aware of the truth, the return to consciousness only brought me sorrow heavier even than it had been before.

I return to Vernon and his affairs. His right to Mount Vernon had been clearly established. A day or two after no more doubt of it was left, I was walking in the Park alone, taking a constitutional before dinner for an appetite. Looking by chance to one side, I espied at some distance from me two well-known figures-those of Meyrick and Vernon. They were walking slowly together, but not arm in arm. Suddenly they stopped, shook hands with each other in what struck me even at the time as being an uncommonly fervent way, and then parting, took different directions. Neither of them had seen me, and I allowed them to go their ways without pursuing either. Meyrick, indeed, it would not have been easy for me to overtake, such was the pace at which he strode away. As for Vernon, he went more slowly, turning now and then to look again at his retreating friend. I thought, though I could not have told why, that there was something very strange in all this.

Next day, as I was returning home from my chambers, I went out of my way to call on Frank. Oh, Mr. Poyntz, sir!' exclaimed Mrs. Biggs, coming to the door at the sound of my voice, and beckoning me into her parlour: Oh, sir, Mr. Poyntz! Can you tell me truly what is the matter with him? Oh, Mr. Poyntz! Poor Mr. Francis!' And the worthy woman began to cry.

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claimed I, in great surprise; and then what I had seen in the Park on the previous day occurred to me; and then I remembered what my wife had said; and then a light flashed across me.

Oh, please, Mr. Poyntz, don't you know what it is for he wouldn't tell me; and he so pale, and sometimes so flushed, and so feverish; and he never was in bed last night, nor laid his head on a pillar; and I know they are all well at the Hall, for he told me so only the day before yesterday, so it can't be that; and I don't know what to think! And it doesn't look like my own house, and he not in it.'

'I am as much surprised as you are, Mrs. Biggs,' I said to the affectionate creature; but, doubtless, he will write to me and explain. If he does not, I shall write to him; indeed I think I shall do so at once; and I shall let you know about him, as soon as I know anything more myself.'

'Oh, thank you, Mr. Poyntz, sir; that will always be something. But after so many years here, and in his little room upstairs in the old house, where first I saw his honoured parents, who were so affable; after so many years, to go away in a day, and to make me that handsome present, too, as if-'

Here poor Mrs. Biggs, fairly sobbing now, and unable to continue, took from a drawer, and put into my hand, a massive gold chain- massive, and therefore fitting, both as a decoration for the stout little woman, and as a retainer for her very fat watch.

But you will send and tell me the very instant, won't you, Mr. Poyntz?' said she, recovering herself. And oh, sir, if you could get him to come back. I'm sure I did all I could to make him comfortable.'

You may rely on this much, Mrs. Biggs,' said I, as I rose to go, that if Frank returns to London, or rather, I should say, when he returns to London, he will come back to Great Coram Street and you. I have often heard him say that he did not think he could be comfortable anywhere else in London now.'

'Oh, bless him for that! And bless you for telling me. It eases my mind, and perhaps I may get a little sleep to-night, though last night I never closed an eye, after him telling me he

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was going away, and to pack up the pictures and things and his books; and to let the rooms, as I said before, and they were to be considered his till they were let, and I might put in the papers, with the use of a pianner.'

Bidding the worthy woman goodday, I went home in a very uncomfortable state of mind. Why had Meyrick not told me-me, when we were such friends as we had so long beenwhy had he not told me that he was leaving London, and that not to return at all perhaps? I resolved that, to calm myself, I would write to him immediately, before dinner even; and accordingly, as soon as I was seated in my own room, I drew my writing materials towards me, and began 'My dear Meyrick.'

But I had written those words only, when I was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Poyntz. She wore a very serious look, shut the door carefully, and seating herself beside me, Arthur,' she said, 'Mr. Vernon has proposed to Fanny.'

Oh!' cried I, throwing down my pen. And 'oh!' I cried a second time, as, seizing it again, I dashed it through 'My dear Meyrick.' That accounts for it all, and you were right, Anne. And then, in a few words I told my wife of what I had seen pass between Meyrick and Vernon in the park, and how I had just been in Great Coram Street, and had found Meyrick gone. Hearing which, she said more than once, 'I am very, very sorry.'

'Depend upon it,' I continued, they had come to an explanation yesterday. And Fanny? But I see I need not ask.'

Yes; she has accepted him. wished me to tell you.'

She

I think, however, that Vernon might have waited a little,' said I, rather harshly. 'Poor Frank!'

Why should he have waited, Arthur? Since it was to be, a day or two could have made no difference to our other friend, for whom I'

t

Tell me, Anne,' I interrupted would you not rather it had been Meyrick?'

'Yes,' said my wife, after pausing a moment. And I am not sure that Fanny knows her own heart thoroughly. But, after all, she has the

right to judge, and ought to be the best judge. Of course, to you, Arthur, who know her so well, I need not say that the great change in Mr. Vernon's circumstances has had no influence with her-it would have been the same thing, we may be sure, if Mr. Vernon were in Meyrick's position, and Meyrick in his.'

'Well, well,' said I, 'if it must be so, it must. She shall never know from me what I would have preferred.'

'That's right. And Vernon will prove himself an excellent husband; of that we may rest assured. And I have no doubt but that she will be a very happy wife. After all, those marriages often turn out best where there is more respect than love on the woman's part.'

Upon my word!' said I. 'When did you discover that, Anne? Why, our own has not turned out so ill, and yet I don't think you respect me in the least.'

'Let us go to dinner,' returned Mrs. Poyntz, with a laugh. You are to have a visit from Mr. Vernon in the course of the evening. One of ceremony.'

Fanny was waiting for us, blushing, and even trembling a little. I kissed her forehead, and said, 'May you be happy, Fanny,' in the parental sort of way proper at such a crisis. In the evening, Vernon came as he had said he would: he spoke to me on the subject next his heart, in his usual manly, quiet way before he left us again, Fanny and he were engaged to each other, and the marriage was to take place as soon as possible; so that Vernon, who, naturally enough, was anxious to revisit the estate which had been the scene of his boyish days, and had at last so unexpectedly become his own after all, might do so, bringing his bride with him.

About a week after this, I received a short letter from Meyrick, in answer to a still shorter one I had written to him. I had refrained from telling him of the approaching marriage, having resolved to defer as long as possible what I now feared would be to him so painful a communication. Consequently, there was no allusion in his letter to the coming event. That letter ran thus :

MEYRICK HALL, THURSDAY. 'MY DEAR POYNTZ,-No wonder you wonder at my disappearance, But you know that many of my good friends say I am eccentric, which, in this formal country, is rather worse than calling one a pickpocket or a railway director. Now, since I have acquired that reputation, it is but philosophical to turn it to account when I can. I have therefore availed myself of it so far as to leave London for the present without assigning any reason, and even without bidding you good-bye. Take it not ill, I beseech you-we shall meet again some day soon, I hope. And in the meantime, I am, as ever, yours affectionately,

FRANCIS MEYRICK.'

No messages this time to Mrs. Poyntz, and Miss Herbert and the children. He could not bring himself to send any to Miss Herbert, and had he sent one to the others, to omit her would have betrayed him. There was a postscript:

P.S.-Excuse me if I scrawl instead of writing. I was a good deal shaken about in getting down here, and have been annoyed ever since by a kind of palpitation in the heart. F. M.'

Well might he apologize for his handwriting; I could scarcely decipher it. He must be very ill,' said I sadly to my wife, as I showed her the all but illegible sheet.

And I afterwards found that for some days at that time his life had been despaired of.

Vernon had removed from his bare room in Somers Town to comfortable lodgings near us. The day for the wedding was fixed. His stoical calmness had been exchanged for a cheerful but not an exuberant gaiety. After so many years of disappointment, and hardship, and wandering, and loneliness, he was looking forward, and not without reason, to many years of that domestic happiness and peaceful enjoyment, for which, he told me, he had ever been secretly and even painfully yearning, throughout his stormy career. But it was not to be.

One day, about a fortnight only before that appointed for his marriage, he had started by a river steamer for Greenwich. A foolish woman, seated on a bench close to the side of the

vessel, was jumping a child she had in her arms, and pretending now and then to be about to throw it overboard. Vernon felt uneasy as he looked on, for the little thing was very lively, and, chirruping and crowing, sprang about a good deal. He even felt inclined to remonstrate with the woman, but from that disinclination to interfere with another person's business, and so seem officious and meddling, which was natural to him, as indeed it is to most Englishmen, he contented himself with keeping a watch upon the child and her. Suddenly the child made an unexpected spring, the woman lost her hold of it, and it fell into the stream. Throwing his hat on the deck, Vernon was over the side an instant after it, and disappeared in the water not very far from where it had gone down. The master of the steamer, who had seen the whole from the paddle-box, promptly had his engine stopped; a few seconds elapsed; and Vernon emerged to the surface, bearing up the child. Both were quickly rescued, a boat conveyed them to the steamer; the child was stripped and wrapped in a warm blanket. Vernon landed at his destination without thinking more of the matter (for the Thames was not then the poisonous sewer it has since become), without thinking of the risk he ran by siting in his wet clothes till they dried upon him. What was such an incident to a man like him, to whom the camp and the bivouac; the extremes of heat and cold; now tempest and shipwreck; now the burning sands of Africa, now the swamps of the Mississippi-had in their turn been familiar things, and things from which his robust constitution had scarcely if at all ever suffered? He did not change his dress till hours afterwards, and though he dined with us that day, so little did he make of his adventure that he did not speak of it to any of us till my wife and Fanny had left him and me alone. Even then his modest reluctance to speak of himself would certainly have kept him silent on the subject; it was only in answer to my rather anxious inquiries as to how he had caught cold that he was brought to tell me what had happened; those inquiries of mine having arisen from my observing that occasionally a shiver