woman," the manager continued, confidentially,
"may be considered a Ripper. Fear! She
doesn't know what fear is. Five-barred gates!
She'd take the wall of the King's Bench Prison,
chevaux-de-frise and all, and leap over the
Surrey Hills into the bargain. She's a Ripper,
Sir William, and nothing but a Ripper."

"Is she alone—I mean, does she live alone?"

"Yes and no. Husband's dead, so she says.
That I told you. The waxwork Italian says
he's her uncle, but he's abroad. She has a fresh
servant about once every fortnight, after she's
broken the old one's head with a water-jug.
Barring that, I think she's alone. Stay, there's
a little chit of a girl that lives with her—a
niece, or cousin, or dependent of some kind,
though Billy Van Post, my treasurer, will have
it that she's the madame's daughter. A quiet
little girl she is, and would be pretty if she
wasn't so thin and pale. Like a little ghost she
is. The madame leads her an awful life."

"And the name of this little girl?"

"There you ask more than I can tell you.
My wife calls her a little angel, and the people
about the gardens have nicknamed her Cinderella.
She gets more kicks than halfpence from the
madame; and I sometimes feel inclined to
interfere, only we like to leave these foreign
horse-riders to themselves as much as we can.
The madame has a devil of a temper. Twice
I've been obliged to go bail for her good
behaviour at Lambeth Police Court, after she
and the water-jug and her dressers have fallen
out."

"It is the countess," thought Sir William
Long. "Poor little Lily!" To Mr. M'Variety
he went on, abstractedly: "It is pretty, very
pretty, indeed."

The conversation to which I have striven to
give coherent sequence, had in reality been made
up of disjointed fragments strewn about by the
voluble M'Variety as they wandered through the
gardens. Long before its close they had entered
the wooden pavilion fitted up as a circus, and
ensconced themselves in the manager's own
private box. Here Lord Carlton, after expressing
to Tom Tuttleshell his opinion that
M'Variety was a worthy, a very worthy,
fellow, went placidly to sleep. Tom, who was
one of the most placable of creatures, and had
quite forgotten Edgar's offensive manner towards
him, would have been very happy to entertain
the young man with a lively description of
everything and everybody connected with Ranelagh;
but the sultan chose to continue superciliously
sulky, and Tom, seeing that he was merely
wasting his words, slipped out of the box, and
had a walk round the gardens, where he found
numbers of people who felt amazingly flattered
and patronised by his condescending to talk to
them.

Sir William Long was too much engaged
with his own thoughts to notice the departure
of Tom, or of the polite manager, who, when his
guests were seated, withdrew to see after one
of his thousand-and-one concernments about the
gardens. Between the slumbering peer and
the simpering dandy—who was looking at the
audience in the hope, and with the expectation,
that they were looking at and admiring him—
Sir William Long had ample scope to think.
The memories came rushing over him. In the
desert of a misspent life two or three oases
started up. His remembrance went back to a
dinner at Greenwich, to a little timid girl he had
petted, and made playful love to, to a kiss he
had printed on her forehead. How many years
had passed since that dinner, and yet how many
hundreds of times he had recalled it; how
vividly he could recal its minutest incidents,
now! Why? It was but an ordinary tavern
festival. He had been at scores of similar
revelries, in company as good, as bad, or as
indifferent, since. There had been nothing
about it out of the common. Nothing but the
child who had sat by his side. And what was
she to him: to him, a gentleman of wealth, title,
and ancient descent? If she lived, and were
indeed this Ernestine's dependent, she could
scarcely be a woman, even now, and he was
worn and grizzled. Why should his thoughts
revert, again and again, to the childish playmate
—the playmate but of an hour—whom he had
kissed in the tavern hall?

"Here is the high school of horsemanship,"
remarked Mr. Greyfaunt. "What a dreadful
old harridan in a riding-habit to be sure! She
looks like Queen Boadicea addressing the ancient
Britons."

The Swiss Shepherdess had whirled round the
arena on her milk-white steed, scattering
artificial flowers out of a kind of decorated
milkpail, and casting quantities of pulverised tan
into the eyes of the groundlings. The Three
Graces, in very short skirts, and somewhat faded
fleshings, had likewise made the circuit of the
ring on their solitary steed. The clown had
uttered his usual dreary witticisms; and his
colleague, rival, and deadly foe, a French
grotesque, attired in garments of parti-coloured
hue, had tied himself into several knots, grinned
between his legs, knocked the back of his head
against the small of his back, and uttered the
customary ejaculations of "La, la!" to the
immense delight of the audience. French
grotesques were novelties in those days, and the
mountebank in question was exceedingly popular.

The legitimate British clown stood apart,
watching the gyrations of his alien competitor
with intense disgust.

"That fit for a Hinglish king, is it?" muttered
the Briton. "That's the sort of thing that's to
go down at Windsor Castle, before the r'yal
fam'lyand the nobility and gentry. It's enough
to make a fellow take to the busking game, or
turn Methody parson at once. I'd rather be a
barker to a shoe-shop in the Cut than demean
myself like that."

Here the volatile foreigner, whose head was
turned by success, and who was plainly presuming
on his popularity, came up to our British
friend with his tongue out and "I say,
mistare ——" The clown, whose cockscomb was
out of joint, administered to him the kick of