He had a billet for a doctor. A servant in tears opened the door, and in a few minutes a worn, sad-eyed broken man came to him.

"Pardon me, monsieur. I cannot receive you. A great sorrowwill you accept a lodging at an hotel? Look-see liere "-and he half opened the door of the adjoining room.

There a woman sat weeping with quiet resignation beside a cot, and there a little baby with yellow cheeks and half-closed eyes lay at the end of his little life's trouble.

The soldier felt his eyes burn and brim with tears. He wrung the doctor's hand a minute, and then flung away wildly down the street to the first hotel, where he shut himself in a room murmuring to himself with a sick foreboding: "Oh, my own boy, my own boy."

Two hours afterwards a waiter came to the door.

"A lady to see you, sir."

"I can see nobody," was the rough response.

"But the lady insists, sir," the waiter went on.

66

"Did you hear me," shouted the Captain in his most martial baritone "I know no lady here-I don't want to know any-and you will leave me alone, or—”

And he marched on the waiter, who fled, leaving the door ajar. A little woman slid into the room.

"Raoul," she whispered.

But Raoul was trying to write a letter, with two portraits before him. Then when she touched him he turned, caught her hands, and cried:

"Hélène! Oh, then it's true, the baby!-"

But the baby was already in the room in its nurse's arms, and its mother explaining her jealous journey; and Raoul was laughing with wet eyelashes, and dancing the baby and kissing the wife like a mariner saved from shipwreck, half mad from the salt of the sea and the despair of his soul.

And when next day, Beaugency began to describe his festive prowesses, he dropped back to the surgeon's side and began an erudite conversation on teething.

"You will introduce me-won't you, Alister?"

"I don't know so much about that! I hardly think it safe---when a plain fellow like myself is pretty confident that he is in a fair way to win the heart of the dearest, loveliest little woman in the world, I don't think he would be wise to throw in her path a handsome lady-killer like yourself, Charlie!"

"Bosh! There is not much danger of cutting you out if she knows what a good fellow you are. Are you engaged?"

"Not exactly-I couldn't ask Ella to be my wife, until I could see some way of keeping her in the luxury she has been accustomed to all her life. I'll introduce you, Charlie. I'll risk it, because when you have made Ella's acquaintance you will resign yourself to music and talk, instead of wasting your substance on cards, at the Junior, night after night. I'll sacrifice myself to serve you, old chap, and trust to your honour not to be too fascinating to my ladye love. Knowing her will do you a lot of good. It has me. So we'll go to Hill Street this evening, it's one of Mrs. L'Estrange's 'At home' nights."

"Thanks, Alister. I shall be delighted. Miss L'Estrange is a great beauty-isn't she? I heard so at the club the other dayWhat is she-blonde or brunette? I hate blondes-they are generally so insipid-big black eyes sparkling like diamonds; dusky cheeks with a dash of damask roses; ruby lips, and five feet three-just Venus de Medici's height. There you are with my beau-ideal of loveliness right before you." Charlie Vane rattles according to his habit, and glancing up with a laugh, he is rather amazed at the shadow that has unmistakably fallen on Alister Grant's face.

"Ella is your beau-ideal, then," is the reply, in a low voice. "You have described her so exactly that one would fancy you had seen her! But I really have never thought much of her beauty, I only know that she is everything to me-and that it would break my heart if she went out of my life!"

"So! you are hard hit indeed, my boy-when you talk of breaking your heart. Hearts are tough things now-a-days, but let us

VOL. XXXIV.

У

hope the fair Ella appreciates your liking properly, and would not so much as look at another man!"

"Let us hope it," is the grave response; and Charlie Vane, unaccustomed to much show of real feeling in the London world, stares at his friend for a moment.

Then he shrugs his shoulders, and rattles away at some other topic, while the colour that had left Alister's face slowly creeps back.

But somehow as the two men dash along to Hill Street, Charlie feels a curious perturbation, and a newborn shyness; and a good deal of his ordinary careless débonnair bearing is absent, when he is introduced to Miss L'Estrange, a dark girl with big black eyes, and damask roses on her dusky cheeks, and a pair of sweet fresh lips that look like twin cherries. She is dressed in a long trailing white silk dress, with a rope of pearls round her throat, and the same pure jewels gleaming in her glossy hair, and she receives Charlie Vane-of one of the crack regiments, and a habitué, of all the swell houses-with a smile that fairly takes away his

breath.

he

Still he is disappointed, for Miss L'Estrange is not the beauty expected-though a sweet lovable girl.

"Alister need not be afraid-I sha'n't lose my head or my heart to her," he thinks, as he walks into his rooms that night; then he drops into a lounge and a reverie, with a cigar in his mouth-and through the clouds of smoke, two large black eyes look at him, and two ruby lips tempt him by their sweetness and freshness.

"How do you like Vane, Ella?" Alister asks of the girl he is half engaged to.

"How do I like him? Oh! so- -so-you see he is your great chum, so of course I must like him!"

"Don't you like him for himself, darling? He is awfully handsome and agreeable, and sings like Capoul."

"Yes" Ella answers, slowly, "still--I'll tell you. He has been told that he is irresistible, and knows it too well, and that's why I don't fancy him-I can't bear conceited men!"

Alister flushes with pleasure, while he reproaches himself for his unloyalty to friendship, and to appease his conscience, goes on affably:

"The women have spoiled him to a certain extent, perhaps. But he is the best fellow going. I want your mother to be kind to him, and to ask him here often. He is pretty well off, and has been leading rather a fast life, and I want him to sober down. He is passionately fond of music, and if you'll take compassion and sing with him, I am sure you will wean him from those eternal club evenings, which are the devil!"

"Alister!" cries Ella, pretending to be shocked, "you must be anxious about Captain Vane's welfare when you take to bad French, like that!"

"Milles pardons, dear, but you will do your best, won't you?" he answers, persuaded that she does not admire his friend, and that no danger can possibly accrue from duets and continual companionship.

And so the weeks go on, and Ella begins to grow curiously tolerant of Charlie's conceit, and curiously nervous as the evening hours come on. Of course she welcomes him simply because his voice blends so deliciously with hers, and he has the power to make even her grim old father smile over his gay sallies. Somehow the evenings he is away at some grand ball or reception-for Charlie is wonderfully in request-seem dull and flat and stale, and altogether unprofitable-but the evenings in Hill Street, when the first notes of "M'Appari" or "Salve dimora " break on her ear, are just a snatch of her ideas of paradise.

Besides this, there is the sweetest subtlest feeling, that in spite of the professional beauties, and the attraction of cards at the Club, Charlie never fails coming to Mrs. L'Estrange's "At home" when he is invited.

He himself wonders how his evenings have passed before he made his first bow in Hill Street! and curses himself for a blind fool not to have seen how lovely Ella really was, and how irresistible. It is hard!—hard to find this out, when she of course loves Alister Grant, and is really pledged to him!

These are the thoughts that rack his soul, and bring an unwonted shadow over his handsome insouciant face, that seemed as if sunshine was habitual to it in the first days, and as Ella marks the shadow, she grows pale, and her heart sinks; and life, which she has, up to now, looked at in glorious hues, seems a horrible and awful mistake.

Unsuspecting-putting implicit and blind faith in both mistress and friend-Alister smiles on the two, delighted to see the reformation in the man whom he likes almost as a brother, and satisfied that he has a hold on Ella's heart that nought can unloosen.

"Ella, darling! My uncle died yesterday, and I am a good many thousands richer, so I shall speak to your father in a day or two, and then you will let the world know how happy I am! You won't hold back now, love, but be my own wife soon-won't you?"

Ella's face is bent over a piece of elaborate work, and Alister does not see the scared look that starts into her eyes, but he sees the little white hand tremble, and sure that it is from sheer excess of joy at the news--he seizes it, and presses his lips passionately to it.

And she does not dare to drag it away-though these kisses seem to burn and sear her flesh.

"Tell me, dearest, that I need not wait long. Oh! my darling! if you knew how I love you-how impatiently I have looked forward to the time when I could really ask you to marry me

you would answer! You would put these dear arms round my neck, and whisper that you too are glad!"

But Ella does not dream of being demonstrative- nay, she shrinks back a little, and bows her head, with its coronet of blueblack tresses, still lower, so that her lover may not read in it her want of love-her utter falsity.

She murmurs in a tremulous voice at last, "I will answer you to-morrow."

But Alister, never doubting her fealty, is quite content.

Mr. L'Estrange gives a cordial consent to Alister's suit, when he has fully explained to the paternal ears his change of fortune. Alister Grant comes of a good old Scotch family, and to Richard L'Estrange-a self-made man, whose antecedents are shaky-such a marriage would well fulfil his aspirations for his daughter. So with a heart brimful of rapture, Alister hastens on the morrow to find Ella, and hear the blessed words that are to make him the happiest of men for ever and ever.

With a white face and compressed lips, Mr. L'Estrange meets him at the door, and draws him into the library.

Alister, amazed, stares at him aghast; then a pallor creeps over his own face, and, staggering a little, he leans up against the wall.

"Ella! what of her? Is she ill?"

"Worse."

"Not-dead?" and the young voice rings out with a supreme agony, that touches the old man to the soul.

"No! no! not dead—that is, not really dead-but dead to you, my boy. She has gone off-eloped with that handsome good-fornothing scoundrel, Vane! Come, Grant, bear it like a man. Although she is my child, I must say she is not worthy of such love as yours."

As Mr. L'Estrange's words clearly forced the truth on Alister's mind, he grasped the nearest chair for support. No sound escapes his white lips. Yet plainly enough the other man sees that his daughter's falsity has dealt a fearful blow-that it has crushed not only hope but life from out of the heart which, only a few moments since, was so joyous and confident of success.

"It is a bitter blow, but it won't kill me," Alister mutters, presently; "I have something still to live for!"

"That's right, my boy; that's the way to take it," Mr. L'Estrange says heartily, as he grasps the poor young fellow's hand.

"Revenge! I'll live for that! Yes, Ella, with your latest. breath you shall remember me!" Alister murmurs, bitterly, as he strides away from the house which had once held such happiness for him.

Only once he met his faithless love by chance, eighteen months after her marriage-and at the sight of him she turned and almost