frame, assured me in her warmest manner, that I should entail on them no additional expense, as in the event of my leaving, they should be forced to keep another

servant.

Not many months after the failure, Margaret became the wife of Mr. Middleton. There was a delicacy and disinterestedness in his coming forward at such a period, which ought, and perhaps did, influence her in his favour; but I don't quite know,-I sometimes fear she accepted him from the sole motive of raising herself above what she was pleased to term a humiliating state of dependence. Certainly she could have had little respect for one whom she had been in the constant habit of designating dull as a November morning, and tedious as a Prussian law-suit. The disparity between them in years was great; but that of temper, inclinations, and pursuits was far greater, and often made me tremble for their future happiness. Mrs. Sidney did not participate in my anxiety; she only regretted, that, owing to their recent misfortunes, she could assemble no gay retinue of servants and carriages, or brilliant concourse of admiring friends, to celebrate her daughter's nuptials.

There is another person of whom I must say a few words before I lay down my pen for awhile. Marables, although of the "antique world," was scarcely one of those who "sweat for duty, not for meed;" she had been always something "between an hindrance and a help;" but since the bankruptcy, the former quality had preponderated to such a degree, that, on Margaret's marriage, Mrs. Sidney gladly acceded to Marables' proposition" of taking up her residence with dear Mrs. Middleton, for the remainder of her days." She is with her at this present time, and I often think, exercises rather an undue influence over her actions. Alas, for the woman who permits herself to be governed by her maid!

CHAPTER XXIII.

La monotonie dans la retraite tranquilise l'ame; la monotonie dans le grande monde fatigue l'esprit.

Why did I marry?

MADAME DE STAEL.

PROVOKED HUSBAND.

“HEUREUX le peuple dont l'histoire ennuie." If there be truth in this aphorism, it certainly would have been very difficult to find a happier family than ourselves during the six years which followed the bankruptcy, for any thing more "ennuyant" than our history during this same period would prove, is, I think, impossible to imagine. Our life was indeed monotonous in the extreme, one day being the echo of another; yet to Viola there was something inexpressibly soothing and tranquillizing in this unvarying routine, when compared with the forced excitement and joyless dissipation of the years that had preceded it. Happy she could scarcely be called, for in her father's gloomy and hopeless depression, in her mother's nervous irritability, in the dread uncertainty too under which she laboured as to her elder brother's welfare, nay more, his existence, when years rolled away without bringing any tidings of the fugitive, in all this there was much to sadden her; at first, indeed, we had trembled for Mr. Sidney's reason, as, unmindful of all around him, he would sit for hours brooding over some visionary scheme; and then, starting abruptly from his chair, would ask wildly for his

hat and stick, and declare that "he must be off to the city, for that Brookes and the Iron Chest would be waiting for him." (It was strange that during these temporary aberrations he should never have alluded to either James or Hoskins.) In moments such as these, Mrs. Sidney, who, like the astute French monarch, drew a broad line of demarcation between falsehood and finesse, would endeavour to tranquillize her husband's mind by the assurance, that it was a public holyday, and consequently, there would be no business. transacted by the house; but this stratagem, after a short while, failed to deceive, and when, on consulting his pocket-book, Mr. Sidney would detect the imposition that had been practised on him, his paroxysms of rage and desperation were fearful to behold. Viola then resolved on pursuing a totally different line of conduct; and placing herself one day next to her father, she entered into a detailed statement of the bankruptcy, pressed on his recollection every minute circumstance connected with his ruin, spoke of Mr. Brookes' death, dwelt on her brother's flight, and expatiated on Mr. Hoskins' perfidy; and then it was that Mr. Sidney threw his arms about his daughter's neck, and wept like a child; those were the first tears he had shed since his boyish days, and abundantly did they relieve his over-fraught heart. From that moment he was calm and collected, although he became the victim of a stern and settled despondency. He was such as I have described him in the opening chapter of this book.

In the midst of all these trials and sorrows, Viola found in her youngest sister a boundless source of consolation. Sacred and beautiful is the tie of sisterhood; holier, truer, firmer than that of friendship, inasmuch as it is of God's own linking! Never have I seen this bond more closely cemented than in Viola and Lucy Sidney. Theirs was, indeed, a "fair encounter of two most rare affections." On Lucy's side there mingled in the unlimited confidence and fearless

unreserve with which she imparted to Viola every thought of her heart, an almost filial reverence, a questionless submission to her sister's judgment; and there was something inexpressibly touching in the watchful tenderness and matronly anxiety with which Viola regarded that young and gentle girl. How often have I sighed, as I have listened to Viola's projects for Lucy's future destiny; how sedulously she meant to guard her from all evil; how resolved, that for her, at least, love should assume its gayest, fairest form. I sighed, for I remembered there was one for whom, in bygone days, I had indulged yet brighter visions; and how had they sped? Lucy was but fifteen at the time of the failure, and greatly did she resemble what Viola had been at the same age. She resembled her in symmetry of form, she resembled her, too, in the chiselled regularity of feature; but still there was wanting that infinite variety, that intermingling of the light and shadow of expression, for which Viola had been so remarkable. The difference between the sisters was as though you should place an elaborate and highly finished copy of one of the old masters next to the glorious, glowing, almost breathing original. In brilliancy of colouring, in the exquisite finish of the details, there might, perchance, be little perceptible difference between the pictures; but still we should vainly seek in the copy for that indescribable look of soul, which must be felt rather than defined: and yet there were not wanting many to affirm (and Mrs. Sidney was amongst the number) that Lucy was yet prettier than Viola had ever been. Prettier, perhaps, she was, but far less lovely.

Of Margaret we now saw but little; operas, balls, and fêtes engrossed her time, to the exclusion of every social duty and domestic tie. She had, on her marriage, commenced, with all the zeal of a newly-formed ministry, the reformation of what she was pleased to term the abuses of the home department.

Poor Mr. Middleton was sadly dismayed when he

found that his quiet, elegant bachelor dinners, with their faultless appointments, blameless cookery, and few select guests, were suddenly superseded by stifling, crowded banquets, at which the assembled company were far more numerous than the table would hold, the clatter of whose voices mingled, as he said, most inharmoniously with the pleasant jingle of the knives and forks; for Mr. Middleton had a favourite theory, that eating and talking were quite incompatible accomplishments. But he was driven wild when, in lieu of his evening conversazione, Margaret introduced the iniquitous diversion of a regular bona fide ball.

In vain Mr. Middleton declaimed, harangued, and dogmatised; Margaret alternately laughed and stormed, raved and ridiculed, yet ended by carrying her point victoriously. Rash, indeed, would have been the man who should attempt to compete with Mrs. Middleton in a war of words. If, as we are told, gravity is the source of that harmony which prevails in the universe, how unfortunate it was that it should have failed to attune the jarring interests of this ill-assorted pair; for gravity was indubitably the distinguishing feature in Mr. Middleton's character.

Seldom have I seen any one more entirely devoid of that subtle, delicate, intuitive qualification, ycleped tact, a qualification which, when possessed in perfection, may rank as an additional sense, and thus it was that, in the daily intercourse of life, Mr. Middleton blundered most wofully; he was for ever putting inopportune questions, making mal à propos observations, and pressing on every vulnerable point,-all this, too, with the kindest intentions imaginable. Moreover, he was literal in the extreme; when all around him were convulsed with laughter, Mr. Middleton's face was "dark as mourning weed," "the joke was beyond him." He was impervious to quizzing; irony he did not understand; the retort courteous, or discourteous, were alike thrown away upon him; the barbed shaft of