mending them to enjoy themselves, and then expecting them to be contented under contempt and neglect. I have no power over him-remember that-none."

Jermyn turned to look in Mrs. Transome's face: it was long since he had heard her speak to him as if she were losing her self-command.

"Has he shown any unpleasant feeling about your management of the affairs?"

66

'My management of the affairs!" Mrs. Transome said, with concentrated rage, flashing a fierce look at Jermyn. She checked herself; she felt as if she were lighting a torch to flare on her own past folly and misery. It was a resolve which had become a habit that she would never quarrel with this man-never tell him what she saw him to be. She had kept her woman's pride and sensibility intact; through all her life there had vibrated the maiden need to have her hand kissed and be the object of chivalry. And so she sank into silence again, trembling.

Jermyn felt annoyed-nothing more. There was nothing in his mind corresponding to the intricate meshes of sensitiveness in Mrs. Transome's. He was any thing but stupid; yet he always blundered when he wanted to be delicate or magnanimous; he constantly sought to soothe others by praising himself. Moral vulgarity cleaved to him like a hereditary odor. He blundered now.

"My dear Mrs. Transome," he said, in a tone of bland. kindness, "you are agitated-you appear angry with me. Yet I think, if you consider, you will see that you have nothing to complain of in me, unless you will complain of the inevitable course of man's life. I have always met your wishes both in happy circumstances and in unhappy ones. I should be ready to do so now if it were possible."

Every sentence was as pleasant to her as if it had been cut in her bared arm. Some men's kindness and love-making are more exasperating, more humiliating than others' derision; but the pitiable woman who has once made herself secretly dependent on a man who is beneath her in feeling

must bear that humiliation for fear of worse.

Coarse kindness is at least better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness. Mrs. Transome knew in her inmost soul that those relations which had sealed her lips on Jermyn's conduct in business matters had been with him a ground for presuming that he should have impunity in any lax dealing into which circumstances had led him. She knew that she herself had endured all the more privation because of his dishonest selfishness. And now, Harold's long-deferred heirship, and his return with startlingly unexpected penetration, activity, and assertion of mastery, had placed them both in the full presence of a difficulty which had been pared by the years of vague uncertainty as to issues. In this position, with a great dread hanging over her, which Jermyn knew, and ought to have felt that he had caused her, she was inclined to lash him with indignation, to scorch him with the words that were just the fit names for his doings-inclined all the more when he spoke with an insolent blandness, ignoring all that was truly in her heart. But no sooner did the words "You have brought it on me" rise within her than she heard within also the retort, "You brought it on yourself." Not for all the world besides could she bear to hear that retort uttered from with

pre

out. What did she do? With strange sequence to all that rapid tumult, after a few moments' silence she said, in a gentle and almost tremulous voice,

"Let me take your arm."

He gave it immediately, putting on his hat and wondering. For more than twenty years Mrs. Transome had never chosen to take his arm.

"I have but one thing to ask. Make me a promise." "What is it?"

"That you will never quarrel with Harold."

"You must know that it is my wish not to quarrel with him."

"But make a vow-fix it in your mind as a thing not to

be done. Bear any thing from him rather than quarrel with him."

“A man can't make a vow not to quarrel," said Jermyn, who was already a little irritated by the implication that Harold might be disposed to use him roughly. "A man's temper may get the better of him at any moment. I am not prepared to bear any thing."

"Good God!" said Mrs. Transome, taking her hand from his arm, "is it possible you don't feel how horrible it would be?"

As she took away her hand Jermyn let his arm fall, put both his hands in his pockets, and shrugging his shoulders, said, "I shall use him as he uses me."

Jermyn had turned round his savage side, and the blandness was out of sight. It was this that had always frightened Mrs. Transome: there was a possibility of fierce insolence in this man who was to pass with those nearest to her as her indebted servant, but whose brand she secretly bore. She was as powerless with him as she was with her

son.

This woman, who loved rule, dared not speak another word of attempted persuasion. They were both silent, taking the nearest way into the sunshine again. There was a half-formed wish in both their minds--even in the mother's-that Harold Transome had never been born.

"We are working hard for the election," said Jermyn, recovering himself as they turned into the sunshine again. “I think we shall get him returned, and in that case he will be in high good-humor. Every thing will be more propitious than you are apt to think. You must persuade yourself," he added, smiling at her, "that it is better for a man of his position to be in Parliament on the wrong side

than not be in at all."

"Never," said Mrs. Transome. "I am too old to learn to call bitter sweet and sweet bitter. But what I may think or feel is of no consequence now. šary as a chimney ornament."

I am as unneces

And in this way they parted on the gravel, in that pretty scene where they had met. Mrs. Transome shivered as she stood alone: all around her, where there had once been brightness and warmth, there were white ashes, and the sunshine looked dreary as it fell on them.

Mr. Jermyn's heaviest reflections in riding homeward turned on the possibility of incidents between himself and Harold Transome which would have disagreeable results, requiring him to raise money, and perhaps causing scandal, which in its way might also help to create a monetary deficit. A man of sixty, with a wife whose Duffield connections were of the highest respectability, with a family of tall daughters, an expensive establishment, and a large professional business, owed a great deal more to himself as the main-stay of all those solidities, than to feelings and ideas which were quite unsubstantial. There were many unfortunate coincidences which placed Mr. Jermyn in an uncomfortable position just now; he had not been much to blame, he considered; if it had not been for a sudden turn of affairs no one would have complained. He defied any man to say that he had intended to wrong people; he was able to refund, to make reprisals, if they could be fairly demanded. Only he would certainly have preferred that they should not be demanded.

A German poet was intrusted with a particularly fine sausage, which he was to convey to the donor's friend at Paris. In the course of a long journey he smelled the sausage; he got hungry, and desired to taste it; he pared a morsel off, then another, and another, in successive moments of temptation, till at last the sausage was, humanly speaking, at an end. The offense had not been premeditated. The poet had never loved meanness, but he loved sausage; and the result was undeniably awkward.

So it was with Matthew Jermyn. He was far from liking that ugly abstraction rascality, but he had liked other things which had suggested nibbling. He had had to do many things in law and in daily life which, in the abstract,

he would have condemned; and indeed he had never been tempted by them in the abstract. Here, in fact, was the inconvenience; he had sinned for the sake of particular concrete things, and particular concrete consequences were likely to follow.

But he was a man of resolution, who, having made out what was the best course to take under a difficulty, went straight to his work. The election must be won; that would put Harold in good-humor, give him something to do, and leave himself more time to prepare for any crisis.

He was in any thing but low spirits that evening. It was his eldest daughter's birthday, and the young people had a dance. Papa was delightful-stood up for a quadrille and a country dance, told stories at supper, and made humorous quotations from his early readings; if these were Latin, he apologized, and translated to the ladies; so that a deaf lady-visitor from Duffield kept her trumpet up continually, lest she should lose any of Mr. Jermyn's conversation, and wished that her niece Maria had been present, who was young and had a good memory.

Still the party was smaller than usual, for some families in Treby refused to visit Jermyn now that he was concerned for a Radical candidate.

CHAPTER X.

"He made love neither with roses, nor with apples, nor with locks of hair."-THEOCRITUS.

ONE Sunday afternoon Felix Holt rapped at the door of Mr. Lyon's house, although he could hear the voice of the minister preaching in the chapel. He stood with a book under his arm, apparently confident that there was some one in the house to open the door for him. In fact, Esther never went to chapel in the afternoon: that "exercise" made her head ache.

In these September weeks Felix had got rather inti