the sea!' replied the Viscount. She didn't look weedy, or sandy, or shell-fishy, that ever I heard of; but came up smiling, with her hair combed out as neatly as the tails and manes of my fillies. And as to rustic bringing-up, there was that young woman in the play-Lady Teazle, you know. See how she carried on.'

The Viscount departed after this, happy in the prospect of meeting Elizabeth an hour later in the happy hunting-grounds of the Rancho, perhaps the best field for flirtation within three miles of Hydepark-corner.

'Elizabeth,' exclaimed Mrs. Chevenix, when they were alone, with an air of almost awful solemnity, 'there is a coronet lying at your feet, if you have only the wisdom to pick it up. I am not going to make any complaint, or to express my opinions, or to say anything in disparagement of that person. I have kept my feelings upon that subject locked within my breast, at any cost of pain to myself. But if, when you have looked around you, and seen what the world is made of, you can be so infatuated as to persist in your mad course, I can only pity you.'

'Don't take the trouble to do that, auntie. I can imagine no higher happiness than that which I have chosen. A coronet is a grand thing, of course, with

all the other things that go along with it. I am not going to pretend that I don't care for the world and its pleasures. I do care for them. I have enjoyed my life in the last three weeks more than I thought it possible that life could be enjoyed. I fear that I have an infinite capacity for frivolity. And yet I shall be proud to surrender all these things for the love of the man I have chosen.'

'The man you have chosen !' repeated Mrs. Chevenix, with a shiver. 'My dearest Lizzie, is there not a shade of indelicacy in the very phrase?'

'I can't help that,' answered Elizabeth coolly; 'I know that I did choose him. I chose him out from all creation for the lord of my life, worshipped him in secret when I thought he was indifferent to me; should have died of a broken heart, I believe, or at any rate of mortification and disappointment, if he had never returned my love.'

This was a bold declaration intended to extinguish aunt Chevenix at once and for ever.

'My poor child,' said the matron, shaking her head with a deploring air, 'I am inexpressibly grieved to hear you speak in that wild manner of such a person as your father's curate. A man in that position cannot afford to be loved in that exaggerated way. A grande passion is out of keeping among people

with limited incomes and their career to make in the world. With people of established position it is different, of course; and though I might smile at such an infatuation, were you to entertain it for Lord Paulyn, I could hardly disapprove. You and he would be as far removed from the vulgar herd of engaged persons as a prince and princess in a fairy tale, and might safely indulge in some little extravagance.'

6

You need fear very little extravagance on my part if Lord Paulyn were my accepted lover,' answered Elizabeth, with a cynical laugh. Imagine any one mated to that prosaic being, with his slang and his stable talk!'

'In spite of those small drawbacks—which, after all, are natural to his youth and open-hearted disposition-I believe him to be capable of a most devoted attachment. I have seen him gaze at you, Elizabeth, in a way that made my blood run cold when I considered that you were capable of trampling upon such a heart for the sake of a Scotch curate. However, I will say nothing,' concluded Mrs. Chevenix with heroism, after having said all she wanted

to say.

In half-an-hour the two ladies were dressed, and on their way to Fulham; Elizabeth enveloped in a

fleecy cloud of whiteness, with gleams of lustrous mauve here and there among her drapery, and a mauve feather in her white-chip hat, gloves faultless, parasol a gem: a toilet whose finishing touches had been furnished by the well-filled purse of Mrs. Chevenix. The matron herself was resplendent in bronze silk, and an imposing blue bonnet. They had put on their richest armour for the encounter with Mrs. Cinqmars, a lady who spent her life in trying to dressdown her acquaintance.

CHAPTER II.

'Applause

Waits on success; the fickle multitude,

Like the light straw that floats along the stream,
Glide with the current still, and follow fortune.'

FULHAM is a neighbourhood of infinite capabilities. It is almost impossible to know the ultimate boundaries of a region to which nature seems to have hardly yet assigned any limit; from squalid streets of sixroomed houses, to splendid places surrounded by park-like grounds; from cemeteries and market-gardens-bare expanses of asparagus or turnips, where the atmosphere is rank with decaying garden stuffsto arenas reserved for the competition of the fleetfooted and strong-armed of our modern youth, and to shady groves dedicated to the slaughter of the harmless pigeon; from newly-built red-brick mansions hiding themselves coyly within high walls, and darkened by the shade of immemorial cedars. Fulham has stomach for them all. Queer little lanes still lead the explorer to unknown (or at least to him