ened. She hoped to recover them in Italy, and the calm secu

n atmosphere other than earth's for those adoring them. If at night, in her sleep, he was a memory that conducted her through scenes which were lightnings, the cool swift morning of her flight released her. France, too, her rival!-the land of France, personified by her instinctively, though she had

collection of past anguish, is baneful to the soul. In Rome Cecilia's vision of her track to Rome wa

ove, and reproachful; and a shame in it like nothing she had yet experienced. Previous pains were bu

te, of a baronet banker and his wife, two faint-faced girls, and a young gentleman of our country, once perhaps a light-limbed boy, chose to be followed by their footman in the melancholy pomp of state livery. Wherever she

land burlesqued abroad. 'You must not generalize on them. Footmen are

abroad foredoomed to share the sentiment. This is your middle-class! What society can they move in, that

. 'Something of

ay be as little wonderful that the satire has no effect. Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us with this aspect of overripeness, not to say monstrosity. I fall in l

a hundred times,' qu

ause I see it. We scoff at th

joints. The first spring of a Frenchman comes of vanity. That you can't say of the English. Peace to all! but I abhor cosmopolitanism. No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it. Non

percilious Celts; with

we be loved,

werful or out of the way, or down it goes. When a nation's dead you may love it; but I don't see the use of dying to be loved. My aim for my country is to have the land respected. For that purpose we must have power; for power wealth;

length of time it took Pliny to journey from the city to his paternal farm, or villa overlooking the lake, or villa overlooking the bay, and some abstruse fun in the tender ridicule of his readings of his poems to friends; for Mr. Austin smiled effusively in alluding to the illustrious Roman pleader's foible of verse: but Pliny bore no resemblance to that island barbarian Nevil Beauchamp: she could not realize the friend of Trajan, orator, lawyer, student, statesman, benefactor of his kind, and model of her own

to lose him. Business

a?' she inquired: and the col

upil and patient. A gentle cross-hauling ensued between them, that they grew conscious of and laughed over during their peregrinations in and out of Rome: she pulled for the Republic of the Scipios; his predilections were toward the Rome of the wise and clement emperors. To Cecilia's mind Rome rocked at a period so closely n

:-he rejected the French. She mused on dim old thoughts of the gracious dignity of a woman's life under high governorship. Turbulent young men imperilled it at every step. The trained, the grave, the partly grey, were fitting lord

y she considered as of no consequence whatever, and she said so, in response to a meaningless nod. But Mr. Austin was obliged to return to work. She set her face homeward with his imm

a good man for his friendship, and requiting him with faithfu

he barely examined her own. The sight of the house warned her instantly that she must have a defence: and then, in desperation but with perfec

it was at least strange that he

r of her return, as his card, with the pencilled line, 'Wi

ustin looked her in the eyes longer than it is custo

into the libr

th him into

hand? He alarmed her, and he pacified her alarm, yet bade her reflect on the matter, saying that her father, like other

er to marry without his approva

of his choice.' Cecilia's features hung on an e

aking. He seemed to be praising an unknown person-some gentleman wh

he showed a painful ridging of the brows, and Mr. Austin cons

listening to Mr. Austin; gradually she was beginning to understand that she was parting company with her original conjectures, but going at so swift a pace in so supple and sure a grasp, that, like the speeding train slipped on new lines of rails by the pointsman, her hurrying sensibility was not shocked, or the shock was imperceptible,

urgent?'

anage the estates, which you are woman of the world enough to know should be in strong hands. He gives you t

library. He embraced he

nk, papa, I

was utterly defenceless before Beauchamp: and possibly Beauchamp was in the

d in, not the most entirely self-possessed of suitors, puffing softly under h

es to the colonel, and was referred to Cecilia; but Colonel Halkett declined to send for her. Beauchamp declined

ame to hi

hat you are waiti

g some weeks. Sha

ere, qu

I have come to ask

I canno

rk with me. I ask

s too