ous than honourable, he very prudently (to borrow his own_expression) tendered his resignation; in other words, he ran away just in time to save the odium of a public dismissal. Dick's future destination in life occasioned no small perplexity to his parents. That unlucky scapegoat, the Navy, was, of course, the first profession which suggested itself to Mr. Sidney's mind; but Mrs. Sidney here interposed her veto, so that idea was, perforce, abandoned. Dick, himself, fascinated by the prospect of idling away his time with impunity, dazzled by the anticipation of sporting a scarlet coat, and ecstacised with certain glorious visions of shooting ad libitum, stoutly contended for the army; and Mr. Sidney as stoutly opposed. Factions now ran high between the parties, for Mrs. Sidney sided with her son; at length a compromise was effected. A cavalry cadetship in the Company's service was offered, and accepted; and as soon as Dick had attained the regulation age, he was exported to the grand mart for portionless daughters and thriftless sons. Many and bitter were the tears poor Mrs. Sidney shed, on parting with her favourite child. I, too, wept redundantly; I am sure I can't tell why, for Dick had always treated me nefariously.

CHAPTER XXI.

By my troth, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue,-SHAKSPEARE.

I clasp'd her hand close to my breast,

While my heart was as light as a feather;
Yet nothing I said, I protest,

But-"Madam, 'tis very fine weather."

Then I follow'd her into the house,

There I vow'd I my passion would try;
But there I was still as a mouse :-

Oh! what a dull booby am I !-RITSON'S SONGS.

MARGARET, in the mean time, had entered on that career which, to Viola, had been fraught with sorrow and vexation: but for Margaret my sympathies were little interested: she, I felt, would, from the energy, or rather fearlessness of her character, steer her course triumphantly through every obstacle.

How shall I describe her? Bizarre, capricious, wild, fantastic, yet withal, generous, frank, and confiding; haughty, and, at times, insolent to her equals and superiors, yet condescending almost to familiarity with those beneath her in station; impatient of control, and headstrong when opposed, yet easily swayed by even the appearance of submission; startling you one moment by a profound knowledge of sciences generally considered beyond the scope of woman's intellect, perplexing you the next by a childlike ignorance of the commonest every-day topics of discourse; satirical more from exuberance of spirits,

than bitterness of disposition, Margaret Sidney was one of the most original, yet at the same time, least popular persons I have ever met with. By her own sex she was universally disliked; for women never pardon in each other the slightest tincture of eccentricity; and although followed, flattered, and admired by the men, none seemed anxious to appropriate to himself what each perhaps deemed might prove rather a dangerous possession. Poor Mrs. Sidney, herself the thrall of fashion, and bond-slave of decorum, was driven nearly wild by her daughter's wilful defiance of the Mede and Persian laws of society.

To Viola the eternal routine of dissipation in which her mother and sister had involved themselves, was most wearisome. Gladly would she long since have seceded from those gay assemblages; but at her mother's express desire she continued to accompany her to the "midnight dance, and public show," for Mrs. Sidney still entertained some visionary projects for her once beautiful and still interesting daughter-projects which Viola unwittingly nourished by her bearing in society, as, refusing to dance, she now invariably attached herself to that class of dowagers who, decked like an Indian idol, blaze forth resplendently in gems and gold, or passed the evening in earnest conversation with two or three little withered old gentlemen, who, as Margaret phrased it, looked exceedingly like shrivelled apples; from all which, Mrs. Sidney concluded, somewhat unadvisedly, that Viola would, in the end, marry a wealthy nabob.

And thus did Viola occasionally gain desultory tidings of Mr. Lyndham's proceedings; but unconnected, and unsatisfactory in the extreme proved the intelligence thus acquired, as, fearful of betraying herself, Viola was, as she imagined, most guarded in her interrogatories. This, indeed, might have been the case, although I have generally observed that young ladies, in their inquiries after absent lovers, greatly

resemble that wise bird the ostrich, who, when he buries his head in the sands, forgets that his whole body is exposed to the hunter's aim, and fancies that because he cannot himself see, he must be, of necessity, screened from observation.

Certain it is that Miss Brookes, after many a crossexamination, which would have done honour to a juvenile barrister, who, flushed with success at having obtained his first brief, is bent upon " astonishing the court," and forthwith fastens, with teeth and talons, on a trembling witness, in pretty much the same fashion as Grimalkin pounces on her helpless victim, and then lets it go for awhile, only to gripe it a little harder the next moment:-Miss Brookes, I say, having ascertained that Mr. Lyndham was, in some measure, instrumental to the estrangement of Viola and Lord Glenalbert, had furnished herself with a vast stock of miscellaneous gossip, for the most part tending to prove that Mr. Lyndham, so far from being inconsolable, was on the point of uniting himself with wealth and beauty. Miss Brookes was (Miss Sharpe, perhaps, excepted) the most gratuitously spiteful person it has ever been my lot to encounter: indeed, I am not quite sure that she could help it, for I sometimes think she was malevolent from temperament. Of one thing I am confident, that there are a set of persons in the world to whom malicious observations are indispensable, as being the means of preventing yet more critical ebullitions of temper. They act as does the safety-valve to the steam-boiler.

All these things considered, I did not give full credence to Miss Brookes' communications, although I certainly had not any superfluous reliance on Mr. Lyndham's constancy. But Viola, in the very spirit of her sex, auguring of his attachment from her own devoted love, gave but little heed to these reports. Alas! for the "unities of time and place;" I am quite sure they are very good things in their way, but I

never could understand them, so I shall now revert to Mrs. Sidney, and speak of her views with regard to Margaret. For once, there was something respectable in her maternal solicitude to see her daughter happily settled in life, for Margaret's vagaries might have disquieted a far more reasonable woman than Mrs. Sidney usually proved herself to be, although I did not think her choice the most felicitous imaginable when I heard her fix on Mr. Middleton, as one to whom she would most gladly intrust her daughter's future destiny.

Mr. Middleton was, when I first knew him, a solemn, and rather) forlorn-looking individual of fifty, or perhaps "inclining to three-score ;" but he was, at the same time, a most absolute gentleman, irreproachable in his demeanour, unexceptionable in his connections, and, for the most part, considered an undeniable acquaintance. His conversation was ponderous and uninviting, being at once exhaustless and exhausting. His commonest expressions took the form of apothegms, his most original observations were postulates. In the East, where wisdom is said to consist less in originality of ideas, than in a fluent application of the thoughts of others, Mr. Middleton would have ranked as a man of first-rate abilities, for he was well primed with quotations, both in prose and verse; and was in the habit of lavishly, and as I thought, unseasonably, decorating his discourse with them. To be sure, poor man, he had rather an overweening sense of his own importance, being most comfortably oblivious that the world had gone on in pretty much the same style before he made good his entry into it, and would, in all probability, remain in statu quo long after his bones were mouldering in the dust:

"Like Dobbin, who around the globe would look,
And his horizon for the earth's mistook."

Then too he was a sort of Mecenas in his way,