side, and put one of her hands, which had grown white in her the Beeches. They've seven or eight miles to drive, and they new and easy service, about his thick neck. "Are you glad to see me, Luke?" she asked. "Of course I'm glad, lass," he answered, boorishly, opening his knife again, and scraping away at the hedgestake. won't be back till after eleven." "Then I'll tell you what, Phoebe, if the inside of the house is so mighty fine, I should like to have a look at it." "You shall, then. Mrs. Barton, the housekeeper, knows you They were first cousins. and had been playfellows in child- by sight, and she can't object to my showing you some of the hood, and sweethearts in early youth. best rooms." "You don't seem much as if you were glad," said the girl; "you might look at me, Luke, and tell me if you think my journey has improved me." "It ain't put any color into your cheeks, my girl," he said, glancing up at her from under his lowering eyebrows; "you're every bit as white as you was when you went away." "But they say travelling makes people genteel, Luke. I've been on the Continent with my lady, through all manner of, curious places; and you know, when I was a child, Squire Horton's daughters taught me to speak a little French, and I found it so nice to be able to talk to the people abroad." "Genteel!” cried Luke Marks, with a horse laugh; "who wants you to be genteel, I wonder? Not me for one; when you're my wife you won't have overmuch time for gentility, my girl. French, too! Dang me, Phoebe, I suppose when we've saved money enough between us to buy a bit of a farm, you'll be parlyvooing to the cows?" She bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. He went on cutting and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin. For some time they were silent, but by-and-bye she said, with her face still turned away from her companion: What a fine thing it is for Miss Graham, that was, to travel with her maid and her courier, and her chariot and four, and a husband that thinks there isn't one spot upon all the earth that's good enough for her to set her foot upon!" 66 Ay, it is a fine thing, Phoebe, to have lots of money," answered Luke," and I hope you'll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages agen we get married." "Why, what was she in Mr. Dawson's house only three months ago?" continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin's speech. "What was she but a servant like me? Taking wages and working for them as hard, or harder, than I did. You should have seen her shabby clothes, Luke-worn, and patched, and darned, and turned and twisted, yet always looking nice upon her, somehow. She gives me more as lady'smaid here than ever she got from Mr. Dawson then. Why, I've seen her come out of the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that master had just given her for her quarter's salary; and now look at her!" "Never you mind her," said Luke; "take care of yourself, Phoebe; that's all you've got to do. What should you say to a public-house for you and me, by-and-bye, my girl? There's a deal of money to be made out of a public-house." The girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands hanging listlessly in her lap, and her pale gray eyes fixed upon the last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees. "You should see the inside of the house, Luke," she said; "it's a tumble-down looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady's rooms-all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds of pounds, the housekeeper told me, and all done for her." It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly to the house. The door by which they entered led into the servant's hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper's room. Phoebe Marks stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so, lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to Luke to follow her into he other part of the house. The long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight-the light carried by Phoebe looking only a poor speck of flame in the broad passages through which the girl led her cousin. Luke looked suspiciously over his shoulder now and then, half-frightened of the creaking of his own hob-nailed boots. "It's a mortal dull place, Phoebe," he said, as they emerged from a passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; "I've heard tell of a murder that was done here in old times." "There are murders enough in these times, as to that, Luke,” answered the girl, descending the staircase, followed by the young man. She led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu, buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes and trinkets, that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning-room, bung with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an ante-chamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head. The young man stared about him, open-mouthed and openeyed. "It's a rare fine place," he said, "and must have cost a power of money." "Look at the pictures on the walls," said Phoebe, glancing at the panels of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with Claudes and Poussins, Wouvermans and Cuyps. "I've heard that those alone are worth a fortune. This is the entrance to my lady's apartments, Miss Graham that was." She lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway and led the astonished countryman into a fairylike boudoir, and thence to a dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its occupant had left it. "I've all these things to put away before my lady comes home, Luke; you might sit down here while I do it, I shan't be long." Her cousin looked round in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully seated himself. "I wish I could show you the jewels, Luke," said the girl; "but I can't, for she always keeps the keys herself; that's the case on the dressing-table there." "What, that?" cried Luke, staring at the massive walnutwood and brass inlaid casket. 'Why, that's big enough to hold every bit of clothes I've got !" "And it's as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and "She's a lucky one," muttered Luke, with lazy indifference. emeralds," answered Phoebe, busy as she spoke in folding the "You should have seen her while we were abroad, with a rustling silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the crowd of gentlemen always hanging about her; Sir Michael shelves of the wardrobe. As she was shaking out the flounces not jealous of them, only proud to see her so much admired. of the last, a jingling sound caught her ear, and she put her You should have heard her laugh and talk with them; throw-hand into the pocket. ing all their compliments and fine speeches back at them, as it were, as if they had been pelting her with roses. She set everybody mad about her, wherever she went. Her singing, her playing, her painting, her dancing, her beautiful smile and sunshiny ringlets? She was always the talk of a place, as long as we stayed in it." 66 "I declare!" she exclaimed, my lady has left her keys in her pocket for once in a way; I can show you the jewellery if you like, Luke." "Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl," he said, rising from his chair, and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. He uttered a cry of wonder when he saw the ornaments glittering on white satin cushions. He wanted No, she has gone out with Sir Michael to a dinner-party, at to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them about and find out "Is she at home to-night ?" 64 their mercantile value. Perhaps a pang of longing and envy | wit and quiet humor, under his listless, dawdling, indifferent, shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to have taken one of them. "Why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, Phoebe," he said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands. "Put it down, Luke! with a look of terror; things?" Put it down directly!" cried the girl, "how can you speak about such irresolute manner. A man who would never get on in the world; but who would not hurt a worm. Indeed, his chambers were converted into a perfect dog-kennel, by his habit of bringing home stray and benighted curs, who were attracted by his looks in the street, and followed him with abject fondness. Robert always spent the hunting season at Audley Court; not that he was distinguished as a Nimrod, for he would quietly trot to covert upon a mild-tempered, stout-limbed bay hack, He laid the bracelet in its place with a reluctant sigh, and and keep at a very respectful distance from the hard riders; his then continued his examination of the casket. horse knowing quite as well as he did, that nothing was further "What's this?" he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob from his thoughts than any desire to be in at the death. in the framework of the box. He pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet, flew out of the casket. "Look ye, here!" cried Luke, pleased at his discovery. Phoebe Marks threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to the toilette-table. "Why, I never saw this before," she said, "I wonder what there is in it?'' The young man was a great favorite with his uncle, and by no means despised by his pretty, gipsey-faced, light-hearted, hoydenish cousin, Miss Alicia Audley. It might have seemed to other men that the partiality of a young lady, who was sole heiress to a very fine estate, was rather well worth cultivating, but it did not so occur to Robert Audley. Alicia was a very nice girl, he said, a jolly girl, with no nonsense about her-a girl of a thousand; but this was the highest point to which enthusiasm could carry him. The idea of turning his cousin's girlish liking for him to some good account never entered his idle brain. I doubt if he had any correct notion of the amount of his uncle's fortune, and I am certain that he never for one moment calculated upon the chances of any part of that fortune ultimately coming to himself. So that when, one fine spring morning, about three months before the time of which I am "It's queer rubbish to keep in such a place," said Luke, care-writing, the postman brought him the wedding cards of Sir lessly. The girl's thin lips curved into a curious smile. "You will bear me witness where I found this," she said, putting the little parcel into her pocket. "Why, Phoebe, you're never going to be such a fool as to take that," cried the young man. "I'd rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to take," she answered; "you shall have the publichouse, Luke." CHAPTER IV.-IN THE FIRST PAGE OF THE TIMES." OBERT AUDLEY was supposed to be a barrister. As a barrister was his name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in Figtree Court, Temple; as a barrister he had eaten the allotted number of dinners, which form the sublime ordeal through which the forensic aspirant wades on to fame and fortune. If these things can make a man a barrister, Robert Audley decidedly was one. But he had never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the doors in Figtree Court. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow, of about seven-and-twenty; the only son of a younger brother of Sir Michael Audley. His father had left him £400 a year, which his friends had advised him to increase by being called to the Bar; and as he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes of these friends than to eat so many dinners, and to take a set of chambers in the Temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly called himself a barrister. Michael and Lady Audley, together with a very indignant letter from his cousin, setting forth how her father had just married a wax-dollish young person, no older than Alicia herself, with flaxen ringlets and a perpetual giggle; for I am sorry to say that Miss Audley's animus caused her thus to describe that pretty musical laugh which had been so much admired in the late Miss Lucy Graham-when, I say, these documents reached Robert Audley-they elicited neither vexation nor astonishment in the lymphatic nature of that gentleman. He read Alicia's angry crossed and recrossed letter without so much as removing the amber mouthpiece of his German pipe from his moustached lips. When he had finished the perusal of the epistle, which he read with his dark eyebrows elevated to the centre of his forehead (his only manner of expressing surprise, by the way) he deliberately tbrew that and the wedding cards into the wastepaper basket, and putting down his pipe, prepared himself for the exertion of thinking out the subject. "I always said the old buffer would marry," he muttered, after about half an hour's reverie. "Alicia and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it hammer and tongs. I hope they won't quarrel in the hunting season, or say unpleasant things to each other at the dinner-table: rows always upset a man's digestion." At about twelve o'clock on the morning following that night upon which the events recorded in the last chapter had taken place, the baronet's nephew strolled out of the Temple, Black friarsward, on his way to the city. He had in an evil hour obliged some necessitous friend by putting the ancient name of Audley across a bill of accommodation, which bill not having been provided for by the drawer, Robert was called upon to pay. For this purpose he sauntered up Ludgate Hill, with his blue necktie fluttering in the hot August air, and thence to a refreshingly cool banking-house in a shady court out of St. Paul's Churchyard, where he made arrangements for selling out a couple of hundred pounds' worth of consols. He had transacted this business, and was loitering at the corner of the court waiting for a chance hansom to convey him back to the Temple, when he was almost knocked down by a man of about his own age, who dashed headlong into the narrow opening. Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself with the exertion of smoking his German pipe, and reading French novels, he would stroll into the Temple Gardens, and lying in some shady spot, pale and cool, with his "Be so good as to look where you're going, my friend!"" shirt collar turned down and a blue silk handkerchief tied loose- Robert remonstrated, mildly, to the impetuous passenger ; ly about his neck, would tell grave benchers that he had" you might give a man warning before you throw him down knocked himself up with over work. The sly old benchers laughed at the pleasant fiction; but they all agreed that Robert Audley was a good fellow; a generoushearted fellow; rather a curious feilow, too, with a fund of sly and trample upon him." The stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at the speaker, and then gasped for breath. "Bob!" he cried, in a tone expressive of the most intense astonishment; "I only touched British ground after dark last night, and to think that I should meet you this morning!" "I've seen you somewhere before, my bearded friend," said Mr. Audley, calmly scrutinizing the animated face of the other, "but I'll be hanged if I can remember when or where." What!" exclaimed the stranger, reproachfully, "you don't mean to say that you've forgotten George Talboys?" No, I have not!" said Robert, with an emphasis by no means usual to him; and then hooking his arm into that of his friend, he led him into the shady court, saying with his old indifference, and now, George, tell us all about it." 66 George Talboys did tell him all about it. He told that very story which he had related ten days before to the pale governess on board the Argus; and then, hot and breathless, he said that he had twenty thousand pounds or so in his pocket, and that he wanted to bank it at Messrs. who had been his bankers many years before. "If you'll believe me, I've only just left their countinghouse," said Robert. "I'll go back with you, and we'll settle that matter in five minutes." They did contrive to settle it in about a quarter of an hour; and then Robert Audley was for starting off immediately for the Crown and Sceptre at Greenwich, or the Castle, at Richmond, where they could have a bit of dinner, and talk over those good old times when they were together at Eton. But George told his friend that before he went anywhere, before he shaved, or broke his fast, or in any way refreshed himself after a night journey from Liverpool by express train, he must call at a certain coffee-house in Bridge Street, Westminster, where he expected to find a letter from his wife. "Then I'll go there with you," said Robert. "The idea of you're having a wife, George; what a preposterous joke." As they dashed through Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street and the Strand, in a fast hansom, George Talboys poured into his friend's ear all those wild hopes and dreams which had usurped such a dominion over his sanguine nature. "I shall take a villa on the banks of the Thames, Boo," he said, "for the little wife and myself; and we'll have a yacht, Bob, old boy, and you shall lie on the deck and smoke, while my pretty one plays her guitar and sings songs to us. She's for all the world like one of those what's it's-names, who got poor old Ulysses into trouble," added the young man, whose classic lore was not very great. The waiters at the Westminster coffee-house stared at the hollow-eyed, unshaven stranger, with his clothes of colonial cut, and his boisterous, excited manner; but he had been an old frequenter of the place in his military days, and when they heard who he was, they flew to do his bidding. He did not want much-only a bottle of soda water, and to know if there was a letter at the bar directed to George Talboys. The waiter brought the soda water before the young men had seated themselves in a shady box near the disused fireplace. No; there was no letter for that name. The waiter said it with consummate indifference, while he mechanically dusted the little mahogany table. 66 George's face blanched to a deadly whiteness. Talboys," he said; 66 perhaps you didn't hear the name distinctly-T, A, L, B, O, Y, S. Go and look again; there must be a letter." The waiter shrugged his shoulders as he left the room, and returned in three minutes to say that there was no name at all resembling Talboys in the letter rack. There was Brown, and Sanderson, and Pinchbeck; only three letters altogether. The young man drank his soda water in silence, and then leaning his elbows upon the table covered his face with his hands. There was something in his manner which told Robert Audley that his disappointment, trifling as it might appear, was in reality a very bitter one. He seated himself opposite to his friend but did not attempt to address him. By-and-bye George looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy Times newspaper of the day before from a heap of journals on the table, stared vacantly at the first page. from its dark bronze to a sickly, chalky, grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus: "On the 24th inst., at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged twenty-two." (To be continued.) MRS. LINCOLN. THE amiable lady who presides at the White House, with so much graceful hospitality, is the daughter of the Hon. Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky, a planter of wealth, who gave her, as well as the rest of his children, a very excellent education. She married Abraham Lincoln, our present respected President, in November, 1842. Of their four sons only two survive, Robert, a fine youth of eighteen, and Thomas, a boy of nine. The former is now studying at Harvard College, and is much esteemed by his comrades and tutors. The death of her second son, William, last February, must be fresh in the recollection of our readers. Mrs. Lincoln, née Mary Todd, is one of our representative women, embodying those household virtues and excellent sense which render Queen Victoria the representative woman of England. Mrs. Lincoln's manners are composed and dignified, and eminently befitting her distinguished station. MOORE AND HIS MOTHER. THE mother's care of Moore's early years, and unabated love They tell us of an Indian tree 'Tis thus, though woo'd by flattering friends, With what fond pride were those lines exhibited to those who had won the mother's confidence! A willing listener, one who did not soon tire of “ Tom's" repeated praises, was sure of such a mark of favor. BE COURTEOUS.-True courtesy is neither more nor less than I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph kindness towards every one, and in social circles. It has regard amongst the list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its to the comfort and interests of society in general, and of indifull meaning; but after a considerable time he pushed the news-viduals in particular, and seeks, in every proper way, to make paper over to Robert Audley, and with a face which had changed all agreeable and happy. NEVER TO KNOW. BY ISA CRAIG. ONE within, in a crimson glow, One without, o'er the fallen snow, Never to know That one looked out with yearning sighs, While one looked in with wistful eyes, And went unwitting. What came of the one without that so Wearily wended? Under the stars and under the snow, Her journey ended! Never to know That the answer came to those wistful eyes, And passed away in those yearning sighs, With night winds blended. What came of the one within that so Yearned forth with sighing? More sad to my thinking his fate, the glow Drearily dying, Never to know That for a moment his life was nigh, And he sought it not and it passed him by, Recall denying. These were two hearts that long agoDreaming and waking Each to a poet revealed its woe, Wasting and breaking: Never to know That if each to other had but done so, And one had not lain 'neath the stars and the snow THE "QUILLDRIVER'S" REVENGE CHAPTER I. E STANDS in the sick chamber a little lamp which has not long been lighted. All covered up in white and flannel on the nurse's lap, there is a voice, and a lusty one; there is a face, dark red and ugly; there are eyes, but you cannot see them yet; and there are fists which don't know what to do with themselves, unless they shall be allowed to fight each other, and poke and fidget into the dark red face. The nurse greets the creaking of the pompous boots with a snappish "sh!" and the baby with a louder and more lamentable remonstrance; but their owner stands on the hearth, proudly. He rattles his seals and his chain; he puts his fingers comfortably between the highest buttons of his waistcoat, and contemplates the morsel of humanity, with his head on one side. He has come into a sudden piece of property-a daughter, to inherit his name and money. A son would have been better, but this is something to be proud of. He condescends to speak to the nurse in his satisfaction, and to inquire into the nature and extent of her family ties. But that individual, perpendicular and bony in her exterior, was perpendicular and bony in her feelings also. "Her name warn't Nuss, though she were a monthly. Her godfathers and godmothers didn't christen her Nuss, neither did her other half bestow it upon her at the haltar. She had a name she thought, such as it were-it did for her, which was Mrs. Griggins among them as knowed her." And when the elderly gentleman hemmed and ba'd and essayed to lift the heap of flannel from her angular lap, she poked a claw at him spitefully, in the performance of her duty. "Why, drat the man! he don't know no more how to handle a babby than my nose-he don't!" And there might have been a fight between them, but for the door again opening stealthily, and with many hushes, after the manner of anxious females when nobody is doing or saying anything but themselves. A married relative must see the dear baby and kiss its ugly face, and call it a beauty, so like its "papa." And the pompous gentleman quite starts at the new title, and nods approvingly. A spinster friend must see the precious little one, bless it! must come on tiptoe, and peep daintily at the red surface, starting back and peeping again, as if it had shown teeth and given tokens of an immediate spring. She finds out that it has its mamma's own nose, a darling! as if that shapeless little protuberance could be called a nose at all. Then she is emboldened to advance a little nearer; to touch its queer little fist; to poke her fingers into its puffy cheeks in an uncomfort. able manner; to ask innocently, "Would it ery? Was it good?" To which questions the perpendicular monthly volunteers that "no babby couldn't stand being pinched and poked as thatn's, and the gentleman had better take the ladies away." But the married relative has drawn the gentleman into a corner, wherein to impart dire suspicions injurious to the character of the monthly; and the spinster friend is reduced to Implore that bony one to assist in uncurling the baby's little fist from her own timid finger, which it has seized as its lawful prey, and will not lose for any amount of "did it then's? would it like to keep it's?" and "bless it's." This is what the bells are ringing for--this poor little lamp of life, hardly lighted, wrapped up, and swathed, and bound together by the fire. And after all these comes peeping in thread paper of a schoolboy, trying to be quiet, raising merry eyes to the bony one's face, and pleading with her. "I say, let's see the jolly baby; now, do, she's my cousin, and I ought-come." Whether it was a look about the boy's mouth which favored her own William-'enry, or a tone of the voice which reminded her of Griggins defunct, the bony one was softened, and turned down a wee corner of the covering for him to peep into the unconscious face. 'Whoop," cried out the lad in a big whisper. "It's jolly ugly! by George, I shouldn't like to kiss it." And while the bells are ringing for the new-born, the lamp that burnt so feebly in the sick chamber went out suddenly, and the pompous man looked on the face of his dead wife. "I wish she had lasted another hour," thinks the husband. "Well we must keep it quiet, or they will stop the bells for my son-daughter I mean. Why couldn't she give me a son? But I will name her as he would have been named, Acton. Yes, she will be Acton Pomfret, and whoever marries her shall take the name. How merrily they ring-glorious bells-all for my daughter!" And down-stairs, his sister by marriage goes in, to lead her son away and take him home. A year ago he was Launcelot Acton Pomfret, heir-apparent to the great head of the house of Pomfret and Chadson; to-night he is simply Lance Pomfret, the only son of his mother, and she is a widow. Her cry is, as she goes home thinking bitterly of her poverty and her boy's prospects, "Oh, if the little one had but died with its mother!" But the little one did not die. They found a nurse for it, and it flourished. Night and morning the creaking boots haunted |
