and I must have a little serious conversation. you going to do with our family heirlooms?"

What are

Hilda blushed scarlet, and was too confused to make any kind of rejoinder. She could not forget that she had prefaced her foolish speech by supposing herself lady of Bradenshope, while the heir of Bradenshope was actually within hearing! She could only hope he had not caught the first sentence, and resolved never again to chatter nonsense in a strange house.

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Coming events cast their shadows before."

LET us, for а little while, return to a person, for whom, however, we have no great admiration-I mean Horace Trelawny, who, if the printed announcement of his brother's marriage be true, has no longer a prospective coronet to offer to the lady of his choice.

Of course it was true! How could it be otherwise? When the Times, or any other of its established contemporaries, announces "A Marriage in High Life," celebrated at St. George's, Hanover Square, and gives a good report of the bride's and bridesmaids' dresses, and discloses the retreat where the happy pair are supposed to be blissfully honeymooning, it is certainly un fait accompli. Hilda never doubted the truth of the announcement, but she greatly wondered, as we have seen, how it all happened. She wrote to Mary Sandys, but that young lady could not give particulars; she had spent the winter in Italy with an invalid aunt, and had heard nothing whatever of the match till Hilda's letter of inquiry reached her. Let us, who in virtue of our

authorship are favoured with powers of clairvoyance, beyond that of any accredited medium, see how it came to pass.

We left Horace Trelawny wandering about on the wet evening of a wet, miserable day, in the dreary, deserted roads of Hyde Park, saying to himself, "Poor Hilda!" Pitying her certainly; for had she not been disappointed of his invaluable self? Had she not lost a lover who would have been a prize to any girl? But he pitied himself much more, for he had been disappointed of-he knew not how many thousands of pounds; Major Capel was reported to be so enormously rich-and he had certainly lost a very charming wife, who would in due time have been a very graceful and effective Countess of Camelford. So after cursing the memory of the unfortunate Major, and feeling himself a little "like a brute," as he recalled that grave farewell, that last solemn kiss, those sweet, sad, proud eyes, dark with unshed tears, he determined to go home and dine, and, if possible, drown his sorrows in a bottle of sparkling Burgundy.

This, however, was not quite so easy as he had hoped it might be; either his appetite was bad, or the dinner was a failure—and yet the Club was noted for its dainty little dinners, and its world-renowned chef! Nor did the wine please him, and though he drank a great deal more than was good for him, it had not the ardently desired effect. Should he go to the theatre, to the opera ? should he join certain friends of his at the billiard table? or should he take a turn at roulette, or rouge et noir, and lose in excitement the cares that were not dissipated by the fumes of wine?

"No, I can't; I am tired, dead tired," he said to himself, as he threw down the newspaper, of which he had not read a single word. "I feel very queer, too; no wonder! It was a dreadful trial to me, facing that poor girl, and putting an end to-to what I suppose I ought to call our engagement. Well! it was her own act! She said it out quite plainly—' I give you back your freedom! Henceforth we are strangers! And, by Jove, how handsome she looked! Every inch a queen! There are many girls of more unquestionable beauty, but this girl is worthy of a coronet; she is fit to be a duchess! Poor,

darling Hilda! and I am sure she loved me devotedly. I could see it in her eyes, and hear it in her voice, proudly as she looked, and calmly as she spoke those parting words. I shall never find another girl to suit me so exactly. But!-what else could I do? I can no more afford to marry a dowerless bride than to buy up all the railways. A man must live, and live as becomes his station, and I'm hard-up, very hard-up, I am afraid! I wonder, now, how much I do owe! how many thousands! Won't the governor be enraged when he finds this match is not to be, and that the heiress was a myth? And I must screw a few hundreds out of him, just to go on with; I must throw a sop to Cerberus, in the shape of part-payment to one or two of my creditors. Heigho! Care killed a cat, but it sha'n't kill me. I'm the same Horace Trelawny as ever, with only two lives—an old life, and a life that the most sanguine insurance company would never take at any premium-between me and the Earldom of Camelford. There are gold fish in the sea yet, and willing to be caught; I must look out for a City heiress, if I can't find one of my own order. I must marry money! Heaven knows if I had been a millionaire, and without debts, I'd never have thrown over my sweet Hilda, though it would have been extremely awkward to have for one's father-in-law a noted blackleg, who shot himself because he was afraid of the travaux forcés. I must go in for a second Miss Kilmansegg—a girl of that sort always falls madly in love with a coronet. If I had not been as good as an eldest son, I should never have got so far without a regular catastrophe; I must say I have enjoyed extraordinary credit, but I'm afraid I am about come to the end of my tether."

It soon became known in the fashionable world that the match between the Honourable Mr. Trelawny and Miss Capel was not to be; some said there never had been any engagement, others declared that it was very properly broken off, in consequence of the young lady's impecuniosity and the bad character of the late Major Capel. It was the close of the season, and Horace, not caring to be talked about at kettle-drums, nor discussed in after-dinner gossip, and generally disgusted with the state of affairs

around him, determined to go abroad. Why not try Monaco ? He might have good luck there. "I'll go to bed," thought he, "and sleep upon it"-meaning, of course, the idea, and not the bed, which was his natural resting-place; and his plan answered so well that he dreamt the croupier was crying "Rouge gagne ! rouge gagne!"—and that was his colour. And then he was trying to gather up the rouleaux of Napoleons and the notes that he had won, but there were so many, his hands would not hold them! He woke encouraged, then slept again, and dreamt a second time. Lo! he broke the bank! His fortune was made, and he forswore le jeu for ever and for ever. In the morning his mind was made up, he would go to Monaco as soon as he could make necessary arrangements.

And clearly the first thing to be done was to refill an exhausted purse! Though it was by no means so clear how this was to be accomplished. Lord Camelford was disgusted with his son's extravagance, but of late he had been more amiably disposed towards him, on account of the auriferous marriage he was about to contract. Hilda's fine fortune was to cover a multitude of her suitor's sins and peccadilloes! And now that was at an end-or rather, it had never been; the fortune had melted into thin air, as completely as any aerial castle in Spain; Hilda was far away-the farther the better, as things were; and the young man was more deeply in debt than he cared to acknowledge even to himself. Of course, his father knew, by this time, all about it; after all, he had never written to him, but he must have heard and read what a fiasco Hilda's splendid dowry had turned out to be; and he might think his son must require a little money from the paternal coffers, since he was disappointed of his bride. It was far more likely, however, that he would leave him to his own resources-simply continuing the "beggarly allowance," as Horace called it, which supplemented the very small income inherited from his mother. "An income!" said Mr. Trelawny, as he sat smoking one of his costliest Havanas, in a magnificent furred dressing-gown provided by his tailor-and to be paid for at some future timean income fit for a tutor, or a wretched curate, or a re

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tired country shopkeeper, or anybody who is accustomed to genteel poverty or vulgar respectability, but not an income for the future Earl of Camelford."

First of all, Horace tried the experiment of "raising the wind" in the fashion usually approved by spendthrifts, but no further loan could he obtain from Jew or Gentile, and some who held Mr. Trelawny's note of hand began to be extremely importunate. The tradesmen whom he had favoured with his custom began also to be, according to his showing, "insufferably impudent." That is to say, they were so utterly unreasonable as to require payment, or at least an instalment of payment, of their account," as delivered," over and over again; and some whose "little bills " were of very long standing were absolutely clamorous. There had been whispers everywhere of Mr. Trelawny's good luck in picking up an heiress; but now that the season had come to an end, and there was no declaration of any engagement, these tradesmen, who were obliged to settle their own accounts regularly whether their customers paid or not, naturally concluded that they had been deceived, and that the heiress had never existed except in Mr. Trelawny's fertile imagination. And people, when they think they have been duped-especially such people as cannot be expected to maintain

"that repose

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere "

are apt to be exceedingly angry, and threaten with uplifted voice. It was very unpleasant, certainly, and extremely aggravating, when only a few months before the persecuted young gentleman had fondly hoped that the days of his impecuniosity were at an end, and the years of plenty close at hand. And now he was dunned-dunned right and left worse than ever, and compelled to submit to all sorts of humiliations in the shape of expostulations, denunciations, and vulgar threats from infuriated creditors.

He tried his friends, but they were all " hard-up" themselves, and many of them were out of town, yachting, shooting, touring, and had not left their addresses; those who remained grew shy of him, and were evidently not anxious to enjoy his society. Even the man who had all