at heart. He is bitten by some of these radical views
for the regeneration of the poor which are subverting
society in every quarter, and I think a year's confinement
in your office may tend more towards his cure
than all the reasoning in the world. Make him work
as your lowest clerk, and show him no respect or
distinction, as that would defeat my views. He shall
have no further allowance from me than a clerk's
salary at a low rate, and I intend that he should live
upon it. The harder he fares, the more likely is he to
become sensible of his folly in adopting the
philanthropic crotchets of the age. Until he gives
them up, I quite renounce him. He will be in town,
and at your office, on Thursday next.

Yours, &c.,

CECILY P. MONKE.

"Ah! Ah! " commented the shrewd old
lawyer; "Miss Cecily's plan for uniting
Hardington and Frogholmes has gone off
—that's the true interpretation of this
document. What tyrants women are! Well!
I suppose I must try to humour both."

Thus it was that Francis George Percival
Monke, heir of Hardington, lord of the manor
of Hardington, became a lawyer's clerk. His
mother thought he would soon sicken of
London lodgings and Mr. Leatherhead's
sedentary work; but, contrary to her
expectations, and even to her hopes, he
accommodated himself to his new position with
cheerfulness and alacrity. He made a friend
amongst his fellow clerks in the person of
young Willie Proby, and the pair took rooms
in the same house, and lived together like
brothers.

"Francis George is no fool!" said old
Leatherhead to himself. "He is a better
fellow, and a more sensible fellow than
any of us thought. It is that silly mother of
his who has had her own ends to serve by
keeping him in the background."

Yes. Francis George began to develope a
plain, useful kind of ability; he had no
genius, but he had concentrativeness, and a
very straightforward honesty of purpose.
He had grown painfully sensible of his
deficiencies, and it was almost laughable to
see with what diligence he strove to repair
them in his leisure evenings. The manuals
of popular information that he read, the lists
of sober facts that he committed to memory,
the instructive lectures that he attended, are
beyond the calculation of his biographer.
Odds and ends of his undigested miscellaneous
knowledge were continually bursting from
him, like scraps from an over full rag-bag,
to the sly and secret amusement of
his companions. Not one of them cared to
laugh at him outright; for his good temper
made him liked, and his romantic
circumstances made him admired. Who
does not, voluntarily or involuntarily, conceive
a respect for the heir to ten thousand a-year?

For a six months he remained in the lawyer's
office, greatly improving both in mind and
manner, as the conceit of himself was rubbed
out of him by intimate contact with other
young fellows wiser and cleverer than he.
Then the question was proposed to him,
whether he was willing to accede to his
mother's wishes, and return home. But
Francis George had not tasted the sweets of
liberty in vain; he wrote an affectionately
respectful letter to his mother, telling
her he preferred to remain in London—
in which decision his father secretly
upheld him. Mrs. Percival Monke now began
to lament her hasty banishment of her son,
and would have been glad to recal him on
almost any terms; but she was much too
tenacious of her maternal authority to stoop
to him and say so, therefore the breach
between them widened. The sudden
marriage of Flora Monke with a penniless
ensign, utterly overthrowing her design for the
reunion of Hardington and Frogholmes,
exasperated her still more against her son;
and, in the first bitterness of her disappointment,
she indited to him the following letter:

Hardington, March 12, 182-.

FRANCIS GEORGE,—You must have heard of your
cousin Flora's elopement with Frederick Steele: thus
you are answerable for her ruin as well as your own.
I throw you off entirely now. You have acted the
part of an undutiful and ungrateful son. You have
taken from me the sole object for which I lived.
Hardington and Frogholmes can never again be one;
and you, cruel, indifferent, wicked, unworthy boy, are
the sole cause. You need not trouble yourself to
send me any more of your ill-spelt protestations of
affection: I believe in deeds, not in words. From
this day forth your existence is nothing to me. You
must have Hardington when I die; but while I live,
not a single sixpence shall you have. You may live
where and how you can; and the worst wish I wish
you is, that if you live to have children of your own,
they may wring your dearest feelings as cruelly as you
have wrung mine. And so, I remain,

Your injured and aggrieved mother,

CECILY PERCIVAL MONKE.

Francis George showed the letter to his
father; who only shrugged his shoulders, and
wished his wife would give him his full
discharge from Hardington also, though
without curtailing his supplies; but the young
man dutifully endeavoured to soften her feelings
towards him, and his failure was not
chargeable on him.

"Woman's a riddle, indeed!" cried old
Leatherhead, when his client wrote to him
that she should henceforward stop her son's
allowance, and that he must maintain
himself independently of her. "Woman's not
always a pleasant riddle either!"

Francis George would have had no difficulty
in raising money on his expectations had he
been so disposed; but, as old Leatherhead
advised him not, and gave him a reasonably
liberal salary, he resigned himself without
difficulty to his fate: resigned himself all the
more readily, because Mr. Proby had got a
living a few miles from town, and had brought
his family to reside there. Willie went down
every Saturday and stayed until Monday,