done, respecting this man 'old enough to be her father,' and the bare idea of whose making love to her was a joke: she would not have thought it a joke, had she credited it at all, and she put down what had happened to the honest desire of Mr. Signet to make himself pleasant to the family, and to his ignorance of how to set about it.

I am afraid that, on the contrary, the whole affair tickled Uncle Stephen's sense of humour vastly. Of all Mr. Signet's guests, he would have been the one who looked forward to getting most entertainment out of the expedition, had not a circumstance occurred at the very outset of it which caused a change of views, or, in other words, 'put his back up.' A messenger arrived at No. 7 from Mr. Signet a few hours before they were to start, offering the use of his carriage, which might be more convenient for the ladies.'

However well-meant this offer might be, Mr. Durham felt it to be 'an overt act' of patronage on the part of their host, or, as he more curtly expressed it, just like his infernal impudence.' Mr. Durham had bespoken a wagonette for the excursion, which would accommodate them very well, and he wrote back to say so; he thanked Mr. Signet for his consideration, but the time was too short to alter their arrangements. But the mischief had been done. The old recluse had been put in that antagonistic frame of mind with respect to their host of which on the former occasion Amy had been apprehensive. He said to himself, This fellow would have sent his carriage for Amy, in order that she may know by experience how nice it would be to have one at her own disposal; but in reality he was annoyed upon his own account. may seem strange that Mr. Signet, who had so much amour propre himself, did not recognise the danger of wounding it in the case of other people; but unhappily his case is not exceptional. And of course he suffered for it.

It

Cedar Villa, so called from a splendid specimen of that tree which overshadowed half the lawn, was really a charming residence in the summer months; in winter, of course, like all other riverside houses, it was damp and dreary; but, with the sun on it, lighting up the cheerful rooms, with their open French windows, and reflecting the glitter of the stream that flowed beneath them, it was bright and pleasant enough. The furniture was a little showy, perhaps, and the walls and ceilings had a somewhat too liberal allowance of gilt on them, but there was really nothing to justify Mr. Durham's reflection that the villa looked like a branch establishment of the house in Paulet Street.

VOL XLI.

NO. CLXI.

D

34

The ladies praised it honestly and without stint, to the branchproprietor's great content.

6

"Yes,' said he, for a mere tradesman, like myself, it is a nice place enough-one is almost tempted, from the possession of it, to imagine oneself a person of importance.'

If Mr. Signet expected anyone to observe on this that he was a person of importance, he was doomed to disappointment.

After all,' he continued, with that eagerness which, with some folks, generally follows a remark that has fallen flat-just as the marksman who has once missed the target is liable to be 'wild' as well as 'wide everything depends upon how one chooses to look at it.'

6

True,' said Mr. Durham drily; that was what caused the great lord in Spain always to eat cherries with his spectacles on ; he protested it made them bigger and more nourishing.'

6

That reminds me,' observed the host, that there is a little fruit in the summer-house, if you would like to partake of it.' 'Oh, how nice!' exclaimed Sabey, clasping her hands. I have not been in a summer-house since we left dear old Tarlton.'

The bower she was thinking of was a rather sombre, tumbledown affair, lined with fir-cones and hung with cobwebs, in the walled garden at the Rectory: in the evening, much in the occupation of bats; but besides the cobwebs, it had certain tender memories clinging to it of girlhood and careless hours that endeared it to her simple nature. It was, therefore, rather a disappointment to her than otherwise that the summer-house at Cedar Villa was of quite another kind: a spick-and-span erection of coloured glass, with a marble table, on which, instead of the tea and cake eaten for a treat on half-holidays, there were grapes and pineapples-the products, as their host explained, of his own greenhouses. But I am sorry to say,' he added, with a smile, no cheaper on that account.'

Before them stretched a long broad wooden terrace, called a camp-shed, and beneath them a flight of steps ran down to the river, from which the silver splash of oars and pleasant laughter of the passengers on that miscalled 'silent highway' was borne to them by obedient breezes that, having done their mission, seemed to faint and die.

'This is very pretty,' observed Durham frankly.

It is perfect Paradise,' sighed Amy, enchanted by the brilliant

river scene, so different from the sluggish Lat.

'It is a Paradise that can very seldom boast of such Peris as honour it to-day,' said Mr. Signet gallantly. A few bachelor

friends come down here occasionally and defile the place with smoke-otherwise I live a hermit's life.'

'But not on hermit's fare,' laughed Sabey. 'On little better, I do assure you, madam.

However, I hope

my cook will presently make an effort for an occasion so extraordinary. After all, there is nothing like Nature: she cannot be imitated.'

Mr. Durham, tickled with a recollection of how iridescence in false stones was produced by fluoric acid, began to laugh.

'What are you laughing at, Uncle Stephen?' inquired Sabey.

Did I laugh? I was thinking of what Mr. Signet says about imitating Nature: it is quite true. The German Casper tells us that the pistol so often put into the hand of a murdered man to simulate suicide is trouble thrown away: in genuine cases it is always found spasmodically grasped.'

My dear Mr. Durham, how can you talk of such things?' cried Amy reproachfully.

'It was doubtless suggested by the sense of contrast,' he answered. Everything here speaks of life and light. The human mind resents impressions too forcibly presented to it, and flies to their contraries.'

I suppose that is why, while sitting in this palatial spot, my mind is reverting to the arbour at Tarlton,' said Sabey, smiling. 'You remember the old arbour, as we used to call it, Matt ?? "Can I ever forget it, darling?' said Matthew tenderly; though I think it rather hard upon the old place to bring it into such comparison.'

'It's a queer thing is memory,' observed Mr. Signet, with at philosophic air. There is no such thing as forgetting.'

'Duvergier tells us a strange thing in physical exemplification of that,' remarked Uncle Stephen. He states that when the brandmark of a galley-slave has vanished through lapse of years, it may be recalled to sight by slapping the neighbourhood of the spot with the flat of the hand till it reddens; when the brand-mark, which cannot redden, at once becomes visible by its whiteness. The mere materials of which our human house is made are much less perishable than is generally supposed. Our bones are recognisable for many generations after they have been laid in the grave. Those of King Dagobert, when dug up in the church of St. Denis, were found well-preserved after four hundred years. Hubler avers that he procured gelatine from the bones of a mummy two thousand years old; and Orfila confirms this, inasmuch as he got twentyseven per cent. of it by boiling some six hundred years old.'

face.

Curious, but not festive,' observed Mr. Signet, making a wry

'No, indeed,' said Amy. I think you may well be pardoned for not appreciating Mr. Durham's taste for the grotesque and terrible.'

That is ungrateful, for I don't know anyone who enjoys a shocking story as much as you, Amy,' said Uncle Stephen reproachfully.

Mr. Signet looked at her with astonished but admiring eyes, and was silent. Perhaps he was searching his mind for a shocking story with which to regale her ears. If so, it was fortunate that, before he found it, an even pulse of oars was heard to beat, and a galley with four rowers shot up to the bottom step of the river flight. It had cushions arranged for five persons in the stern, above which was a striped canopy, to shield its tenants from the sun. 'Though you wouldn't come in my carriage, I venture to hope you will patronise my gig,' said Mr. Signet, pointing to the gallant galley. A row on the water before dinner is much recommended by the faculty.'

There was a mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pomposity and feeble drollery, of melancholy result and good intention, in all that Mr. Signet did and said that day, which would have ensured an interest in him in any student of human nature. It has been said that whoever has an honest wish to make himself agreeable to his fellow-creatures must needs succeed-a consoling theory, which, however, even if it were true, would by no means make everybody pleasant. But I fear it smacks of optimism.

Mr. Signet was much too wise to take an oar: he had a conviction-which it is a pity is not more general-that the spectacle of a gentleman in his shirt-sleeves, verging on corpulence, and more than middle-aged, toiling at the oar is not an agreeable one. Το sit and steer, on the contrary, if you make no spasmodic attempt to adapt yourself to the motion of the boat, is a situation of dignity. On his right was Sabey, on his left was Amy, and his conversation was divided between them, though not, it must be confessed, in equal proportions. To the latter he made remarks in a low voice upon the beauties of the scenery, and consulted her wishes as to their course. At her instigation he landed the party on a wooded island, which they explored. The islands in these parts,' he said, 'are called eyots, which I don't think you can spell, Miss Thurlow.' When she answered this challenge, and correctly, he expressed his wonder.

'You forget,' she said, 'that it is my calling to teach young folks to spell.'

To be sure,' he replied tenderly, and sighed. By the sigh he meant her to understand that so much beauty and intelligence was utterly thrown away on such a career; and by the tenderness of his tone he implied that there was one, if she only knew it, who had both the will and the power to emancipate her from it.

For the first time Amy began to think that her people were right in their ridiculous suspicions of Mr. Signet; and she pitied him a little, though the pity was by no means of the sort which is akin to love. Once more afloat, he steered into a bed of waterlilies, and invited her to gather some.

They are the prettiest ornaments for the dinner-table you can imagine,' he said; and we need no gardeners for them hereabouts.'

This was clever of him, for he was thinking of quite another sort of ornament. He knew she would have to take off her glove to pluck them, and he wished to see whether she wore his agate ring or not. As it happened, she had put it on that morning-not without some doubt-out of compliment to him, and his beady eyes shone brighter than ever as they fell upon it. It was impossible now for her to doubt that after that his attentions to her became very marked. She became rather miserable in consequence, and her serious face and manner encouraged his hopes. He had had the sagacity to supply his two male guests with very large and excellent cigars, and under cover of their smoke, or rather of the drowsiness inspired by the divine weed, he carried on his advances without exciting their notice. But Sabey, of course, saw everything, and trembled lest Matthew should also see. It is strange but true that a man may make love to a woman without her knowing it, but not in the presence of another woman without her knowing it; in this case, however, and by this time, they both knew it, and grievously repented that they had ever come to Cedar Villa.

After they had had their water-lounge-which, we may be sure, included a visit to a lock, in the cool delicious depths of which the sisters sang a song together, which Mr. Signet christened the Duet of the Sirens '-they went in to dinner. This was really an Apician meal, though not, as Uncle Stephen had wickedly anticipated, served on gold plate hall-marked. The centre of the table was a looking-glass, on which fresh water-lilies were disposed, as though lying on their native element.

'We have to thank you for these, Miss Thurlow,' said the host, smiling-which, as there were about fifty lilies, and she had gathered, perhaps, half a dozen, was a gallantry indulged in somewhat at the expense of truth. The ladies were not very talkative, having thoughts of their own as to the consequences of a certain disappointment that even modest Amy was now convinced was about