left adrift and companionless, seemed the suitor. The only remnants of her natural force that remained to her united in the one resolution not to run away.

What dismayed answer the doctor might have made to this heartless speech can never be known. He was so entirely taken aback that he paused, clearing his throat with but one amazed exclamation of her name; but before his astonishment and indignation had shaped itself into words, their interview was interrupted. An irregular patter of hasty little steps, and outcries of a childish voice behind, had not caught the attention of either in that moment of excitement; but just as Nettie delivered this cruel outbreak of feminine pride and self-assertion, the little pursuing figure made up to them, and plunged at her dress. Freddy, in primitive unconcern for anybody but himself, rushed headforemost between these two at the critical instant. He made a clutch at Nettie with one hand, and with all the force of the other thrust away the astonished doctor. Freddy's errand was of life or death.

"I sha'n't go with any one but Nettie," cried the child, clinging to her dress. "I hate Chatham and everybody. I will jump into the sea and swim back again. I will never, never leave go of her if you should cut my hands off. Nettie! Nettie !—take me with you. Let me go where you are going! I will never be naughty any more! I will never, never go away till Nettie goes. I love Nettie best! Go away, all of you!" cried Freddy, in desperation, pushing off the doctor with hands and feet alike. "I will stay with Nettie. Nobody loves Nettie but me."

It was well for the doctor that his little groom had the eyes and activity of a monkey, and knew the exact moment at which to dart forward and catch the reins which his master flung at him, almost without pausing in his perilous career. The doctor made a leap out of the drag, which was more like that of a mad adventurer than a man whose business it was to keep other people's limbs in due repair. Before Nettie was aware that he had stopped, he was by her side. "Dr. Edward," she exclaimed, breathlessly, "hear me first! Now I am left unrestrained, but I am not without resources. Don't think you are bound in honor to say anything over again. What may have gone before I forget now. I will not hold you to your word. You are not to have pity upon me!" cried Nettie, not well aware what she was saying. The doctor drew her arm into his; found out, sorely against her will, that she was trembling, and held her fast, not without a sympathetic tremor in the arm on which she was constrained to lean. "But I hold you to yours!" said the doc-side the child, and clasped him to her in a tor; "there has not been any obstacle be- passion of restrained tears and sobbing. The tween us for months but this; and now it is emotion which her pride would not permit gone, do you think I will forget what you her to show before, the gathering agitation have said, Nettie ? You told me it was im- of the whole morning, broke forth at this irpossible onceresistible touch. She held Freddy close and "And you did not contradict me, Dr. Ed-supported herself by him, leaning all her

Nettie had no power left to resist this new assault. She dropped down on one knee be

troubled heart and trembling frame upon the | which that childish tumult had died away in little figure which clung to her bewildered, sudden awe of her presence; "but we have suddenly growing silent and afraid in that spoken to each other here before now. I passionate grasp. Freddy spoke no more, did not mean to vex you then-at least, I but turned his frightened eyes upon the doc- did mean to vex you, but nothing more." tor, trembling with the great throbs of Net- Here she paused with a sob, the echo of her tie's breast. In the early wintry sunshine, past trouble breaking upon her words, as on the quiet rural high-road, that climax of happened from time to time, like the passion the gathering emotion of years befell Nettie. of a child; then burst forth again a moShe could exercise no further self-control. ment after in a sudden question. "Will She could only hide her face, that no one you let me have Freddy?" she cried, surmight see, and close her quivering lips tight rendering at discretion, and looking eagerly that no one might hear the bursting forth of up in the doctor's face; "if they will leave her heart. No one was there either to hear him, may I keep him with me?" or see-nobody but Edward Rider, who stood bending with sorrowful tenderness over the wilful fairy creature, whose words of defiance had scarcely died from her lips. It was Freddy, and not the doctor, who had vanquished Nettie; but the insulted lover came in for his revenge. Dr. Rider raised her up quietly, asking no leave, and lifted her into the drag, where Nettie had been before, and where Freddy, elated and joyful, took his place beside the groom, convinced that he was to go now with the only true guardian his little life had known. The doctor drove down that familiar road as slowly as he had dashed furiously up to it. He took quiet possession of the agitated trembling creature who had carried her empire over herself too far. At last Nettie had broken down; and now he had it all his own way. When they came to the cottage, Mrs. Fred, whom excitement had raised to a troublesome activity, came eagerly out to the door to see what had happened; and the two children, who, emancipated from all control, were sliding down the banisters of the stair, one after the other, in wild glee and recklessness, paused in their dangerous amusement to watch the new arrival. "Oh! look here; Nettie's crying!" said one to the other, with calm observation. The words brought Nettie to herself.

"I am not crying now," she said, waking into sudden strength. "Do you want them to get killed before they go away, all you people? Susan, go in, and never mind. I was not—not quite well out of doors; but I don't mean to suffer this, you know, as long as I am beside them. Dr. Edward, come in. I have something to say to you. We have nowhere to speak to each other but here," said Nettie, pausing in the little hall, from

It is unnecessary to record the doctor's answer. He would have swallowed not Freddy only, but Mrs. Fred and the entire family, had that gulp been needful to satisfy Nettie, but was not sufficiently blinded to his own interests to grant this except under certain conditions satisfactory to himself. When the doctor mounted the drag again he drove away into Elysium, with a smiling Cupid behind him, instead of the little groom who had been his unconscious master's confidant so long, and had watched the fluctuations of his wooing with such lively curiosity. Those patients who had paid for Dr. Rider's disappointments in many a violent prescription, got compensation to-day in honeyed draughts and hopeful prognostications. Wherever the doctor went he saw a vision of that little drooping head, reposing, after all the agitation of the morning, in the silence and rest he had enjoined, with brilliant which he had the greatest share; and, with eyes half-veiled, shining with thoughts in that picture before his eyes, went flashing along the wintry road with secret smiles, and carried hope wherever he went. Of course it was the merest fallacy so far as Nettie's immediate occupation was concerned. too much to do to think of rest-more to do That restless little woman had twenty times than ever in all the suddenly changed preparations which fell upon her busy hands. But the doctor kept his imagination all the same, and pleased himself with thoughts of her reposing in a visionary tranquillity, which, wherever it was to be found, certainly

did not exist in St. Roque's Cottage, in that sudden tumult of new events and hopes.

From The National Review.

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited by her Great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. Third edition, with Additions and Corrections derived from the original Manuscripts, illustrative Notes, and a new Memoir. By W. Moy Thomas. In two volumes. London: Henry Bohn.

stand it, beauty to adorn it, and wit to amuse it; but she chose to pass great part of her life in exile, and returned at last to die at home among a new generation, whose name she hardly knew, and to whom she herself was but a spectacle and a wonder.

Lady Mary Pierrepont-for that was by birth her name-belonged to a family which had a traditional reputation for ability and cultivation. The Memoirs of Lucy Hutch

to us from the first generation of refined Puritans, the only book, at any rate, which effectually brings home to us how different they were in taste and in temper from their more vulgar and feeble successors)-contains a curious panegyric on wise William

NOTHING is so transitory as second-class inson-(almost the only legacy that remains fame. The name of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is hardly now known to the great mass of ordinary English readers. A generation has arisen which has had time to forget her. Yet only a few years since, an allusion to the "Lady Mary" would have been easily understood by every well-in-Pierrepont, to whom the Parliamentary formed person; young ladies were enjoined party resorted as an oracle of judgment, and to form their style upon hers; and no one whom Cromwell himself, if tradition may be could have anticipated that her letters would trusted, at times condescended to consult and seem in 1862 as different from what a lady court. He did not, however, transmit much of rank would then write or publish as if of his discretion to his grandson, Lady Mathey had been written in the times of pagan- ry's father. This nobleman, for he inherited ism. The very change, however, of popular from an elder branch of the family both the taste and popular morality gives these let- marquisate of Dorchester and the dukedom ters now a kind of interest. The farther of Kingston, was a mere man " about town," and the more rapidly we have drifted from as the homely phrase then went, who passed where we once lay, the more do we wish a long life of fashionable idleness interto learn what kind of port it was. We spersed with political intrigue, and who sigventure, therefore, to recommend the let-nalized his old age by marrying a young ters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as an instructive and profitable study, not indeed to the youngest of young ladies, but to those maturer persons of either sex "who have taken all knowledge to be their province," and who have commenced their readings in "universality" by an assiduous perusal of Parisian fiction.

beauty of fewer years than his youngest daughter, who, as he very likely knew, cared nothing for him and much for another person. He had the "grand air," however, and he expected his children when he visited them, to kneel down immediately and ask his blessing, which, if his character was what is said, must have been very valuable. The only attention he ever (that we know of) be

It is, we admit, true that these letters are not at the present day very agreeable read-stowed upon Lady Mary was a sort of theating. What our grandfathers and grandmothers thought of them it is not so easy to say. But it now seems clear that Lady Mary was that most miserable of miserable beings, an ambitious and wasted woman; that she brought a very cultivated intellect into a very cultivated society; that she gave to that society what it was most anxious to receive, and received from it all which it had to bestow; and yet that this all was to her as nothing. The high intellectual world of England has never been so compact, so visible in a certain sense, so enjoyable, as it was in her time. She had a mind to under

rical outrage, pleasant enough to her at the time, but scarcely in accordance with the educational theories in which we now believe. He was a member of the Kit-Cat, a great Whig club, the Brooks's of Queen Anne's time, which, like Brooks's, appears not to have been purely political, but to have found time for occasional relaxation and for somewhat unbusiness-like discussions. They held annually a formal meeting to arrange the female toasts for that year; and we are told that a whim seized her father to nominate Lady Mary, "then not eight years old a candidate; alleging that she was far prettier