of commencing a new season at the Bonbonnière for the next few

months?'

“H. gave a long whistle.

'My dear boy, don't think of it,' he exclaimed; it can't be done. We must open the theatre, make what money we can; and if we can't make a composition, we had better go through the court.'

'But Carlitz!' I remonstrated.

'Carlitz is dying,' replied H., with supreme carelessness, 'has been dying for the last four years. It's very trying for her. She'd have been driving in her barouche, with strawberry-leaves on the panel, by this time, if he hadn't been so long about it. But a man can't go on dying for ever, you know; there must be a limit to that sort of thing.' 'You talk of a composition. Would a cheque for a thousand pounds enable her to satisfy her creditors?'

"Mr. H. deliberated.

'Fifteen hundred might do,' he said presently; 'Snoggs and Bangham, the builders, must have a decent lump of money to stop their mouths; and there's Caliks the florist, an uncommonly tough customer. Yes, I think something between fifteen hundred and two thousand would do it.'

'You must contrive to settle matters for fifteen hundred,' I said. 'I know what a clever financier you are, H. Take me to your room, and give me a pen and ink. I have been sending away money this morning, and happen to have my cheque-book in my pocket.'

'My dear fellow, this generosity is really something utterly unprecedented, and completely overpowering,' exclaimed H., in a fat choking voice. But I doubt if madame will be induced to accept a loan of this nature. If she does avail herself of your generous offer, the matter must of course be placed on a strictly business-like footing. If a bill of sale on the wardrobe and musical library of the Bonbonnière would satisfy your legal adviser as security—'

"I assured Mr. H. that nothing could be farther from my thoughts than the desire to secure myself from loss by means of a bill of sale.

'The very name of such an instrument sets my teeth on edge,' I said; the money will be to all intents and purposes a free gift, but it may be better to call it a loan.'

My dear fellow,' cried H. with a gulp, expressive of generous emotion, this is noble. But you don't know madame. Proud, sir, proud as Lucifer.'

"I remembered that little scene in the glen, and could not dispute the fact of the lady's haughty and somewhat impracticable mind.

'It can't be done, sir,' said H. decisively; it's a pity, but it can't be done.'

'Why not? Madame Carlitz knows nothing of business matters. I have heard her say as much fifty times.'

A mere child, sir-a baby.'

In that case there is no difficulty. I will write the cheque; you will settle with the tradesmen, and tell Madame Carlitz nothing except that those obnoxious persons are satisfied. You may take as much credit as you please for your financial powers; I shall not betray the secret of the affair.'

'Upon my word, my dear friend, you are a prince!' said H. with enthusiasm.

"Nor did he make any further difficulty. We finished our cigars, and went into the house together, with stealthy footsteps; for the thing we were about to do was a kind of treason. H. led me into a little room which he called his den-a room in which he had spent many weary hours trying to square the circle of madame's pecuniary embarrassments.

"I wrote a cheque for 15007., payable to the order of the divine Carlitz.

'She will indorse it without looking at it, I suppose ?' I said.

'My dear sir, she would indorse the bond of a compact with Mephistopheles. In business matters she is perfectly infantine. I think she has a vague notion that her creditors can send her to the Tower, and have her head cut off, if she fails to satisfy their demands.'

"On this we went back to the drawing-room, where madame asked me, with a pretty, half-offended air, why I had been so long absent. Then H. brewed some Maraschino punch, which was supposed to be an Olympian beverage, and madame was more charming than ever. If I had been capable of thinking twice of a sum of money squandered on a pretty woman-which I was not--I should have been amply rewarded for my generosity. But I could afford to waste a thousand or two on the caprice of the moment without fear of remorseful twinges or economical regrets after the deed was done.

"It was late when I left the Lodge. Madame and H. followed me to the gate, and bade me good-night under the soft summer stars. Her gaiety had left her by one of those sudden changes that made her charming; and she looked and spoke with a tender sadness as we parted.

'If I could believe in her depth of feeling, if I could hope-' I said to myself, after that pensive parting; and then I remembered the sands at B- and the vows that I had vowed, and the dreams that I had dreamed.

'No,' I said, if I could trust her, I could not trust myself. With passion and reality I have finished. Let amusement be the business of my life. I will love as Horace loved, and my motto shall be, Vogue la galère.

"I had only walked a few yards away from the gate when I remembered that I had left my light overcoat, with a pocket full of letters and papers, in the hall. I ran back; the gate was open, the door open too. I went in, and took my coat from its peg. As I did so, I was

surprised to hear a silvery peal of laughter-long and joyous, nay indeed triumphant, from my enchantress. H.'s bass guffaw sustained the sweet soprano peal; and even placid Mrs. H. assisted with a cheerful second.

"And but three minutes before she had looked at me with eyes so tenderly mournful, had spoken with tones so sadly sweet!

"I lifted the portière and looked into the room.

'I have come back for my coat,' I said.

"The laughter ceased with suspicious abruptness.

'O, do come in! This absurd H. has been telling us the most ridiculous story about Fred M. Of course you know Fred M.?' cried madame, in nowise disconcerted.

"She insisted that I should stay to hear the anecdote, which H. told for my benefit, with sufficient fluency, and a dash of that clubhouse mimicry which passes current for faithful imitation. I did not find the anecdote overpoweringly funny; but the lady sounded her peal of silver bells again, long and loudly as before, and I was fain to believe that this frivolous semi-scandalous relation had been the cause of the laughter that had startled and surprised me.

"I was not altogether convinced; and that nice appreciation of club-house anecdotes did not appear to me an excellent thing in woman. My adieux were brief and cold, and I walked homeward somewhat désillusionné.

CHAPTER XXVII.

VALE.

"AT my own quarters trouble unutterable awaited me. While I had amused myself with the more piquant society of Gulnare, my sad sweet love-my Medora-had fled from her solitary bower. I found my household gods shattered; and standing among their ruins I was fain to confess that I had deserved the stroke. She was gone. The poor child had borne my absence so uncomplainingly that I had been almost inclined to resent a patience that seemed like coldness. Had she been more demonstrative-had her affection or her jealousy assumed a more dramatic and soul-stirring form-it might have been better for both of us. But the poor child locked all her feelings so closely in her breast, that she had of late seemed to me the tamest and dullest of womankind ―an automaton with a wobegone face.

"The woman who waited upon her in that rude mountain home told me that she was gone. She had gone out early in the day-soon after my own departure-and had not been seen since that time. She had seen me in a carriage with a strange lady, and had, by some means, possessed herself of the secret of my visits to the lodge in the valley. This very woman had, perhaps, been C.'s informant, though she stoutly denied the fact when I taxed her with it.

"She was gone. It mattered little how she had obtained the information that had prompted her to this mad act. For some minutes I stood motionless on the spot where I had heard these tidings, powerless to decide what I ought to do. And then, sudden as shaft of Apollo the destroyer, there darted into my brain the idea of suicide. That poor benighted child had left her cheerless home to destroy herself.

"I rushed from the house, pausing only to bid the woman send her husband after me with a lantern and a rope. What I was going to do I knew not. My first impulse was to seek her myself, along that desolate coast. She might wander for hours by the sea she loved so well, shrinking from that cold refuge, loth to fling herself into the strong arms of that stern lover for whom she would fain forsake me.

"I waited only till I saw D. emerge with his dimly-twinkling light, called to him to follow me, and then ran down the craggy winding way -the Devil's Staircase-to the sands below.

"And then I remembered the heights above me-the little classic temple in which we had so often sat—and I shivered as I thought what a fearful leap madness might take from that rocky headland. I had told C. the story of Sappho,-of course giving her the ideal Sappho of modern poesy, and not the flaunting, wine-bibbing, strong-minded, wrong-minded Mitylenean lady of Attic comedy,-and we had agreed that Phaon-if indeed there ever existed such a person-was a monster.

"As I hurried along those lonely sands, dark with the shadows of the heights above, I remembered the soft spring sunset in which I had related the well-worn fable, and I could almost feel my love's little hand clinging tenderly to my arm-the hand whose gentle touch I never was to feel again.

"I will not excruciate thee, reader, or bore thee, as the case may be, by one of those prolonged intervals of suspense whereby the venal hack of the Minerva Press would attempt to harrow thy feelings, and eke out his tale of strawless brick. For thee, too, life has had its fond hopes and idle dreams, its bitter disappointments, chilling disillusions, dark hours of remorse.

"Enough that in this crisis I suffered-suffered as I have never suffered since that day. My search was in vain; nor were the efforts of the men whom I sent in all directions of the coast-by the cliff and by the sands of more avail. For two days and two nights I suffered the tortures of Cain. I told myself that this girl's blood was upon my head; and if, in that hour when the thought of her untimely death was so keen and unendurable an agony, she could have appeared suddenly before me, I think I should have thrown myself at her feet and offered her the devotion of my life, the legal right to bear my name.

"She did not so appear, and the hour passed. Upon the third morning, after a delay that had seemed an eternity of torture, the post brought me a letter from C. She was at E, whither she had gone, after long brooding upon my inconstancy.

VOL. V.

'I will not try to tell you all I have suffered,' she wrote; 'my most passionate words would seem to you cold and meaningless when measured against those Greek poets whose verse is your standard for every feeling. I will only say you have broken my heart. My story begins and ends in that one sentence. There must come an end even to such worship as mine. O, H., you have been very cruel to me! I have seen you with the beautiful foreign lady whose society has been pleasanter to you than mine. Your carriage drove past me one day, as I stood half-hidden by the bushes upon a sloping bank above the road, and I heard her joyous laugh, and saw your head bent over her long dark ringlets, and knew that you were happy with her.

From the hour in which I discovered how utterly you had deceived me, my life has been one continued struggle with despair. You do not know how I loved those whom I left for your sake. In all the passion and pain of your Greek poetry, I doubt if there is a sentence strong enough to express the agony that I feel when I think of those dear friends, and stretch out my arms to them across the gulf that yawns between us. You read me a description of the ghosts in the dark under-world one day, before you had grown too weary of me to let me share your thoughts. I feel like those ghosts, H.

'Why should I tire you with a long letter? I leave you free to find happiness with the lady whose name even I do not know.

Perhaps some day, when you are growing old, and have become weary of all the pleasures upon earth, you will think a little more tenderly of her who thought it a small thing to peril her soul in the hope of giving you happiness, and who awoke from her fond foolish dream to find, with anguish unspeakable, that the sacrifice had been as vain as it was wicked.'

"This letter melted me; and yet I was inclined to be angry with C. for the unnecessary pain her abrupt disappearance had inflicted upon me. I was divided between this feeling and the relief of mind afforded by the knowledge that my folly had not resulted in any fatal event. She had gone to E- in a fit of jealousy, and she favoured me with the usual feminine reproaches so natural to the narrow female intellect -imagine a man reminding his friend at every turn of the sacrifices he had made for friendship!-and she sent me the address of that humble inn where she had taken up her abode, and of course expected me to hasten thither as fast as post-horses could convey me.

"Nothing could be more hackneyed than the end of the little romance. I will not say that I was capable of feeling disappointed because the poor child had not drowned herself; but I confess that this commonplace turn which the affair had taken grated on my sense of the poetical. It is possible that I had indeed learnt to measure everything by the standard of Greek verse; certain it is that it seemed a sinking in poetry to descend from Sappho's fatal leap to a commercialtraveller's tavern at E——.