and speaker, and was really a very clever and accomplished young gentleman. In a few years, when the centre of his faith has shifted somewhat, he will even be endurable; but at present he is a prig. However, Norah doesn't fall to him to be taken in to dinner but to the host; who, perceiving at last that she was very pretty indeed, became ponderously gracious to her. He explained to her that it was the Springthorpe air—of which he spoke as though he kept it bottled in his cellar with his wines-that made her sleep so soundly and long; and cited, seemingly as a parallel case, the cure of sleeplessness in dipsomaniacs in the Springthorpe hydropathic establishments, as due altogether to the ozone of the air. As Mr. Summers spoke slowly and thoughtfully, this subject lasted him through the soup and half way through the fish, when he passed to one of even greater interest-namely, an occasion when he had himself slept for fifteen hours at a stretch. As this was an incident of absorbing and universal interest, Mr. Summers entered into all its circumstances and addressed himself to the whole table, hanging in mute attention upon his lips. It had happened in his youth, in his bachelor days, in Scotland in an inn after a long day's shooting in which he had made a moderate bag (its contents were duly detailed), and after which he had made not so moderate a dinner (dishes detailed all but one, of which he was not quite certain at this distance of time). However, he went to bed at ten o'clock, and did not wake once till one the next day! Here he looked round from guest to guest for expressions of amazement, and came last to Miles, who could think of nothing better to say in response to the mute appeal than--'I should think Saundy made you pay for a double-bedded room.'

"Eh?'

They didn't charge you for a double-bedded room?'

'We had separate bedrooms,' said Mr. Summers stiffly, affronted by this suggestion that he and his shooting companion had shared the same bedroom. Then Miles had to explain his quotation from Dick Swiveller at length and amid the densest silence, with the result that when he came to Dick's demand that the irascible lodger should pay for a double-bedded room, Mr. Summers said

'He didn't pay, of course?'

'It was only a joke,' said Miles.

'It would have been past a joke if he had paid,' replied Mr. Summers; and this, which really was a joke, tickled him so much that he repeated it, looking round again from face to face, and saying to Norah, ‘Eh, Miss Wyndham, what do you say?' Norah, not venturing to say anything, Mr. Summers looked once more

round the table beaming with pride and enjoyment of his joke, which put him in perfect good humour with Miles and everyone else. But I quite agree with what you say, Mr. Wyndham, about the extortion of the Scotch,' he continued, addressing himself first to Miles, but, when the interest of his subject grew thrilling, to the table at large. For on a subsequent visit to Scotland I put up at an inn at Inverness, the Imperial I think, and was charged five shillings for a bottle of corked port I couldn't drink. Five shillings, by Jove! for a bottle of bad port which I never drank! I declined point-blank to pay-the fellow swore he would make me pay, and absolutely summoned me for the five shillings! I was advised to pay and have done with it--I declined. I declined even to employ a lawyer. I appeared in court personally; put the whole case at length before the magistrate, exposed in a speech of twenty minutes the scoundrel's extortion in charging a crown for a bottle of bad port, and won the case, sir, in a canter!'

'Oratio de Coronâ,' muttered Miles, to whose freehandedness this fuss about five shillings, a debt which was certainly due, seemed contemptible. This time, however, he didn't venture to utter his joke aloud, though he was not able to suppress it altogether. It was a ready pun and a happy sarcasm at the disproportionate importance Mr. Summers gave the paltry business-at any rate Mr. Chillingham, who caught the words, thought so. Bending across Miss Carrie, who sat between himself and Miles, he said, Pray don't explain that joke, Mr. Wyndham; it would be "murder to dissect " it.'

'Oh, do explain it, Mr. Wyndham, I love a joke so-do tell me,' cried Carrie, suspecting a sarcasm and hoping to make mild mischief of some kind.

I said Mr. Summers made a speech for the Crown,' replied Miles in the hope of making this pun intelligible. He was not going to be trapped again into a lengthy explanation, by which a joke, like a perfume long exposed, becomes vapid to nauseousBut Carrie could make no more of the English than of the Latin pun. However, she affected to understand it, and in order to show and share her enjoyment of it, she cried out, 'Papa, do you know what Mr. Wyndham says? He says that at Inverness you made a speech for the Crown.'

ness.

I

'Not for the Crown. For the defence; for the defence. was defendant in the case, Mr. Wyndham, and the Crown is usually plaintiff or prosecutor.' Mr. Summers spoke with unusual weight, being a specialist and expert in this matter as a magistrate. I am, sir, under the king in some authority.' Miles had the wisdom this time to keep silence and to accept

with perfect gravity Mr. Summers' correction on this recondite point of forensic practice.

It will be seen from this specimen of the conversation that, with the exception of the host's 'past-a-joke' jest, there was nothing to enliven a dull dinner. Mr. Summers monopolised the attention of the table—as he always did when he had himself for a subject—and his stories, though of absorbing interest, no doubt, were not exactly lively. Such as it was, however, the conversation indirectly affected our heroine's fortunes through attracting Mr. Chillingham to her father. Being fresh from Oxford, he naturally thought Miles' classical pun admirably apt and ready, and, after the ladies had left the room, he devoted himself with the pertinacity of an American interviewer to get all the Irish information he could out of such an evidently shrewd and quick observer. Mr. Chillingham had the sympathetic interest in Ireland, common amongst English Radicals, which is precisely that a doctor feels in a case that will test crucially the truth of a treasured theory. He couldn't feel, or affect to feel, a liking for the Irish ; still less could he pretend to regard them as on a level-not to say with the English-but with any other Western Aryan race; but their very inferiority would put his principles to the most trying and triumphant test. Besides, whatever they were, they had been brutally ill-used by the privileged classes, and were at least as much entitled to legal protection from ill-usage as the dumb creatures beneath the safeguard of S. P. C. A.

These, in brief, were Mr. Chillingham's views on the Irish question, held impregnably and expressed ex cathedrâ, and he was glad to get from Miles such information as confirmed them. Information which did not confirm them he naturally put aside as prejudiced. No one made a more liberal allowance for prejudice -in others than Mr. Chillingham.

ears.

As for Miles, he had his prejudices of course. His views, for instance, of the relative brutality and animalism of the two peoples, English and Irish, would have sounded simply insane to English But as Miles knew they might to much more advantage be howled out in the desert air, where hearing should not latch them,' than addressed to English ears, he kept them discreetly to himself. Thus he and Mr. Chillingham got on so well that the latter insisted on his spending Tuesday next with him to meet and enlighten about Ireland a Secretary of State, who was coming down to support by a speech in a neighbouring town the candidature of our Radical friend. Miles declined, feeling a delicacy about accepting an invitation in which his host was not included; but, on Mr. Summers himself urging his acceptance of it, he at length

gave way under the flattering pressure put upon him by Mr. Chillingham. He did think a good deal of Norah's loneliness without him in such a house, but he couldn't well plead this excuse and he had no other to offer. His absence on that day made, as we shall see, a much more serious difference to Norah than he could have imagined.

Meanwhile Norah was having a dreary time of it in the drawing-room. Carrie, who was sprightliness itself in the diningroom, became suddenly limp, listless, and even sullen as the door closed behind the ladies on their exit. Mr. Chillingham's attention to her had not been as marked as she had expected and had given Norah to expect; wherefore she was naturally aggrieved with Norah. Miss Summers, who was resolved to baffle Norah's crafty and shameless pursuit of her brother, entertained her guest with a photographic album, in which she pointed out all the portraits of all the great people of their acquaintance, but especially that of a young lady to whom, she said, her brother was, to all intents and purposes, engaged. She showed her hand so clumsily by making a dead set at this photograph and dinning again and again into her guest's ears the fact of her brother's virtual engagement, that it was impossible for Norah to misunderstand her drift. As for Mrs. Summers, having complained of a complaint of the under-housemaid about over-work in connection with the preparation of Miles' and Norah's bedrooms, she relapsed into her usual apathetic silence-Norah thought to herself that the poorest Irish peasant was incomparably better mannered than these rich English people-had more of the root of the matter' in him. He would certainly have shown deeper insight and sympathy, a more sensitive consideration for her feelings, and a disinterested eagerness to please infinitely greater.

CHAPTER XIX.

A DUENNA.

All seems infected that th' infected spy,

As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.— POPE.

A CERTAIN Mrs. Chinnock, an old lady with the most charitable hand and the most uncharitable tongue (no uncommon combination) in Springthorpe, said two years since to Miss Summers on her becoming a pronounced devotee, I wouldn't give it up for a year yet, my dear, if I were you.' An oracular speech which Miss Summers, though not by any means a quick-witted person, was at no loss to interpret. Her knowledge at once of herself and of Mrs..

Chinnock made its meaning unmistakable by her. It was, indeed, similar advice to that Mistress Quickly gave Falstaff: How now, Sir John!' quoth I, 'What, man! be o' good cheer. So a' cried out, "God, God, God!" three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.'

In fact, Mrs. Chinnock meant to suggest that religion was a resource of despair to spinsters of a certain age. It cannot be denied that there was truth in the suggestion; for, speaking generally, the Church receives into its charitable bosom the failures of both sexes. It may be remarked, too, as regards the gentler sex, that the most devoted votaries of pleasure become the most devout votaries of piety; and that flirts especially develop into fervent devotees. It is only a mild illustration of the Hudibrastic aphorism :

The greatest saints and sinners have been made

Of proselytes of one another's trade.

At all events, it is true of Miss Summers that the Church's gain was proportionate to Mammon's loss. Her fervour now as a fanatic was as glowing and aggressive as had been her fervour as a flirt in her unregenerate days. Among Rochefoucauld's maxims occurs a reflection which gives the key to the aggressiveness at least of her fanaticism. 'Les Vieillards aiment à donner de bons préceptes, pour se consoler de n'être plus en état de donner de mauvais exemples.' She put the cross she took up to the same use that the provoked priest in the Irish story put the sacred symbol-the belabouring with it of the enemy. She never missed a chance of pointing out the impiety of the profane; and it may truly be said that religion was twice blessed to her in the assurance it gave her at once of her own security and of the insecurity of her friends. In a word, she was a spiteful old maid who found a free duct for her bile in the channel of religion.

When the gentlemen had adjourned to the drawing-room on the evening of Norah's arrival, Miss Summers contrived to throw together her and Mr. Chillingham, to the common discomfiture of her brother and sister. For Mr. Chillingham and Norah got on so well together that Carrie was furious and her brother uncomfortable with jealousy. Mr. Chillingham, getting at once on to the subject of Ireland, of course got at once into hot water; for there were only two other subjects on which Norah felt so warmly, and she had an uncompromising and positive way of expressing her opinions on any question she had decided for herself, which, in a very pretty, bright, and winning girl, was irresistible to such an antagonist as Mr. Chillingham. Of course if a girl, however pretty, witty, or