go about telling people that Mrs. Vanthorpe had tried her best to get young Mr. Taxal, Lord Taxal's son, and had failed. She liked to hear the thing said, even by herself. The French lady who said it pleased her to hear the sound of a compliment, even though she knew it not to be true, and even though it was only said by herself to herself, would find, if she studied the meannesses of others as fairly as she did her own, that malice can be fed on food as unsubstantial as vanity itself. Miss Elvin was becoming a decided success in the musical world. Her concerts were always attended by a fashionable crowd. Places had to be taken for them long in advance. She drove in her brougham-hired, to be sure, but hired for the season, and therefore in a manner her own. Her brother dressed very handsomely, and devoted himself to acting as her escort and her man of business. She was really attached to him, and even looked up to him, though he could do nothing in particular. She liked to see him well dressed, and to know that her money made him a gentleman. Everything was smiling on her. Yet she could not forgive Gabrielle Vanthorpe for not having appreciated her singing, for having nevertheless patronised her, and for

having brought her to meet people like the Charltons. Miss Elvin had to the full that peculiar form of the artistic temperament which Heine illustrates humorously, when he speaks of marrying some lovely being and getting divorced from her if she does not praise his verses as highly as he thinks they deserve.

Meanwhile the lovers went on loving, and wholly indifferent to what their friends and enemies were saying. Gabrielle Vanthorpe had taken up her abode, for the time, with Lady Honeybell, and Fielding stayed for the most part in an hotel not far away. They had, for the present, to do without the exquisite hours of gloaming; for they saw each other only in the usual prosaic way proper to well-ordered conventionality. Mrs. Bramble and her husband took care of Gabrielle's little house for the present, and Fielding came there sometimes at the same hour of gloaming, and got Mrs. Bramble's leave to sit alone in the room where Gabrielle and he had sat before. A very harmless amusement, Mrs. Bramble thought, and she fancied he must find it dull, and she once asked him wouldn't be like to have the lamps lighted. But he thanked her and said no, he preferred to sit in the room as it was; and when it grew

almost quite dark he always got up and went away. Mrs. Bramble thought him rather an eccentric young man, but she liked his friendly, frank ways, and his genial smile; and she sometimes said, 'Well, one can't blame poor Miss Gabrielle,' as she still occasionally called her, after all.'

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CHAPTER IV.

PAULINA LAUNCHES HER FIRE-SHIP.

THERE was one person on whose ears the news of Gabrielle's approaching marriage came with a startling effect. Paulina Vanthorpe had become a sort of heroine, with a certain class of persons who are always looking out for the victim of a grievance. She had actually taken a hall, and held meetings to discourse of her wrongs. She had mixed up somehow the cause of woman's rights, and the wickedness of compulsory vaccination, with her own personal wrongs; and, in the minds of ordinary persons, produced a sort of confusion as to whether the Mrs. Vanthorpe who addressed public meetings was the heroine of an agitation against private madhouses, or a feminine copy of the Tichborne Claimant, or a champion of the right of women to enter the medical profession, or an American lady in

spired to denounce the evils of the marriage system. For a time things went rather swimmingly with her. She managed to attract audiences; she delivered orations in a strong shrill voice, with much energy of dramatic action, and on any subject that happened to occur to her mind at the moment. She got invitations to attend other meetings; she appeared as the supporter of the crotchet of anyone who chose to invite her. She was quite a distinguished person; and in more than one instance, the prospective candidate for a metropolitan borough had been asked, by a deputation of voters, to favour them with his opinions on the question of Mrs. Vanthorpe and her wrongs, before they could see their way to support his claims to a seat in Parliament. Paulina therefore was busy, and, for the time, happy. She was really under the impression that she was becoming a remarkable public character, and her vanity was fed on the absurd applauses she received. She felt satisfied, too, that she was greatly tormenting the Levens; and that was a joy to her. But in the midst of her business, and her public triumph, she suddenly learned that Gabrielle Vanthorpe was to marry Clarkson Fielding. The strongest passion of her nature was