CHAP. III.

"JACK has become quite fond again, I declare, of Ianthe," said Mrs. Jackson to her husband, "quite a good husband.”

"Umph!"

"You may say umph, as long as you like, Mr. J., but he never leaves her side; he is quite attentive-like. I only hope, poor dears, they will have fine weather for their passage to-morrow."

"I tell you what it is, Mrs. J., I don't above half-like this trip abroad. We never went abroad in our lives."

"Oh, but then there is such a difference," said Mrs. Jackson, who idolised her daughter, and who had the eye of a sexagenarian for Jack Grandison's points.

"Difference; I don't like differences."

"Well, don't let us have any, my dear," was the wife's quiet retort, and the conversation changed.

Jack Grandison had proposed to his wife to go upon the continent. His habits lately had entirely changed. He had become a pattern-man, and to cure himself radically, to break with former bad associates and bad associations, he had proposed a twelvemonth's absence from England. Janthe, doatingly fond of her spouse, wildly jealous of him, full of girlish romance about Childe Harold, and the Drachenfels, and Venetian gondolas, and the Colosseum, with a macedoine of scenery, and sentiment, which she had been cooking all her teens, and longed to get sick off eagerly assented to his proposal, and obtained her parent's consent.

They had a charming passage in the Princess Alice to Ostend. They reached the Rhine without any other adventure than a flirtation of Jack's with Mademoiselle Félicie, his wife's maid. He was so thoroughly bored, that he was obliged to do something; but as a proof of the change for good, which had been effected in him, he consented to her being cashiered, and did not interpose a word in her defence.

It was also, very much in favour of the genuineness of Jack's reform, that he withstood all the gambling temptations of Ems, Wiesbaden, Homburg, and Baden. It was in vain that MM. Chabert, Blanc, and Benazet, the monarchs of these famous watering-places, preferred before him their irrefragable banks. Jack looked on unmoved.

"What an enormous sum!" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Grandison, as a Russian prince flung fifteen thousand francs carelessly upon the rouge at Baden. There was speculation in her manufacturing blood, and she looked on eagerly.

The Russian prince won.

Mrs. Grandison was in a transport of excitement, and could not help showing her surprise at her husband's coolness, who was yawning.

"Pooh!" my dear, he said, "there are greater stakes in life than

that."

Shortly afterwards the Grandisons left Baden: they proceeded on to Freyberg, and Jack proposed going by the Valley of Hell to SchaffhauMrs. Grandison, unlike Marshal Villars of yore, who declined attempting the pass, saying, "He was not devil enough," was enchanted with the idea. It was a glorious summer-day, the waters

sen.

of the Treisam sparkled in the sun, the enormous grey old rocks were gilded here and there with bright and various colours, there was the softest possible breeze singing in the magnificent wood which overhung the defile. Jack, too, was in the most amiable of humours; he pointed out all the merits of Moreau's retreat through this romantic valley, as if he had studied strategy all his life. He wrapped her shawl around her when there was the least increase of wind. He had never been since their marriage so agreeable or so charming.

Mrs. Jack Grandison, in going to bed at Donaneschingen, whither they had diverged to break the journey, took one of those opportunities, so dear to the domestic, of telling Jack, that it was the happiest day of her life.

"The next day, she wanted," she said, "to go and see the source of the Danube, and the palace of the Prince of Furstenburg, one of those poor devils of Mediatised princes, who are only to be compared in European history to Lord Ripon, having been at the top of the tree, and who now hang half way from it.

Very early on the ensuing morning, Jack awakened her, and with a tenderness which touched his wife more than any other passage in their conjugal life, insisted upon getting her asses' milk himself.

"Since Felicie is gone," said Jack, "you have not taken it regularly."

Ianthe, whose eyes glistened with a grateful joy at the reminiscence of her power over Jack in the downfall of the perfidious abigail, took the glass from his hands and said,

"Thank you, dearest."

It might be that Jack was revolted at her over-affectionateness, for after he had given her the glass he turned his back upon her and walked to the window.

A strange feeling of suffocation came over him. He threw open the window; he looked into the fresh green fields, and the material world seemed happy in the morning sunshine, Jack thought perhaps because it could not feel. After a minute of tremendous agony, in which he saw as much into himself as drowning men do, Jack walked deliberately to the bell. He pulled it. By the time the courier had reached the room Jack's feelings were distorted into an appearance of almost intolerable anguish.

"Your poor mistress, your poor mistress; she is dead! Good God! she is dead!"

The Italian, quick as lightning, was already at the bedside, and there, as if in a calm and peaceful slumber, lay the corpse of the ill wedded lady. There was not a mark, or stain, or speck upon her features, a proof how subtle had been the poison Jack had used. The courier was not without suspicion. Jack's first words had reference not to his own feelings, but to another's he had not said my poor wife, but your poor mistress. All this was suggestive to the ardent and creative,mind of the Italian, but then they are familiarized to violence-forget almost as soon as they have guesseddestroy the moment after they have built.

Thus eight months afterwards, when Jack landed in England, in deep mourning, an object of much fashionable sympathy (he had secured 100,000%. down with his wife, which was now his own) it mattered little

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to him that his father-in-law shuddered as he looked upon him with a fixed, hard, tearless gaze, and that poor Mrs. Jackson shrieked and tore her hair, and wailed in simple and deep grief for her lost child.

Two years afterwards there might have been seen upon the steps of Crockford's, upon a fine night like that with which our tale commenced There were Horace Vere, Crossbuttock, St. many of our characters. Hyacinth, John Positive, Henry Winnington, and a large throng of loungers.

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Shall you go to Jack's wedding to-morrow?" asked Horace Vere of St. Hyacinth.

"Oh yes! I must, of course;

an odd fellow he has become."

I am so intimate with him. But what

"How do you mean ?" asked Horace.

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Why, the other day we were sitting at the St. James's-the pretty Melusina was there they were discussing over the map, their wedding trip, and she proposed the Rhine, when all of a sudden Jack grew as black as the devil, contradicted her, would not hear of it, and behaved like a brute. He will beat her, you will see.

"What could make her accept?" asked Crossbuttock, very slowly. He had been refused himself, for the pretty Melusina had a will of her

own.

"Oh, Jack will be a cabinet minister before long if humanity plays trumps. His speech on the Abolition of the Punishment of Death the other night, was magnificent!" exclaimed Lord John Positive.

"It is a Machiavelian mind, Jack's!" said Horace Vere, slowly and sententiously.

"Very," said Winnington.

at Norwood, Vere ?"

"Do you remember Parthenope's dinner

"Ah, to be sure, with the two Belles."

"How strange, is it not, that that dinner should have determined the destiny of a young girl then not out, who was probably thinking of nothing more grave than her German lesson."

"What are you moralising about, Winnington ?" asked St. Hyacinth. Why, that Lady Melusina de Bohun's fate, the marriage of one of the prettiest, noblest, most admired girls in London, was influenced by a chance word of an Italian actress at an orgie of Parthenope's at Norwood."

"I don't quite see that," said Horace Vere.

“No,” said Winnington, sadly, "yet such is Life."

"IF I have a prejudice, mamma, it is against an infernal rap at breakfast. Somebody has been tormenting our knocker for these ten minutes, and not one of our domestics is industrious enough to answer the individual, who must be wearied out with exercising his thumb and forefinger."

"Don't fret, Finnikin, there's a love. It is only the postman," said Mrs. Rashly, the mamma.

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Only the postman-I like that. It is all very well for you, mamma, to say only the postman, because you live within your income, and never expect any bill but a billet doux. Now I, with my liberal allowance, as the old gentlemen call 300l. per annum, paid quarterly, confess to a debt or two, and if I have a prejudice, it is against being impertinently reminded of the gross amount of them, and of my numerous promises to discharge them."

"You are very extravagant, Finny, you must allow," said Miss Lætitia Rashly, a young lady who ventured to lecture her brother now and then upon the strength of her being one year older than he was.

"Extravagant, Letty! well, I like that. I flatter myself that I lay out my money rather economically and judiciously than not-don't Ï, mamma? Can I live as I do upon a smaller outlay?"

"Why, if you will keep horses and-" commenced Miss Letty, not giving mamma a chance of responding.

"Keep horses and-and what else?" asked the mamma, rather alarmed.

"Ponies and puppy-dogs," said Letty.

"If I have a prejudice, it is decidedly against girls who will talk of what they know nothing about. I merely keep a park-horse, a buggyhorse, and a couple of little turriers."

"Yes, to worry rats and cats, and jump upon sofas and ottomans, and dirty one's dresses," said the sister.

"Letty, my love, young men must do as other young men do. There is nothing immoral or vicious in your brother's pursuits. Horse exercise is strongly recommended by the faculty, and what is a dog but his master's protector and friend,' as the song says? And as for Finny's little Pluto and Proserpine worrying cats, I can see no objection to it, provided they limit their attentions to our neighbours; and rats, you know, are an uncommon nuisance when they frequent your common sewer."

"As usual, mamma-in your opinion, Finny is like the king or

the queen-he can do no wrong; but if I indulge in a little waltzing or polkaizing, I am snubbed and looked inky upon."

"Nonsense, Letty," said the brother, "mamma does not object to a waltz or a polka now and then; but, like myself, if she has a prejudice, it is against a girl who is perpetually pirouetting with grown up

men."

"Infamous! as if I-"

But Miss Letty Rashly's reply was prevented by the entrance of the footman with a very small note on a very large silver salver.

"That's not an £. s. d.," said Finnikin; "no note for me, Thomas?" Thomas bowed a negative, and held the salver to his mistress.

"Oh! delightful," said Miss Letty, peeping over her mother's shoulder. "It is a letter from dear Issy Canterwell-I know she writes to say that she is coming up to Chelsea to spend a month with us."

"If I have a prejudice, it is against any body and every body who professes to judge of the interior of a letter by a glimpse of the exterior. Mamma, open and read it.”

But Mrs. Rashly was one of those persons who never will open a letter before they have inspected the handwriting, examined the seal, and looked at the post-mark, all the while really-do-believing it is, and then reallydo-believing that it is not from some person who writes just such a style of hand, and lives very near the Town whose name is expressed in the post-mark.

Mr. Finnikin Rashly had a prejudice against persons of this sort; but he knew that a bare hint on the subject would lead to a longer delay in the opening of the note, the contents of which he was anxious to learn. He therefore held his tongue, and a clean knife to his mamma, with which she might carefully cut round the seal; an old plan of hers that she would not give up, although Mr. Rowland Hill had long enabled her correspondents to use an envelope.

"She is coming," said Lætitia, clapping her hands with delight.

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Letty, my love, it is very rude to read an epistle directed to another person. Your old schoolfellow, Miss Isabella Canterwell, is good enough to accept my kind invitation, in a fine Italian hand, and intends to stay a month or six weeks if agreeable, on satin-wove paper."

"Delightful!" said Lætitia. "She's such a dear, and so rich."

"Then I rather think I may buy the gray, and give Osborn a bill at two months," said Finnikin to himself. "I must be a muff if, with my advantages, I cannot secure a country girl in a much shorter space than that."

So saying, Finnikin rose from the breakfast-table, and surveyed himself in the pier-glass; and it may be as well to inform the reader at once of the image he saw reflected on its polished surface. It was the figure of a little man, having some twenty-two years, rather short legs and arms, a corpulent medium, and a large head, communicating with his body by a short neck, and covered with long, sandy-coloured hair. The face was fat and flabby, and nearly obscured by whiskers and moustaches, which had a prejudice against curling. It was dressed in a pair of lightgray trousers, nearly covering the feet, and through two little holes in the bottom of them the toes of a pair of French boots were just visible. The upper part was clad in a summer vest" of white, with a pink

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