"Certainly not," she replied, lightly; but
the colour rose in her cheek, and her breath
came a little quicker. "I don't believe in
people loving with passion and force, and all
that sort of thing. It is pretty to talk about
on balconies, and it looks well on paper, in a
scrawly hand, running crookedly up into the
corner, and with plenty of dashes, and no
date ——-" And here she laughed again, and
touched up the greys. Routh still kept
silence, and still his dark look was bent upon her.

"No, no," she went on, as the rapid trot
the ponies began again to sound pleasantly on
the level road, and she turned them out of the
forest boundaries towards the town, "I know
nothing about all that, except pour rire, as
they say in Paris, about everything under the
sun, I do believe. To return to Arthur Felton:
he is the last person in the world with whom I
could imagine any woman could get up anything
more serious than the flimsiest flirtation."
" You did ' get up' that, however, I imagine ?"
said Routh.

"Of course we did. We spouted very
trite poetry, and he sent me bouquets — very
cheap ones they were, too, and generally came
late in the evening, when they may, being
warranted not to keep, be had at literally a dead
bargain; and we even exchanged photographs—I
don't say portraits, you will observe. His is like
enough; but that is really nothing, even among
the most prudish of the blond misses. I wonder
the haberdashers don't send their likenesses
with their bills, and I shall certainly give mine
to the postman here; I am always grateful to
the postman everywhere, and I like this one—
he has nice eyes, his name is Hermann, and he
does not smoke."

"What a degenerate German!" said Routh.
"And so Mr. Arthur Felton has your likeness?"

"Had — had, you mean. How can I tell
where it is now? — thrown in the fire, probably,
and that of the reigning sovereign of his affections
comfortably installed in the locket which
contained it, which is handsome, I confess ; but
he does not so much mind spending money on
himself, you see. It is exactly like this."

She placed her whip across the reins, and
held all with the left hand, while she fumbled
with the right among the satin and lace in which
she was wrapped, and drew out a short gold
chain, to which a richly chased golden ball, as
large as an egg, was attached. Turning slightly
towards him, and gently checking her ponies,
she touched a spring, and the golden egg opened
lengthways, and disclosed two small, finely
executed photographs.

One was a likeness of herself, and Routh
made the usual remarks about the insufficiency
of the photographic art in certain cases. He
was bending closely over her hand, when she
reversed the revolving plate, and showed him
the portrait on the other side.

"That is Arthur Felton," she said.

Then she closed the locket, and let it drop
down by her side amid the satin and the lace.

The French groom had in his charge a soft
India shawl in readiness for his mistress, in
case of need. This shawl Stewart Routh took
from the servant, and wrapped very carefully
round Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge as they neared
the town.

"The evening has turned very cold," he said;
and, indeed, though she did not seem to feel it,
and rather laughed at his solicitude, Routh
shivered more than once before she, set him
down, near the Kursaal, and then drove
homewards, past the house where his wife was
watching for her, and waiting for him.

Routh ordered his dinner at the Kursaal,
but, though he sat for a long time at the table,
he ate nothing which was served to him. But
he drank a great deal of wine, and he went
home to Harriet — drunk.

"How horribly provoking! It must have
come undone while I was handling it to-day,"
said Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge to her maid,
when that domestic was attiring her for dinner.
"I had the locket, open, not an hour ago."

"Yes, ma'am," answered the maid, examining
the short gold chain; " it is not broken, the
swivel is open."

"And of all my lockets I liked my golden
egg best," lamented Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge.

                     OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

                              OLD PATCH.

On a summer morning in the year 1784 (two
years after the secession of America from
England), Mr. Levy, a Portuguese Jew diamond-
merchant of Lincoln's Inn-fields, who had advertised
a parcel of very valuable diamonds for sale,
received a letter from a Mr. Schutz, probably a
German amateur of jewels. This Mr. Schutz,
who wrote a crabbed, shaky, and crippled hand,
announced his wish to see the diamonds, if the
Portuguese merchant would bring them to his
lodgings, at Mr. Connoly's, a shoe and patten
warehouse in Swallow-street, Oxford-street, his
extreme age and decrepitude preventing him
attending in person.

The Portuguese merchant, somewhat nettled
at being treated as a mere tradesman or bagsman
itinerating for orders, yet still long-suffering
where money was at stake, wrote civilly
back that Mr. Schutz might call upon him and
see the diamonds if he liked, but that it was not
his habit to wait on purchasers. At the hour
fixed, a hackney-coach, containing Mr. Schutz,
duly rumbled into the square, and stopped at the
jewel-merchant's house. The German amateur
apologised for not getting out of the coach, on
account of his lameness; so the diamonds were
brought out to him in their cases.

Mr. Schutz, evidently a poor, sickly,
paralytic old clergyman, was bundled up in a
large black camlet surtout, the buttoned cuffs
reaching to his elbows, the broad cape fastened
up over his chin. He wore the long curling
wig and large cocked-hat of a country clergyman.
His face was ochry yellow with jaundice, and
furrowed by age and sickness. To support