"Don't say anything to me," said the officer. "It will be used against you."

"It came all along of my long legs," cried Nicholls, ignoring the friendly injunction, and proceeding to enlarge on the feat he had performed. "I have never had a happy hour since; I was second footman there, and a good place I had; and I have wished, thousands of times, that the bracelet had been in a sea of molten fire. Our folks had took a house in the neighbourhood of Ascot for the race week, and they had left me at home to take care of the kitchen-maid and another inferior or two, taking the rest of the servants with them. I had to clean the winders afore they returned, and I had druv it off till the Thursday evening, and out I got on the balqueny, to begin with the back drawing

"What do you say you got out on ?"

"The balqueny. The thing with the green rails round it, what encloses the winders. While I was a leaning over the rails afore I begun, I heered something like click-click, a going on in the fellow room at the next door, which was Colonel Hope's. It was like as if something light was being laid on a table, and presently I heered two voices begin to talk, a lady's and a gentleman's, and I listened—”

"No good ever comes of listening, Joe," interrupted the officer.

"I didn't listen for the sake of listening, but it was awful hot, a standing outside there in the sun, and listening was better than working. I didn't want to hear, neither, for I was thinking of my own concerns, and what a fool I was to have idled away my time all day till the sun came on to the back winders. Bit by bit, I heered what they were talking of-that it was jewels they had got there, and that one was worth two hundred guineas. Thinks I, if that was mine, I'd do no more work. After a while, I heered them go out of their room, and I thought I'd have a look at the rich things, and I stepped over slanting-ways on to the little ledge running along the houses, holding on by our balqueny, and then I passed my hands along the wall till I got hold of their balqueny-but one with ordinary legs and arms couldn't have done it. You couldn't, sir."

"Perhaps not," remarked the officer.

!

"There wasn't fur to fall, if I had fell, only on to the kitchen leads under; but I didn't fall, and I raised myself on to their balqueny, and looked in. My! what a show it was stunning jewels, all laid out there; so close that if I had put my hand inside, it must have struck all among 'em; and the fiend prompted me to take one. I didn't stop to look ; I didn't stop to think; the one that twinkled the brightest and had the most stones in it was the nearest to me, and I clutched it, and slipped it into my footman's undress jacket, and stepped back again.” "And got safe into your balcony.'

"Yes; but I didn't clean the winder that night. I was upset, like, by what I had done, and I think, if I could have put it back again, I should; but there was no opportunity. I wrapped it up in my winder leather, and then in a sheet of paper, and then I put it up the chimbley in one of the spare bedrooms. I was up the next morning afore five, and I cleaned my winders: I'd no trouble to awake myself, for I had never slept. The same day, towards evening, you called, sir, and asked me some questions -whether we had seen any one on the leads at the back, and such

like. I said as master was just come home from Ascot, would you be pleased to speak to him."

"Ah!" again remarked the officer, "you were a clever fellow that day. But if my suspicions had not been strongly directed to another quarter, I might have looked you up more sharply.

"I kep' it by me for a month or two, and then I gave warning to leave. I thought I'd have my fling, and I became acquainted with her -that lady-and somehow she wormed out of me that I had got it, and I let her dispose of it for me, for she said she knew how to do it without danger."

"What did you get for it?"

The skeleton shook his head. "Thirty-four pound, and I had counted on a hundred and fifty. She took a oath she had not helped herself to a sixpence."

"Oaths are plentiful with the genus," remarked the detective.

"She stood to it she hadn't, and she stopped and helped me to spend it. After that was done, she went over to stop with somebody else who was in luck; and I have tried to go on, and I can't: honestly or dishonestly it seems all one, nothing prospers, and I'm naked and famishing-and I wish I was dying."

"Evil courses never do prosper, Nicholls," said the officer, as he called in the policemen, and consigned the gentleman to their care. So Gerard Hope was innocent!

"But how was it you skilful detectives could not be on this man's scent ?" asked Colonel Hope of the officer, when he heard the tale.

"Colonel, I was thrown off it. Your positive belief in your nephew's guilt infected me, and appearances were very strong against him. Miss Seaton also helped to throw me off: she said, if you remember, that she did not leave the room; but it now appears that she did leave it when your nephew did, though only for a few moments. Those few moments

sufficed to do the job."

"It's strange she could not tell the exact truth," growled the colonel. "She probably thought she was exact enough, since she only remained outside the door, and could answer for it that no one entered by it. She forgot the window. I thought of the window the instant the loss was mentioned to me, but Miss Seaton's assertion that she never had the window out of her view, prevented my dwelling on it. I did go to the next door, and saw this very fellow who committed the robbery, but his manner was sufficiently satisfactory. He talked too freely; I did not like that; but I found he had been in the same service fifteen months: and, as I must repeat, I laid the guilt to another."

"It is a confoundedly unpleasant affair for me," cried the colonel; "I have published my nephew's disgrace and guilt all over London." "It is more unpleasant for him, colonel," was the rejoinder of the

officer.

"And I have kept him short of money, and suffered him to be sued for debt; and I have let him go and live amongst the runaway scamps over the water, and not hindered his engaging himself as a merchant's clerk and in short, I have played up the very deuce with him."

"But reparation is doubtless in your own heart and hands, colonel." "I don't know that, sir," testily concluded the colonel.

III.

ONCE more Gerard Hope entered his uncle's house; not as an interloper, stealing into it in secret, but as an honoured guest, to whom reparation was due, and must be made. Alice Seaton leaned back in her invalid chair, a joyous flush on her wasted cheek, and a joyous happiness in her eye. Still the shadow of coming death was there, and Mr. Hope was shocked to see her-more shocked and startled than he had expected, or chose to express.

"Oh, Alice! what has done this?"

"That," she answered, pointing to the bracelet, which, returned to its true owner, lay on the table. "I should not have lived many years; of

that I am convinced; but I might have lived a little longer than I now shall. It has been the cause of misery to many, and Lady Sarah says she shall never regard it but as an ill-starred trinket, or wear it with any pleasure."

"But, Alice, why should you have suffered it thus to affect you?" he remonstrated. "You knew your own innocence, and you say you believed and trusted in mine: what did you fear ?"

"I will tell you, Gerard," she resumed, a deeper hectic rising to her cheeks. "I could not have confessed my fear, even in dying; it was too distressing, too terrible; but now that it is all clear, I will tell it. 1 believed my sister had taken the bracelet."

He uttered an exclamation of amazement.

"I have believed it all along. She had called to see me that night, and was, for a minute or two, in the room alone with the bracelets: I knew she, at that time, was short of money, and I feared she had been tempted to take it-just as this unfortunate servant man was tempted. Oh, Gerard, the dread of it has been upou me night and day, preying upon my fears, weighing down my spirits, wearing away my health and my life. And I had to bear it all in silence: it is that dreadful silence which has killed me.'

"Alice, this must have been a morbid fear."

"Not so-if you knew all. But now that I have told you, let us not revert to it again: it is at an end, and I am very thankful. That it should so end, has been my prayer and hope: not quite the only hope," she added, looking up at him with a sunny smile; "I have had an

other."

"What is it? You look as if it were connected with me." "So it is. Ah, Gerard! can you not guess it?"

"No," he answered, in a stifled voice, "I can only guess that you are

lost to me."

"Lost to all here. Have you forgotten our brief conversation, the night you went into exile? I told you then there was one far more worthy of you than I could have ever been."

"None will ever be half so worthy: or-I will say it, Alice, in spite of your warning hand-half so loved."

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you.”

Gerard," she continued, sinking her voice, "she has waited for

"Nonsense," he rejoined.

She has. I have watched, and seen, and I know it; and I tell it

you under secrecy: when she is your wife, not before, you may tell her that I saw it and said it. She is a lovable and attractive girl, and she does not and will not marry: you are the cause."

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'My darling

"Stay, Gerard," she gravely interrupted; "those words of endearment are not for me. Give them to her: can you deny that you love her?" "Perhaps I do-in a degree. Next to yourself

"Put me out of your thoughts while we speak. If I were-where I so soon shall be, would she not be dearer to you than any one on earth? would you not be well pleased to make her your wife ?"

"Yes, I might be."

"That is enough, Gerard. Frances, come hither."

The conversation had been carried on in a whisper, and Lady Frances Chenevix came towards them from a distant window.

hand; she also held Gerard's.

Alice took her

"I thought you were talking secrets," said Lady Frances, "so kept away."

"As we were," answered Alice. "Frances, what can we do to keep him amongst us? Do you know what Colonel Hope has told him ?" "No. What?"

"That though he shall be reinstated in favour as to money matters, he shall not be in his affection or in the house, unless he prove sorry for his rebellion by retracting it. The rebellion, you know, at the first outbreak, when Gerard was expelled the house-before that unlucky bracelet was ever bought. I think he is sorry for it: you must help him to be

more so.

Fanny," said Gerard, while her eyelids drooped, and the damask mantled in her cheek, deeper than Alice's hectic, "will you help me?"

"As if I could make out head or tail of what you two are discussing!" cried she, by way of helping herself out of her confusion, as she attempted to turn away; but Gerard caught her to his side and detained her. "Fanny will you drive me again from the house ?"

She lifted her eyes, twinkling with a little spice of mischief: “I did not drive you before."

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"In a manner, yes," he laughed. Do you know what did drive me?" She had known it at the time: and Gerard read it in her conscious face.

"I see it all," he murmured, drawing her closer to him; "you have been far kinder to me than I deserved. Fanny, let me try and repay you for it."

Frances endeavoured to look dignified, but it would not do, and she was obliged to brush away the tears of happiness that struggled to her eyes. Alice caught their hands together and held them between her own, with a mental aspiration for their life's future happiness. Some time back she could not have breathed it in so fervent a spirit: but-as she had said—the present world and its hopes had closed to her.

"But you know, Gerard," cried Lady Frances, in a saucy tone, “if you ever do help yourself to a bracelet in reality, you must not expect me to go to prison with you."

"Yes I shall," answered he, far more saucily: "a wife must follow the fortunes of her husband."

MADAME DE POMPADOUR.*

THE marriage of the Dauphin with the Infanta of Spain (January, 1745) was celebrated with unusual magnificence, not only to do justice to the happy occasion itself, but also in order to amuse the king, Louis XV., at that time suffering from the loss of his last favourite, Madame de Châteauroux. At Versailles, there were feasts in the château, festivals in the gardens, and boating on the waters; at Compèigne, there was hunting; and at Fontainebleau, illuminations and fishing by torchlight.

The city of Paris, at that time participating in all the joys and all the griefs of the royal family, wished also to celebrate the wedding in a worthy manner. The provost of the merchants gave a grand entertainment in a kind of temporary conservatory, but the most splendid of all the fêtes was that given at the Hôtel de Ville, the palace of the bourgeoisie.

It was on that occasion that the king, ever susceptible to new impressions, and possibly not disinclined to fill the vacuum that tormented him, distinguished from amidst the crowd there assembled a young woman scarcely twenty-one years of age, fair, with loose hair, and disguised as Diana hunting. The costume which she wore was that of a nymph, quiver on her back, bow in her hand, and she pretended to be aiming an arrow at the king. The prince, with his usual gallantry, stepped up to the beautiful Diana, and said to her, in his most gracious manner, "Fair mistress, the wounds that you inflict are mortal." After having made a suitable and tender reply, the nymph disappeared in the crowd, leaving the king in ecstatic rapture. He was not long before he found out his Diana again, when, entering into conversation with her, he detected in his new acquaintance a young person, who whenever his hunts took him to the forest of Sénart, followed him on horseback, or in an elegant shell of rock crystal (!) drawn by two sorrel horses.

Louis XV. had so far recognised this amiable perseverance as to send the lady occasionally a reminiscence of the hunt in the shape of stags' horns, a boar's ham, or a fox's tail; the Château d'Etioles, where she dwelt, was also well known to him; but at that time, wholly devoted to Madame de Châteauroux, he paid little attention to the fair huntress of the forest of Sénart, who, on her side, was at once exceedingly discreet and very cautious in the approaches which she made to royal favour, having always in view the entire affections of the king, and not the mere gratification of a vulgar and passing caprice.

The Château d'Etioles, a fairy creation, adorned with all that luxury and taste which distinguished the eighteenth century, was charmingly situated at the extremity of the forest of Sénart, at the point where the Seine approaches Corbeil. Etioles, since created a marquisate, was the property of Jean Baptiste Lenormand, nephew of the wealthy Lenormand de Turneheim, one of the leading farmers-general of the epoch. This M. Lenormand Etioles wedded, the 17th of January, 1739, JeanneAntoinette Poisson, daughter of Antoine Poisson, of the house of the brothers Pâris, also wealthy farmers, contractors, and financiers of the

* Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. Par M. Capefigue.