THE SEAMY SIDE.

CHAPTER I.

HOW MISS NETHERSOLE BECAME AN

INSTRUMENT.

Now while Gilbert and Alderney Codd were floundering in the dark, groping here and there with uncertain steps and finding nothing; while Mr. Theodore Bragge was 'following up' one clue after another, and asking continually for more cheques; while Nicolas was hugging to his bosom the new and delightful secret with which he intended one day to make such a coup as would make the ears of them who heard

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of it to tingle, and set the hearts of all boys, wherever the English tongue is spoken, aflame; while the partners were doubtful and despondent; while the cousins daily became as uncertain over the event as the English public once were over the identity of a certain claimant, Miss Nethersole, this time an instrument without knowing it, voluntarily communicated the very fact which they were all anxious to find.

We have seen how this lady, her enemy being dead, and her lawyer stubbornly refusing to ask for the indictment of a dead man, betook herself to her country villa, and sat down to enjoy comfortably the settled gloom which may arise in woman's heart equally from love disappointment or the baffling of revenge. The forgeries were put away with her plate in a box, which for greater safety she kept screwed to the floor under her own bed. And for a time she submitted herself to

the inevitable, and tried to be resigned under the Ruling which had torn her enemy from her grasp.

You

You cannot, to be sure, execute any revenge upon a dead man which shall have the true flavour about it. You may -as many great monarchs, gourmets in revenge, have done-hang up the limbs, cut into neat joints, upon gibbets, or stick them on pikes, or paint them beautifully with tar, and then sling them up with chains on a gibbet to dangle in the wind; and yet, after all, nothing satisfies. may gaze with pleasure on the gallowstree, but there is always the uneasy feeling that the man himself, who has joined the majority, may be laughing at you all the while. Miss Nethersole would perhaps have liked, could she be persuaded that it was a Christian thing, to have decorated Temple Bar with Anthony Hamblin in bits. I mean that her bitterness was so

savage, so deeply rooted, that she would have caught at any chance of satisfying the hunger of her soul. She was a woman who, on this subject, was raging. This man had robbed her of her sister, and of her money. Worse than that, he had robbed her of her heart. She was no older than he. When he came to Newbury she was still young, two-and-thirty or so; he was handsome; he was gentle in his manner, courteous and attentive; she had not had many opportunities of meeting such a gallant gentleman, this daughter of a successful Nonconformist tradesman: she mistook his politeness for something more real, and because he was deferent and courteous, she thought he was in love. She was not hard-featured in those days, nor hard-minded; the honey in her nature still predominated over the vinegar; and although her oval face was rather thin, and her chin a little pointed, she was not yet