no, not if I were literally hacked to pieces.'

It was not a pleasant speech. Mr. Lester tried a lighter strain.

'Like the unfortunate women who daily present themselves before the magistrate with black eyes and broken limbs, taking all the blame of the quarrel on themselves, and begging their "natural protector" should be returned to them. How soon that interesting curiosity ultimately belabours them with any handy weapon, from a quart-pot to a coal-scuttle, and makes them into mince-meat for their coffins, we lawyers all know.'

Kate was silent, but tears rose to her eyes. At eighteen we have some difficulty in playing a part; the next ten years, which too often rob us of candour, peace, and innocency, enable us to play the part of 'the dying gladiator' more easily.

'I have known and loved you from a child, Kate,' he said, with deep emotion. 'I never forgot you at any time, and it isn't likely I should ever fail to be your friend in the future. You may rely implicitly on my honour and affection. And, after all, who can credit mere reports? Ernest, doubtless, has enemies. Let him make you happy, that is all I ask. And now -God bless you-farewell!'

He left a leather case by her side, containing a massive and handsome dead-gold bracelet, with a cross of pearls in the centre. Whose wrist this would adorn in the future he little guessed. Kate, mute as a martyr, carried away this gift to her room, and, throwing herself down by her little bed, burst into an agony of strong weeping. O cruel revelation! Ŏ fatal warning! The golden draught of love poisoned at her lips; the old fear of Ernest gathering deeper force with every numbered minute! Give up Ernest, and be visited with torrents of reproach,

VOL. XXVII.

scorn, and invective! There was a sentence of her lover which rang in her ears like a cry of doom :

'If you throw me over, Katie, it will be the worst day's work you ever did. I will live to punish you, to make your life an hourly torment. Remember, I never spare.'

But after that he had kissed her —such a kiss-a minglement of defiance and slavish adoration, for there was a touch of the savage in Ernest, and Kate, impressed by complex emotions, meekly submitted to a coercion there was now no resisting. And then every noble mind judges others by a wide and generous standard; charity clothes them in a soft and holy garb.

After listening for some time to the faint echoes of the voluble voices below, each in turn insisting and expostulating with interminable monotony and repetition, her mamma and her aunts settled their council of war with unanimous acclaim, and the usual self-complacency and indifference of all lookers-on in any crisis. Kate, feeling nervous and listless, bathed her forehead, hands, and hair in cold water, and then descended below; her young face, grave and sweet, had gained a vigorous gleam of determination that, considering her youth, was almost pathetic in its troubled expectancy. But the tears had soothed her.

'They made themselves a part

Of fancies floating through the brainThe long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answer back again.'

CHAPTER V.

ARCADIAN BLISS.

'It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is over-wrought; Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch

him with thy lighter thought.'

PENAL servitude on a limited scale-but for an unlimited termhas commenced for Kate. She is Mrs. Hamilton; she has entered the sacred portals of that august sanctuary-marriage-where every wounded heart is tended, every care dispelled, and every lawful joy consecrated by the purest and most ennobling instincts. Does she weep, Ernest will be ready with at least two pocket-handkerchiefs; or smile, his countenance will express the fondest sympathy. What is he, of course, but her adoring husband, her awful immutable companion, her idol, and so on for evermore?

In attaining the lawful summit of every girl's ambition Kate has, in reality, wedded chains and a jailor; she is a fashionable galleyslave, at the mercy of her lord and master Ernest, who, even during the connubial delights of that social surfeit, the honeymoon, has already given serious symptoms of an addiction to 'dipsomania.'

Kate has never before seen a man utterly, profoundly, hopelessly drunk; her mild papa never exceeded his second pint of burgundy, and her brothers were merely feeble, well-disposed, well-regulated young men, of the average stamp, with no insane cravings for acquaintance with the devil's fire; their veins were always filled with that safe milk-and-water which never boils over.

But Ernest the magnificent tipsy to the extent of knocking a sleek young waiter into the bathroom of the Royal Hotel, Ellington, and then, displaying his superb muscles, adding injury to

insult by actually lifting him into the bath and turning the hot-water tap on him, was, to be sure, a rather painful spectacle for a bride's loving eyes to feast upon.

When expostulated with, Ernest merely declared 'he'd shake the rascal's shirt-front off next time,' and, to prove the truth of his threat, attacked Kate's delicately-embroidered muslin jacket, and left the marks of three cruel fingers on those beautiful arms. Kate cried a great deal, threw herself on the stuffy sofa, and sobbed her heart out, not from the physical pain she suffered, but from witnessing the hideous horrible degradation of the mysterious, but still sacred, Ernest. She was frightened, almost cowed, and her astonishment exceeded her terror. She had never read or heard of any gentleman forgetting to be gentle and affectionate in his honeymoon. Afterwards, to be sure, there might be some excuse for attack; custom deadens love and everything else, and she had never indulged in any enraptured visions of the future with Ernest. But the presentthe intolerable present-an aching limb, a tear-stained face, and a waiter rampant and raging on the landing, calling for vengeance with the dramatic force of an ancient Greek-surely this was a ghastly satire on the celestial dreams of the time-honoured honeymoon. Kate dried her tears; she hated to be childish and ridiculous; and, though her hands trembled a good deal, they were yet outstretched with yearning prayerfulness towards Ernest; and her imploring eyes, deepening in fire and force, were turned on the monster with a pathos that ought to have melted black marble. But Ernest, vaguely conscious of his brutality, only swore horribly-what else could he do, perhaps?-when that mis guided youth on the landing ver

bosely threatened to take him before a magistrate.

'Offer him some money and beg him to be quiet,' pleaded Kate, opening her purse. 'I will give him this five-pound note, Ernest, and ask him to go away."

'You will do nothing of the sort' said her tyrant, seizing the purse, his avaricious instincts fairly roused; 'give five pounds, indeed, to that d-d lout! I wish I had thrashed him soundly; he insulted me-in-in-sinuated I was confoundedly tipsy, and suggested soda-water!'

But soon Ernest's graceful limbs reclined in peaceful slumber; and Kate, reckless of consequences and Ernest's anger, sought the man and settled the matter with a couple of sovereigns.

When Ernest woke he was marvellously jocose and amiable; he was oblivious of every unpleasant circumstance connected with the bath-room; his caresses bordered on the sublime, and he was, moreover, visited with an excellent appetite for his dinner. Kate, declaring her head ached pitilessly, begged Ernest to excuse her joining him at his repast, and shut herself in her room, with the discarded muslin jacket facing her like some grim and fatal record.

'I can never endure the sight of it again,' muttered Kate, applying arnica to her wounded arm; 'so here it goes.'

There was a fire smouldering in the grate-the evenings in October are often chill-and into this the mangled remains of the embroidered jacket were duly consigned. Thus she was left to her own reflections.

Kate's mind, vivid and keen in its imaginative power, dwelt on every detail of the awful occurrence with almost morbid emphasis. She felt dizzy, sick at heart, already half abandoned to ruin,

and yet her courage never failed her. She would try and redeem Ernest from his wickedness and weaknesses. She would be his guardian-angel, and with every prompting of pity and virtue, of forbearance and self-restraint, seek to win him from the error of his ways.

Ernest at her feet, a hopeful prodigal, clothed, repentant, and in his right mind, what could be more touching? And then, perhaps, he was unaware how very little overcame him. Alas, poor Kate! Every morning did Ernest hire a couple of horses, which he drove till they nearly expired of exhaustion; every afternoon did he pass in the billiard-room of the hotel, smoking steadily; and every evening was he tipsy. At first amicably so, indulging in vicarious jests, slip-shod humour, painful to the ears of refined sensibility; then vulgarly, when his wife learnt of his former admiration of the ballet, and began to understand the dialect of the degraded; then brutally, when he always attacked something or some some one, when the instincts of a beast of prey were aroused, and he would fly at a hat-stand, an armchair, a mirror, or his wife. On whom may a man vent his spleen unless on that consecrated victim? and so Kate learnt her lesson-a rather hard one, tedious and wearisome in the extreme.

Ernest was always delightfully oblivious of his verbosity when his brain cleared; and then he would be meek and caressive-horrible caresses, more awful than drunken fury and ravings; they were so gross 2 satire on the subdued hopes, the simple faith, the breathless rapture with which a woman clings to every emanation of affection from the man she reveres and loves. There is nothing more awful for the victim to endure than this mockery of joy-this travestie

of sentiment, when the mind recoils with loathing from contact with a besotted animal, and the imagination falters as it recalls the degradation of the past, and dares not dream of the future.

But now behold them settled in all the glory of modern respectability in a smart suburban villa at Surbiton, resplendent with new papers, furniture, carpets, and blinds; all that terrible pageantry of realism that makes life so stereotyped a monotony to some people.

Kate walked about the rooms, steadily clinging to the hope of happiness being centred in creature comforts, and tried to feel lively, and throw her soul into patent blind-rollers, fenders, firescreens, and kitchen-ware. Bills poured in violently, which did not improve Ernest's temper; but as Kate's five thousand had been paid into the firm, it stopped a temporary leakage in that mysterious business in the City, and enabled him to dress himself to perfection without feeling his tailor's subsequent dunning. Kate's days passed in hiring servants, ordering meals, and trying the articles of the various tradespeople in Surbiton-delightful occupations, more or less exhilarating than the visits of the upholsterer's people, who always came about luncheon-time, and somehow always devoured the mutton that would have formed the family's late dinner. Kate struggled manfully over the accounts; remembered when beef rose in price; kept a diary; did a little gardening; received numberless calls from ladies in the neighbourhood, who copied her, but thought her rather cold and distant. Poor Kate! Reticence and reserve alone saved her; there was no girlish 'gush,' none of the spasmodic affection of a happy bride for people now. How could she take any one to that slowly-hardening breast

with its dull, aching, consuming, unassuaged pain?

The servants worried her most. They got into the painfully chronic habit of leaving at the month, declaring they would do anything in the world for 'missus,' but sooner serve their time in prison than stand 'master.'

Every morning did Ernest fire a parting volley of abuse and oaths. at his servants: his coffee was 'dirty ditchwater;' his toast leathery; his boots were badly brushed, ditto his clothes. A pack of lazy thieves, eating their heads off, and other mental squibs that sent them into tantrums, made them always insolent or sulky to Kate, who really found her place no sinecure.

Invitations to various little dinner-parties poured in; but who shall describe Kate's martyrdom, when Ernest (his dress-clothes a failure), in a violent rage all the way they drove together in the Surbiton fly, would suddenly tear his gloves to ribbons, smash a window, and vow wholesale vengeance on his bride's head during the return journey? Kate, in her pretty white dress, with crimson roses in her hair, struggling hard not to let him see her tears; her hands burning with inward fever; her whole nervous system out of gear-is she not in truth a piteous spectacle? And then the dinner-cold-eyed women wondering at her silence, expecting to find a brilliant merry girl, not this dull image, paler than a lily, without a word to say for herself. But if Kate exerted herself to talk, which she did sometimes with a force, almost passion, that bewildered herself, it was men only who listened, admired, and understood her; her wit dazzled in its reckless torrent, its awful audacity. Ernest, half-seas over, could only catch the flash of her eyes, and, vowing to tame her into

submission by and by, generally disappeared into the billiard-room with a very fishy aspect, to lose at pool.

'Glorious creature, Mrs. Hamilton; would make an actress of the highest powers,' one man was saying, who had been listening silently to Kate's rapid utterance, and now viewed her critically from a distance. He was an artist by profession, by name Laurence Hesseltine, who had been left a considerable fortune by a relative, and now painted, not for ambition, but pour se distraire. Laurence had met Kate at an evening party a few days before her marriage with Ernest, and confessed to warm admiration of her beauty. And, indeed, Kate's loveliness was of that rare and subtle order, only an artist and a man of culture could appreciate at its true worth. Those rare nuances, too, of sentiment were just to his

taste.

Laurence was a perfect man of the world, but the world of fashion. He was a mild flâneur, without any complex vices; he rather detested the ordinary pleasures other men find so irresistible; and when taxed with languor, indifference, or coldness, shrugged his shoulders, and declared women were dreadfully monotonous, and bored him.' Is not such a being a lusus naturæ in this age of riot, luxury, and fastness? His soul had hitherto been expended in Art, that entrancing mistress whose charms never fail, and whose beauty is daily renewed. His friends vowed Laurence would ultimately join the Trappists, and lead a life of silence and seclusion; but others declared that this was just the cold calm fellow to be scorched and consumed some day by the overpowering rays of the sun of Love; and Laurence was rather inclined to agree with them. It was this man, graceful, lan

guid, cold, and wealthy, who now followed Mrs. Hamilton into the drawing-room and requested her to play for him. As a rule, Kate refused all appeals of the kind; music was not encouraged by Ernest, and suggested thoughts of 'broken light' to her, for she feared the sinister effects of these outpourings of sound; but on this occasion, the host being bland and a little deaf, and the ladies indulgent and discursive, Kate drew off her cream-coloured gloves and sat down to the piano.

Fascinated and enthralled, Laurence drew near her and hung a little over her, as though to carry away this picture of Kate in his mind for ever. Her colour burnt brightly, her breath came fast, her pearly throat and exquisite neck, full-rounded and voluptuous, dimly veiled in transparent tulle illusion, were perfect in form and symmetry, while her face, glowing with suppressed feeling, appealed to his senses and imagination, as no other woman's face had ever done be

fore.

'What shall I play for you?' asks Kate, coquettishly striking some chords, thankful for her one enchanting gift that had brought this man to her side. After all, Surbiton may be a desirable neighbourhood, if they give dinnerparties like this, and invite such men as Laurence Hesseltine.

Mrs. Plumpton, the hostess, sipping coffee, begs for something lively with an air in it; but Kate, radiant and excited, anxious to excel and gain his approval, pretends not to listen.

'Say which shall it be-you choose,' she murmurs, bending with a smile towards Laurence, who feels the room going round with him and animation half suspended.

Play the "Sonata Pastorale" of Beethoven, if you can remember it without the music.'