hauteur in her tone, lest she should be misunderstood. "Mr. Carlyle is one of the very few men, so entirely noble, whom the sort of disgrace, reflected from Lady Isabel's conduct, cannot touch."

The carriage of the first guest. Barbara ran across the room, and rattled at Mr. Carlyle's door. " Archibald! do you hear?"

66

Back came the laughing answer. "I shan't keep them long. But they may surely accord a few minutes' grace to a man who has just been converted into an M.P."

Barbara descended to the drawing-room. Leaving her, that unhappy lady, to the cement and the broken pieces, and to battle as she best could with her bitter heart. Nothing but stabs; nothing but stabs! Was her punishment ever to end? No. The step she had taken, in coming back to East Lynne, precluded that.

The guests arrived. All, save Mr. and Mrs. Hare. Barbara received a note from her mamma instead. The justice did not feel well enough to join them.

I should think he did not. If retribution came home sharply to Lady Isabel, it was coming home in some degree to him. Richard, his own unoffending son-unoffending in every sense of the term, until that escapade of the falling in love with Afy-had been treated with unnatural harshness. West Lynne and the public would not fail to remember it—and the justice was remarkably alive to West Lynne and the public's opinion. The affection for Richard, which the justice had been pressing down and keeping under, and turning into all possible channels of hate, was now returning in unpleasant force. Unpleasant, in so far as that it did savage war with his conscience.

"I-I-might have hunted him to death, you know, Anne," said the justice, sitting in his chair, and wiping his brows, and eating humble pie for perhaps the first time in his life.

"But it is over now, Richard dear," said gentle, loving Mrs. Hare, the happy tears coursing down her cheeks.

"But I might had he made his appearance here. In fact, I should."

"Do not grieve, Richard; it will not recal the past. In a little time we may have him home again with us; and then we can both make it up to him."

"And how are we to get him here? where he is? He may be dead, I say."

He may be dead. Who knows

"No, he is not. We shall get him when the time comes.

Mr. Car

lyle knows where he is; has known a long while, he told me to-day: even sees him sometimes. A true friend to us all, Richard, is Archibald Carlyle."

"Ay. That jade, Barbara, is in luck. I shouldn't be surprised but what she knows too; if he does. A good girl, a good girl, though she puts up at times for saucy independence."

Mrs. Hare could scarcely make her husband out, his tone and manner were so thoroughly changed from what she had ever known them.

"But I can't believe it's true yet, Anne. I can't indeed. If he is innocent, why couldn't he have been cleared before? It is so many years ago, you know! Do you think he is innocent ?"

"Dear Richard, I know he is," she answered, with a happy smile. "I have been sure of it a long, long while. And so has Mr. Carlyle."

"Well, that's something.

-and all that ?"

Carlyle's judgment is. Is his room aired

"Whose room?" echoed Mrs. Hare.

"Poor Dick's."

"My dear, you forget," she returned, in wonderment.

"He cannot

come home yet; not until after the assizes. The others must be proved guilty, and he innocent, before he can come home."

"True, true," said Mr. Justice Hare.

A pleasant party, it was, at East Lynne: and twelve o'clock struck before the carriage of the last guest drove away. It may have been from one to two hours after that, and the house was steeped in moonlight and quietness, everybody being abed and asleep, when a loud, alarming summons at the hall bell echoed through the stillness.

The first to put her head out at a window, was Wilson. "Is it fire ?" shrieked she, in the most excessive state of terror conceivable. Wilson had a natural dread of fire; some people do possess this dread more than others; and had oftentime aroused the house to a commotion by declaring she smelt it. "Is it fire?" shrieked Wilson.

"YES," was shouted, at the very top of a man's voice, who stepped from between the entrance pillars to answer.

Wilson waited for no more. Clutching at the baby with one handa fine young gentleman now of near twelve months' old, promising fair to be as great a source of trouble to Wilson and the nursery as was his brother Archibald, whom he greatly resembled and at Archie with the other; out she flew to the corridor, screeching "Fire! fire! fire!" in every accent of horror. Into William's room, and dragging him out of bed; into Lucy's, and dragging her; banging open the door of Madame Vine, and the shrieks, Fire! fire! fire! never ceasing, down tore Wilson with the four children, and burst unceremoniously into the sleeping apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. By this time, the children, terrified out of their senses, not at Wilson's cry of alarm, but at the summary propelling down stairs, set up a shrieking too. Madame Vine, believing that half of the house at least was in flames, was the next to appear, throwing on a shawl she had caught up: and then came Joyce. "Fire! fire! fire!" shouted Wilson; together."

66

we are all a being burnt up

from sleep, sprang out of bed Everybody else was in a night

Poor Mrs. Carlyle, thus wildly aroused and into the corridor in her night-dress. dress when folks are flying for dear life, they don't stop to look for their dress-coats, and best blonde caps. Out came Mr. Carlyle, who had hastily assumed his pantaloons.

:

He cast a rapid glance down to the hall, and saw that the stairs were perfectly free for escape: therefore the hurry was not so violent. Every soul around him was shrieking in concert, making the confusion and din terrific. The bright moonlight streamed in at the corridor windows, but there was no other light: shadowy and indistinct enough looked the white figures.

"Where is the fire ?" he exclaimed. "I don't smell any. Who first gave the alarm ?”

The bell answered him. The louder and longer than before. leaned from it." Who's there?"

hall bell, which rang out ten times
He opened
He opened one of the windows and
Madame Vine caught up Archie.

"It's me, sir," responded a voice, which he at once recognised to be that of one of Mr. Hare's men-servants. "Master have been took in a fit, sir, and mistress sent me for you and Miss Barbara. You must please make haste, sir, if you want to see him alive." Miss Barbara! It was more familiar to Jasper, in a moment of excitement, than the new

name.

"You, Jasper! Is the house on fire? This house ?"

"Well, I don't know, sir. I can hear a dreadful deal of screeching in it."

Mr. Carlyle closed the window. He began to suspect that the danger lay in fear alone. "Who told you there was fire?" he demanded of

Wilson.

"That man ringing at the door," sobbed Wilson. "Thank goodness, I have saved the children."

Mr. Carlyle felt somewhat exasperated at the mistake. His wife was trembling from head to foot, her face of a deadly whiteness; and he knew that she was not in a condition to be alarmed, necessarily or unnecessarily. She clung to him in terror, asking if they could escape.

My darling, be calm! There is no fire. It is a stupid mistake. You may all go back to bed and sleep in peace," he added to the rest. “And, the next time that you alarm the house in the night, Wilson, have the goodness to make yourself sure, first of all, that there's cause for it."

Barbara, frightened still, bewildered and uncertain, escaped to the window and threw it open. But Mr. Carlyle was nearly as quick as she: he caught her to him with one hand, and drew the window down with the other. To have these tidings told to her abruptly, would be worse than all. By this time, some of the servants had descended the other staircase, with a light (being in various stages of costume); and, hastening to open the hall door, Jasper entered. The man had probably waited to help to put out the "fire." Barbara caught sight of him ere Mr. Carlyle could prevent it, and grew sick with fear, believing some ill had happened to her mother.

Drawing her inside their chamber, he broke the news to her soothingly and tenderly, making light of it. She burst into tears. "You are not deceiving me, Archibald? Papa is not dead?"

"Dead!" cheerily echoed Mr. Carlyle, in the same tone he might have used had Barbara wondered whether the justice was taking a night airing for pleasure in a balloon. "Wilson has indeed frightened you, love. Dress yourself, and we will go and see him.”

"He

At that moment, Barbara recollected William. Strange that she should be the first to do so; before Lady Isabel, before Mr. Carlyle. She ran out again to the corridor, where the boy stood shivering. may have caught his death!" she uttered, snatching him up in her arms. "Oh, Wilson! what have you done? His nightgown is damp and cold."

it on.

Unfit as she was for the burden, she bore him to her own bed. Wilson was not at leisure to attend to reproaches just then. She was engaged in a wordy war with Jasper, leaning over the balustrades to carry "I never told you there was a fire!" indignantly denied Jasper. "You did. I opened the nursery window, and called out 'Is it fire?' and you answered Yes.'"

"You called out 'Is it Jasper?' What else should I say but 'Yes, to that? Fire! Where was the fire likely to be? In the park?" "Wilson, take the children back to bed," authoritatively spoke Mr. Carlyle, as he advanced to look down into the hall. "John, are you there? The close carriage instantly. Look sharp. Madame Vine, pray don't continue to hold that heavy boy. Joyce, cannot you relieve madame?"

In crossing back to his room, Mr. Carlyle had brushed past madame, and noticed that she appeared to be shaking, as if with the weight of Archibald. In reality, she was still alarmed, not understanding yet the cause of the commotion. Joyce, who comprehended it as little, and had stood with her arms round Lucy, advanced to take Archibald; and Mr. Carlyle disappeared. Barbara had taken off her own warm nightgown then, and put it upon William in place of his cold one; had struck a light, and was busily dressing herself.

"Just feel his nightgown, Archibald! Wilson

A shrill cry of awful terror interrupted the words, and Mr. Carlyle made but one bound out again. Barbara followed: the least she thought, was, that Wilson had dropped the baby into the hall.

That was not the catastrophe. Wilson, with the baby and Lucy, had already disappeared up the staircase, and Madame Vine was disappearing. Archibald lay on the soft carpet of the corridor, where madame had stood; for Joyce, in the act of taking him, had let him slip to the ground, let him fall, from sheer terror. She held on by the balustrades, her face ghastly, her mouth open, her eyes fixed in horror; altogether an object to look upon. Archie gathered himself on to his sturdy legs, and stood staring.

"Why, Joyce! what is the matter with you?" cried Mr. Carlyle. "You look as if you had seen a spectre."

Oh, master!" she wailed, "I have seen one."

"Are you all going deranged together?" retorted he, wondering what had come to the house. "Seen a spectre? Joyce!"

Joyce fell on her knees, as if unable to support herself, and crossed her shaking hands upon her chest. Had she seen ten spectres, she could not have betrayed more dire distress. She was a sensible and faithful servant, one not given to flights of fancy, and Mr. Carlyle gazed at her in very amazement.

66

'Joyce, what is this ?" he asked, bending down and speaking kindly. "Oh, my dear master! Heaven have mercy upon us all!" was the inexplicable answer.

"Joyce, I ask you, what is this?"

She made no reply. She rose up, shaking; and, taking Archie's hand, slowly proceeded towards the upper stairs, low moans breaking from her, and the boy's naked feet pattering on the carpet.

"What can ail her?" whispered Barbara, following Joyce with her eyes. "What did she mean, about a spectre?"

"She must have been reading a ghost-book," said Mr. Carlyle. "Wilson's folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. Barbara."

Make you haste,

PARIS IN ITS CYNICAL ASPECTS.*

Ir has been long known that the great centres of life are predestined more than any other places to gather together impure elements both in a moral and in a material point of view. Paris has lately been regenerated in the latter respect. The atmosphere is no longer vitiated by the odour of cloacas, and the dark and tortuous streets, the abode of crime and murder, have been replaced by large arteries into which life is admitted with light. Formerly the capital was a city of mud and smoke. It is now called "le beau Paris."

So much for the material aspect. By the side of this precious transformation there is a dark contrast. If Paris astonishes the provinces by its prodigies of art and industry, it terrifies them by the cynicism and shamelessness of some who live within its walls.

The night bandits have disappeared, the hideous sores in the heart of the city have been cauterised, but the ulcerated parts still remain: they have been neither cured nor eradicated. They have only changed their place of abode and their aspect, and the virus is just as potent and as poisonous as ever. “All moral and religious sentiments, strangled by scepticism, lie," we are told, "crushed beneath the material civilisation of beau Paris.''

means.

The prominent impulse among the inhabitants of the French metropolis is, in modern times, in favour of what is designated as "le commerce honnête." The general impulse might rather be defined as the anxiety to make money or to become rich; and the development of this feeling, where moral and religious sentiments are extinct, is to effect the desired object without any particular regard to purity or rectitude of There are many higher flights made in this grand pursuit than the more particular one we allude to, that is to say, such as are contained within the limits of what is designated as le commerce honnête, but they are not a whit less exposed to the shafts of cynicism than the more common-place devotion to the interests of a questionable commerce. fact that the habits of traffic and the play of figures dries up the heart, and that the tendency of certain lines of commerce are towards fraud, was known to all antiquity, and the ancients gave the same deity to tradesmen as to thieves. In Paris, according to M. Gabriel Pélin, the producer and the loyal tradesman are crushed by the "commandites" and the monopolists. A dishonest speculation organises hideous coteries into compact bands that seize upon all intelligence and activity, and put it out of the power of the ordinary tradesman to effect purchases at a profitable price.

The

The modest shop of fifty years ago is gone by, scarcely to be met with or to be recognised. It is replaced by the so-called Parisian commerce, which is carried on amid mirrors, bronze, gilt, and gas. Everything is splendour and luxury. Deception is no longer practised in regard to the window merely, but how many shopmen cheat with impunity in respect

* Les Laideurs du Beau Paris; Histoire Morale, Critique et Philosophique des Industries, des Habitants et des Monuments de la Capitale. Par Gabriel Pélin.