it en route, while De Vigne puffed away at a giant Havana, between regulating which and keeping his fidgety Grey Derby quiet, (he usually rode horses that would have thrown any other man but him or M. Rarey,) he had little leisure for road-side conversation.

At last Curly broke silence, twisting his long blonde moustaches with a puzzled smile, and flicking his mare's ears thoughtfully with his whip.

"Well, De Vigne! I don't know what to make of it!" "Don't know what to make of what?" demanded De Vigne, curtly.

He was a little impatient with his Frestonhills pet. One may not care two straws for pheasant-shooting-nay, one may even have sprained one's arm, so that it is a physical impossibility to lift an Enfield to one's shoulder-and yet so dog-in-mangerish is human nature that one could kick a fellow who ventures to come in and touch a head of our défendu or uncared-for game.

"Of that little thing," returned Curly, musingly. "I don't understand her."

"Very possibly.”

"Why very possibly? I know a good deal of women, good, bad, and indifferent, but I'll be hanged if I can understand that Little Tressillian. She's so different, somehow, to all the rest of 'em. She has so much sense in her, and yet she is full of life and nonsense. She can touch on all sorts of queer subjects, and speak about a man's life without a trace of boldness. She is so frank and free one might take no end of advantage of her; and yet, somehow, deuce take it, one can't. The girl's truth and fearlessness are more protection to her than other women's pruderies and chevaux-de-frise."

De Vigne did not answer, but smoked his Havana silently; probably because he thought with Curly, but was not going to say so.

"She is a little darling," resumed Curly, meditatively. "That's the sort of girl I've dreamed about, De Vigne. One feels a better fellow with her-eh ?"

"Can't say," replied De Vigne. "I have generally looked on young ladies, for inflammable boys like you, as dangerous stimulants rather than as calming tonics."

"Confound your matter-of-fact," swore Curly. "You may laugh at it if you like, but I mean it. She makes me think of things that one pooh-poohs and forgets in the bustle of the world. She's a vast lot too good to be shut up in that brown old house, with only a kitten to play with, and an old nurse to take care of her."

"She seems to have made an impression on you!" said De Vigne, dryly.

"Certainly she has !" said Curly, gayly. "And, 'pon my life, what makes still more impression on me, De Vigne, is, that you and I, two as wild fellows as ever lived, and pretty well as unscrupulous in that line, I should say, as that much-abused chap, Don Juan, should be going calling on that little thing, and chatting with her as harmlessly as if she were our sister, when we ought to be making desperate love to her, if she hadn't such confounded dear trusting eyes of hers that they make one ashamed of one's own thoughts. 'Pon my life, it's very extraordinary!"

"If extraordinary, it is only a man's honor," said De Vigne, with his coldest hauteur, "toward a young, guileless girl, utterly unprotected, save by her own defenselessness-the best protection to any right-feeling man. For my own part, as a 'married man,' (how cold his sneer always grew at those words!) I have no right to 'enter the lists' with you, as you poetically phrased it to day, even supposing my experiences of passion did not make me, as they do, renounce all such affairs, with no merit in the renunciation; and for yourself, you are too true a gentle

man, Curly, though it is our way' to be unscrupulous in such matters, to take unfair advantage of my introduction of you to a girl who is a lady, and deserves to be treated as such, though she has not the entourages of wealth and position to command respect; and, indeed, if you did, I, to whom Mr. Tressillian appealed for what slight assistance I have it in my power to afford her, should hold myself responsible for having made you known to her, and should be bound to take the insult as to myself."

Curly, at the beginning of De Vigne's very calm, but very grandiose speech, opened his lazy violet eyes, and stared at him; but as he went on, all Curly's warmer feelings, and all the native delicacy and generosity that lay at the heart of this young "Adonis of the Guards," too deep for his life to score them out, roused up, and he turned to his old Frestonhills hero with his smile, so young in its brightness:

"Quite right, De Vigne. You are a brick; and if I do any harm to that dear Little Tressillian, I give you free leave to shoot me dead like a dog, and should richly deserve it, too. But go and see her I must, for she is worth all the women we shall meet at Jerry's to-day, though they do count themselves the crême de la crême."

"The crême de la crême can be, at the best, only skim," said De Vigne, with his ready fling of sarcasm; "but I am not going to the Maberlys', thank you. Early strawberries and late on dits are both flavorless to my taste; the fault of my own palate, perhaps. I shall go and lunch at the U. S., and play a game or two at pool. How much better I should like billiards, if one could progress; but after the first year or two a man has reached his perfection in it, and then he stands still till his eyes and arms fail him. How pleasant the wind is! Grey Derby wants a gallop, let's give him his way."

Palamon and Arcite were not truer or warmer friends than De Vigne and Curly; but, when a woman's face dazzled the eyes of both, the death-blow was struck to friendship, and the seeds of feud were sown.

PART THE THIRTEENTH.

I.

HOW VIVIAN SABRETASCHE BURIED HIS PAST AND AWOKE TO A GOLDEN PRESENT.

On the 12th of May Leila Countess of Puffdoff gave a ball, concert, and sort of moonlight fête, all three in one, at her charming dower-house at Twickenham. All our set went pretty nearly, and all the men of Ours, of course, for le feu Puffdoff had been in the Dashers, and out of a tender memory of him, his young widow made enfans de la maison of all the corps; not, one is sure, because Ours was one of the crackest troops in the service, and we were counted the handsomest set of men in all Arms, but out of pure love and respect for our late gouty colonel, who, Georges Dandin in life, became a Mausolus when under the sod. Who upholds that the good is oft interred with our bones? Ce n'est pas vrai, though it is Shakspeare who says it; if you leave your family, or your pet hospital a good many thousands, you will get the cardinal virtues, and a trifle more, in letters of gold on your tomb; if you have lived up to your income, or forgotten to insure, any penny-alining La Monnoye will do to scribble your epitaph, and break off with "C'est trop mentir pour cinq écus !" Le feu Puffdoff became "mon mari adoré" as soon as the

grave closed over him; poor cause —‘ -"mon mari adoré" had left his handsome countess most admirably well off, and with some of this "last bequest" the little widow gave us a charming fête on this 12th of May. Such things are all so much alike, that, going to one, you ordinarily have gone to all, but this was certainly better than most. The Puffdoff wines were par excellence; the Puffdoff taste admirable; Grisi and Mario, and a number of lesser stars sang à ravir; Violet Molyneux and a number of lesser belles waltzed to perfection; there were as lovely women and as exquisite toilettes as you could wish to see; and there were the fairy-like grounds glistening in the moonlight, with myriad lamps gleaming like diamond clusters among the darkness, and the winter-garden, where, under glass, nature in the tropics was counterfeited so inimitably with fragrant imitations of the rose gardens of the East, the orange groves of southern Europe, and the luxuriant vegetation of the West Indies.

It looked like fairyland, I admit, with its brilliant coloring, its heavy perfumes, its beautiful music. Not Anacreon or Aristippus, Boccaccio or Moore, need have imagined anything more charming to look at it was only a pity that the people were not Arcadians to enjoy it; that there were such plots and counterplots and fermentations under that smooth surface; such heart-burnings, jealousies, and manœuvres among those soft smiling beauties; such undercurrents of bitterness and ill-nature under the pleasant sunny ripples of social life. What a sad trick one catches of looking under everything; it spoils pleasure, for nothing will stand it; but when once one has been sick through chromate of lead, one can't believe in Bath-buns, try how one may! I went to the ball late; De Vigne, much to the Puffdoff's chagrin, chose instead to go to a card party at