as amiable as she was clever; for this man never allowed himself to be deceived by women. If he purchased knowledge and experience dearly, they were useful on occasions. He thought her hesitation and agitation on their introduction very pretty in their way— original at any rate; and she gave herself no airs. The authoress of Vanda must have read and thought very deeply. Meanwhile Nancy, whose conversational powers were, he reflected, nothing if not naughty, was saying,

'You've made me so unhappy. Now don't go and fall in love with a girl who was deformed.'

'What!' cried Clarence, 'Amaranth deformed ?’

'With what a tone you speak her name! but it's true. Ask your brother.'

No more was then said, as William sauntered up, and Amaranth, still watching the fire, turned to thank Nancy for the song.

'Where are you staying?' asked the Captain later on, when a suitable occasion presented itself for a whisper. I should much like to see you again.'

Amaranth blushed painfully and half shook her head. There was something irresistibly attractive in her shy simplicity; and as his eye ran over her slender form he believed Nancy's words were more than half prompted by malice.

'Tell me, Miss Markham, where you are staying,' he went on hurriedly.

'Nancy knows,' said Amaranth, anxious to escape.

'But I am interested in you. Will you allow me to call? Re

member there is a story to be told. You said so just now. I must hear it.'

But Mrs. Gilbert interposing at that moment, Amaranth glided to the other side of the room; and when the brougham was announced it was Captain Kinnaird, not the pacific William, who drew Amaranth's arm in his and led her to the carriage. William was rejoiced to find there was no occasion to nourish jealous qualms, and was imbued with a sort of penitential humility when he next addressed Nancy. When the Captain returned Mr. Gilbert was loud in praise of Amaranth's virtues and talents; and if Nancy muttered incredulous murmurs, they passed unnoticed.

When Clarence hailed his hansom and flung himself into a corner, shivering from the bitter night wind, he sincerely wished Amaranth could still have been by his side, instead of whirling off in an opposite direction in a snug carriage and pair. He had that irrational longing to see her again. which often assails men whose affections are never lasting, and whose fickleness is almost a proverb. Hard living and pleasure without stint will often produce a dejection your severe ascetics can never know. But William's wines and liqueurs were of the best, so the Captain escaped a headache, however hipped he may have felt in other respects.

"That's a very singular little girl,' he repeated more than once, and I shall certainly turn in at the Crescent to-morrow night and hear Vanda.

'Aн, Gullefère, mon ami, you will never know true happiness till you are a married man;' and Florian de Milletrésors puffed away at his cigarette, whilst a self-satisfied smile curled the tips of his scented moustaches. 'Think what I was only twelve little months ago, and then behold me now. My cheeks fell in as if all my teeth had fallen out, and there were lines all round my eyes as if I had a hundred years

of age.

In the morning I could scarcely support the exertion of my toilette, and at night I appeared as a ghost at our charming little suppers.'

'I can understand all that,' I said, laughing, as I got up to stir the fire. Till a year ago you went the pace, like a madman on a bicycle; and now—'

'Thanks to my Flavie, my pace is changed, and I go as steadily as a park hack in the Bois. Very true, mon ami, that is the proof of what I say. Thanks to my Flavie, my wrinkles vanish, my bloom returns; I go to bed punctually when the clock strikes twelve; every morning I rise as fresh as a lark, and breakfast with madame by half-past eleven. I ride with her, I drive with her; I sing, she plays the accompaniment; she works, I wind her wools. In the evening we go together to the theatre, a concert, a soirée, thé dansant, or whatever entertainment she prefers ; and together we come back. There is a felicity about matrimony that you cannot divine. It agrees with

your conscience, your digestion, your-'

'Everything but my pocket,' I cried, jingling the few golden coins I had about me.

'Ah, bah! it does not cost so much as some of the little pleasures you would have to give up,' said the Count, looking very sagacious, as, with the forefinger of his right hand, he pushed his nose to the left. My Flavie will never empty my pockets as quickly as— as-but we will let the past be. At thirty, il faut se ranger. Dine with us to-night, behold our felicity; and if I do not soon hear of a Madame Gullefère, I shall pity your obstinacy and deplore your fate. Au revoir?

He threw the end of his cigarette into the fire, took up his hat and cane, brushed the former with his sleeve, removed a speck of dust from the toe of his polished patentleather boots with his cambric handkerchief, looked at his own reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece, and having twirled his moustaches to his own satisfaction, turned to me with a few last words of admonition.

Poor Florian! he looked the very incarnation of happiness and dandyism combined, as he ran lightly down-stairs, jumped into his coupé, and so vanished from view.

'I suppose he is in a hurry to return to his Flavie,' I thought to myself with a wondering smile, as I took off my smoking-jacket, and prepared for a ride in the Bois.

On my way I chanced to pass De Milletrésors' hôtel just as this Darby and Joan were going out for their conjugal drive. He was carrying an armful of furs, and was too much occupied with handing madame into the carriage to notice my insignificant self. I caught a glimpse of a baby-face with a fuzz of light hair at the top of it, suggestive, at the first glance, of a champagne hair-wash. I may truly say that I passed on without a single pang of envy, but with a fixed determination not to intrude an inopportune third on their charming tête à tête. Better a thousand times have a dinner at the Cercle, with a lot of cheery fellows all round me, than sit at the side of the De Milletrésors' table with a bill and a coo at either end of it.

After this I saw but little of Florian; his domestic engagements became so multifarious that we had no more opportunities for a cozy chat. I believe that madame had a horror of me, and of all the rest of his special friends. She thought that we were always on the watch to lead him again into his old ways, that we were intent on dragging him back into our circle of happy bachelors, where the gap created by his absence reminded us of his defection. He was such a merry little fellow, with his goodtempered conceit and ready wit, that we forgave him all his other faults his absurdly effeminate beauty, his curls and affectations, and all sorts of defects which I can't remember now; I know that we all missed him to a surprising extent, and I returned to London, voting the adorable Flavie the greatest bore in Paris.

Three years passed away, and I never saw a trace of my poor friend; three Derbys, and he had thrice deserted our drag; three times we had been obliged to depend on Watkins for our cornet accompani

ment, when the soul of Florian had been used to expend itself year after year in the most thrilling and awakening of roulades, and Watkins was blown before we got clear of the suburbs.

Domestic felicity, indeed! We called it nothing less than domestic bondage, and vowed never to have our hair combed by any beauteous Flavie of the future. Report said that the victim had grown fat; that his wasp-like waist had developed into such bee-like proportions, that no amount of corsets could contract his figure to its former proportions. Poor Florian, his last joy gone! Take his waist from him, and the man was nothing. It was the joy, the hope, the aim of his existence.

One day, when I had not thought of him at all, I chanced to run up against him in Bond-street. 'Gullefère, mon ami!' he exclaimed, with rapture; and I verily believe he would have embraced me before the eyes of all the footmen waiting outside Redmayne's if I had not steadfastly kept him at arm's length, whilst I grasped his hand affectionately. A masculine embrace is the most unsatisfactory thing I know, neither nice nor naughty.

It

In another minute we were walking arm-in-arm towards Piccadilly, and he was talking as volubly as a conversational steam-engine. was delightful to hear him rattle on, just in his old style; but on observing him closely, I perceived that time, or care, or Madame Flavie had added several lines to his white forehead and round the corners of his eyes.

'Come with me to the Grosvenor,' he said presently, as we reached the corner by Marlborough House, 'and I will present you to madame.'

'With all the pleasure in life, but I am due at the barracks in half an hour. I shall hope to re

new our acquaintance to-morrow or the next day at latest.'

'Renew your acquaintance!' he exclaimed, in surprise. But, mon ami, you have never yet beheld my Mélanie.'

'Mélanie! Flavie, you mean. Do you think I could have forgotten her?'

He gave an embarrassed laugh, and grew pink about the cheeks.

'Tenez, mon cher,' he said, with resolution, after a moment's pause, 'take me somewhere, anywhere you like; but I must absolutely unbosom myself to you before another instant has passed.'

'Come to the club, then, it is close at hand; and I haven't much time to spare.'

Ensconced in a quiet corner in the Army and Navy, I learnt the story of his woes.

'You must not blame her; I do not, I never did. La petite had a passion, a vraie passion for the red hair; when she saw it she was quite what we call entraînée; she could not restrain herself. Her cousin, Achille de Chauchard, returned from Algiers, and it was then that I discovered this deplorable mania. He was red as a flame, a lobster, what you will; it made you perspire to look at him when the sun shone on his hair; but Flavie liked it. When he was gone she was crushed. She seemed like a person in the dark; her light had gone out. I reasoned with her; it availed not. Once I thought to myself, "Is this sacrifice required of me? must I, to please la petite, make myself hideous like that tawny monkey of a man ?" But no, parole d'honneur, I would have died to give her one moment's satisfaction; but I could not dye my hair and be an object of horror to my looking-glass till the end of my days. That was trop fort. So I said, "You must choose between us ;" and she chose. You must have

seen it in the papers. Mais non? You surprise me.'

He paused, lit another cigarette, and frowned desperately at the tip of it, as if he saw in its glowing tobacco some likeness to Flavie's Achille.

'It was doubly hard on you,' I ventured to remark; for I never saw such an example of a devoted Benedict.'

'Devoted! I was her slave. I was at her beck and her call from morning till night. I went nowhere without her. She never went out without her Florian by her side. I gave up my time, my friends, my pleasures to please her, and this was my return. Ah, it was trop triste! It hit me hard. I thought I could not live. I went out, and leaning over the side of the pont, I contemplated the Seine; but the waters were muddy; it seemed a thousand pities to spoil my best coat. I could not take it off, for figurez-vous the sensation if I had been found in my shirtsleeves! It came on to rain. I went home to get an umbrella, and, ma foi, I never came back. I had a little glass of absinthe, for the shivers were running down my backbone. I reposed myself in my armchair, and I did not look at the Seine again.'

He ran his fingers lightly through his curls, so as to disarrange them as little as possible, and resumed, in a less tragic tone,

I

In six months I was free. thought of you. I was once more what you call-ah, yes—a bachelor; but I felt a want, a void, a blank. Matrimony is like champagne, when once you have tasted it you desire it again. And yet if I had not seen Mélanie, I do not know that I should have ventured.'

'It required some courage, I should think, after your first experiment.'

'Ah, yes, you have reason;' and

he drew up his marionette-like figure to its full height of five feet nothing; but then courage, I flatter myself, like most Frenchmen, I never fail in. Ah, if you had seen her first-you need not shake your head-I should have trembled for my chance. She is divine, adorable-one has but to see her to love her.'

'Then I had better not see her, I think,' said I, laughing. 'As you've had first chance, I should risk my happiness for nothing.'

'Ah, no, you have the British phlegm-you do not catch fire at the first spark. Come with me,' he cried, starting up; 'it will not take you more than a little quarter of an hour. My poor Mélanie will be wondering what has become of me, and you will account for my absence.'

'Ah, I see, you are afraid of her already.'

'No, parole d'honneur, you are mistaken,' he said quite seriously, as we went down the steps of the club arm-in-arm, I intent on making my way to the Wellington Barracks, he bent upon dragging me to the Grosvenor. 'We cannot be afraid, neither the one nor the other, for we are one-we have but one will between us, one hope, one heart.'

'Don't be so pathetic, or you'll make me cry.'

'Ah, bad boy, you mock me.'

'But one heart between you! That's the very worst sign of the disease I ever heard of.'

'I do not mind your chaff―no, not in the very least. I have not yet finished my moon of honey, so that if I exceed in my ecstasies, it is pardonable.'

'I don't know about that, when it's a second moon of honey. You are expected to know better by that time.'

This way, mon cher,' and he tried to draw me away down the Mall.

'No, no, my way is across the park. Walk with me to the gates, and then home by the Birdcagewalk-it won't make five minutes' difference.'

'No, temptère, I am too late already. I should never forgive myself, if I had kept Mélanie waiting for her drive. If you will not come, I say Au revoir.

'All right, I will look you up to-morrow. Ta-ta!' So, with a friendly nod, we parted.

'Poor beggar!' I thought to myself, as I hurried across the park as fast as my legs (and they were more than an average length) could carry me, 'he's more hopelessly henpecked than ever!'

I was introduced to number two the next day, and was not much more charmed with her than with the fluffy-headed Flavie of a few years back. She favoured me with a few heart-piercing glances out of the largest, most sentimental pair of eyes it was ever my good fortune to behold. I did not mind it much during our twenty minutes' chat; but, good heavens, to have to be strung up to an answering pitch, morning, noon, and night, it would be more than any man could stand. I looked at Florian with profoundest pity, but his languishing optics seemed to be playing the same little game to perfection. And then I came away.

De Milletrésors persecuted me with invitations for dinner; but I got out of them all without difficulty, as it was the height of the season, when any man may swear that he has two or three engagements for every night of the week, and obtain a certain amount of credence. I invited him to a select little dinner at the club, and tried to tempt him with all the old friends I could muster, but he rejected the idea with scorn. There was no having him without his Mélanie; so we were at last obliged to im