Adela, and also, as a matter of course, you will lend me a helping hand, getting invitations, and all that sort of thing, and throwing us together as much as possible. Dear me, I should think before Ascot comes round the thing might be managed; I'm due at Chicago by the end of July. Good-bye, darling; you and I must be together as much as possible for the next month or six weeks.” "Good-bye," answered Lady Adela, "we will be inseparable till the thing is done," and she bent lower over her palette and colours, possibly to hide an odd little smile that was playing about the corners of her mouth.

Everyone wondered at the sudden increase of friendship between Lady Adela Westlake and Gladys Browne. Riding, driving, walking, at afternoon parties, "at homes," balls, they were always to be seen side by side. The odd shifts Lady Adela put herself to to get cards for her friend for houses which Lord Greyburn frequented excited much comment. People began to say ill-natured things about Gladys: "She had not found globe-trotting pay lately." "She was getting tired of her spinsterhood." "She was looking out for a rich husband," and so forth. They talked still more when soon the pair of friends developed into a trio, and wherever Gladys and Lady Adela went, Lord Greyburn was to be found in their train. What did it all mean? Here was a man openly vowed to celibacy and two ladies practically rowing in the same boat, forming an odd sort of triple alliance, and evidently getting much enjoyment out of it. Was it only friendship of the genuine Platonic order, or had one or other of the trio ulterior views? It was altogether puzzling, enigmatical. The enigma, however, admitted of a very simple solution. Gladys Browne had exceptional powers of conversation, Lady Adela had exceptional grace of manner. Each had chosen to exercise her special gift in a special manner for Lord Greyburn's special delectation. The combination was charming and irresistible. As thus, Gladys would start some subject in which it was known Lord Greyburn took deep interest, say a discussion at the Browning Society. "Did Browning believe in a future state?" Lady Adela with a pretty downward (or upward) glance of her dark eyes would appeal to Lord Greyburn for his opinion on the matter. Lord Greyburn would state his opinion, generally an opposite one to that advanced by Gladys. An argument would arise, it began to grow heated; Lady Adela with a few graceful words would cool it, proving to the disputants that their ideas were more sympathetic than their words, that in reality they both meant the same thing, although they each had a different way of expressing it. Or the argument would flag-Lady Adela would put flax on the fire and fan the flame by recalling some personal experience of Gladys's during her travels which bore upon the subject, or some college experience of Lord Greyburn's equally to the point. Lord Greyburn had never been thrown into such delightful companionship before. "To think there should be such

women as this in 'Society,' and I never to have come upon them before," he said more than once to himself; "they are destitute alike of vanity and inanity. In all my experience I never came upon a girl with good eyes who knew how to use her tongue to advantage. Now, if I were thinking of matrimony I really shouldn't know which of the two to choose. It's a thousand pities the woman hasn't the right to speak first in England. By Jove! whichever of these two made me the offer I should feel bound to accept her." And then he buried himself in his books again and forgot all about both of them.

The Hon. Algernon Sydney Stratton dug him out of his study and twitted him with his dual friendship for these ladies. "People say," said the Hon. Algernon, " that you are about to bring in a bill in the Lords to repeal the laws against bigamy and then we shall see!"

"No; do they?" said his friend in slightly alarmed tones. "I do assure you, Algy, there's nothing in it, but friendship, pure friendship, nothing more. You might walk behind us at any moment, you would hear nothing but the topics of the day discussed."

"Oh, might I?" responded Algy. "Next time I see you three together I'll do it. I give you my word I will.”

He kept his word. Not two days afterwards he met the three at an "afternoon" at the Orleans Club. He spied them one after the other in different corners of the lawn, but he knew perfectly well that the law of affinity would soon bring them all three within the same square foot of grass. "I'll keep my eye on the Gladys," he said to himself. "She is the most conspicuous, by reason of her size and of her red and yellow draperies. Wherever she leads I'll follow."

Presently Gladys led the way towards the gate, the Hon. Algernon followed, and found Lady Adela and Lord Greyburn slowly lounging in the same direction. They met all four at the lodge. Gladys gave the Hon. Algernon a short brusque nod and a limp hand. To say truth, she was bent that day on making one last desperate effort to bring Lord Greyburn to his proper position, on his knees at her feet. Ascot was at hand, she had had enough of London for one year; preparations for Chicago had to be made, if she intended ever getting there at all. She was more deeply interested in this matter than she had thought it possible she could ever be in such triviality as love-making, and it is just possible if she had been in the habit of confessing herself to herself she would have been driven to own that that which had begun in jest was ending in earnest, and that if Lord Greyburn did chance to put the momentous question, her answer would be as unlike the pantomimic one she had gone through for the benefit of Lady Adela as a "Yes" is unlike a "No."

How the Hon. Algernon stuck to them that day; there was no shaking him off, try as they would! Did they want to hear the

band? He wanted to listen also. Ices! Oh, yes!-let's have ices or iced coffee, or something or other iced. A boat-the very thing. Nothing like the river on a sunshiny day!--and so forth. No matter what proposed, the Hon. Algernon was determined to have his share of the fun.

Gladys grew crosser and crosser. It seemed to her for the first time since they had laid their plot together, that Lady Adela was not performing her part of the bargain. Instead of taking the Hon. Algernon altogether off her (Gladys's) hands, and so leaving her free to attack, for the last time, Lord Greyburn, there was she all-occupied herself in murmuring soft nothings (they could be nothing more) into his ear, to all appearance indifferent whether the little torment went or stayed. It would have tried the temper of a saint, and Gladys's temper was far from saint-like, as she was quite willing to admit. They were walking four abreast across the lawn, the two ladies side by side in the middle, the Hon. Algernon flanking Gladys, Lord Greyburn beside Lady Adela. Gladys could bear it no longer, she lowered her sunshade so as to exclude the insipid, boyish face on her right hand.

"Shall we walk along the banks and see the sun set into the river?" she asked, pointedly addressing Lord Greyburn across her friend.

"Ah! how delightful; nothing I should enjoy more," ejaculated the Hon. Algernon from behind the sunshade.

"We were thinking of strolling through Twickenham church yard," answered Lord Greyburn. "I want to show Lady Adela the epitaph on Kitty Clive. There has been an opinion started of late that Kemble wrote the lines. Now independently of the fact of a discrepancy in the dates, I can't imagine Kemble perpetrating an epitaph. Can you?"

Gladys put down her sunshade with a snap.

"I don't know about Kemble perpetrating epitaphs," she answered, in a loud crisp voice (a voice Lord Greyburn had never heard her use before), "but I should uncommonly like to be called upon to perpetrate one at the present moment."

The boyish face at her side was upturned to hers in a moment. "Now, surely you don't mean upon me, Miss Gladys ?" he said, in a voice that proclaimed the fact that he was not to be "sat upon." "How on earth could you work in Algernon Sydney Stratton into decent rhyme? Of course, doggerel you wouldn't condescend to."

"So," answered Gladys, turning full upon him :—

"Here lies no less

Than an A double S."

And, having fired her shot, she walked on ahead at a rapid pace, leaving the others at least three feet behind.

The Hon. Algernon grew crimson. Lord Greyburn hemmed Lady Adela cast down her eyes.

"I don't think you could perpetrate anything so cruel," Lord Greyburn murmured, looking down into the pretty, demure face by his side. He was surprised and pained at this sudden revelation of Gladys Browne at her worst. Hitherto he had only seen her at her best.

"I am not clever enough to perpetrate any epitaph either cruel or kind," Lady Adela answered, in her lowest, sweetest tones. "My tombstone, if I could have my choice, would be-"

She broke off abruptly, a faint colour tinged her cheek, a sigh parted her dainty rose-bud lips. How charming she looked under her cream-coloured Gainsborough hat, with the chequered sunlight falling about her soft cashmere dress.

"Would be what?" demanded Lord Greyburn, almost breathlessly, stopping in his walk, and waiting for her answer.

"A blank, my Lord," was her reply, in low mournful tones, that reached only his ear.

The Hon. Algernon did not hear a syllable of all this, but he saw Lord Greyburn take her hand and look down into her face. Then he had sense enough to walk on as fast as he could.

He overtook Gladys Browne.

"I say," he said, "look behind! Hadn't we better go and see the sun set into the river?"

Lord Greyburn and Lady Adela were married before the end of the season. Gladys Browne hastened her departure to Chicago, so as to be beyond the sound of the wedding bells.

LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SPECIAL

CORRESPONDENT.

BY JOHN AUGUSTUS O'SHEA.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE Passion-Play, I am half afraid, is a hackneyed subject now. Previous to my account of it in the Standard, the first and longest which ever appeared in a newspaper, it had only been known to readers of English by allusions in a novel by the Baroness Tautphous (an Irish lady by birth), by a graphic criticism in Miss Howitt's Art Student in Munich, referred to in the notes to Longfellow's Golden Legend, and by an article in Blackwood, from a gentleman who visited the hamlet in 1860.

Of my account, it will be enough to say-and I trust I will be pardoned for the natural vanity-that I was complimented by one correspondent on my familiarity with patristic lore, that a goodnatured Jesuit copied it in full in a journal he edited and solicited the prayers of his readers for my conversion, that an astute compiler of books cribbed it wholesale and spoiled it in the cribbing, and that I was presented with a very acceptable douceur by the authorities of Shoe Lane on my return.

Since 1870 the Passion-Play has been done to rags in print by writers and scribblers of all orders. One good volume about it has been produced, the volume-a luxurious and most conscientious history of the entire function, its origin and surroundings, with the text and admirable photographs of the leading performers and most artistic groupings-by my capable friend, Mr. J. P. Jackson, of the New York Herald. Those who wish to master the subject, and can afford a ten-pound note, should get that volume in preference to all others.

It was my lot to visit Ober-Ammergau (sometimes shortened to Ober-Au) again in 1880, but as the primary purpose of these memoirs is to amuse, not to bore, I will ask the reader to accompany me on my first journey to the district, when everything was fresh, and when my mind was more impressible. That journey was delightful. We started from the "Four Seasons" at halfpast five in the morning, a jovial party. There was Professor Agassiz, of Cambridge, likewise a reverend graduate of Cambridge, U. S. A., who had come up from Florence to take a look at the yy

VOL. XXXIV.