LITMIR.BIZ

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to admire it. I do not care how I have disfigured my head since you are not to see it again.

      "God bless you, Lorne. Do not quite forget last night, directly, and believe me, as in truth I am,

      "Most devotedly yours,

       "HARRIETTE."

      This was his answer, written, I suppose, in some pique:

      "True you have given me many sweet kisses, and a lock of your beautiful hair. All this does not convince me you are one bit in love with me. I am the last man on earth to desire you to do violence to your feelings by leaving a man as dear to you as Frederick Lamb is, so farewell Harriette. I shall not intrude to offend you again.

      "LORNE."

      "Poor Lorne is unhappy and, what is worse," thought I, "he will soon hate me!" The idea made me wretched. However, I will do myself the justice to say, that I have seldom, in the whole course of my life, been tempted by my passions or my fancies to what my heart and conscience told me was wrong. I am afraid my conscience has been a very easy one; but certainly I have followed its dictates. There was a want of heart and delicacy, I always thought, in leaving any man, without full and very sufficient reasons for it. At the same time, my dear mother's marriage had proved to me so forcibly the miseries of two people of contrary opinions and character torturing each other to the end of their natural lives, that, before I was ten years old, I decided in my own mind to live free as air from any restraint but that of my conscience.

      Frederick Lamb's love was now increasing, as all men's do, from gratified vanity. He sometimes passed an hour in reading to me. Till then, I had no idea of the gratification to be derived from books. In my convent in France I had read only sacred dramas; at home, my father's mathematical books, Buchan's Medicine, Gil Blas, and The Vicar of Wakefield, formed our whole library. The two latter I had long known by heart, and could repeat at this moment.

      My sisters used to subscribe to little circulating libraries in the neighbourhood, for the common novels of the day; but I always hated these. Fred Lamb's choice was happy, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, The Rambler, Virgil, &c. "I must know all about these Greeks and Romans," said I to myself. "Some day I will go into the country quite alone, and study like mad. I am too young now."

      In the meantime, I was absolutely charmed with Shakespeare. Music I always had a natural talent for. I played well on the pianoforte; that is, with taste and execution; though almost without study.

      There was a very elegant looking woman residing in my neighbourhood, in a beautiful little cottage, who had long excited my curiosity. She appeared to be the mother of five extremely beautiful children. These were always to be seen, with their nurse, walking out, most fancifully dressed. Every one used to stop to admire them. Their mother seemed to live in the most complete retirement. I never saw her with anybody besides her children.

      One day our eyes met: she smiled, and I half bowed. The next day we met again, and the lady wished me a good morning. We soon got into conversation. I asked her if she did not lead a very solitary life.

      "You are the first female I have spoken to for four years," said the lady, "with the exception of my own servants; but," added she, "some day we may know each other better. In the meantime will you trust yourself to come and dine with me to-day?"

      "With great pleasure," I replied, "if you think me worthy that honour."

      We then separated to dress for dinner.

      When I entered her drawing-room at the hour she had appointed, I was struck with the elegant taste, more than with the richness of the furniture. A beautiful harp, drawings of a somewhat voluptuous cast, elegant needle-work, Moore's poems, and a fine pianoforte, formed a part of it. "She is not a bad woman—and she is not a good woman," said I to myself. "What can she be?"

      The lady now entered the room, and welcomed me with an appearance of real pleasure. "I am not quite sure," said she, "whether I can have the pleasure of introducing you to Mr. Johnstone to-day, or not. We will not wait dinner for him, if he does not arrive in time." This was the first word I had heard about a Mr. Johnstone, although I knew the lady was called by that name.

      Just as we were sitting down to dinner Mr. Johnstone arrived and was introduced to me. He was a particularly elegant, handsome man, about forty years of age. His manner of addressing Mrs. Johnstone was more that of an humble romantic lover than of a husband; yet Julia, for so he called her, could be no common woman. I could not endure all this mystery, and, when he left us in the evening, I frankly asked Julia, for so we will call her in future, why she invited a strange madcap girl like me, to dinner with her.

      "Consider the melancholy life I lead," said Julia.

      "Thank you for the compliment," answered I.

      "But do you believe," interrupted Julia, "that I should have asked you to dine with me, if I had not been particularly struck and pleased with you? I had, as I passed your window, heard you touch the pianoforte with a very masterly hand, and, therefore, I conceived that you were not uneducated, and I knew that you led almost as retired a life as myself. Au reste," continued Julia, "some day, perhaps soon, you shall know all about me."

      I did not press the matter further at that moment, believing it would be indelicate.

      "Shall we go to the nursery?" asked Julia.

      I was delighted; and, romping with her lovely children, dressing their dolls, and teaching them to skip, I forgot my love for Argyle, as much as if that excellent man had never been born.

      Indeed I am not quite sure that it would have occurred to me, even when I went home, but that Fred Lamb, who was just at this period showing Argyle up all over the town as my amorous shepherd, had a new story to relate of his grace.

      Horace Beckford and two other fashionable men, who had heard from Frederick of my cruelty as he termed it, and the duke's daily romantic walks to the Jew's Harp House, had come upon him by accident in a body, as they were galloping through Somers-town. Lorne was sitting in a very pastoral fashion on a gate near my door, whistling. They saluted him with a loud laugh. No man could, generally speaking, parry a joke better than Argyle: for few knew the world better: but this was no joke. He had been severely wounded and annoyed by my cutting his acquaintance altogether, at the very moment when he had reason to believe that the passion he really felt for me was returned. It was almost the first instance of the kind he had ever met with. He was bored and vexed with himself for the time he had lost, and yet he found himself continually in my neighbourhood, almost before he was aware of it. He wanted, as he has told me since, to meet me once more by accident, and then he declared he would give me up.

      "What a set of consummate asses you are," said Argyle to Beckford and his party; and then quietly continued on the gate, whistling as before.

      "But r-e-a-l-l-y, r-e-a-l-l-y, ca-ca-cannot Tom She-She-She-Sheridan assist you, marquis?" said the handsome Horace Beckford, in his usual stammering way.

      "A very good joke for Fred Lamb, as the case stands now," replied the duke, laughing: for a man of the world must laugh in these cases, though he should burst with the effort.

      "Why don't she come?" said Sir John Shelley, who was one of the party.

      An odd mad-looking Frenchman, in a white coat and a white hat, well known about Somers-town, passed at this moment and observed his grace, whom he knew well by sight, from the other side of the way. He had, a short time before, attempted to address me when he met me walking alone, and inquired of me when I had last seen the Marquis of Lorne, with whom he had often observed me walking. I made him no answer. In a fit of frolic, as if everybody combined at this moment against the poor, dear, handsome Argyle, the Frenchman called, as loud as he could scream, from the other side of the way, "Ah! ah! oh! oh! vous voilà, monsieur le Comte Dromedaire," alluding thus to the duke's family name, as pronounced Camel. "Mais ou est donc madame la Comtesse?"

      "D——d impudent rascal!" said Argyle, delighted to vent his growing rage on somebody, and started across the road after the poor thin old Frenchman, who might have now said his prayers had not his spider-legs served him better than his courage.

      Fred

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