at the time, why you know it will be the greater
glory and happiness for me."

"Whatever you please," she said earnestly.
"And I will add a little condition of my own.
You know what sort of a place this is—how
they talk—-"

"Just what I was going to say. Our little
compact shall be kept secret and sacred. Oh,
Lucy, to-day seems to be another day from
yesterday; the men and women whom I so
abused a few minutes ago seem to me not
nearly so bad! They may be decayed, but they
mean well."

She laughed. That laugh was delightful to
him, for he now saw that what had been his
fatal bête noire and phantom—"Such a sacrifice
for duty!" and his sister's ugly speech,
"Old enough to be her father!" had no place
here.

Mr. Dacres, now at the highest point marked
on the scale, "exuberant good humour," had
turned to seize on his daughter. "Here's my
cricket, Mrs. Beaufort, the last élève Miss
Pringle has turned out. Tell Mrs. Beaufort
about Miss Pringle, Lulu, love—her terms, and
teaching, and all that. I never can keep this
sort of thing in my head. My dear child, what
have you done with West?"

Mr. West went home, smiling to himself,
and tripping as lightly over the hard trottoir
as any of Miss Pringle's young ladies. No
wonder. He had swallowed the elixir of life,
which is love! Neighbours, knowing his hours,
thought he was posting home to dinner.
Miss Margaret West thought so too, and
received him smiling at his eagerness. She
was one of those good souls who delight in
seeing others ready to "do justice" to what
their hands have prepared, and whom, of
course, the selfish hungry take very easy.
Already she had repented for her plain speaking
the night before. She knew his sensitiveness,
and that he would feel it doubly; and,
like many other good souls, thought how she
would make it up to him in the best way
known to her, by a special treat which she
knew he liked—a fine browned French fowl.
It was already nearly the proper time. He
came bounding up the stairs.

She saw something in his face, which no
prospect of fowls could have inspired. Her
look of bright and kindly reception changed to
one of uneasiness. "Where have you been?"
she asked, without much meaning.

"Ah, Margaret," he said, exultingly, "you
were wrong. I have come from her, and
have told her everything, and—and I was
right!"

She rose up angrily, and, with the colour rushing
to her cheek, "flounced" impatiently over
to the window. She understood it all.

"Then I tell you this," she said at last, turning
to him, "you have done a foolish and a
ridiculous thing. With all your sense! When it
comes to a point of inclination or whim, the
wise and the foolish seem to be just the same.
I tell you, you will live to repent it."

"Not I," he answered; "never. Oh,
Margaret, think me a fool—a child—what you
will, but this remains: I am happier than I
have been for ten years. The sun seems to
shine—the world to be alive—and life to be
something. If this be folly, how can you
blame me? for it is so mucn pleasanter than
wisdom."

How could she blame him. She could only
mutter impatiently, but with half her displeasure
gone, "Such follies—at your age!"

Meanwhile the new family had been established
at "Poolyack's," in the enjoyment of
every luxury. The simple tradesmen of the
place—varying a little the principle of their
countrymen, the Bourbons—had learnt nothing
and forgotten everything, and felicitated each
other on the blessing of having such patrons.
They had the "air so distinguished," so "gentil,"
the genuine air, in short, which, alas! so many
of their predecessors had to so fatal an extent.
The furniture-maker was allowed, at his own
urgent request, to send up to Paris for
mirrors of a more elegant pattern to suit
Mr. G. Beaufort's exacting taste. The best
horses, and, singular omen! the all but
new phaeton, built to a Sir Jones's order,
a difficile gentleman, too, and mysteriously
abandoned when that displayer of the Red
Hand disappeared and was never heard of
again. This handsome turn-out was accepted
grudgingly by the Beauforts, until something
better could be found. The elegance
and even magnificence of their apartments
was, justly, the theme of all. Men in the shabby
old shooting-coats stopped each other in the
street to tell of what they had just heard at
Fay's shop—a humble artist, who dealt in the
silver-gilt brooches, with a few watches and
chains in his window—that he had received
orders to have down from Paris a Breguet
watch, its chains and decorations, of the very
"first force." The small notabilities of the
place were deposed; every one began to struggle
to reach these distinguished strangers, and were
never tired of repeating that "there was no
mistake about them;" the uncomplimentary
hint being, that "mistake" was incident to
the common lot of Dieppe immigrants.
Mr. Blacker, the bringer of these valuable
recruits, was exalted proportionably. The
people who had been inclined to sneer at his
rapturous panegyrics, and laugh at his black
swans, were now silenced.

The bearing of the gentlemen of this
Guernsey Beaufort family, who seemed to
despise the whole place, excited no resentment.
It was merely agreed that Mrs. Beaufort was not
up to the standard of the rest; having a
kind of gentle, amiable manner, that was
scarcely high-bred. It was noticed, also,
that she could not talk of the "high" persons
met in a former state; and, being rather
overlooked by her husband and brother-in-law, of
whom she seemed to stand in timorous awe,
she was justly set down "as being of inferior