extraction to him;" he had married some person
a little lower in degree, for money, most likely.
Yet she had a wonderful sweetness of manner.

CHAPTER X. AT THE POST.

WRITING many letters, and looking out now
and again on the place where the market was
going on, Mr. West spent the morning busily
and cheerfully. The parti-colours, the flitting
to and fro of the figures, the fruit, the fish, the
wares, the booths, and baskets, reminded him
of the market-scene in an opera which he
had long ago seen in Paris. He smiled as he
caught himself admitting such associations with
pleasure. Not so long ago he would have
called it "a hungry place—the wretched
theatrical market-women." He then went out
to post his papers. Bright day, "gay little
place;" so it seemed to him now. On the road,
he passed the little toy library, more a stall than
a shop, where the English got books printed in
Paris by the admirable M. Baudry, then the
chief pirate of the Continent. Le Duc's, or
"Le Duke," as he was translated, was a great
resort. English were always coming in and
going out; English were always poking and
rummaging in the dark corners, choosing a
book. Poor Le Duke used to complain,
piteously, of having often to redeem his
volumes in person from the local "Hill of
Piety," which he visited in the regular way
of business. Le Duke had the longest
face of all that morning, and was telling
Captain Filby, dismally, "Nine months'
subscription, sir, and not a farthing paid. The
three young ladies coming every day, and there
are two dozen of my books which I shall never,
never, see again!"

"Serve you right, Le Duke," was the
captain's consolation. "Don't you know our
English yet? Not you. You'll be trusting
'em again and again. Hallo, West, you
coming for a story-book! By Jove, we'll all
be paying our debts in Dieppe next!"

Another time, Mr. West would have coldly
put down this gentleman, whom he always
kept at a distance. He knew him thoroughly.
Perhaps Mr. Filby knew the bad impression
he had produced tolerably well. Most men
and women have an instinct in such things.
Mr. West answered him good-humouredly that
morning. "I want something for my sister,"
he said, "and must subscribe for her. Her
life is dull enough."

"Nothing like family affection. I like to see
it. Have you met Blacker's new swells—flock
of black swans, of course? Nothing like
'em ever came into the place. Prizes!
Mark my words, sir, they'll turn up blanks.
Take care of 'em, Le Duke. If anything
particularly gentlemanlike comes into your shop,
be on your guard, my friend; and as for any
thing uncommonly lady-like—-"

Mr. West could venture on a jest that
morning.

"Why, this is most unselfish of you. I
hope he has had no reason to regret trusting
Captain Filby."

"Is that a joke?" the other answered, sourly.
"I say that Mr. Blacker has got these decent
people, the Dalrymples, to take up those De
Courcys, or whatever their name is. They're
giving them a little drum. No use asking if
you're going. Oh, no! We might as well
hope to see one of the nuns out of the convent
here."

"I don't know," said Mr. West, cheerfully.
"I dare say we shall be there."

Mr. Filby looked after him askance, and
told his friends that West was getting quite
like a boy at school; and remember he told 'em
that fellow would give the old girl the slip, one
day, and end by marrying some low pity feel
out of a back room.

Mr. West went on gaily to the post. He
was thinking to himself, "No one shall ever be
able to say I am a fool, or repeat that cant
about a school-girl, and—old enough to be her
father. It shall all come from her. She shall
have her own time, and shall work it out for
herself. If she were to think she was bound
in any way, it would be a constraint." He
knew human nature so well, did Mr. West;
and when he was at the bar, his friends
said no man could lead a witness so well,
or follow the human mind in its ebbs and
driftings over the flats and shallows of motives
and self-interest. He was a solitary walker,
and found a great pleasure in lonely
wanderings up the cliffs to the old fort, where
the few soldiers kept a mouldy guard.
There he had his own world figures, men
and women, curious events, and dreams, still
more entertaining to him than real men and
women and their doings. He, too, used to
go down to the ships; but at the season when
the world was not there. He frequented the
inner port, where the small English brig ran in,
and unloaded, and the Rotterdam barque with
the wings folded to its sides; where the soup-
fed custom-house officers, in dingy livery, moved
about sadly among casks and chests. But on
this day he was looking cheerfully and with
interest at the regular inhabitants and colonists.
He was thinking what dramatic life there must
be among them, what character, what shifts,
what knavery, had a man but time and inclination
to study them.

Here was the post—a dull, money-lending,
pawnbroking little hovel, yet the most interesting
spot in the whole place. Tragedy, comedy,
farce, went on there. The little Frenchman who
sat at the window, what a study of faces he
could have made! The matter-of-fact Englishman,
putting forward his card, "See here, Wilson,
please—anything pour moi, I say?" and who
turns away with an almost audible "d—n" of
disappointment. The timorous girl, with face
full of a wistful pain, and a voice that she tries to
keep steady, and who has been sent by mamma
and the girls at home for the expected letter
which they know will not come. Wonderful
man at the window, whose life goes by dipping