"Don't be cruel. You know it is my poverty." "Your poverty of spirit. You gave up money for her, and that is as good as if you had it still, and better. If you love Zoe, scrape up an income somehow, and say the word. Why, Harrington is bewitched with you, and he is rolling in money. I wouldn't lose her by cowardice, if I was you. Uxmoor will offer marriage before he goes. He is staying on for that. Now, take my word for it, when one man offers marriage, and the other does not, there is always a good chance. of the girl saying this one is in earnest, and the other is not. We don't expect self-denial in a man; we don't believe in it. We see you seizing upon everything else you care for; and, if you don't seize on us, it wounds our vanity, the strongest passion we have. Consider, Uxmoor has title, wealth, everything to bestow with the wedding-ring. If he offers all that, and you don't offer all you have, how much more generous he looks to her than you do!" "In short, you think she will doubt my affection, if I don't ask her to share my poverty." "If you don't, and a rich man asks her to share his all, I'm sure she will. And so should I. Words are only words.” "You torture me; I'd rather die than lose her." "Then live and win her. I've told you the way." "I will scrape an income together, and ask her." "Upon your honour?" Upon my soul." "Then, in my opinion, you will have her in spite of Lord Ux moor." Hot from this, Edward Severne sat down and wrote a moving letter to a certain cousin of his in Huntingdonshire. "MY DEAR COUSIN,-I have often heard you say you were under obligations to my father, and had a regard for me. Indeed, you have shown the latter by letting the interest on my mortgage run out many years and not foreclosing. Having no other friend, I now write to you, and throw myself on your pity. I have formed a deep attachment to a young lady of infinite beauty and virtue. She is above me in everything, especially in fortune. Yet she deigns to love me. I can't ask her hand as a pauper; and by my own folly, now deeply repented, I am little more. Now, all depends on you, my happiness, my respectability. Sooner or later I shall be able to repay you all. For God's sake, come to the assistance of your affectionate cousin, "EDWARD SEVERNE. "The brother, a man of immense estates, is an old friend, and warmly If I could only, attached to me. through your temporary assistance or connivance, present my estate as clear, all would be well, and I could repay you afterwards." To this letter he received an immediate reply. "DEAR EDWARD,—I thought you had forgotten my very existence. Yes, I owe much to your father, and have always said so, and acted accordingly. Whilst you have been wandering abroad, deserting us all, I have improved your estate. I have bought all the other mort gages, and of late the rent has paid the interest, within a few pounds. I now make you an offer. Give me a long lease of the two farms at £300 a-year-they will soon be vacant-and £2000 ̊ out of hand, and I will cancel all the mortgages, and give you a receipt for them as paid in full. This will be like paying you several thousand pounds This munificent offer surprised and delighted Severne; and, indeed, no other man but cousin George, who had a heart of gold, and was grateful to Ned's father, and also loved the scamp himself, as everybody did, would have made such an offer. Our adventurer wrote and closed with it, and gushed gratitude. Then he asked himself how to get the money. Had he been married to Zoe, or not thinking of her, he would have gone at once to Vizard, for the security was ample. But in his present delicate situation this would not do. No; he must be able to come and say, "My estate is small, but it is clear. Here is a receipt for £6000 worth of mortgages I have paid off. I am poor in land, but rich in experience, regrets, and love. Be my friend, and trust me with Zoe." He turned and twisted it in his mind, and resolved on a bold course. He would go to Homburg, and get that sum by hook or by crook out of Ina Klosking's winnings. He took Fanny into his confidence; only he substituted London for Homburg. "And oh, Miss Dover," said he, "do not let me suffer by going away and leaving a rival behind." "Suffer by it!" said she. "No. I mean to reward you for taking my advice. Don't you say a word to her. It will come better from me. I'll let her know what you are gone for and she is just the girl to be upon honour, and ever so much cooler to Lord Uxmoor, because you are unhappy, but have gone away trusting her." And his artful ally kept her word. She went into Zoe's room before dinner to have it out with her. In the evening Severne told Vizard he must go up to London for a day or two. "All right," said Vizard. "Tell some of them to order the dog-cart for your train." But Zoe took occasion to ask him for how long, and murmured, "Remember how we shall miss you," with such a look, that he was in Elysium that evening. But at night he packed his bag for Homburg, and that chilled him. He lay slumbering all night, but not sleeping, and waking with starts and a sense of horror. At breakfast, after reading his letters, Vizard asked him what train he would go by. He said, the one o'clock. "All right," said Vizard. Then he rang the bell, countermanded the dog-cart, and ordered the barouche. "A barouche for me!" said Severne. "Why, I am not going to take the ladies to the station." "No; it is to bring one here. She comes down from London five minutes before you take the up train." There was a general exclamation-Who was it? Aunt Maitland? "No," said Vizard, tossing a note to Zoe "it is Doctress Gale." Severne's countenance fell. A GERMAN BATH. THE bath-life that is so much in favour with our foreign friends is a thing that has almost gone out of date in England. We are quite aware that gouty and rheumatic patients gather into great hotels and lodging-houses round such springs as bubble up in the valleys of the Peak; that there are still pumprooms at places like Bath and Harrowgate, Leamington and Cheltenham, with shady alleys of chestnut and lime, where visitors may take the gentle exercise that helps the healing virtues of the waters. While some of those once-famous resorts have been going down hill, others have been growing into fashion as residences; and crescents and terraces and semi-detached villas cover the crowded fields that used to be traversed by shady footpaths, and fragrant with the fresh scents of the country. But the new frequenters of these showy and stuccoed towns are altogether of another class from the old ones. They are gone there to live all the year round, and to contrive on a moderate income to enjoy the pleasures of society. They look out for good air, ample house-room, economical gaiety, the advantages of schools and masters for children who have to make their way, and the chances of eligible marriages for girls who would be lost in London. Colonies of retired Indians have been drawn together by the ties of common interests; and there are whole quarters where the conversation is as thoroughly Anglo-Indian as in the club-rooms of " the Oriental" or the East Indian United Service. There are great gatherings of dowagers, whose families of accomplished beauties are generally larger than their jointures; and in summer or winter, be it said with all respect, an eligible gentleman of captivating manner is welcomed as a godsend and a joy, so long as it pleases him to remain among them. But the days are long gone by when such scenes as Smollett depicted in his Humphrey Clinker,' or Thackeray in his 'Virginians,' are to be witnessed at Bath or at Tunbridge Wells; when the fascinations of the lively society that had left town for the Spa won men away from the pheasants or the partridges; when frivolity and flirtation, statesmanship and literature, met together in the crowds in the pump-rooms or on the Pantiles; and when the chariots of spendthrift gamblers like the Marches and the Selwyns were perpetually on the road between the clubs in St James's Street and the ordinaries and play-tables of some urbs in rure. Nay, we fancy that even at the "Bath," par excellence, there is no such characteristic institution now as that grandly insinuating master of the ceremonies who did the honours of the rooms to Mr Pickwick and his friends; while he modestly merged his personal glories before the splendour of such fugitive luminaries as his Lordship of Mutinhead and his Achates, Mr Crushington. English people have been learning to take their pleasures in other ways. Those who can afford it come to London for the season, travelling townwards comfortably along the network of railways that has spread itself to John O'Groat's and the Land's End. Having had their fill of the pleasures of the town, and seen the complexions that used to dazzle them in the Row changing colour with the flowers in the parterres, they scatter over the length and breadth of the land among the thousands of pleasant country homes that throw open their hospitable doors. Or they go cruising in yachts that show the colours of the clubs on every accessible sea, from the Norwegian Fjords to the Mediterranean Archipelagoes; or if they have a fancy for bath-life, they cross to the Continent, where the veritable bath-life is still to be enjoyed. But even abroad it is not of course what it used to be, looking at it from the popular English aspect. United Germany has been growing disagreeably respectable; and the principalities that have not been confiscated have been following the lead of the Kaiser, who refuses to sully his fingers with those immoral gains that used to figure so handsomely in the State budgets. As Electors, Grand-Dukes, and Serene Highnesses had ceased to sell their subjects to the service of foreign Powers, so we have seen the reform of those agreeable Vanity Fairs, in which every tourist made a point of lingering. As even Christian and the companion of his pilgrimage had no help for it but to pass by their prototype, following the shortest road to the Celestial City, so everybody's way seemed to lie through them to everywhere. A very superficial study of human nature was sufficient to teach their promoters how to conciliate prejudices and even principles. Except publicans and sinners who made slight profession of decency, nobody stopped at Homburg or Baden for the play. There was the fresh air of the Taunus hills, the magnificent scenery of the Black Forest, the meeting with many friends who, like yourself, might have been attracted by the fame of the waters. And once there, even while you wrapped yourself in your virtue while you stopped your ears to the rattle of the coin and the seductive 671 rustle of the bank-notes,-there was ceedingly lively. The place was no denying that the scene was exlike a grander Cremorne or Mabille thrown open for a day fête under aristocratic patronage, although it preserved its loosely Bohemian charm by the mixed character of its mob of habitués. Nature had been pressed into the service of the management, and her simple fascinations were tricked out with striking stage effects. The balconies of the straggling villas that lined the road by which you entered were gay with clusters of clematis and passion-flower, and draped in roses and Virginian creepers. The hotels were embosomed in masses of decidblooming flower-beds and enamelled uous trees, and surrounded with lawns of emerald velvet. There from the glare, long lines of flowerwere green alleys that screened you ing oleander, mazes of artisticallyarranged shrubbery with meandering paths; limpid brooks that murmured in miniature cascades over beds of dazzling gravel. Artificial showers of spray fell perpetually on the well-kept grass plots and the dusty roads; while a dreamy languor, faintly scented by fragrant blossoms, hung over the coquettish houses that smiled in the noonday sun. The strains of pianos, touched by the hands of a master or a mistress, chimed in with the more distant melody of the band that was playing in the kiosque before the Kursaal; the clear notes of tenor or mellow contralto came floating out through the open casements, for the professional musical element was sure to muster strong. In fact, if you were familiar with the carte du pays, or rather des personnes, or were happy in providing yourself with a competent cicerone, you found you were living and breathing among celebrities. A couple or so of crowned heads might be seen any morning unobtrusively sauntering about the skirts of the little crowd that had gathered to listen to the morning music. As for the Emperors and those grander potentates whose breath made the war or peace of the world, they had each of them their pet places of resort, and you knew precisely where to seek them-from Ems to Vichy. But in all the leading play resorts, the list of the cure-guests furnished sufficiently sensational reading. Daily you noted the arrival or departure of Arch-Dukes and Grand-Dukes and sovereign princes who exercised something like autocratic authority over territories more or less important. Cadets of reigning houses, princes more or less impecunious, there were by the score, many of them figuring with a plurality of names in the pages of the Almanac of Gotha. Thither came the great English peer, like my Lord of Steyne, either travelling in state with his wife and daughters and half a score of a suite, or quietly en garçon attended by his valet. There were Bans and Hospodars and Waywodes, dignitaries and ex - dignitaries bearing all manner of semi-barbaric styles, but most of them lackered over with French polish, and provided for the occasion with well-filled purses. There were Russians, of course, in plenty, male and female, smoking cigarettes and quaffing champagne, making serious play the business of their lives, and suspected of keeping their hands in at political intrigue by way of intellectual distraction. For there were ambassadors, ministers, or chargés d'affaires, who might possibly be as serenely indifferent as they seemed to anything but the trifles of their everyday existence; but who might, on the other hand, as it was popularly believed, be intriguing over a recon struction of the map of Europe. There were sets and cliques; and the morgue and phlegm of aristocrats like our own of course fenced their dignity behind impalpable but impassable barriers. As a rule, however, there was a free and easy abandon, which might make everybody for the moment the acquaintance of anybody else, if he showed the vouchers of a well-cut coat and a passable manner. An interchange of passing civilities committed one to nothing, it being understood that every one was at liberty to cut and come again when it pleased him. For example, the agreeable gentleman who dropped in unpretendingly of a Sunday to take his seat near the top of the table d'hôte in the Kursaal might be the prince of the country in person; and his Highness did not come there, you may be sure, to keep his fellow-diners at arm's length. But because you exchanged remarks with him on the weather, or ideas on some question of the day, it did not follow that you were to have the entrée of the Court or a general invitation to the shooting-lodge on the Platte. Literature and the fine arts were freely represented, as well as aristocracy, politics, and plutocracy. The silent female who sat opposite you at dinner, devoting herself to the dishes in morose abstraction, and making fearful play among the potato salads and the pickles, might be the light and graceful lyrist of the South, who had sent a thrill through all the hearts in Fatherland. The lively little man who strove in vain to engage her broad red ear, and win a thought from the business of the moment, was the dramatist who had left his countrymen leagues behind in the chase after the sombre and the terrible. Mademoiselle Rossignol, of the Italian Opera, Paris, is warbling |