brought up to it, Mr. Roy. You don't expect a lady to have the training of a housemaid-or a cook."

"I'm tired of ladies! It's the same story over and over again. Have you seen the So-and-sos? Are you going to such-and-such a ball? Who are these people? Do they give things? I suppose we shall be obliged to know them! That is all one gets out of the sort of women one takes down to dinner seven nights in the week. I should like to meet nature sometimes, heart and brains, flesh and blood, truth, sympathy, and a little common sense!"

"Should you!" thought my lady, who, to do her justice, had in her composition more flesh and blood, perhaps even more common sense, than he gave her credit for. "You'll know better some day, and certainly you shall not speak like that when I've got you safe in hand, and firmly broken in !" but she only looked kindly in his face, and answered with a spice of covert satire, "I'm surprised you should say that. I think a woman is always agreeable with a pleasant man at her elbow. We don't want much encouragement to talk; and if there are long intervals of silence during dinner, it's generally your fault, not ours. At least, that is my experience, and I used to dine out a great deal before you came to London."

He could not but be mollified by the loving glance and the flattering inference. "Any fellow would make himself agreeable who sat by you," he answered. "I was thinking of very different people, like Lady Pandora and her lot. Never mind. Let us hear the plan of the campaign. Where are you going to take us, and what shall you do to us when we get there?"

"I meant to go down by water, but you say you hate the river, and it does look melancholy with the tide out. My plan is to drive to Bushey, where we can all meet and admire the chestnuts. They must look beautiful now."

66

They did a week ago. People take care to miss them at their best. Après?"

"Then let us go on to Hampton Court, make our bows to bluff King Hal, ask some of our poor relations to give us tea, walk in that quaint old garden, and perhaps lose ourselves in the Maze. Young people delight in the Maze."

Visions of tight-waist flitting to and fro like a hunted hind through alleys of evergreens crossed John Roy's brain, and he signified a cordial assent.

"When we've had enough of it," continued her ladyship, “let us go on to Richmond, dine at The Castle-I've arranged all that-and drive home by moonlight. Do you approve?"

"I shall like the driving back," answered Roy, who could not well say less, and who, indeed, was never loth to return home from such festivities. "I think it sounds pleasant enough."

"Then you won't throw me over?" returned Lady Jane affectionately. "You couldn't be so cruel! I have got to depend upon you so for everything, because I feel that you have too good a heart to play me false."

"THEN take Auntie.

CHAPTER XXXV.

HAMPTON COURT.

She likes it, and it will do her good." The speaker was Nelly, sitting in her glass case as usual, pen in

hand.

'Steady! I mean to take you both.

You'll never be yourself again till you get some fresh air. When I knew you first you carried a red ensign; now you have hauled it down and hoisted the white. Look out, Mrs. John, that you don't run up the yellow flag before you've done!"

The honest seaman was right; though her smile seemed cheerful enough, it could not conceal from Brail, nor from anyone else, the ravages deep sorrow and bitter injustice had made on that fair fresh face. Her eyes were sunk, her cheeks fallen; and though her beauty had gained something in refinement, it had lost the delicacy of tint which made it so attractive in the old happy days long ago.

Even her aunt deplored the change, and held many a consultation with their firm friend the lieutenant as to what should be done. The one called her "out-of-sorts," the other "out-of-gear," but neither could devise better remedies than amusement, variety, and fresh air.

"You ought to go, Nelly, you ought indeed," argued Mrs. Phipps, taking part in these deliberations. "I am sure at your age I would have jumped at such an offer, like a cock at a gooseberry! June weather, my dear, a day in the country, a pleasure-trip on board a steamboat, and a sailor beau to look after you-what more can a young woman want? And it's strange if such an old-established business as ours can't take care of itself for a summer's afternoon. You seem to expect you will find the hotel vanished when you come back!"

So Nelly was over-persuaded, and, accompanied by her aunt,who, having an attraction of her own in the shape of a female friend at Hampton Court, required little pressing for so agreeable a jaunt,-put on, with her best bonnet and a new pair of gloves, as cheerful a face

as she could command, to do credit to their gallant escort, the enterprising Brail.

Auntie's get-up was not quite so successful. Black and gold, as much as possible of both, had always been her conception of full dress. But for the one, she was gay and glittering as a jeweller's shop; but for the other, sombre and imposing as a six-plumed hearse. Her face, though, shone with good humour, and that well-pleased smirk which nobody can call up at will, and which is, indeed, the very trade-mark of a Londoner out for a brief, rare holiday.

So these three took shipping in a steamboat at a commodious place of embarkation, no longer called Hungerford Stairs, and, except that the elder lady showed much interest in a mechanical contrivance for lowering the funnel of the steamer under Putney Bridge, while she compared its captain, invidiously, with her own nautical hero Brail, nothing worthy of remark occurred during the entire passage. The lieutenant, who, with a certain bluffness of manner, possessed much of that tact which comes from a kind heart, devoted himself to Auntie's amusement, leaving Nelly to the quiet enjoyment of air, sunshine, green trees, shining water, and the soothing monotony of continuous motion against the stream. If people only knew the kindness they can sometimes confer by leaving us alone! This is no place to enter on the higher consolations of religion, the gracious words spoken expressly for the bruised reed and the broken heart, that raise the fallen far above the level of earthly shame and earthly care: but, such holy considerations apart, do we sufficiently appreciate the mere material repose of mind and body, that we never fail to find within the walls of a church? For an hour and three-quarters no mortal can molest us with greeting, narrative, or repartee. No post invades the sacred precincts, nor note requiring an immediate answer; the most enthusiastic acquaintance neither dare smile, nor nod, nor insist on shaking hands; and however dull, nay, drowsy, may be the sermon, how can we think it tedious, when it prolongs, if but by minutes, this grateful interval of solitude, that comes but one day in the whole busy week!

Nelly, leaning against the side to watch the water as it flowed by, did not so much think as dream. Sorrows, cares, regrets, and injuries seemed to float down with the ebb towards the sea; and hope, the offspring of memory, as skill is the child of experience, beckoned her on to shape her true course against wind and tide, not entirely despairing of a change here, and confident in a better time hereafter.

She had struggled to do right, as women alone do struggle, against a flood of difficulties under which a man would long ago have yielded

and gone down. It is not the so-called stronger sex that fights hardest with privation, sorrow, the tempter's lures, and its own overpowering affections, for the bare reward of an approving conscience. In London alone, how many thousands are there of an undefeated Legion who work their fingers to the bone on a dry crust and a sip of tea, rather than lose an atom of self-respect, or suffer a breath of suspicion to dim their spotless shields ! What are the boasts of chivalry to courage such as this? And for us gentlemen, who assume to hold honour as the very air we breathe, do we help or hinder them in their path? No. We look on such things too lightly, and, in spite of a dishonest proverb, believe me, "All is not fair in love and war!"

"Why, you're better every moment, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Phipps, as the steamer touched its landing-place. "By the time we get to Hampton Court you'll look like yourself again, and do us credit; won't she, Mr. Brail? As for me, I declare, the river, and the breeze, and the swans, and one thing and another, have set me up so, that if the fiddler would only go on with his scraping, I do believe I should begin to dance. I feel like five-and-twenty, Mr. Brail, and I've you to thank for it; but I should relish a glass of ginger-beer!"

That refreshment was easily obtained, and the three soon found themselves at Hampton Court Palace, where Mrs. Phipps went to visit her friend, maid and housekeeper to a peer's daughter living rent-free as the lodger of her sovereign, while Nelly and Brail walked on to wait in the gardens, where they met a crowd of both sexes, chiefly Londoners of the lower class, about to return home by train, happy, hilarious, and, seeing that it was thirsty, hay-making weather, not quite so well-behaved as usual.

"Excuse me for a minute!" exclaimed Brail, whose quick eye caught sight of an old ship-mate in the throng. "Don't go farther than the lawn. I shall be back directly. I can't help myself. It's a case of man overboard. There's nothing else to be done!"

His face expressed stern disgust, and, indeed, not without cause. In the midst of some half-dozen roughs, who looked perhaps worse than they really were, but could only be classed as the least desirable society for an officer and a gentleman, he spied an old friend holding forth with such thickened volubility of speech and grotesque vehemence of gesture, as declared him to be pleasantly drunk at six in the afternoon.

His face shone, his eyes wandered, he swayed and lurched on uncertain feet with idiotic smiles, while his hat was pushed back on his head at the angle that denotes hopeless imbecility or irretrievable defeat.

Alas! can such things be? Sober, this man was a smart officer, a consummate seaman, a hearty messmate, and a sterling friend. Drunk, he seemed simply a butt, a laughing-stock, a tom-fool for the rabble to hoot and jeer.

He knew it, too-nobody better-in his lucid intervals; knew that his professional prospects, the bread he ate, his standing as an officer, his character as a gentleman, his soundness of mind and body, the very welfare of his soul, depended on resistance to that vicious craving which had grown to be his curse; and yet he gave way, hob-nobbing, as it were, with the demon who pressed the poison to his lips, and priding himself on such good-fellowship as must constitute the conviviality of hell.

Not broke yet, strange to say, but wearing the Queen's uniform still, and drawing the Queen's pay. Never a week in port without many a "squeak for it ;" sometimes, even in blue-water, guilty of that offence which is justly unpardonable by our Articles of War. Who shall say how often his mess-mates screened him by taking his duty on themselves; how the very top-men anticipated his orders, moved by pity, not without contempt, or the master-at-arms turned away his lantern in mingled sorrow and disgust? The surgeon's mate tried in vain to make him a teetotaller, as the one indispensable step towards becoming hereafter an admiral.

Catching sight of Brail, he recognised his old shipmate, and staggered to meet him with a cordiality that must have seemed truly gratifying, had it not been the offspring of grog.

"Come aboard at last, my hearty!" said he, holding on to his friend, and hiccoughing his greetings in strange confusion of time and place. "An old mess-mate, my lads," looking angrily around. "Make him welcome, all hands, and don't stand grinning there like

a shipload of monkeys! He's an explorer, my sons, this is—a North Pole man! Excuse me, old chap; we'd have had the yards squared and the side manned, if you'd only warned us. Give us your flipper -there's mine! Look at it; I tell ye, as honest a fist as ever broke a biscuit! Hold on now! Let's go below and liquor up!"

With a view of carrying out this hospitable suggestion, he suffered Brail to lead him out of the gardens, closely watched by one of the care-takers of the place, and dismissed with three cheers from the rabble, for whom this agreeable little interlude had provided a laughabie entertainment, tragic, comic, and burlesque, with nothing to pay.

Our friend felt in a false position, and winced sorely; but he was the last man to shirk a job, however unpleasant, that came in the shape of duty; so he steered his drunken companion towards the inn as