By and by the walk put the swift-changing Rosa in spirits, and she began to chat gayly, and hung prattling and beaming on her husband's arm, when they entered Curzon Street. Here, however, occurred an incident, trifling in itself, but unpleasant. Dr. Staines saw one of his best Kentish patients get feebly out of his carriage, and call on Dr. Barr. He started, and stopped. Rosa asked what was the matter. He told her. She said, "We ARE unfortunate."

Staines said nothing; he only quickened his pace; but he was greatly disturbed. She expected him to complain that she had dragged him out, and lost him that first chance. But he said nothing. When they got home, he asked the servant had anybody called.

"No, Sir."

"Surely you are mistaken, Jane. A gentleman in a carriage!"

"Not a creature have been since you went out, sir."

"Well, then, dearest," said he sweetly, "we have nothing to reproach ourselves with." Then he knit his brow gloomily. "It is worse than I thought. It seems even one's country patients go to another doctor when they visit London. It is hard. It is hard."

Rosa leaned her head on his shoulder, and curled round him, as one she would shield against the world's injustice; but she said nothing; she was a little frightened at his eye that lowered, and his noble frame that trembled a little, with ire suppressed.

Two days after this, a brougham drove up to the door, and a tallish, fattish, pasty-faced man got out, and inquired for Dr. Staines.

He was shown into the dining-room, and told Jane he had come to consult the doctor.

Rosa had peeped over the stairs, all curiosity; she glided noiselessly down, and with love's swift foot got into the yard before Jane. "He is come! he is come! Kiss me."

Dr. Staines kissed her first, and then asked who was come.

"Oh, nobody of any consequence. ONLY the first patient. Kiss me again."

Dr. Staines kissed her again, and then was for going to the first patient.

"No," said she; "not yet. I met a doctor's wife at Dr. Mayne's, and she told me things. You must always keep them waiting; or else they think nothing of you. Such a funny woman! 'Treat 'em like dogs, my dear,' she said. But I told her they wouldn't come to be treated like dogs or any other animal."

"You had better have kept that to yourself, I think."

"Oh! if you are going to be disagreeable, good-by. You can go to your patient, sir. Christie, dear, if he is very—very ill—and I'm sure I hope he is—oh, how wicked I am; may I have a new bonnet?"

"If you really want one."

On the patient's card was "Mr. Pettigrew, 47 Manchester Square."

As soon as Staines entered the room, the first patient told him who and what he was, a retired civilian from India; but he had got a son there still, a very rising man; wanted to be a parson; but he would not stand that; bad profession; don't rise by merit; very hard to rise at all;—no, India was the place. "As for me, I made my fortune there in ten years. Obliged to leave it now—invalid this many years; no TONE. Tried two or three doctors in this neighborhood; heard there was a new one, had written a book on something. Thought I would try HIM."

To stop him, Staines requested to feel his pulse, and examine his tongue and eye.

"You are suffering from indigestion," said he. "I will write you a prescription; but if you want to get well, you must simplify your diet very much."

While he was writing the prescription, off went this patient's tongue, and ran through the topics of the day and into his family history again.

Staines listened politely. He could afford it, having only this one.

At last, the first patient, having delivered an octavo volume of nothing, rose to go; but it seems that speaking an "infinite deal of nothing" exhausts the body, though it does not affect the mind; for the first patient sank down in his chair again. "I have excited myself too much—feel rather faint."

Staines saw no signs of coming syncope; he rang the bell quietly, and ordered a decanter of sherry to be brought; the first patient filled himself a glass; then another; and went off, revived, to chatter elsewhere. But at the door he said, "I had always a running account with Dr. Mivar. I suppose you don't object to that system. Double fee the first visit, single afterwards."

Dr. Staines bowed a little stiffly; he would have preferred the money. However, he looked at the Blue Book, and found his visitor lived at 47 Manchester Square; so that removed his anxiety.

The first patient called every other day, chattered nineteen to the dozen, was exhausted, drank two glasses of sherry, and drove away.

Soon after this a second patient called. This one was a deputy patient—Collett, a retired butler—kept a lodging-house, and waited at parties; he lived close by, but had a married daughter in Chelsea. Would the doctor visit her, and HE would be responsible?

Staines paid the woman a visit or two, and treated her so effectually, that soon her visits were paid to him. She was cured, and Staines, who by this time wanted to see money, sent to Collett.

Collett did not answer.

Staines wrote warmly.

Collett dead silent.

Staines employed a solicitor.

Collett said he had recommended the patient, that was all. He had never said he would pay her debts. That was her husband's business.

Now her husband was the mate of a ship; would not be in England for eighteen months.

The woman, visited by lawyer's clerk, cried bitterly, and said she and her children had scarcely enough to eat.

Lawyer advised Staines to abandon the case, and pay him two pounds fifteen shillings expenses. He did so.

"This is damnable," said he. "I must get it out of Pettigrew; by-the-by, he has not been here this two days."

He waited another day for Pettigrew, and then wrote to him. No answer. Called. Pettigrew gone abroad. House in Manchester Square to let.

Staines went to the house-agent with his tale. Agent was impenetrable at first; but, at last, won by the doctor's manner and his unhappiness, referred him to Pettigrew's solicitor; the solicitor was a respectable man, and said he would forward the claim to Pettigrew in Paris.

But by this time Pettigrew was chattering and guzzling in Berlin; and thence he got to St. Petersburg. In that stronghold of gluttony, he gormandized more than ever, and, being unable to talk it off his stomach, as in other cities, had apoplexy, and died.

But long before this Staines saw his money was as irrecoverable as his sherry; and he said to Rosa, "I wonder whether I shall ever live to curse the human race?"

"Heaven forbid!" said Rosa. "Oh, they use you cruelly, my poor, poor Christie!"

Thus for months the young doctor's patients bled him, and that was all.

And Rosa got more and more moped at being in the house so much, and pestered Christopher to take her out, and he declined: and, being a man hard to beat, took to writing on medical subjects, in hopes of getting some money from the various medical and scientific publications; but he found it as hard to get the wedge in there as to get patients.

At last Rosa's remonstrances began to rise into something that sounded like reproaches. One Sunday she came to him in her bonnet, and interrupted his studies, to say he might as well lay down the pen, and talk. Nobody would publish anything he wrote.

Christopher frowned, but contained himself, and laid down the pen.

"I might as well not be married at all as be a doctor's wife. You are never seen out with me, not even to church. Do behave like a Christian, and come to church with me now."

Dr. Staines shook his head.

"Why, I wouldn't miss church for all the world. Any excitement is better than always moping. Come over the water with me. The time Jane and I went, the clergyman read a paper that Mr. Brown had fallen down in a fit. There was such a rush directly, and I'm sure fifty ladies went out—fancy, all Mrs. Browns! Wasn't that fun?"

"Fun? I don't see it. Well, Rosa, your mind is evidently better adapted to diversion than mine is. Go you to church, love, and I'll continue my studies."

"Then all I can say is, I wish I was back in my father's house. Husband! friend! companion!—I have none."

Then she burst out crying violently; and, being shocked at what she had said, and at the agony it had brought into her husband's face, she went off into hysterics; and as his heart would not let him bellow at her, or empty a bucket on her as he would on another patient, she had a good long bout of them: and got her way, for she broke up his studies for that day, at all events.

Even after the hysterics were got under, she continued to moan and sigh very prettily, with her lovely, languid head pillowed on her husband's arm; in a word, though the hysterics were real, yet this innocent young person had the presence of mind to postpone entire convalescence, and lay herself out to be petted all day. But fate willed it otherwise: while she was sighing and moaning, came to the door a scurrying of feet, and then a sharp, persistent ringing that meant something. The moaner cocked eye and ear, and said, in her every-day voice, which, coming so suddenly, sounded very droll, "What is that, I wonder?"

Jane hurried to the street-door, and Rosa recovered by magic; and, preferring gossip to hysterics, in an almost gleeful whisper, ordered Christopher to open the door of the study. The Bijou was so small that the following dialogue rang in their ears:—

A boy in buttons gasped out, "Oh, if you please, will you ast the doctor to come round directly; there's a haccident."

"La, bless me!" said Jane, and never budged.

"Yes, miss. It's our missus's little girl fallen right off an i-chair, and cut her head dreadful, and smothered in blood."

"La, to be sure!" And she waited steadily for more.

"Ay, and missus she fainted right off; and I've been to the regler doctor, which he's out; and Sarah, the housemaid, said I had better come here; you was only just set up, she said; you wouldn't have so much to do, says she."

"That is all SHE knows," said Jane. "Why, our master—they pulls him in pieces which is to have him fust."

"What an awful liar! Oh, you good girl!" whispered Dr. Staines and Rosa in one breath.

"Ah, well," said Buttons, "any way, Sarah says she knows you are clever, 'cos her little girl as lives with her mother, and calls Sarah aunt, has bin to your 'spensary with ringworm, and you cured her right off."

"Ay, and a good many more," said Jane, loftily. She was a housemaid of imagination; and while Staines was putting some lint and an instrument case into his pocket, she proceeded to relate a number of miraculous cures. Dr. Staines interrupted them by suddenly emerging, and inviting Buttons to take him to the house.

Mrs. Staines was so pleased with Jane for cracking up the doctor, that she gave her five shillings; and, after that, used to talk to her a great deal more than to the cook, which judicious conduct presently set all three by the ears.

Buttons took the doctor to a fine house in the same street, and told him his mistress's name on the way—Mrs. Lucas. He was taken up to the nursery, and found Mrs. Lucas seated, crying and lamenting, and a woman holding a little girl of about seven, whose brow had been cut open by the fender, on which she had fallen from a chair; it looked very ugly, and was even now bleeding.

Dr. Staines lost no time; he examined the wound keenly, and then said kindly to Mrs. Lucas, "I am happy to tell you it is not serious." He then asked for a large basin and some tepid water, and bathed it so softly and soothingly that the child soon became composed; and the mother discovered the artist at once. He compressed the wound, and explained to Mrs. Lucas that the principal thing really was to avoid an ugly scar. "There is no danger," said he. He then bound the wound neatly up, and had the girl put to bed. "You will not wake her at any particular hour, nurse. Let her sleep. Have a little strong beef-tea ready, and give it her at any hour, night or day, she asks for it. But do not force it on her, or you will do her more harm than good. She had better sleep before she eats."

Mrs. Lucas begged him to come every morning; and, as he was going, she shook hands with him, and the soft palm deposited a hard substance wrapped in paper. He took it with professional gravity and seeming unconsciousness; but, once outside the house, went home on wings. He ran up to the drawing-room, and found his wife seated, and playing at reading. He threw himself on his knees, and the fee into her lap; and, while she unfolded the paper with an ejaculation of pleasure, he said, "Darling, the first real patient—the first real fee. It is yours to buy the new bonnet."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" said she, with her eyes glistening. "But I'm afraid one can't get a bonnet fit to wear—for a guinea."

Dr. Staines visited his little patient every day, and received his guinea. Mrs. Lucas also called him in for her own little ailments, and they were the best possible kind of ailments: for, being imaginary, there was no limit to them.

Then did Mrs. Staines turn jealous of her husband. "They never ask me," said she; "and I am moped to death."

"It is hard," said Christopher, sadly. "But have a little patience. Society will come to you long before practice comes to me."

About two o'clock one afternoon a carriage and pair drove up, and a gorgeous footman delivered a card—"Lady Cicely Treherne."

Of course Mrs. Staines was at home, and only withheld by propriety from bounding into the passage to meet her school-fellow. However, she composed herself in the drawing-room, and presently the door was opened, and a very tall young woman, richly but not gayly dressed, drifted into the room, and stood there a statue of composure.

Rosa had risen to fly to her; but the reverence a girl of eighteen strikes into a child of twelve hung about her still, and she came timidly forward, blushing and sparkling, a curious contrast in color and mind to her visitor; for Lady Cicely was Languor in person—her hair whitey-brown, her face a fine oval, but almost colorless; her eyes a pale gray, her neck and hands incomparably white and beautiful—a lymphatic young lady, a live antidote to emotion. However, Rosa's beauty, timidity, and undisguised affectionateness were something so different from what she was used to in the world of fashion, that she actually smiled, and held out both her hands a little way. Rosa seized them, and pressed them; they left her; and remained passive and limp.

"O Lady Cicely," said Rosa, "how kind of you to come."

"How kind of you to send to me," was the polite, but perfectly cool reply. "But how you are gwown, and—may I say impwoved?—You la petite Lusignan! It is incwedible," lisped her ladyship, very calmly.

"I was only a child," said Rosa. "You were always so beautiful and tall, and kind to a little monkey like me. Oh, pray sit down, Lady Cicely, and talk of old times."

She drew her gently to the sofa, and they sat down hand in hand; but Lady Cicely's high-bred reserve made her a very poor gossip about anything that touched herself and her family; so Rosa, though no egotist, was drawn into talking about herself more than she would have done had she deliberately planned the conversation. But here was an old school-fellow, and a singularly polite listener, and so out came her love, her genuine happiness, her particular griefs, and especially the crowning grievance, no society, moped to death, etc.

Lady Cicely could hardly understand the sentiment in a woman who so evidently loved her husband. "Society!" said she, after due reflection, "why, it is a boa." (And here I may as well explain that Lady Cicely spoke certain words falsely, and others affectedly; and as for the letter r, she could say it if she made a hearty effort, but was generally too lazy to throw her leg over it.) "Society! I'm dwenched to death with it. If I could only catch fiah like other women, and love somebody, I would much rather have a tete-a-tete with him than go teawing about all day and all night, from one unintwisting cwowd to another. To be sure," said she, puzzling the matter out, "you are a beauty, and would be more looked at."

"The idea! and—oh no! no! it is not that. But even in the country we had always some society."

"Well, dyar, believe me, with your appeawance, you can have as much society as you please; but it will boa you to death, as it does me, and then you will long to be left quiet with a sensible man who loves you."

Said Rosa, "When shall I have another tete-a-tete with YOU, I wonder? Oh, it has been such a comfort to me. Bless you for coming. There—I wrote to Cecilia, and Emily, and Mrs. Bosanquet that is now, and all my sworn friends, and to think of you being the one to come—you that never kissed me but once, and an earl's daughter into the bargain."

"Ha! ha! ha!"—Lady Cicely actually laughed for once in a way, and did not feel the effort. "As for kissing," said she, "if I fall shawt, fawgive me. I was nevaa vewy demonstwative."

"No; and I have had a lesson. That Florence Cole—Florence Whiting that was, you know—was always kissing me, and she has turned out a traitor. I'll tell you all about her." And she did.

Lady Cicely thought Mrs. Staines a little too unreserved in her conversation; but was so charmed with her sweetness and freshness that she kept up the acquaintance, and called on her twice a week during the season. At first she wondered that her visits were not returned; but Rosa let out that she was ashamed to call on foot in Grosvenor Square.

Lady Cicely shrugged her beautiful shoulders a little at that; but she continued to do the visiting, and to enjoy the simple, innocent rapture with which she was received.

This lady's pronunciation of many words was false or affected. She said "good murning" for "good morning," and turned other vowels to diphthongs, and played two or three pranks with her "r's." But we cannot be all imperfection: with her pronunciation her folly came to a full stop. I really believe she lisped less nonsense and bad taste in a year than some of us articulate in a day. To be sure, folly is generally uttered in a hurry, and she was too deplorably lazy to speak fast on any occasion whatever.

One day Mrs. Staines took her up-stairs, and showed her from the back window her husband pacing the yard, waiting for patients. Lady Cicely folded her arms, and contemplated him at first with a sort of zoological curiosity. Gentleman pacing back yard, like hyena, she had never seen before.

At last she opened her mouth in a whisper, "What is he doing?"

"Waiting for patients."

"Oh! Waiting—for—patients?"

"For patients that never come, and never will come."

"Cuwious! How little I know of life."

"It is that all day, dear, or else writing."

Lady Cicely, with her eyes fixed on Staines, made a motion with her hand that she was attending.

"And they won't publish a word he writes."

"Poor man!"

"Nice for me; is it not?"

"I begin to understand," said Lady Cicely quietly; and soon after retired with her invariable composure.

Meantime, Dr. Staines, like a good husband, had thrown out occasional hints to Mrs. Lucas that he had a wife, beautiful, accomplished, moped. More than that, he went so far as to regret to her that Mrs. Staines, being in a neighborhood new to him, saw so little society; the more so, as she was formed to shine, and had not been used to seclusion.

All these hints fell dead on Mrs. Lucas. A handsome and skilful doctor was welcome to her: his wife—that was quite another matter.

But one day Mrs. Lucas saw Lady Cicely Treherne's carriage standing at the door. The style of the whole turnout impressed her. She wondered whose it was.

On another occasion she saw it drive up, and the lady get out. She recognized her; and the very next day this parvenue said adroitly, "Now, Dr. Staines, really you can't be allowed to hide your wife in this way. (Staines stared.) Why not introduce her to me next Wednesday? It is my night. I would give a dinner expressly for her; but I don't like to do that while my husband is in Naples."

When Staines carried the invitation to his wife, she was delighted, and kissed him with childish frankness.

But the very next moment she became thoughtful, uneasy, depressed. "Oh, dear; I've nothing to wear."

"Oh, nonsense, Rosa. Your wedding outfit."

"The idea! I can't go as a bride. It's not a masquerade."

"But you have other dresses."

"All gone by, more or less; or not fit for such parties as SHE gives. A hundred carriages!"

"Bring them down, and let me see them."

"Oh yes." And the lady, who had nothing to wear, paraded a very fair show of dresses.

Staines saw something to admire in all of them. Mrs. Staines found more to object to in each.

At last he fell upon a silver-gray silk, of superlative quality.

"That! It is as old as the hills," shrieked Rosa.

"It looks just out of the shop. Come, tell the truth; how often have you worn it?"

"I wore it before I was married."

"Ay, but how often?"

"Twice. Three times, I believe."

"I thought so. It is good as new."

"But I have had it so long by me. I had it two years before I made it up."

"What does that matter? Do you think the people can tell how long a dress has been lurking in your wardrobe? This is childish, Rosa. There, with this dress as good as new, and your beauty, you will be as much admired, and perhaps hated, as your heart can desire."

"I am afraid not," said Rosa naively. "Oh, how I wish I had known a week ago."

"I am very thankful you did not," said Staines dryly.

At ten o'clock Mrs. Staines was nearly dressed; at a quarter past ten she demanded ten minutes; at half-past ten she sought a reprieve; at a quarter to eleven, being assured that the street was full of carriages, which had put down at Mrs. Lucas's, she consented to emerge; and in a minute they were at the house.

They were shown first into a cloak-room, and then into a tea-room, and then mounted the stairs. One servant took their names, and bawled them to another four yards off, he to another about as near, and so on; and they edged themselves into the room, not yet too crowded to move in.

They had not taken many steps, on the chance of finding their hostess, when a slight buzz arose, and seemed to follow them.

Rosa wondered what that was; but only for a moment; she observed a tall, stout, aquiline woman fix an eye of bitter, diabolical, malignant hatred on her; and as she advanced, ugly noses were cocked disdainfully, and scraggy shoulders elevated at the risk of sending the bones through the leather, and a titter or two shot after her. A woman's instinct gave her the key at once; the sexes had complimented her at sight; each in their way; the men with respectful admiration; the women, with their inflammable jealousy and ready hatred in another of the quality they value most in themselves. But the country girl was too many for them: she would neither see nor bear, but moved sedately on, and calmly crushed them with her Southern beauty. Their dry, powdered faces could not live by the side of her glowing skin, with nature's delicate gloss upon it, and the rich blood mantling below it. The got-up beauties, i.e., the majority, seemed literally to fade and wither as she passed.

Mrs. Lucas got to her, suppressed a slight maternal pang, having daughters to marry, and took her line in a moment; here was a decoy duck. Mrs. Lucas was all graciousness, made acquaintance, and took a little turn with her, introducing her to one or two persons; among the rest, to the malignant woman, Mrs. Barr. Mrs. Barr, on this, ceased to look daggers and substituted icicles; but on the hateful beauty moving away, dropped the icicles, and resumed the poniards.

The rooms filled; the heat became oppressive, and the mixed odors of flowers, scents, and perspiring humanity, sickening. Some, unable to bear it, trickled out of the room, and sat all down the stairs.

Rosa began to feel faint. Up came a tall, sprightly girl, whose pertness was redeemed by a certain bonhomie, and said, "Mrs. Staines, I believe? I am to make myself agreeable to you. That is the order from headquarters."

"Miss Lucas," said Staines.

She jerked a little off-hand bow to him, and said, "Will you trust her to me for five minutes?"

"Certainly." But he did not much like it.

Miss Lucas carried her off, and told Dr. Staines, over her shoulder, now he could flirt to his heart's content.

"Thank you," said he dryly. "I'll await your return."

"Oh, there are some much greater flirts here than I am," said the ready Miss Lucas; and whispering something in Mrs. Staines's ear, suddenly glided with her behind a curtain, pressed a sort of button fixed to a looking-glass door. The door opened, and behold they were in a delicious place, for which I can hardly find a word, since it was a boudoir and a conservatory in one: a large octagon, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with looking-glasses of moderate width, at intervals, and with creepers that covered the intervening spaces of the wall, and were trained so as to break the outline of the glasses without greatly clouding the reflection. Ferns, in great variety, were grouped in a deep crescent, and in the bight of this green bay were a small table and chairs. As there were no hot-house plants, the temperature was very cool, compared with the reeking oven they had escaped; and a little fountain bubbled, and fed a little meandering gutter that trickled away among the ferns; it ran crystal clear over little bright pebbles and shells. It did not always run, you understand; but Miss Lucas turned a secret tap, and started it.

"Oh, how heavenly!" said Rosa, with a sigh of relief; "and how good of you to bring me here!"

"Yes; by rights I ought to have waited till you fainted. But there is no making acquaintance among all those people. Mamma will ask such crowds; one is like a fly in a glue-pot."

Miss Lucas had good nature, smartness, and animal spirits; hence arose a vivacity and fluency that were often amusing, and passed for very clever. Reserve she had none; would talk about strangers, or friends, herself, her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a breath. At a hint from Rosa, she told her who the lady in the pink dress was, and the lady in the violet velvet, and so on; for each lady was defined by her dress, and, more or less, quizzed by this show-woman, not exactly out of malice, but because it is smarter and more natural to decry than to praise, and a little medisance is the spice to gossip, belongs to it, as mint sauce to lamb. So they chatted away, and were pleased with each other, and made friends, and there, in cool grot, quite forgot the sufferings of their fellow-creatures in the adjacent Turkish bath, yclept society. It was Rosa who first recollected herself. "Will not Mrs. Lucas be angry with me, if I keep you all to myself?"

"Oh no; but I'm afraid we must go into the hot-house again. I like the greenhouse best, with such a nice companion."

They slipped noiselessly into the throng again, and wriggled about, Miss Lucas presenting her new friend to several ladies and gentlemen.

Presently Staines found them, and then Miss Lucas wriggled away; and in due course the room was thinned by many guests driving off home, or to balls, and other receptions, and Dr. Staines and Mrs. Staines went home to the Bijou. Here the physician prescribed bed; but the lady would not hear of such a thing until she had talked it all over. So they compared notes, and Rosa told him how well she had got on with Miss Lucas, and made a friendship. "But for that," said she, "I should be sorry I went among those people, such a dowdy."

"Dowdy!" said Staines. "Why, you stormed the town; you were the great success of the night, and, for all I know, of the season." The wretch delivered this with unbecoming indifference.

"It is too bad to mock me, Christie. Where were your eyes?"

"To the best of my recollection, they were one on each side of my nose."

"Yes, but some people are eyes and no eyes."

"I scorn the imputation; try me."

"Very well. Then did you see that lady in sky-blue silk, embroidered with flowers, and flounced with white velvet, and the corsage point lace; and oh, such emeralds?"

"I did; a tall, skinny woman, with eyes resembling her jewels in color, though not in brightness."

"Never mind her eyes; it is her dress I am speaking of. Exquisite; and what a coiffure! Well, did you see HER in the black velvet, trimmed so deep with Chantilly lace, wave on wave, and her head-dress of crimson flowers, and such a riviere of diamonds; oh, dear! oh, dear!"

"I did, love. The room was an oven, but her rubicund face and suffocating costume made it seem a furnace."

"Stuff! Well, did you see the lady in the corn-colored silk, and poppies in her hair?"

"Of course I did. Ceres in person. She made me feel hot, too; but I cooled myself a bit at her pale, sickly face."

"Never mind their faces; that is not the point."

"Oh, excuse me; it is always a point with us benighted males, all eyes and no eyes."

"Well, then, the lady in white, with cherry-velvet bands, and a white tunic looped with crimson, and headdress of white illusion, a la vierge, I think they call it."

"It was very refreshing; and adapted to that awful atmosphere. It was the nearest approach to nudity I ever saw, even amongst fashionable people."

"It was lovely; and then that superb figure in white illusion and gold, with all those narrow flounces over her slip of white silk glacee, and a wreath of white flowers, with gold wheat ears amongst them, in her hair; and oh! oh! oh! her pearls, oriental, and as big as almonds!"

"And oh! oh! oh! her nose! reddish, and as long as a woodcock's."

"Noses! noses! stupid! That is not what strikes you first in a woman dressed like an angel."

"Well, if you were to run up against that one, as I nearly did, her nose WOULD be the thing that would strike you first. Nose! it was a rostrum! the spear-head of Goliah."

"Now, don't, Christopher. This is no laughing matter. Do you mean you were not ashamed of your wife? I was."

"No, I was not; you had but one rival; a very young lady, wise before her age; a blonde, with violet eyes. She was dressed in light mauve-colored silk, without a single flounce, or any other tomfoolery to fritter away the sheen and color of an exquisite material; her sunny hair was another wave of color, wreathed with a thin line of white jessamine flowers closely woven, that scented the air. This girl was the moon of that assembly, and you were the sun."

"I never even saw her."

"Eyes and no eyes. She saw you, and said, 'Oh, what a beautiful creature!' for I heard her. As for the old stagers, whom you admire so, their faces were all clogged with powder, the pores stopped up, the true texture of the skin abolished. They looked downright nasty, whenever you or that young girl passed by them. Then it was you saw to what a frightful extent women are got up in our day, even young women, and respectable women. No, Rosa, dress can do little for you; you have beauty—real beauty."

"Beauty! That passes unnoticed, unless one is well dressed."

"Then what an obscure pair the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de Medicis must be."

"Oh! they are dressed—in marble."

Christopher Staines stared first, then smiled.

"Well done," said he, admiringly. "That IS a knockdown blow. So now you have silenced your husband, go you to bed directly. I can't afford you diamonds; so I will take care of that little insignificant trifle, your beauty."

Mrs. Staines and Mrs. Lucas exchanged calls, and soon Mrs. Staines could no longer complain she was out of the world. Mrs. Lucas invited her to every party, because her beauty was an instrument of attraction she knew how to use; and Miss Lucas took a downright fancy to her; drove her in the park, and on Sundays to the Zoological Gardens, just beginning to be fashionable.

The Lucases rented a box at the opera, and if it was not let at the library by six o'clock, and if other engagements permitted, word was sent round to Mrs. Staines, as a matter of course, and she was taken to the opera. She began almost to live at the Lucases, and to be oftener fatigued than moped.

The usual order of things was inverted; the maiden lady educated the matron; for Miss Lucas knew all about everybody in the Park, honorable or dishonorable; all the scandals, and all the flirtations; and whatever she knew, she related point-blank. Being as inquisitive as voluble, she soon learned how Mrs. Staines and her husband were situated. She took upon her to advise her in many things, and especially impressed upon her that Dr. Staines must keep a carriage, if he wanted to get on in medicine. The piece of advice accorded so well with Rosa's wishes, that she urged it on her husband again and again.

He objected that no money was coming in, and therefore it would be insane to add to their expenses. Rosa persisted, and at last worried Staines with her importunity. He began to give rather short answers. Then she quoted Miss Lucas against him. He treated the authority with marked contempt; and then Rosa fired up a little. Then Staines held his peace; but did not buy a carriage to visit his no patients.

So at last Rosa complained to Lady Cicely Treherne, and made her the judge between her husband and herself. Lady Cicely drawled out a prompt but polite refusal to play that part. All that could be elicited from her, and that with difficulty, was, "Why quall with your husband about a cawwige; he is your best fwiend."

"Ah, that he is," said Rosa; "but Miss Lucas is a good friend, and she knows the world. We don't; neither Christopher nor I."

So she continued to nag at her husband about it, and to say that he was throwing his only chance away.

Galled as he was by neglect, this was irritating, and at last he could not help telling her she was unreasonable. "You live a gay life, and I a sad one. I consent to this, and let you go about with these Lucases, because you were so dull; but you should not consult them in our private affairs. Their interference is indelicate and improper. I will not set up a carriage till I have patients to visit. I am sick of seeing our capital dwindle, and no income created. I will never set up a carriage till I have taken a hundred-guinea fee."

"Oh! Then we shall go splashing through the mud all our days."

"Or ride in a cab," said Christopher, with a quiet doggedness that left no hope of his yielding.

One afternoon Miss Lucas called for Mrs. Staines to drive in the Park, but did not come up-stairs; it was an engagement, and she knew Mrs. Staines would be ready, or nearly. Mrs. Staines, not to keep her waiting, came down rather hastily, and in the very passage whipped out of her pocket a little glass, and a little powder puff, and puffed her face all over in a trice. She was then going out; but her husband called her into the study. "Rosa, my dear," said he, "you were going out with a dirty face."

"Oh!" cried she, "give me a glass."

"There is no need of that. All you want is a basin and some nice rain-water. I keep a little reservoir of it."

He then handed her the same with great politeness. She looked in his eye, and saw he was not to be trifled with. She complied like a lamb, and the heavenly color and velvet gloss that resulted were admirable.

He kissed her and said, "Ah! now you are my Rosa again. Oblige me by handing over that powder-puff to me." She looked vexed, but complied. "When you come back I will tell you why."

"You are a pest," said Mrs. Staines, and so joined her friend, rosy with rain-water and a rub.

"Dear me, how handsome you look to-day!" was Miss Lucas's first remark.

Rosa never dreamed that rain-water and rub could be the cause of her looking so well.

"It is my tiresome husband," said she. "He objects to powder, and he has taken away my puff."

"And you stood that?"

"Obliged to."

"Why, you poor-spirited little creature, I should like to see a husband presume to interfere with me in those things. Here, take mine."

Rosa hesitated a little. "Well—no—I think not."

Miss Lucas laughed at her, and quizzed her so on her allowing a man to interfere in such sacred things as dress and cosmetics, that she came back irritated with her husband, and gave him a short answer or two. Then he asked what was the matter.

"You treat me like a child—taking away my very puff."

"I treat you like a beautiful flower, that no bad gardener shall wither whilst I am here."

"What nonsense! How could that wither me? It is only violet powder—what they put on babies."

"And who are the Herods that put it on babies?"

"Their own mothers, that love them ten times more than the fathers do."

"And kill a hundred of them for one a man ever kills. Mothers!—the most wholesale homicides in the nation. We will examine your violet-powder: bring it down here."

While she was gone he sent for a breakfast-cupful of flour, and when she came back he had his scales out, and begged her to put a teaspoonful of flour into one scale and of violet powder into another. The flour kicked the beam, as Homer expresses himself.

"Put another spoonful of flour."

The one spoonful of violet powder outweighed the two of flour.

"Now," said Staines, "does not that show you the presence of a mineral in your vegetable powder? I suppose they tell you it is made of white violets dried, and triturated in a diamond mill. Let us find out what metal it is. We need not go very deep into chemistry for that." He then applied a simple test, and detected the presence of lead in large quantities. Then he lectured her: "Invisible perspiration is a process of nature necessary to health and to life. The skin is made porous for that purpose. You can kill anybody in an hour or two by closing the pores. A certain infallible ass, called Pope Leo XII., killed a little boy in two hours, by gilding him to adorn the pageant of his first procession as Pope. But what is death to the whole body must be injurious to a part. What madness, then, to clog the pores of so large and important a surface as the face, and check the invisible perspiration: how much more to insert lead into your system every day of your life; a cumulative poison, and one so deadly and so subtle, that the Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime, from merely hammering on a leaden anvil. And what do you gain by this suicidal habit? No plum has a sweeter bloom or more delicious texture than the skin of your young face; but this mineral filth hides that delicate texture, and substitutes a dry, uniform appearance, more like a certain kind of leprosy than health. Nature made your face the rival of peaches, roses, lilies; and you say, 'No; I know better than my Creator and my God; my face shall be like a dusty miller's.' Go into any flour-mill, and there you shall see men with faces exactly like your friend Miss Lucas's. But before a miller goes to his sweetheart, he always washes his face. You ladies would never get a miller down to your level in brains. It is a miller's DIRTY face our mono-maniacs of woman imitate, not the face a miller goes a-courting with."

"La! what a fuss about nothing!"

"About nothing! Is your health nothing? Is your beauty nothing? Well, then, it will cost you nothing to promise me never to put powder on your face again."

"Very well, I promise. Now what will you do for me?"

"Work for you—write for you—suffer for you—be self-denying for you—and even give myself the pain of disappointing you now and then—looking forward to the time when I shall be able to say 'Yes' to everything you ask me. Ah! child, you little know what it costs me to say 'No' to YOU."

Rosa put her arms round him and acquiesced. She was one of those who go with the last speaker; but, for that very reason, the eternal companionship of so flighty and flirty a girl as Miss Lucas was injurious to her.

One day Lady Cicely Treherne was sitting with Mrs. Staines, smiling languidly at her talk, and occasionally drawling out a little plain good sense, when in came Miss Lucas, with her tongue well hung, as usual, and dashed into twenty topics in ten minutes.

This young lady in her discourse was like those little oily beetles you see in small ponds, whose whole life is spent in tacking—confound them for it!—generally at right angles. What they are in navigation was Miss Lucas in conversation: tacked so eternally from topic to topic, that no man on earth, and not every woman, could follow her.

At the sight and sound of her, Lady Cicely congealed and stiffened. Easy and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, she was all dignity, and even majesty, in the presence of this chatterbox; and the smoothness with which the transfiguration was accomplished marked that accomplished actress the high-bred woman of the world.

Rosa, better able to estimate the change of manner than Miss Lucas was, who did not know how little this Sawny was afflicted with misplaced dignity, looked wistfully and distressed at her. Lady Cicely smiled kindly in reply, rose, without seeming to hurry,—catch her condescending to be rude to Charlotte Lucas,—and took her departure, with a profound and most gracious courtesy to the lady who had driven her away.

Mrs. Staines saw her down-stairs, and said, ruefully, "I am afraid you do not like my friend Miss Lucas. She is a great rattle, but so good-natured and clever."

Lady Cicely shook her head. "Clevaa people don't talk so much nonsense before strangaas."

"Oh, dear!" said Rosa. "I was in hopes you would like her."

"Do YOU like her?"

"Indeed I do; but I shall not, if she drives an older friend away."

"My dyah, I'm not easily dwiven from those I esteem. But you undastand that is not a woman for me to mispwonownce my 'ah's befaw—NOR FOR YOU TO MAKE A BOSOM FWIEND OF—WOSA STAINES."

She said this with a sudden maternal solemnity and kindness that contrasted nobly and strangely with her yea-nay style, and Mrs. Staines remembered the words years after they were spoken.

It so happened that after this Mrs. Staines received no more visits from Lady Cicely for some time, and that vexed her. She knew her sex enough to be aware that they are very jealous, and she permitted herself to think that this high-minded Sawny was jealous of Miss Lucas.

This idea, founded on a general estimate of her sex, was dispelled by a few lines from Lady Cicely, to say her family and herself were in deep distress; her brother, Lord Ayscough, lay dying from an accident.

Then Rosa was all remorse, and ran down to Staines to tell him. She found him with an open letter in his hand. It was from Dr. Barr, and on the same subject. The doctor, who had always been friendly to him, invited him to come down at once to Hallowtree Hall, in Huntingdonshire, to a consultation. There was a friendly intimation to start at once, as the patient might die any moment.

Husband and wife embraced each other in a tumult of surprised thankfulness. A few necessaries were thrown into a carpet-bag, and Dr. Staines was soon whirled into Huntingdonshire. Having telegraphed beforehand, he was met at the station by the earl's carriage and people, and driven to the Hall. He was received by an old, silver-haired butler, looking very sad, who conducted him to a boudoir; and then went and tapped gently at the door of the patient's room. It was opened and shut very softly, and Lady Cicely, dressed in black, and looking paler than ever, came into the room.

"Dr. Staines, I think?"

He bowed.

"Thank you for coming so promptly. Dr. Barr is gone. I fear he thinks—he thinks—O Dr. Staines—no sign of life but in his poor hands, that keep moving night and day."

Staines looked very grave at that. Lady Cicely observed it, and, faint at heart, could say no more, but led the way to the sick-room.

There in a spacious chamber, lighted by a grand oriel window and two side windows, lay rank, title, wealth, and youth, stricken down in a moment by a common accident. The sufferer's face was bloodless, his eyes fixed, and no signs of life but in his thumbs, and they kept working with strange regularity.

In the room were a nurse and the surgeon; the neighboring physician, who had called in Dr. Barr, had just paid his visit and gone away.

Lady Cicely introduced Dr. Staines and Mr. White, and then Dr. Staines stood and fixed his eyes on the patient in profound silence. Lady Cicely scanned his countenance searchingly, and was struck with the extraordinary power and intensity it assumed in examining the patient; but the result was not encouraging. Dr. Staines looked grave and gloomy.

At last, without removing his eye from the recumbent figure, he said quietly to Mr. White, "Thrown from his horse, sir."

"Horse fell on him, Dr. Staines."

"Any visible injuries?"

"Yes. Severe contusions, and a rib broken and pressed upon the lungs. I replaced and set it. Will you see?"

"If you please."

He examined and felt the patient, and said it had been ably done.

Then he was silent and searching.

At last he spoke again. "The motion of the thumbs corresponds exactly with his pulse."

"Is that so, sir?"

"It is. The case is without a parallel. How long has he been so?"

"Nearly a week."

"Impossible!"

"It is so, sir."

Lady Cicely confirmed this.

"All the better," said Dr. Staines upon reflection. "Well, sir," said he, "the visible injuries having been ably relieved, I shall look another way for the cause." Then, after another pause, "I must have his head shaved."

Lady Cicely demurred a little to this; but Dr. Staines stood firm, and his lordship's valet undertook the job.

Staines directed him where to begin; and when he had made a circular tonsure on the top of the head, had it sponged with tepid water.

"I thought so," said he. "Here is the mischief;" and he pointed to a very slight indentation on the left side of the pia mater. "Observe," said he, "there is no corresponding indentation on the other side. Underneath this trifling depression a minute piece of bone is doubtless pressing on the most sensitive part of the brain. He must be trephined."

Mr. White's eyes sparkled.

"You are an hospital surgeon, sir?"

"Yes, Dr. Staines. I have no fear of the operation."

"Then I hand the patient over to you. The case at present is entirely surgical."

White was driven home, and soon returned with the requisite instruments. The operation was neatly performed, and then Lady Cicely was called in. She came trembling; her brother's fingers were still working, but not so regularly.

"That is only HABIT," said Staines; "it will soon leave off, now the cause is gone."

And, truly enough, in about five minutes the fingers became quiet. The eyes became human next; and within half an hour after the operation the earl gave a little sigh.

Lady Cicely clasped her hands, and uttered a little cry of delight.

"This will not do," said Staines, "I shall have you screaming when he speaks."

"Oh, Dr. Staines! will he ever speak?"

"I think so, and very soon. So be on your guard."

This strange scene reached its climax soon after, by the earl saying, quietly,—

"Are her knees broke, Tom?"

Lady Cicely uttered a little scream, but instantly suppressed it.

"No, my lord," said Staines, smartly; "only rubbed a bit. You can go to sleep, my lord. I'll take care of the mare."

"All right," said his lordship; and composed himself to slumber.

Dr. Staines, at the earnest request of Lady Cicely, stayed all night; and in course of the day advised her how to nurse the patient, since both physician and surgeon had done with him.

He said the patient's brain might be irritable for some days, and no women in silk dresses or crinoline, or creaking shoes, must enter the room. He told her the nurse was evidently a clumsy woman, and would be letting things fall. She had better get some old soldier used to nursing. "And don't whisper in the room," said he; "nothing irritates them worse; and don't let anybody play a piano within hearing; but in a day or two you may try him with slow and continuous music on the flute or violin if you like. Don't touch his bed suddenly; don't sit on it or lean on it. Dole sunlight into his room by degrees; and when he can bear it, drench him with it. Never mind what the old school tell you. About these things they know a good deal less than nothing."

Lady Cicely received all this like an oracle.

The cure was telegraphed to Dr. Barr, and he was requested to settle the fee. He was not the man to undersell the profession, and was jealous of nobody, having a large practice, and a very wealthy wife. So he telegraphed back—"Fifty guineas, and a guinea a mile from London."

So, as Christopher Staines sat at an early breakfast, with the carriage waiting to take him to the train, two notes were brought him on a salver.

They were both directed by Lady Cicely Treherne. One of them contained a few kind and feeling words of gratitude and esteem; the other, a check, drawn by the earl's steward, for one hundred and thirty guineas.

He bowled up to London, and told it all to Rosa. She sparkled with pride, affection, and joy.

"Now, who says you are not a genius?" she cried. "A hundred and thirty guineas for one fee! Now, if you love your wife as she loves you—you will set up a brougham."



CHAPTER VIII.

Doctor Staines begged leave to distinguish; he had not said he would set up a carriage at the first one hundred guinea fee, but only that he would not set up one before. There are misguided people who would call this logic: but Rosa said it was equivocating, and urged him so warmly that at last he burst out, "Who can go on forever saying 'No,' to the only creature he loves?"—and caved. In forty-eight hours more a brougham waited at Mrs. Staines's door. The servant engaged to drive it was Andrew Pearman, a bachelor, and, hitherto, an under-groom. He readily consented to be coachman, and to do certain domestic work as well. So Mrs. Staines had a man-servant as well as a carriage.

Ere long, three or four patients called, or wrote, one after the other. These Rosa set down to brougham, and crowed; she even crowed to Lady Cicely Treherne, to whose influence, and not to brougham's, every one of these patients was owing. Lady Cicely kissed her, and demurely enjoyed the poor soul's self-satisfaction.

Staines himself, while he drove to or from these patients, felt more sanguine, and buoyed as he was by the consciousness of ability, began to hope he had turned the corner.

He sent an account of Lord Ayscough's case to a medical magazine: and so full is the world of flunkeyism, that this article, though he withheld the name, retaining only the title, got the literary wedge in for him at once: and in due course he became a paid contributor to two medical organs, and used to study and write more, and indent the little stone yard less than heretofore.

It was about this time circumstances made him acquainted with Phoebe Dale. Her intermediate history I will dispose of in fewer words than it deserves. Her ruin, Mr. Reginald Falcon, was dismissed from his club, for marking high cards on the back with his nail. This stopped his remaining resource—borrowing: so he got more and more out at elbows, till at last he came down to hanging about billiard-rooms, and making a little money by concealing his game; from that, however, he rose to be a marker.

Having culminated to that, he wrote and proposed marriage to Miss Dale, in a charming letter: she showed it to her father with pride.

Now, if his vanity, his disloyalty, his falsehood, his ingratitude, and his other virtues had not stood in the way, he would have done this three years ago, and been jumped at.

But the offer came too late; not for Phoebe—she would have taken him in a moment—but for her friends. A baited hook is one thing, a bare hook is another. Farmer Dale had long discovered where Phoebe's money went: he said not a word to her; but went up to town like a shot; found Falcon out, and told him he mustn't think to eat his daughter's bread. She should marry a man that could make a decent livelihood; and if she was to run away with HIM, why they'd starve together. The farmer was resolute, and spoke very loud, like one that expects opposition, and comes prepared to quarrel. Instead of that, this artful rogue addressed him with deep respect and an affected veneration, that quite puzzled the old man; acquiesced in every word, expressed contrition for his past misdeeds, and told the farmer he had quite determined to labor with his hands. "You know, farmer," said he, "I am not the only gentleman who has come to that in the present day. Now, all my friends that have seen my sketches, assure me I am a born painter; and a painter I'll be—for love of Phoebe."

The farmer made a wry face. "Painter! that is a sorry sort of a trade."

"You are mistaken. It's the best trade going. There are gentlemen making their thousands a year by it."

"Not in our parts, there bain't. Stop a bit. What be ye going to paint, sir? Housen, or folk?"

"Oh, hang it, not houses. Figures, landscapes."

"Well, ye might just make shift to live at it, I suppose, with here and there a signboard. They are the best paid, our way: but, Lord bless ye, THEY wants headpiece. Well, sir, let me see your work. Then we'll talk further."

"I'll go to work this afternoon," said Falcon eagerly; then with affected surprise, "Bless me; I forgot. I have no palette, no canvas, no colors. You couldn't lend me a couple of sovereigns to buy them, could you?"

"Ay, sir; I could. But I woan't. I'll lend ye the things, though, if you have a mind to go with me and buy 'em."

Falcon agreed, with a lofty smile; and the purchases were made.

Mr. Falcon painted a landscape or two out of his imagination. The dealers to whom he took them declined them; one advised the gentleman painter to color tea-boards. "That's your line," said he.

"The world has no taste," said the gentleman painter: "but it has got lots of vanity: I'll paint portraits."

He did; and formidable ones: his portraits were amazingly like the people, and yet unlike men and women, especially about the face. One thing, he didn't trouble with lights and shades, but went slap at the features.

His brush would never have kept him; but he carried an instrument, in the use of which he was really an artist, viz., his tongue. By wheedling and underselling—for he only charged a pound for the painted canvas—he contrived to live; then he aspired to dress as well as live. With this second object in view, he hit upon a characteristic expedient.

He used to prowl about, and when he saw a young woman sweeping the afternoon streets with a long silk train, and, in short, dressed to ride in the park, yet parading the streets, he would take his hat off to her, with an air of profound respect, and ask permission to take her portrait. Generally he met a prompt rebuff; but if the fair was so unlucky as to hesitate a single moment, he told her a melting tale; he had once driven his four-in-hand; but by indorsing his friends' bills, was reduced to painting likeness, admirable likenesses in oil, only a guinea each.

His piteous tale provoked more gibes than pity, but as he had no shame, the rebuffs went for nothing: he actually did get a few sitters by his audacity: and some of the sitters actually took the pictures, and paid for them; others declined them with fury as soon as they were finished. These he took back with a piteous sigh, that sometimes extracted half a crown. Then he painted over the rejected one and let it dry; so that sometimes a paid portrait would present a beauty enthroned on the debris of two or three rivals, and that is where few beauties would object to sit.

All this time he wrote nice letters to Phoebe, and adopted the tone of the struggling artist, and the true lover, who wins his bride by patience, perseverance, and indomitable industry; a babbled of "Self Help."

Meantime, Phoebe was not idle: an excellent business woman, she took immediate advantage of a new station that was built near the farm, to send up milk, butter, and eggs to London. Being genuine, they sold like wildfire. Observing that, she extended her operations, by buying of other farmers, and forwarding to London: and then, having of course an eye to her struggling artist, she told her father she must have a shop in London, and somebody in it she could depend upon.

"With all my heart, wench," said he; "but it must not be thou. I can't spare thee."

"May I have Dick, father?"

"Dick! he is rather young."

"But he is very quick, father, and minds every word I tell him."

"Ay, he is as fond of thee as ever a cow was of a calf. Well, you can try him."

So the love-sick woman of business set up a little shop, and put her brother Dick in it, and all to see more of her struggling artist. She stayed several days, to open the little shop, and start the business. She advertised pure milk, and challenged scientific analysis of everything she sold. This came of her being a reader; she knew, by the journals, that we live in a sinful and adulterating generation, and anything pure must be a godsend to the poor poisoned public.

Now, Dr. Staines, though known to the profession as a diagnost, was also an analyst, and this challenge brought him down on Phoebe Dale. He told her he was a physician, and in search of pure food for his own family—would she really submit the milk to analysis?

Phoebe smiled an honest country smile, and said, "Surely, sir." She gave him every facility, and he applied those simple tests which are commonly used in France, though hardly known in England.

He found it perfectly pure, and told her so; and gazed at Phoebe for a moment, as a phenomenon.

She smiled again at that, her broad country smile. "That is a wonder in London, I dare say. It's my belief half the children that die here are perished with watered milk. Well, sir, we shan't have that on our souls, father and I; he is a farmer in Essex. This comes a many miles, this milk."

Staines looked in her face, with kindly approval marked on his own eloquent features. She blushed a little at so fixed a regard. Then he asked her if she would supply him with milk, butter, and eggs.

"Why, if you mean sell you them, yes, sir, with pleasure. But for sending them home to you in this big town, as some do, I can't; for there's only brother Dick and me: it is an experiment like."

"Very well," said Staines: "I will send for them."

"Thank you kindly, sir. I hope you won't be offended, sir; but we only sell for ready money."

"All the better: my order at home is, no bills."

When he was gone, Phoebe, assuming vast experience, though this was only her third day, told Dick that was one of the right sort: "and oh, Dick," said she, "did you notice his eye?"

"Not particklar, sister."

"There now; the boy is blind. Why, 'twas like a jewel. Such an eye I never saw in a man's head, nor a woman's neither."

Staines told his wife about Phoebe and her brother, and spoke of her with a certain admiration that raised Rosa's curiosity, and even that sort of vague jealousy that fires at bare praise. "I should like to see this phenomenon," said she. "You shall," said he. "I have to call on Mrs. Manly. She lives near. I will drop you at the little shop, and come back for you."

He did so, and that gave Rosa a quarter of an hour to make her purchases. When he came back he found her conversing with Phoebe, as if they were old friends, and Dick glaring at his wife with awe and admiration. He could hardly get her away.

She was far more extravagant in her praises than Dr. Staines had been. "What a good creature!" said she. "And how clever! To think of her setting up a shop like that all by herself; for her Dick is only seventeen."

Dr. Staines recommended the little shop wherever he went, and even extended its operations. He asked Phoebe to get her own wheat ground at home, and send the flour up in bushel bags. "These assassins, the bakers," said he, "are putting copper into the flour now, as well as alum. Pure flour is worth a fancy price to any family. With that we can make the bread of life. What you buy in the shops is the bread of death."

Dick was a good, sharp boy, devoted to his sister. He stuck to the shop in London, and handed the money to Phoebe, when she came for it. She worked for it in Essex, and extended her country connection for supply as the retail business increased.

Staines wrote an article on pure food, and incidentally mentioned the shop as a place where flour, milk, and butter were to be had pure. This article was published in the Lancet, and caused quite a run upon the little shop. By and by Phoebe enlarged it, for which there were great capabilities, and made herself a pretty little parlor, and there she and Dick sat to Falcon for their portraits; here, too, she hung his rejected landscapes. They were fair in her eyes; what matter whether they were like nature? his hand had painted them. She knew, from him, that everybody else had rejected them. With all the more pride and love did she have them framed in gold, and hung up with the portraits in her little sanctum.

For a few months Phoebe Dale was as happy as she deserved to be. Her lover was working, and faithful to her—at least she saw no reason to doubt it. He came to see her every evening, and seemed devoted to her: would sit quietly with her, or walk with her, or take her to a play, or a music-hall—at her expense.

She now lived in a quiet elysium, with a bright and rapturous dream of the future; for she saw she had hit on a good vein of business, and should soon be independent, and able to indulge herself with a husband, and ask no man's leave.

She sent to Essex for a dairymaid, and set her to churn milk into butter, coram populo, at a certain hour every morning. This made a new sensation. At other times the woman was employed to deliver milk and cream to a few favored customers.

Mrs. Staines dropped in now and then, and chatted with her. Her sweet face and her naivete won Phoebe's heart; and one day, as happiness is apt to be communicative, she let out to her, in reply to a feeler or two as to whether she was quite alone, that she was engaged to be married to a gentleman. "But he is not rich, ma'am," said Phoebe plaintively; "he has had trouble: obliged to work for his living, like me; he painted these pictures, EVERY ONE OF THEM. If it was not making too free, and you could spare a guinea—he charges no more for the picture, only you must go to the expense of the frame."

"Of course I will," said Rosa warmly. "I'll sit for it here, any day you like."

Now, Rosa said this, out of her ever ready kindness, not to wound Phoebe: but having made the promise, she kept clear of the place for some days, hoping Phoebe would forget all about it. Meantime she sent her husband to buy.

In about a fortnight she called again, primed with evasions if she should be asked to sit; but nothing of the kind was proposed. Phoebe was dealing when she went in. The customers disposed of, she said to Mrs. Staines, "Oh, ma'am, I am glad you are come. I have something I should like to show you." She took her into the parlor, and made her sit down: then she opened a drawer, and took out a very small substance that looked like a tear of ground glass, and put it on the table before her. "There, ma'am," said she, "that is all he has had for painting a friend's picture."

"Oh! what a shame."

"His friend was going abroad—to Natal; to his uncle that farms out there, and does very well; it is a first-rate part, if you take out a little stock with you, and some money; so my one gave him credit, and when the letter came with that postmark, he counted on a five-pound note; but the letter only said he had got no money yet, but sent him something as a keepsake: and there was this little stone. Poor fellow! he flung it down in a passion; he was so disappointed."

Phoebe's great gray eyes filled; and Rosa gave a little coo of sympathy that was very womanly and lovable.

Phoebe leaned her cheek on her hand, and said thoughtfully, "I picked it up, and brought it away; for, after all—don't you think, ma'am, it is very strange that a friend should send it all that way, if it was worth nothing at all?"

"It is impossible. He could not be so heartless."

"And do you know, ma'am, when I take it up in my fingers, it doesn't feel like a thing that was worth nothing."

"No more it does: it makes my fingers tremble. May I take it home, and show it my husband? he is a great physician and knows everything."

"I am sure I should be obliged to you, ma'am."

Rosa drove home, on purpose to show it to Christopher. She ran into his study: "Oh, Christopher, please look at that. You know that good creature we have our flour and milk and things of. She is engaged, and he is a painter. Oh, such daubs! He painted a friend, and the friend sent that home all the way from Natal, and he dashed it down, and SHE picked it up, and what is it? ground glass, or a pebble, or what?"

"Humph!—by its shape, and the great—brilliancy—and refraction of light, on this angle, where the stone has got polished by rubbing against other stones, in the course of ages, I'm inclined to think it is—a diamond."

"A diamond!" shrieked Rosa. "No wonder my fingers trembled. Oh, can it be? Oh, you good, cold-blooded Christie!—Poor things!—Come along, Diamond! Oh you beauty! Oh you duck!"

"Don't be in such a hurry. I only said I thought it was a diamond. Let me weigh it against water, and then I shall KNOW."

He took it to his little laboratory, and returned in a few minutes, and said, "Yes. It is just three times and a half heavier than water. It is a diamond."

"Are you positive?"

"I'll stake my existence."

"What is it worth?"

"My dear, I'm not a jeweller: but it is very large and pear-shaped, and I see no flaw: I don't think you could buy it for less than three hundred pounds."

"Three hundred pounds! It is worth three hundred pounds."

"Or sell it for more than a hundred and fifty pounds."

"A hundred and fifty! It is worth a hundred and fifty pounds."

"Why, my dear, one would think you had invented 'the diamond.' Show me how to crystallize carbon, and I will share your enthusiasm."

"Oh, I leave you to carbonize crystal. I prefer to gladden hearts: and I will do it this minute, with my diamond."

"Do, dear; and I will take that opportunity to finish my article on Adulteration."

Rosa drove off to Phoebe Dale.

Now Phoebe was drinking tea with Reginald Falcon, in her little parlor. "Who is that, I wonder?" said she, when the carriage drew up.

Reginald drew back a corner of the gauze curtain which had been drawn across the little glass door leading from the shop.

"It is a lady, and a beautiful—Oh! let me get out." And he rushed out at the door leading to the kitchen, not to be recognized.

This set Phoebe all in a flutter, and the next moment Mrs. Staines tapped at the little door, then opened it, and peeped. "Good news! may I come in?"

"Surely," said Phoebe, still troubled and confused by Reginald's strange agitation.

"There! It is a diamond!" screamed Rosa. "My husband knew it directly. He knows everything. If ever you are ill, go to him and nobody else—by the refraction, and the angle, and its being three times and a half as heavy as water. It is worth three hundred pounds to buy, and a hundred and fifty pounds to sell."

"Oh!"

"So don't you go throwing it away, as he did. (In a whisper.) Two teacups? Was that him? I have driven him away. I am so sorry. I'll go; and then you can tell him. Poor fellow!"

"Oh, ma'am, don't go yet," said Phoebe, trembling. "I haven't half thanked you."

"Oh, bother thanks. Kiss me; that is the way."

"May I?"

"You may, and must. There—and there—and there. Oh dear, what nice things good luck and happiness are, and how sweet to bring them for once."

Upon this Phoebe and she had a nice little cry together, and Mrs. Staines went off refreshed thereby, and as gay as a lark, pointing slyly at the door, and making faces to Phoebe that she knew he was there, and she only retired, out of her admirable discretion, that they might enjoy the diamond together.

When she was gone, Reginald, whose eye and ear had been at the keyhole, alternately gloating on the face and drinking the accents of the only woman he had ever really loved, came out, looking pale, and strangely disturbed; and sat down at table, without a word.

Phoebe came back to him, full of the diamond. "Did you hear what she said, my dear? It is a diamond; it is worth a hundred and fifty pounds at least. Why, what ails you? Ah! to be sure! you know that lady."

"I have cause to know her. Cursed jilt!"

"You seem a good deal put out at the sight of her."

"It took me by surprise, that is all."

"It takes me by surprise too. I thought you were cured. I thought MY turn had come at last."

Reginald met this in sullen silence. Then Phoebe was sorry she had said it; for, after all, it wasn't the man's fault if an old sweetheart had run into the room, and given him a start. So she made him some fresh tea, and pressed him kindly to try her home-made bread and butter.

My lord relaxed his frown and consented, and of course they talked diamond.

He told her, loftily, he must take a studio, and his sitters must come to him, and must no longer expect to be immortalized for one pound. It must be two pounds for a bust, and three pounds for a kitcat.

"Nay, but, my dear," said Phoebe, "they will pay no more because you have a diamond."

"Then they will have to go unpainted," said Mr. Falcon.

This was intended for a threat. Phoebe instinctively felt that it might not be so received; she counselled moderation. "It is a great thing to have earned a diamond," said she: "but 'tis only once in a life. Now, be ruled by me: go on just as you are. Sell the diamond, and give me the money to keep for you. Why, you might add a little to it, and so would I, till we made it up two hundred pounds. And if you could only show two hundred pounds you had made and laid by, father would let us marry, and I might keep this shop—it pays well, I can tell you—and keep my gentleman in a sly corner; you need never be seen in it."

"Ay, ay," said he, "that is the small game. But I am a man that have always preferred the big game. I shall set up my studio, and make enough to keep us both. So give me the stone, if you please. I shall take it round to them all, and the rogues won't get it out of ME for a hundred and fifty; why, it is as big as a nut."

"No, no, Reginald. Money has always made mischief between you and me. You never had fifty pounds yet, you didn't fall into temptation. Do pray let me keep it for you; or else sell it—I know how to sell; nobody better—and keep the money for a good occasion."

"Is it yours, or mine?" said he, sulkily.

"Why yours, dear; you earned it."

"Then give it me, please." And he almost forced it out of her hand.

So now she sat down and cried over this piece of good luck, for her heart filled with forebodings.

He laughed at her, but at last had the grace to console her, and assure her she was tormenting herself for nothing.

"Time will show," said she, sadly.

Time did show.

Three or four days he came, as usual, to laugh her out of her forebodings. But presently his visits ceased. She knew what that meant: he was living like a gentleman, melting his diamond, and playing her false with the first pretty face he met.

This blow, coming after she had been so happy, struck Phoebe Dale stupid with grief. The line on her high forehead deepened; and at night she sat with her hands before her, sighing, and sighing, and listening for the footsteps that never came.

"Oh, Dick!" she said, "never you love any one. I am aweary of my life. And to think that, but for that diamond—oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!"

Then Dick used to try and comfort her in his way, and often put his arm round her neck, and gave her his rough but honest sympathy. Dick's rare affection was her one drop of comfort; it was something to relieve her swelling heart.

"Oh, Dick!" she said to him one night, "I wish I had married him."

"What, to be ill-used?"

"He couldn't use me worse. I have been wife, and mother, and sweetheart, and all, to him; and to be left like this. He treats me like the dirt beneath his feet."

"'Tis your own fault, Phoebe, partly. You say the word, and I'll break every bone in his carcass."

"What, do him a mischief! Why, I'd rather die than harm a hair of his head. You must never lift a hand to him, or I shall hate you."

"Hate ME, Phoebe?"

"Ay, boy: I should. God forgive me: 'tis no use deceiving ourselves; when a woman loves a man she despises, never you come between them; there's no reason in her love, so it is incurable. One comfort, it can't go on forever; it must kill me, before my time and so best. If I was only a mother, and had a little Reginald to dandle on my knee and gloat upon, till he spent his money, and came back to me. That's why I said I wished I was his wife. Oh! why does God fill a poor woman's bosom with love, and nothing to spend it on but a stone; for sure his heart must be one. If I had only something that would let me always love it, a little toddling thing at my knee, that would always let me look at it, and love it, something too young to be false to me, too weak to run away from my long—ing—arms—and—year—ning heart!" Then came a burst of agony, and moans of desolation, till poor puzzled Dick blubbered loudly at her grief; and then her tears flowed in streams.

Trouble on trouble. Dick himself got strangely out of sorts, and complained of shivers. Phoebe sent him to bed early, and made him some white wine whey very hot. In the morning he got up, and said he was better; but after breakfast he was violently sick, and suffered several returns of nausea before noon. "One would think I was poisoned," said he.

At one o'clock he was seized with a kind of spasm in the throat that lasted so long it nearly choked him.

Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent to the nearest surgeon. He did not hurry, and poor Dick had another frightful spasm just as he came in.

"It is hysterical," said the surgeon. "No disease of the heart, is there? Give him a little sal-volatile every half hour."

In spite of the sal-volatile these terrible spasms seized him every half hour; and now he used to spring off the bed with a cry of terror when they came; and each one left him weaker and weaker; he had to be carried back by the women.

A sad, sickening fear seized on Phoebe. She left Dick with the maid, and tying on her bonnet in a moment, rushed wildly down the street, asking the neighbors for a great doctor, the best that could be had for money. One sent her east a mile, another west, and she was almost distracted, when who should drive up but Dr. and Mrs. Staines, to make purchases. She did not know his name, but she knew he was a doctor. She ran to the window, and cried, "Oh, doctor, my brother! Oh, pray come to him. Oh! oh!"

Dr. Staines got quickly, but calmly, out; told his wife to wait; and followed Phoebe up-stairs. She told him in a few agitated words how Dick had been taken, and all the symptoms; especially what had alarmed her so, his springing off the bed when the spasm came.

Dr. Staines told her to hold the patient up. He lost not a moment, but opened his mouth resolutely, and looked down.

"The glottis is swollen," said he: then he felt his hands, and said, with the grave, terrible calm of experience, "He is dying."

"Oh, no! no! Oh, doctor, save him! save him!"

"Nothing can save him, unless we had a surgeon on the spot. Yes, I might save him, if you have the courage: opening his windpipe before the next spasm is his one chance."

"Open his windpipe! Oh, doctor! It will kill him. Let me look at you."

She looked hard in his face. It gave her confidence.

"Is it the only chance?"

"The only one: and it is flying while we chatter."

"DO IT."

He whipped out his lancet.

"But I can't look on it. I trust to you and my Saviour's mercy."

She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer.

Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an incision in the windpipe, and got Dick down on his stomach, with his face over the bedside. Some blood ran, but not much. "Now!" he cried, cheerfully, "a small bellows! There's one in your parlor. Run."

Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines' direction lifted Dick a little, while the bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied to the aperture in the windpipe, and the action of the lungs delicately aided by this primitive but effectual means.

He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, wrote a hasty direction to an able surgeon near, and sent his wife off with it in the carriage.

Phoebe and he never left the patient till the surgeon came with all the instruments required; amongst the rest, with a big, tortuous pair of nippers, with which he could reach the glottis, and snip it. But they consulted, and thought it wiser to continue the surer method; and so a little tube was neatly inserted into Dick's windpipe, and his throat bandaged; and by this aperture he did his breathing for some little time.

Phoebe nursed him like a mother; and the terror and the joy did her good, and made her less desolate.

Dick was only just well when both of them were summoned to the farm, and arrived only just in time to receive their father's blessing and his last sigh.

Their elder brother, a married man, inherited the farm, and was executor. Phoebe and Dick were left fifteen hundred pounds apiece, on condition of their leaving England and going to Natal.

They knew directly what that meant. Phoebe was to be parted from a bad man, and Dick was to comfort her for the loss.

When this part of the will was read to Phoebe, she turned faint, and only her health and bodily vigor kept her from swooning right away.

But she yielded. "It is the will of the dead," said she, "and I will obey it; for, oh, if I had but listened to him more when he was alive to advise me, I should not sit here now, sick at heart and dry-eyed, when I ought to be thinking only of the good friend that is gone."

When she had come to this she became feverishly anxious to be gone. She busied herself in purchasing agricultural machines, and stores, and even stock; and to see her pinching the beasts' ribs to find their condition, and parrying all attempts to cheat her, you would never have believed she could be a love-sick woman.

Dick kept her up to the mark. He only left her to bargain with the master of a good vessel; for it was no trifle to take out horses and cows, and machines, and bales of cloth, cotton, and linen.

When that was settled they came in to town together, and Phoebe bought shrewdly, at wholesale houses in the city, for cash, and would have bargains: and the little shop in ——- Street was turned into a warehouse.

They were all ardor, as colonists should be; and what pleased Dick most, she never mentioned Falcon; yet he learned from the maid that worthy had been there twice, looking very seedy.

The day drew near. Dick was in high spirits.

"We shall soon make our fortune out there," he said; "and I'll get you a good husband."

She shuddered, but said nothing.

The evening before they were to sail, Phoebe sat alone, in her black dress, tired with work, and asking herself, sick at heart, could she ever really leave England, when the door opened softly, and Reginald Falcon, shabbily dressed, came in, and threw himself into a chair.

She started up with a scream, then sank down again, trembling, and turned her face to the wall.

"So you are going to run away from me!" said he savagely.

"Ay, Reginald," said she meekly.

"This is your fine love, is it?"

"You have worn it out, dear," she said softly, without turning her head from the wall.

"I wish I could say as much; but, curse it, every time I leave you I learn to love you more. I am never really happy but when I am with you."

"Bless you for saying that, dear. I often thought you MUST find that out one day; but you took too long."

"Oh, better late than never. Phoebe! Can you have the heart to go to the Cape, and leave me all alone in the world, with nobody that really cares for me? Surely you are not obliged to go."

"Yes; my father left Dick and me fifteen hundred pounds apiece to go: that was the condition. Poor Dick loves his unhappy sister. He won't go without me—I should be his ruin—poor Dick, that really loves me; and he lay a-dying here, and the good doctor and me—God bless him—we brought him back from the grave. Ah, you little know what I have gone through. You were not here. Catch you being near me when I am in trouble. There, I must go. I must go. I will go; if I fling myself into the sea half way."

"And, if you do, I'll take a dose of poison; for I have thrown away the truest heart, the sweetest, most unselfish, kindest, generous—oh! oh! oh!"

And he began to howl.

This set Phoebe sobbing. "Don't cry, dear," she murmured through her tears; "if you have really any love for me, come with me."

"What, leave England, and go to a desert?"

"Love can make a desert a garden."

"Phoebe, I'll do anything else. I'll swear not to leave your side. I'll never look at any other face but yours. But I can't live in Africa."

"I know you can't. It takes a little real love to go there with a poor girl like me. Ah, well, I'd have made you so happy. We are not poor emigrants. I have a horse for you to ride, and guns to shoot; and me and Dick would do all the work for you. But there are others here you can't leave for me. Well, then, good-by, dear. In Africa, or here, I shall always love you; and many a salt tear I shall shed for you yet, many a one I have, as well you know. God bless you. Pray for poor Phoebe, that goes against her will to Africa, and leaves her heart with thee."

This was too much even for the selfish Reginald. He kneeled at her knees, and took her hand, and kissed it, and actually shed a tear or two over it.

She could not speak. He had no hope of changing her resolution; and presently he heard Dick's voice outside, so he got up to avoid him. "I'll come again in the morning, before you go."

"Oh, no! no!" she gasped. "Unless you want me to die at your feet. I am almost dead now."

Reginald slipped out by the kitchen.

Dick came in, and found his sister leaning with her head back against the wall. "Why, Phoebe," said he, "whatever is the matter?" and he took her by the shoulder.

She moaned, and he felt her all limp and powerless.

"What is it, lass? Whatever is the matter? Is it about going away?"

She would not speak for a long time.

When she did speak, it was to say something for which my male reader may not be prepared. But it will not surprise the women.

"O Dick—forgive me!"

"Why, what for?"

"Forgive me, or else kill me: I don't care which."

"I do, though. There, I forgive you. Now what's your crime?"

"I can't go. Forgive me!"

"Can't go?"

"I can't. Forgive me!"

"I'm blessed if I don't believe that vagabond has been here tormenting of you again."

"Oh, don't miscall him. He is penitent. Yes, Dick, he has been here crying to me—and I can't leave him. I can't—I can't. Dear Dick! you are young and stout-hearted; take all the things over, and make your fortune out there, and leave your poor foolish sister behind. I should only fling myself into the salt sea if I left him now, and that would be peace to me, but a grief to thee."