tinue to show our good blood through a dozen generations. Your mother, poor thing, had no beauty and no birth either. I believe I have told you so before, but you have not inherited a look-no, not a single feature from her. You have Garratt Fleming's face, line for line, and I cannot pay you a higher compliment. Your dear grandfather was unfortunate in his domestic concerns.' This was Mrs. Tudor's pretty way of stating the fact that a man was an unprincipled spendthrift; 'but he was the noblest-looking man and the most perfect dresser of his time. Enjoy yourself well, child, and be sure, if Colonel Dashwood offers to pay their share of the fly, you take the money at once. It

shows very ill-breeding ever to make any difficulty about the settlement of small accounts.'

This last injunction of Mrs. Tudor's proved her to be ignorant of the finer part of Colonel Dashwood's character. He accompanied his daughters to the carriage; he took and held Esther's hand with that paternal warmth he seemed always ready to feel for all young women except his own children; finally, he remarked how kind it was of Miss Fleming to call round for Jane and Milly. They must do as much for her the next time they were all going to the same party. But Colonel Dashwood knew, as well as Mrs. Tudor herself, when it was decently possible to be spared eighteenpence.

Papa has given me a colour for the evening,' said Jane as they drove off. It does make my cheeks burn so when I hear those polite little roundabout ways of being mean that our family excel in.'

'I hope your dress isn't very fresh, Esther,' cried Milly. 'What is it, black? Oh, how dowdy! however, it's all the better for us. I was afraid you would have a new white muslin, and we are in our old washed ones. You have got a bouquet, I see, so have I. Wasn't it good of Jane? Papa presented us with two shillings to buy flowersjust fancy, two shillings, twentyfour pence between us-and she gave up her share to me. Jenny's always so good in these little things.'

'I wish you would have mine, Jane,' cried Esther; they are very good ones that were sent to Aunt Tudor this morning; but they are not of the least use to me. Do take them off my hands as a kindness.'

Jane Dashwood's nature was not irrevocably selfish, like Milly's, but the temptation of a hothouse bouquet was a strong one. She thought of her washed muslin; of Miss Lynes' certain costly freshness; she knew Arthur had so often told her so that one of her most irresistible poses was when she held her lips upon a bouquet and half raised her eyes towards her partner's face. 'It seems dreadfully selfish to rob you, Esther, but if you really don't want them.'

I am very glad to give them you, Jane,' said Esther, thinking with a little pang of her unbroken black dress. 'You know better what to do with such things than I do.'

'It is thoroughly base of you, Miss Dashwood, for all that,' remarked Milly, when Esther had made over her sole ornament into Jane's hands. 'We poor wretches who are on our promotion want adorning more than engaged people, you know.'

That is just why I am selfish, Milly,' replied Miss Dashwood. 'I am so utterly thrown on my own resources, so hopelessly on my promotion again! Paul usurped, in secret, by mysterious influences, and openly by Miss Fleming, and Mr. Peel given by the unanimous consent of all his friends to Miss Lynes. It is a pity there are not a few willow-leaves among these flowers, Esther. My position to-night would make them a very appropriate endowment for me.'

'You don't mean that, Jenny,' said Millicent. You know that in spite of your washed muslin you are bent on Miss Lynes's utter discomposure and retreat, and feel very sure of it, too. I wish I had some especial work on my hands like you. It is so insipid dancing and talking with everybody and not caring for any one in particular. I hope John Alexander won't have managed to get there, though. He's all very well when one spends the day with his sisters, but I could not stand

looking intimate with him before people.'

Which little exposition of feeling, I think, pretty surely affords the key-note to Miss Millicent Dashwood's general views of life. She liked knowing the Smithetts and spending days with them, because they were rich, and wealth was the one thing that Milly, in her inmost heart, most yearned after and respected. She liked John Alexander's attentions very well indeed when only his sisters were by to witness them. She could even look forward a few years and picture herself marrying John Alexander, if she were not sufficiently lucky in the mean time to meet with any one who happened to be a gentleman as well as rich. But to meet Mr. Smithett among a room full of decent people, to have to receive his attentions and listen to his silly jokes and vulgar laugh, with other persons listening to them too, would have given Milly about as much pain as anything not directly and absolutely wounding her own selflove, could have power to inflict on her.

Next to money, the opinion of her little world was Millicent Dashwood's god. I think, though the struggle might have been sharp, she would really sooner have given the Smithetts up, with their dinners, riding-horses, presents, John Alexander's attentions, and all the other benefits that she received from them, than have it said by the people at Mrs. Strangways' ball that she was intimate with a family of stocking-weavers. Any foolish sentiment about the Smithett girls themselves, or inconvenient gratitude for any of the kindness they had shown to her, it was not at all in Millicent Dashwood's way to feel.

Not many people had arrived when they reached the Strangways', and the first object that met Jane's eyes on entering the cloak-room was Miss Lynes standing in solitary and absorbed attention before a chevalglass. The heiress was dressed in a brocaded pink silk, of a hue and texture gorgeous to behold. This dress was made with excess of trimmings, with fringes, with bows of

VOL. V.-NO. XXXI.

ribbon, with bouquets of flowers, with lace. From poor Miss Lynes's head (that pièce de résistance to all innately tasteless or newly-made women) depended a coronet of many colours, fern-leaves, grasses, fruits; all things of merit and price in themselves, but very hideous to look upon in their present position.

As she continued intent upon her employment, which was to hinder her hair from parting, as thinnish sandy hair has a habit of doing upon high, nude, glossy foreheads, Jane Dashwood danced lightly behind the unconscious heiress, and by pantomimic gestures conveyed to Esther and Milly her own sense of the varied graces of her wealthy rival's dress and figure. Just as she had commenced a very graphic representation of the set of two squarelooking red elbows, Miss Lynes caught sight of her in the glass, and turned round sharply.

'La, Miss Dashwood, how you startled me! I declare I never heard you come in at all. I'm so used to servants it seems quite odd to do anything for myself. Do you think my hair will do?'

'Oh, perfectly, I should say,' Jane answered, looking slowly up and down Miss Lynes's figure. 'Your dress is quite magnificent.'

"This? La, no, I think it very plain, I can assure you; but for a little party it don't look well to be over-dressed. Your sister, I suppose?' looking at Milly. You're not out yet, are you?'

It was not in Millicent Dashwood's nature to be anything but civil to the owner of fifty thousand pounds, and she answered very sweetly indeed that she was out. She had been to balls for the last six months.

'Dear me! I thought from your dress you weren't;' and she glanced at Milly's skirt, which, like Jane's, had shrunk from its pristine length in washing. Just set the door open for me,' she added, turning to Esther. 'It's enough to tear one's dress to pieces cramming in and out of these little pokey bedrooms.'

Esther looked straight between Miss Lynes's eyebrows for a moment, then turned away, and the heiress, with all the rustle of vulgar

2 P

assurance, stalked away by herself down stairs.

'Oh, you dear old Esther!' cried Jane, and in her exultation she ran up and embraced Esther round the waist. I never saw such a lovely take-down in my life-so utterly demolishing, and yet so dignified. I would give anything to have let that woman's impertinence down as you did.'

'If her skin is not as thick as a buffalo's, which it looks, she must have felt your sarcasm when you were praising her looks, Jane,' said Milly. Did you ever hear anything so odious as her telling me that my dress was short? Only that I knew you and Esther were quite strong enough without me, I would have let her see pretty plainly how intensely vulgar I thought her.'

'She is not worth thinking about,' interrupted Jane, quickly, as the sounds of approaching steps told that more people were arriving.

If you are ready, Esther, we will go down at once. It would be the height of indecorum for three young women without a chaperon to enter a room in which more than half-adozen people were assembled. Miss Lynes, you see, has nestled her innocent head under Mrs. Strangways' wing already.'

There were, however, a good many more than half-a-dozen people in the room when they entered; and Miss Lynes, though, in the metaphorical language of ball-rooms, under Mrs. Strangways' care, was, in commonplace speech, already flirting hard with Mr. Peel upon a remote and isolated ottoman.

A glance-less than a glancean instinctive momentary chill told Esther, as she went in, that Paul was not there, and she at once retreated quietly to a corner, with a general sense of extreme weariness of spirit, and with no other desire than to be a passive spectator of what was going on about her for the remainder of the evening.

'Vous me manquez-je suis absent de moi-même!' I suppose, at some period of life, every human being, in some form of speech or another, has repeated that line of Victor Hugo's to his own heart.

Esther Fleming, who knew nothing whatever of sentiment, and had never read a word of French poetry, was repeating it now, but unconsciously (and, after all, that is the only way to do such things truly. All the fine aroma, all the exquisite half-pain of love is gone, when we are once thoroughly conscious of what we are about). She really thought the rooms were dark to her because she had no taste for balls, no zest in little intrigues and triumphs like Milly's; no one strong interest like poor Jane's; and when she took her place between two frightfully-old Bath young ladies upon a sofa, quite simply and seriously believed herself to be intent on watching the arrival of Mrs. Strangways' guests-not the door through which Paul Chichester's face might possibly appear.

Mrs. Strangways' guests, whatever they might think or speak about their hostess, at any other time, were very numerous this night; and Mrs. Strangways, dressed with all the exquisite art that to her was second nature, and with a slightly heightened shade of pink upon her cheeks, looked superbly handsome as she received them.

Did she remember the slights, the coldness, the positive insults to which she had submitted at different times from nine-tenths of these smiling guests of hers? Did her smiling guests remember the condemnation they had so often and so loudly expressed of the woman who was entertaining them, as they now shook her by the hand?

Esther asked herself this while she watched repetition after repetition of the same little comedy of bows and smiles and compliments, as group after group of white and pink and blue floated up to Mrs. Strangways and away again. But poor Esther was, you know, quite barbarian in all her ideas of life and of right and wrong. Who thinks of what they have once said of a hostess, when they are just going to spend a pleasant evening at her expense? Who remembers that the Dean of Sarum's wife and daughters were once so bitter to one, when the Dean of Sarum's wife and