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coquetry is not inborn in men,-in Englishmen, at all events. There are male coquets, as there are male milliners and male dancers; but Nature asserts herself in every case. Just when the last perfection in art is required, they lack those finer graces of the sex whose attributes they are infringing, and become ridiculous. Arthur Peel could carry on any number of flirtations apart; could parry jealous questionings with a mixture of aplomb and indignant tenderness that belonged almost to the highest stage of science; but yet to the very highest he could not reach. Meeting the woman who loved him, in the company of the woman whose fifty thousand pounds he desired to possess, he looked more foolish, more awkward, than any schoolgirl of fifteen would do if suddenly called into a position in which just the same amount of tact should be required of her.

But, whatever the feelings of the others, Mrs. Strangways, at least, looked radiant, and would on no account pass Jane and Esther with merely bowing. She stopped, she shook hands, she made playful surmises as to the object of their early walk; finally she introduced Jane to Miss Lynes. The heiress nodded with the affability that her wealth and her magnificent mount and her groom behind her, and her present success with Arthur, warranted her to feel: Jane drew up her little figure and inclined her head about three-quarters of an inch with an awfully supercilious ghost of a smile, extending as much to Mr. Peel as to Miss Lynes.

'Have you walked far, Miss Fleming?' Arthur inquired, bring ing his horse nearer to the path and farther from the heiress, but not daring to address Jane herself. 'We did not see you on the common. I suppose-ah-'

He was assisted out of his dilemma by Jane. That one word 'we' had sent all the angry blood from her heart to her cheeks, and Mr. Peel knew, before she spoke, the kind of answer he had to expect.

'We haven't been far, Mr. Peel. Milly has gone to spend the day

with those dreadful school-friends of hers, the Smithetts, and as I never can stand the cotton atmosphere for more than five minutes without a sensation. of choking, I made my escape, and asked Esther to come out with me here for a little purer air.'

It was not a refined thrust: Jane was the first to confess herself afterwards that she had been positively unladylike. But it took the desired effect at the time. No fine shaft could have pierced so tough a skin, morally and physically, as Miss Lynes's; but the slightest allusion to trade made her actually shiver. She was so exultingly proud of her money, so thoroughly ashamed of the way in which her money had been made!

'Who are the Smithetts?' she cried, in that quick familiar way with which people of her breeding always try to throw off their confusion. 'I never met them out-I never heard of them. Are they in society?'

The

'Some persons visit them,' said Jane, in a frightfully clear, syllabic manner. 'I believe old Mr. and Mrs. Smithett belong to a highly respectable class of persons. daughters, from being ashamed of their parents and of their business, are insufferable. Is that really one of Stone and Mason's horses, Mrs. Strangways? It is a much more decent-looking creature than any papa ever gets for Milly and me.'

'Oh, I hope you won't get any hack-horses when you ride with me again, Mrs. Strangways,' interrupted Miss Lynes. 'They're such miserable screws, I don't care to be seen with them; and you know you can always have one of mine, whenever you like. I keep three, beside the groom's.'

Arthur Peel had always felt a mild chronic distaste for Miss Lynes's person; but at this moment it rose into something very near strong repugnance. Her corpulent figure, her stunted features had never stood out in such strong relief as they did now, with Jane Dashwood's delicate form and proud little patrician face straight before him. Her bragging pride of wealth and innate vulgarity of soul had never revolted him as they did now, with Jane's mock

ing wit ready to call them out and treasure them for his especial gratification and benefit hereafter.

How devoutly he wished Jane Dashwood had Miss Lynes's money -or half of it! He thought he would marry her to-morrow with half of it, and let Miss Lynes and her three horses, besides the groom's, go to the deuce. He almost thought, looking at the two young women together, that he would marry Jane without a penny, and leave Miss Lynes with all her wealth for some one of stronger stomach than himself.

He almost thought so: but Arthur Peel was too old a hand ever to act upon any foolish impulse. A delicate lithe figure and proud little patrician face are very nice things indeed for a man who can afford to pay for them-which he could not. He was over head and ears in debt; his family were bankrupts; his only hope of being able to save his commission, or his position in life at all, rested upon his being able to bring his own handsome face to a good matrimonial market as speedily as possible. As much love as it was in his nature to feel he felt at this moment for Jane Dashwood; as much disgust as any woman, young and well-disposed towards himself, could fill him with he felt for Miss Lynes; and for an instant, as I have said, the desperate folly of being true to the one and throwing up the other did enter his brain.

That instant was enough to show him the danger of allowing feeling ever to dally with principle. Young women, however vulgar, with fifty thousand pounds to their portion, are not readily met, and are quickly lost. Already two or three men of family as high, and with position less desperate than his own, were steadily in pursuit of Miss Lynes. A little well-founded jealousy on her part, a slight suspicion as to the disinterestedness of his motives, and his game might be up.

Mr. Peel turned his eyes resolutely from Jane Dashwood's face, and fixing them upon Miss Lynes, asked her, in rather a low voice, if she was ashamed of riding with him, as he was on a hack-horse? If so,

she had only to speak, and, whatever the violence to his own feelings, he would go at once in an opposite direction.

'You droll creature!' cried Miss Lynes in her loudest tone. As if I had ever taken the trouble to look what your horse was like! Nothing like the vanity of men I do believe -and all the time, do you know you are losing your flower? I shall take care how I waste one of my rare winter roses upon you another time.'

And she leant forward, and with an air of the most perfect, recognised familiarity adjusted a flower that was nearly falling from Mr. Peel's buttonhole.

It was more than Jane Dashwood's strength could bear. She had marked Arthur's low tone; she intercepted the look which passed from his eyes to the heiress as she stooped forward towards him now; and a feeling nearer akin to positive anguish than any he had ever yet caused her, contracted her heart. That he could never love Miss Lynes, she knew; but, tempted by his own need, might he not be brought in time,-might he not already have brought himself, to the thought of marrying her?

'Esther, it is time for us to go on. These November days are so short, and we have not got half through our walk yet.'

'And we were to have been at the Crofton's at two, and it is now halfpast one,' said Mrs. Strangways, looking at her watch. 'Thank you, Jane dear, for reminding me of the time. I could not get those young people on when we were in the country. They persisted in calling it warm, and looking out for violets, in spite of all my assertions about its being the depth of winter. Miss Fleming, I am to see you on Thursday, I hope? That is right. Come early with Jane and Milly. You will have an opportunity of renewing your acquaintance with a Weymouth friend-that is, if Miss Dashwood will give you carte blanche for doing

so.'

And then Mrs. Strangways' affection for her young friends could not be satisfied without another warm

shake of the hand; and Jane had to submit to another patronizing nod of triumph from Miss Lynes, as, laughing and talking in an under tone to Arthur Peel, she rode off by his side.

'Well, what do you think of my rival now?' she cried, after a minute, to Esther. 'Do you think there is imminent danger of Arthur Peel's falling in love with Miss Lynes?'

'With Miss Lynes, herself,-no!' 'But with her money, yes. You think her rare roses in November, the three " orses besides the groom's" will tempt him? I don't, Esther. It is not in Arthur's nature to sell himself to such a woman as that. Look at them together! Did you ever see such a contrast? I can tell by the turn of Arthur's head, even at this distance, that it is she who is doing all the talking-just in the same forward way that she volunteered to button his coat for him. I suppose, however hideous a woman is, men feel flattered at having love made to them with such outrageous warmth-but to return it by love! Ah, that is another thing.'

Through the long vista of leafless trees Miss Dashwood continued to watch the riding-party as long as they were in sight. Just as they turned into the town park, and when the archway across the road would in another moment have shut them out of sight, Mr. Peel turned, checked his horse for an instant, and raised his hand to his hat.

The blood rushed up crimson into Miss Dashwood's face.

'Do you see him, poor fellow ?— Esther, do you see him? He wants me to know by that look that he wishes he was here, and that his companions are odious to him. How wrong I was to show such annoyance before those women-as if it could matter to me Mrs. Strangways having entrapped him, for once, into riding with her and Miss Lynes! I was very wrong-wasn't I?'

'You acted naturally, Jane,' said Esther, who felt herself unable to decipher such worlds of meaning in Arthur's parting salutation. 'Mr. Peel seemed quite intimate enough with Miss Lynes to justify your annoyance. Shall we walk on a little

quicker? the common is some distance from us yet.'

But all Jane Dashwood's desire for the country was gone. 'There is no good in walking up that terrific hill, Esther. It is quite as pleasant here. Let us sit down for a few minutes and rest. I have yet something I want particularly to say to you.'

Esther knew that something particular, with Jane Dashwood, must mean the only subject of real interest to her in the world-her own loveaffairs; accordingly, she was quite prepared for another indignant outburst about Arthur Peel's seeming flirtation with the heiress. When

Jane began to speak, however, all indignation had left her voice, and her face was as soft and gentle as though no tornado of fierce jealousy or quick repentance had just swept across her heart.

'You think my love and my trust, too, are unreasonable, Esther. I am quite sure you do; but you don't know what has made them both so deep in my heart. You don't really know how long and how I have trusted Arthur Peel.'

'Three years, you told me, Jane. You must have been almost a child when your acquaintance with him first began.'

'I was never a child, Esther; we were not brought up to be children. I was just as much a woman at sixteen as I am, or as Milly is, now. But I was not quite sixteen when I first met Arthur. I went to spend the Christmas holidays with my aunt Robarts, papa's sister, in Leicestershire; and Arthur, who was going to stay in the house, too, travelled down in the same carriage with me. He was quite a boy then, he had only just got his commission, and he was as simple as possible, much simpler than I was. Well, you know how such things go on! We played battledore and shuttlecock, and sang duets, and gave each other flowers, and went through all the established stages of a boy-andgirl flirtation; and then, one evening in the greenhouse, he made me an offer. I don't think I cared very much about him, but I accepted him because I always meant to accept

the first man who offered to me. The Robartses encouraged it all immensely, and papa wrote me the only affectionate letter I ever had from him in my life, and everybody let me know, directly or indirectly, how wonderfully clever I had been at sixteen to get hold of such a catch as Arthur Peel.'

'The engagement was a permitted one, then?'

'Permitted! I should think it was permitted. Arthur had an old aunt living at that time, who was expected to leave him the whole of her money, something like twenty or thirty thousand pounds, and we all felt sure we had got hold of this money, and thought Arthur the most delightful, promising, excellent young man living. Well, the aunt died, about six months after I was engaged, and left every shilling she had to her solicitor. When Arthur wrote and told me of his fallen prospects, and said it need make no difference to us, and his profession in time would be enough for us to marry on, I first really felt that I loved him. Papa was in a great rage, and stormed about Arthur, as if he had taken us in, instead of being disappointed himself. He said the engagement shouldn't go on a day, that it was a mockery for a penniless cornet to talk of marrying one of his daughters, that the Peels were a dissipated, ruined family (I never heard of their bad morals before, you must know), and he should have me back upon his hands in a twelvemonth, if he was fool enough to consent to such a beggarly marriage. If I was pretty enough to get as good an offer as Mr. Peel's had been at sixteen, I should be sure to have another as good if I waited. As to love, he and Mrs. Dashwood both knew very well I had accepted the offer simply because it was an eligible one. Mrs. Robarts had informed them my manner showed that pretty plainly from the first, and so on.

'I didn't make any opposition, for I knew, if they chose, they could hinder me from seeing Arthur; but I swore in my heart I would never give him up as long as he himself wished to marry me. I had accepted

him half through vanity, half through worldliness; but at the first word of being false to him, under his fallen prospects, something stronger seemed to rise up in my heart, and I have kept to it. Yes, Esther, I have kept to it ever since.'

'I am sorry for you, Jane. Whatever other people may think, I say you determined right.'

"Sometimes I think so, too; but, you know, wrong is so mixed up with right, or so grows of it, that however one starts one seems forced into evil as one gets on. I may have been right in determining to stand by Arthur, whether he was rich or poor, but I have been wrong a hundred, a thousand times, in all the deceit and prevarication, and sometimes the downright falsehoods, of the last three years. Just in the same way wrong seems in time to become right. Papa was worldly and harsh in making me break with Arthur Peel as he was then; but I believe, if I could judge dispassionately, I should consider any father right, who held his daughter back from marrying such a man as Arthur Peel is now.'

'Oh, Jane! can you say this?'

'I can both say it and feel it. If we had married early, if we had been openly engaged, he might— God knows if it be so, but I try to think it!--he might have been different, for my sake. But only bound as he has been to me (and such, even, as our engagement is, we have ourselves broken it off half a score of times), he has had nothing to hold him back from becoming like all the rest of his family. It is inborn in every one of the Peels to be extravagant and dissipated, and a gambler. His two eldest brothers are outlawed, the third is following fast on their steps, and Arthur himselfbut here Miss Dashwood's voice trembled, and she stopped short.

'I wish you had married him long ago,' cried Esther. 'It is not very like me to counsel runaway marriages, but I do think a runaway marriage would have been better for you both than the sort of engagement that binds you now. Marry Arthur Peel while you still love each other, and while there is a

hope of reclaiming him. I will be your bridesmaid, Jane.'

6

Miss Dashwood laughed bitterly: then the quick blood started to her cheek again. Your proposal might have been worth listening to three years ago, Esther. We were younger and simpler, and more sentimental then than we are now. Arthur Peel, at two-and-twenty, is a great deal too old to commit an action of such surpassing folly as to add a penniless wife to the heavy burthen of his other encumbrances.'

'Jane, do you mean?——'

'I mean,' cried Miss Dashwood, starting up suddenly, that Arthur and I thoroughly understand each other, and ourselves. We are engaged in our way, which, as I told you, would never be yours, and if I talked to you for a hundred hours, instead of one, you would know no more about us than you do now. You would still be Esther Fleming, and we should still be Arthur Peel and Jane Dashwood. Oh, no,' she added, as Esther turned towards the common which was to have been their destination-oh, no, let us get on home at once; we want a few turns in Milsom Street, to enliven us after all this solitude. Country walks are very innocent and charming, and sentimental in theory, but in practice-va!

What do you mean to wear on Thursday? Papa and Mrs. Dashwood are so shamefully stingy that Milly and I will be obliged to go in our washed muslins. How I wish philanthropy occasionally bore fruits at home as well as abroad!'

The tide had turned again: all that the fickle nature contained of seriousness had evaporated. Blue grenadines and white silks; gored skirts and plain ones; the advantages of fair women over dark women in possessing a wider range of becoming colours: these formed the staple of Miss Dashwood's conversation during the remainder of the day.

CHAPTER XXII.

RIVAL CHARMS.

When she first left Countisbury Miss Fleming would have scouted

the idea that she could ever find pleasure either in dress, or in parties, or in anything save letters from Malta during Oliver Carew's ab

sence.

As the evening approached, however, on which she was again to meet Paul, she could not hide from herself that she was looking forward with an unusual amount of interest to the event; also that she made more little rehearsals with flowers and muslins and lace for several successive evenings than she had ever done before in her whole simple life.

Was she growing vain, avid of general admiration, or-and this question gave her conscience a sharper prick were all these rehearsals proof of a desire to stand well with one man, and that one another than Oliver ?

'You look distinguished, Esther, said Mrs. Tudor, as her niece stood before her for approval on the evening of the party, and it is the highest praise I could give you. The simple unstudied style suits you. Little mignon persons require small fripperies; large dark women demand few and flowing lines. Our styles are the same. I never wore more in my hair in my life than you have now. Our cast of features can afford to set fashion aside.'

Esther was dressed in a black lace that Mrs. Tudor's own cast-off stores had furnished forth. A single scarlet flower was in her hair, a gold bracelet, a loan also of Mrs. Tudor's, was her only ornament. But that nameless something, which neither dress nor fashion, nor always birth, can give; that fine grace which, lacking a better word, we call distinction, was Esther Fleming's inherited portion, and Mrs. Tudor was right when she added to her other praise a prophecy that her niece would be by far the most refined and best-bred young woman in Mrs. Strangways' rooms.

"Some families take up every plebeian face that they have the misfortune to be allied with, Esther, but we retain our own features, excepting Joan, whom I regard as a mere accidental offset, the one crooked branch you will see on the handsomest tree. We shall con

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