only know that the man who blighted my mother's life was Sir Lucas Clevedon. I have told you before to-day that I could never discover whether he did or did not marry her. There was only one man likely to know the truth-that man was Lord Dartmoor, my father's most intimate friend, but he died and made no sign. All that I know is, that about a year before my mother's death, Sir Lucas, at Lord Dartmoor's instigation, sold an estate of some value, and settled the purchase-money upon my mother and me. Now I do not believe Sir Lucas Clevedon was the kind of man to make any such sacrifice without a motive, and that a motive stronger than a selfish man's love. It is quite possible there had been some sort of marriage abroad, and that this settlement was the price he paid for secrecy. Yet I hardly think if the ceremony had been valid -a marriage that would hold water in a law-court-my mother would have sold my birthright. I love her too dearly to believe that she could be unjust to her child. I love her too dearly to believe that she was ever anything less than my father's wife.'

'And you have never even thought of asserting your rights?' asked Augusta.

'Never. If I have rights, I have no evidence to prove them, not so much as the certificate of my birth. Nor do I even know where I was born, nor by what name my wretched existence was recorded in the register of humanity. I am not the man to advance a claim I could not support, or wantonly to bring dishonour upon my mother's name by dragging the question of my birthright before the world. The settlement which my father made was sufficient to secure me a good education, and to keep me respectably while I waited for my first brief. I owe it to Lord Dartmoor that I began life at Harrow and Oxford. I owe it to Lord Dartmoor that I was not a shoeless pickpocket, sleeping under the dark arches in the Adelphi.'

Augusta Harcross covered her face with her hands and shuddered visibly. She was a woman to whom this kind of thing, this doubtful birth, this possibility of naked feet and dark arches, was unspeakably horrible. To her, who had been nurtured in the luxurious lap of middle-class prosperity, the thoughts of these degrading circumstances were as glimpses of some nethermost gulf, too black and deep to be looked into. She covered her face involuntarily, as if by that gesture she would fain have shut out the full horror of the situation. That she should have married a man so situated seemed to her the bitterest shame that could have befallen

her a disgrace from which there could be no recovery. And she had chosen him as a man likely to achieve distinction for her—a man whose name it would be an honour to bear. Great heavens! what a revelation! Future ages would know of her as the wife of Sir Lucas Clevedon's illegitimate son. Such secrets may be hidden for the moment, but leak out in history.

'His brother!' she said at last. 'Sir Lucas Clevedon's unacknowledged son! O, why did you ever bring me here ?' 'It was you who insisted on my coming.'

'Do you suppose that I would have come here if I had known this?' cried Mrs. Harcross indignantly. The very name of the

place would have been detestable to me.'

'If it has become so now we can go away at once,' replied Hubert quietly. There is nothing to hinder us.'

'And challenge suspicion by the very fact of our going! After all the talk about your likeness to these Clevedons, too! I daresay there are people who suspect already. It is too horrible to think of.'

'I am sorry I told you this, since the discovery is so painful to you.' 'Painful! You have stung me to the heart. To think of my husband in such a position-not daring to acknowledge his own brother-a visitor in his father's house without the right to utter his father's name!'

'It is a pity my parents were not wiser in their generation,' said Mr. Harcross, with a contemptuous laugh. If my mother had drowned me in Lake Lucerne, for instance; or if my father had dropped me out of the travelling carriage on the edge of some convenient precipice, you would have been spared this humiliation.'

'Laugh at me as much as you please. But dearly as I have loved you, I think I would rather you had died long ago than that I should have lived to suffer what I suffer to-day,' said Mrs. Harcross; and with those words she sundered the frail bond that had bound her husband's heart with a sentiment which was half remorse, half gratitude. His gratitude and his remorseful sense of having wronged her perished together, as he listened to that ruthless speech.

'I do not think there are many wives who would have taken such a revelation in such a spirit,' he replied, with an exceeding calmness; but I do think that your character is the natural outcome of your surroundings, and I am hardly surprised. Am I to conclude that you wish to remain here until the proposed end of your visit?'

'Certainly. I will do nothing to make people talk.'

'As you please. I came here to gratify you, and shall remain until you're tired. It's half-past six, I see,' looking at his watch. Isn't it time you began to think about dressing for dinner?'

His quiet tone betrayed no emotion whatever. If he were offended ever so deeply, she could not tell how much or how little. There was no quickened breathing, no unsteadiness of the voice, nor the faintest quiver of the firm thin lips.

'Your toilet is such an important business,' he said; and mine only an affair of half an hour. I'll go and smoke my cigar in the colonnade while you make your election between pink and blue.' And so they parted; he to go, as he had said, to one of the stone colonSECOND SERIES, VOL. VIII. F.S. VOL. XVIII.

Y

nades at the end of the house, where he took another solitary promenade, and solaced his wounded spirit with a cigar.

'I'm glad I told her,' he said to himself. I'm glad she showed me her nature in all its nakedness. Great heaven! what a narrow selfish soul! Not a thought of my loss, or my dishonour. Only herself-the cheat practised upon herself. I don't think I ever understood her thoroughly until to-day. At least I have done with compunction; I shall feel no more remorse for having contracted an engagement I cannot conscientiously fulfil. She only wanted a position, and that I have won for her. Loved me! she never can have loved me; if she had, she would have flung herself upon my breast to-day, and sobbed out her shame for me upon my heart. If I had told Grace Redmayne my story! O God! I can see the sweet sympathetic face lifted up to mine, the tender eyes shining through a mist of tears. I can almost feel the touch of the dear dead hands. 0, my love, my love! you would have perished to save my soul from pain; yet your memory is "the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.'

Tullion had rather a hard time of it that evening at the toilet of her mistress. Mrs. Harcross, although distinguished at all times by a bearing which her maid called 'orty,' or stand-offish,' was, for the most part, a lady of even temper. She was too proud to fly into a passion with a servant, or betray vexation at the failure of a new dress. That omnipresent and mysterious deity called 'Society' reigned supreme even in Augusta's dressing-room. She would not suffer her maid to see a countenance which she could not present to Society. This evening, however, Mrs. Harcross was evidently out of sorts.

'Why didn't you order a fire in my room, Tullion?' she exclaimed, looking contemptuously at the grate with its summer finery of paper shavings. On such a miserable day as this, a fire is an absolute necessity.'

I can light it this moment, ma'am, if you like,' replied the dutiful Tullion, ready to speed off in quest of coals and wood.

And smother me with smoke!' cried Augusta. No, thank you. I daresay all these old chimneys smoke abominably. What induced you to put out that diamond necklet?' she asked, pointing to a fiery serpent, coiled on a purple velvet cushion, a chef-d'œuvre of the jeweller's art, and her father's wedding present. Do you suppose I am going to parade the contents of my jewel-case every evening ?'

'I beg your pardon, ma'am, if I was wrong. But I thought you would wear the amber silk and black lace, and being rather a 'eavy dress, it wants the relief of di'monds. You've not worn the amber yet.'

'I hate amber. And the dress with the Maltese flounces is not amber, but maize. I wish you would learn to call colours by their right names. can take out my black silk train.'

Every woman with black hair wears amber.

You

'Black silk, ma'am !' exclaimed Tullion, aghast. There ain't a death among the crowned heads of Europe, is there, ma'am ?' 'Crowned heads, nonsense!'

'I thought it might be rile mourning, ma'am. You so seldom wear black.'

'Pray don't argue the point, Tullion; I shall wear black silk this evening.'

It was a petty caprice, no doubt, for so lofty a mind. But Mrs. Harcross had conceived a sudden horror of all that finery which had been hitherto the chief occupation and delight of her days. The treasures of those vast travelling-cases, brimming over with silks, and satins, and laces, and furbelows, seemed all at once transformed into so much sackcloth and ashes. Good heavens, was she to make herself splendid and conspicuous only to be pointed out as the wife of Sir Lucas Clevedon's natural son ? How could she tell how many people knew the story of her husband's birth? This Lord Dartmoor who was in the secret might have told his friends right and left, and such knowledge spreads like a prairie fire. It was not because Mr. Harcross fancied his story unknown that it really was so. Half the people who shook his hand and ate his dinners might be familiar with the circumstances of his birth, and might secretly despise him. It was like living in an atmosphere of contempt.

So the glittering snake, and two infant snakes, his companions, which had coiled themselves into earrings, were put away in their velvet beds, and Mrs. Harcross wore a lustrous black silk dress, with a train three yards long, over which, when hard pressed by Tullion, she consented to wear a tunic of old point lace, which a Roman-catholic bishop might have envied. Dressed thus, with a knot of scarlet ribbon in her dark hair, and an antique cross of black pearls upon her neck, Mrs. Harcross looked more distinguished than in a more elaborate costume.

'There's nothing that don't become you, ma'am !' said the maid rapturously, as she looped up the tunic with a spray of scarlet geranium. Even black, which is so very trying to most brunette ladies.'

Mrs. Harcross contemplated herself contemptuously in the cheval glass before which she was standing, with the maid on her knees at her feet.

What did it matter how well or how ill she looked? only the wife of Sir Lucas Clevedon's illegitimate son.

She was

IMAGINARY LONDON

A delusive Directory

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

VII. ST. POGRAM'S PALACE AND ST. POGRAM'S-STREET.

VARE to ?' the hansom cabman inquires in an offhand and, as it appears to me, not too respectful manner. 'St. Pogram's Palace,' I reply, with the languid but lofty consciousness of having a good bourne to give; and look sharp.' The cabman involuntarily touches his hat, and then transfers that touch, through the medium of a whip, to his horse. He sets off, let us say from Brompton, at a tremendous pace; and as he passes the cab-rank at the top of Sloanestreet, I fancy him signaling in an occultly masonic manner to some brother Jehu that he is driving no end of a swell.'

He is not driving anything of the kind; and he will find out his mistake at the end of the journey, when I pay him a legal eighteenpenny in lieu of the fanciful three-and-sixpenny fare upon which he may be reckoning. It is as easy to go to St. Pogram's Palace, if you put yourself in the right groove for going there, as to the Old Bailey; and indeed I rather astonished a cabman in Pall-mall the other evening by bidding him drive me to the Central Criminal Court. Do you mean Noogate ?' asked the charioteer. Newgate will do,' I replied; and to increase his perplexity, I made him drive through Covent-garden-market, and stopping the vehicle by St. Paul's church, I bought a camellia japonica for my button-hole at Mrs. Buck's in the grand avenue. Now, wot can this cove be a-wantin' of at the Hold Bailey at five o'clock in the hevening vith a vite choker and flower in his coat?' the dubious cabman may have muttered to himself. 'Vitnesses don't vear vite chokers, and he can't be vun of the grand jury. P'raps he's out on bail, and is goin' to surrender hisself." Little did the simple-hearted cabman wis that I was bound to the Old Bailey sessions - house to eat marrow-pudding with the judges, and hobnob with the reverend ordinary. Life is a game at ups and downs; it is full of violent contrasts, and everything depends upon circumstances. It was my fortune, during the war in France, to lie in gaol one morning and to dine with an ambassador in the evening; and on both occasions I did my best to accommodate myself to circumstances. You must do it if you wish to get on in the world; and if you will only get yourself into a properly philosophical frame of mind, and take the rough with the smooth, you will find his excellency's chambertin as palatable, in its degree, as the prison gruel,