generations, three bottlings off, and a voyage to India say, to supply the article. What it is worth when you get it is another matter. But your real fine lady is a thing of time and tradition; you can't, to take the very lowest qualification of all, get at that unutterably graceful impudence in one generation. Mere Becky Sharp genius won't do it; it wants tradition. The art is, they say, rapidly becoming extinct in England; but there are a few fine ladies left still. We have lost utterly the art of designing decent buildings and statues, and of making bells; but those who ought to know tell one, we have a few fine ladies left, though none coming in. One would say that fine ladies would, in the coming bouleversement, be found last in Prussia. Bismarck, though of the other sex, is, as far as we have been taught to understand the fine lady, the finest instance of the fine lady to be found out of England.

It is humiliating to confess that poor dear Lady Downes tried to be the fine lady before Lady Southmolton: but she did. She sat, and fall-lalled, and patronized, and talked about the Court, and cross-examined Lady Southmolton on the peerage, and on people. And Lady Southmolton sat and looked at her.

Colonel Hilton appeared next. He had been to Châlons, but not, as was proposed to him, to America. He looked handsomer than ever. He had found so much to do at Châlons, in studying the new military movements, that he had got another man sent to America. It had been very pleasant there and at Paris. The Poyntz people, Sir Harry and his bride, had been there. 66 At Châlons or at Paris?"- "At both." "How was Lady Poyntz?” Lady Poyntz was quite well," he believed.

Next the Poyntzes themselves came. Every one at one time had declared they would not call on them, but now, somehow, everybody did. Lady Southmolton went with singular promptitude, in the most public manner; thundering through Winkworthy ostentatiously, in the family Ark. It is supposed that Sir P. Downes would have refused to call, but his women-folks were too many for him. It was understood that Sir Harry would keep up the house much as the Huxtables had done, and Constance had a hundred pounds' worth of finery which she must wear out before the fashions changed; and she, as bully of the establishment, had no idea of having a house closed to her down here, where there were so few. So they went, and everybody went. And Sir Harry received them with the most high-headed nonchalance, and showed them all, as plainly as possible, that he did not care whether they came or stayed away.

So the land became peopled again; and before they had well heard and communicated all the news, Laura, one afternoon coming out of her room, heard Lord Hatterleigh cackling and screeching in the hall

CHAPTER XXVII.

ABOUT a fortnight after their arrival at the Castle, Lady Poyntz was sitting at breakfast, in her own old room in the keep, the quaint four-windowed room in which Laura once met Sir Harry Poyntz.

Poor woman! She had got back to the dear old Castle as its mistress, she had got title and position, such as it was; but she had made a sad blunder, and she had found it out three days after she had married.

Sir Harry puzzled and shocked her. He was unutterably false, but he was never in the very least ashamed of it; and as for physical cowardice, he boasted of it. With all this he had shown hitherto such a perfectly equable temper, and such an unmovable persistency in gaining his end, that, on the two or three occasions in which their wills had crossed already, she had yielded, although a person of considerable strength of character. Once she had made him a scene, but it was no use: the more she stormed the more he laughed, in such an exasperating way that he left her pale with rage. She vowed to herself that he should never see her tears again.

Still it was his interest to treat her well, for only half her money was in his power, and he did so whenever she did not come between him and his object: when that was the case, his gigantic selfishness would have made him use cruelty towards her, had it been necessary.

Lady Poyntz, I wish you would tell your women to get the blue room ready for to-morrow," he said on this particular morning.

"Certainly, dear: who is coming?"

"Captain Wheaton."

"Sir Harry Poyntz," she said, indignantly, "you promised that you would not let that man enter the house!"

"I did not promise."

"You did, and, what is more, you know you did.”

"Well, that was before we were married, when I was n't sure of you."

"Or my money?"

"Or your money: exactly, and I can't keep my promise now, lovers' oaths, you know. I must have the fellow. He is an awful blackguard, but he is necessary to me. I will keep him in

order for you.
as great a hound as that."

He is afraid of me,

physically afraid I mean,

Lady Poyntz remained silent, considering how she should act, and, while doing so, fixed her fine dark eye steadily on her husband's. What a curious, shallow, cold, dangerous eye it was, the lightest blue she had ever seen, with a kind of moonlight gleam about it! She would have died sooner than have turned her own eye away, and yet she would have been glad to do so. She made as though she were brushing flies away from her forehead, and at last said,

"Well, I have made up my mind; I suppose he will come.” "Most assuredly!"

"Then I shall not speak to him, and not allow him in the drawing-room. I must sit at dinner with him, I suppose?"

"Well, I think so. I am glad you are not going to speak to him; it will teach him his place. So that is settled; I thank you very much.”

Harry," said Lady Poyntz, "do you ever hear from your brother in India?

"My brother in India is an extravagant and dissipated rascal," said Sir Harry; "I wish he was at Jericho! He has been costing me more money."

"Is there any chance of his coming home soon?" she asked. I should like to catch him at it," said Sir Harry. “O, should so very much like to catch him at it!”

I

Maria had asked him this in good-natured curiosity, to see how he was disposed towards his brother, and to try and find out something of his character. She had been set on to this by her old friend, Sir Charles Seckerton. It was an important question to him, for he knew the state of Sir Harry Poyntz's health. She left the result here, as being somewhat unsatisfactory. There was another matter on which she wished to satisfy herself, and thought it a good opportunity. She, as nonchalantly as she could, said,

"What a sad accident the Seckertons have had with their new huntsman !"

The light-blue eyes were on her in a moment. She thought that the fowl sat, and she stalked on.

He said, "Yes, I heard of it."

"Did you know anything of the young man ?”

"I suppose you do, from your manner, my pretty fencer. I guess that you know that he was our illegitimate brother. Is not that true?

>>

Maria laughed. "You are very cunning," she said; but the blue eye was on her, still inquiringly.

"Who told you?” he asked.

"Lady Emily Seckerton," she said. he? Were you fond of him ?”

"What sort of man was

Very much so. I liked him better than any other human being, except you, you know, of course.'

"You seem to have taken his loss pretty easily; I did not notice that you were much affected."

"I wished to spare your feelings; I was unwilling to disturb the happiness of your honeymoon by any exhibition of grief. Besides, it is one of the traits of my character that I never do show my grief. The remarkable fortitude I showed at the death of my father drew tears from the nurse. She was drunk, and wanted to kiss me; but I am sure she was in earnest."

"I suppose you could show equal fortitude at my death? said Maria.

"That would depend entirely on what you did with the thirty thousand pounds which is settled on yourself. If you left it back to me, as Christianity dictates, I should spend five-and-twenty pounds on a cheap tombstone for you, tear my hair, and take to drink. If you let it go back to your family, I should show my fortitude by looking out for another woman with money, as soon nay, long before it was decent."

as

"Harry! Harry!" said Maria, reproachfully, "are you ever in earnest?"

"Sometimes on money matters,

on sentimental business, So drop it. Now, have you satisfied your curiosity about Poyntz-Hammersley?"

never.

"I have satisfied my own. Now to raise yours. Do you like

Laura Seckerton?"

"I love her! She is a paragon of a woman,

so beautiful, so discreet, so careful not to wound with her tongue. O, I love her!"

"Shall I tell you something about her, your paragon?" "Do; you will never bore me as long as you speak of her." "Why, then, I will tell you," said the unhappy woman. "She fell in love with Poyntz-Hammersley; she made every kind of advance to him, which he, for decency's sake, reciprocated. When he was drowned, she took to her long-forgotten devotions, and went into mourning, until her father and mother forced her, with threats, to behave more reasonably. All this time she believed him to be a common groom from the stable-yard. I know that she knows no more of him, no, nor does any one else, except her mother and her father. And this is your Laura: it is the scandal of the place.' Sir Harry drew his chair up against hers, and said, “ again."

Say that

"Why."

"Because it is delicious; because it does me good; because it makes me love you. Wheaton shall dine in the housekeeper's room, in the still-room, in the coal-hole, before he insults my peerless wife by his presence! Say it again."

She told the story over, with additions.

"That is very good," he said; "you love her, don't you? "I hate her!" said Maria, but said no more.

"And I," said Sir Harry Poyntz, grasping his wife's arm,"I hate her with a hatred which your spasmodic female nature has no power of understanding, leave alone of feeling! She hates me, and she nearly turned you against me (and your sixty thousand pounds, you know; let us have no sentimentality). She has used language about me here, there, and everywhere which a dog would n't forgive, and a dog will forgive, from his heart of hearts, far more than any Christian. I hate her! I can ruin her father any hour after six months; but the pleasure of ruining her will be greater than taking possession of the Court. How are matters going on with Lord Hatterleigh?

Maria roused herself, and said: "I expect the engagement to be announced every day. The booby is always there. How long he will take about proposing Providence only knows. When, where, and how he will do it I dare not think, but do it he will and she will have him, and stop slander."

"Look here," said Sir Harry, with his wife's wrist still in his hand. "You have said you hated her, and I must do you the credit to say that you never lie, if that be any credit. We must let this engagement go on until it is talked of all over the county, until it is in the 'Morning Post'; and then we must revive this scandal, get it broken off, and drag her down in the dust. Tell me, woman (for I am blind about such things), is Hatterleigh, as they say in their cant, man enough to pitch her overboard for this?"

"He is one of the first men who would do so. But I am not prepared-"

"Then I will prepare you. It was well done in her to trifle and play with our dear friend, Colonel Hilton, and then throw him over for a roughrider!”

Maria could not help catching her arm away. "Have I married the Fiend?" she thought, and Sir Harry Poyntz laughed and left the room.

This interview had opened both their eyes a little. Maria saw, by this last unutterably wicked speech of his, that her husband knew that she had been in love with Colonel Hilton, and that he had tried to see whether that was the case still. He, from the snatching-away of her arm when Hilton and Laura's names were mentioned together, had seen that it was. Alas! he