venture I am shut out from! If I were but single, an opportunity now offers of captivating a lovely and accomplished foreign Countess, with a dowry of diamonds in her dressing-box, and a gold mine in her precious pocket: there's a good opening for a nice young man!"

"Pray avail yourself of it," returned Alice. "Don't let me be any obstacle; carry off the Countess, and I will remain behind with that noble creature whom you style Don Whiskerandos. I prefer him infinitely to you, he is so like a very well-trained baboon."

Harry's conjecture that the mysterious Countess meant to cross in the same vessel with himself and his wife proved correct; for, scarcely had he seen Alice comfortably established on a snug bench, where, if the sea-fiend should be so uncourteous as to attack her, she could on an emergency lie down, when daintily tripped along the human chicken-ladder, which connected the vessel with the shore, the graceful, bien chaussé, little feet of the Countess! Then ensued a grand scene. Whiskerandos either did not comprehend, or refused to comply with some demand of the hotel commissionnaire, who had taken upon himself the charge of the baggage, and who accordingly resisted his conveying his mistress's luggage on board. Whiskerandos grimaced and chattered in a polyglot jargon, apparently compounded of every language under heaven, and utterly incomprehensible to the deepest philologist extant; the commissionnaire was immoveable. Whiskerandos implored,- the commissionnaire was deaf to his entreaties. Whiskerandos stormed, the commissionnaire was inexorable. Whiskerandos, unable to endure his fate with calmness, went raving mad, -he swore oaths so replete with improbable consonants that it is only a wonder they did not smash every tooth in his head; he stamped, shrieked, clenched his fists, and shook them in the face of his adversary,-in vain; the commissionnaire remained adamant, and prepared actually to carry off the offending luggage.

"Look at that ape," observed Harry to his wife, who was watching the scene, half in amusement, half in terror; "he's going into sky-blue fits apparently: of all absurd sights an angry foreigner is the most ridiculous. Do you see his moustaches?--they actually stand on end with fury, like the hairs on the tail of an excited cat; but see, the Don appeals to his mistress; the Countess will have to settle the affair in propria persona." The affair, however, was not to be settled so easily; for the inflexible commissionnaire proved as deaf to the entreaties of the mistress as he had shown himself

to the threatenings of the man; and the Countess, if countess she was, having remonstrated to no purpose in a gentle, timid voice, looked helplessly round, as though she would appeal to society at large to aid her in her difficulty.

"Poor thing! those men have frightened her, she looks ready to cry," exclaimed Alice. "Harry, dear, do go and see if you cannot assist her-you understand how to manage those people so well; besides they always attend to a gentleman."

Thus urged, Harry crossed the deck, and Alice saw him take off his hat and address the interesting foreigner; she bowed her head, and was evidently making a grateful answer; then Harry turned to the disputants, who both assailed him with a volley of words, upon which he first silenced Whiskerandos, then he exchanged a few cabalistic sentences with the commissionnaire, and slipped a talisman into his hand, whereupon, with the celerity of some harlequinade trick, he changed into an amiable obliging creature, only too anxious to please everybody, and went off patting Whiskerandos on the back, and calling him a brave garçon, to assist with his own silver-absorbing fingers in conveying the Countess's luggage on board. Then the Countess overwhelmed Harry with thanks, and Harry smiled benignantly upon the Countess, and they "talked conversation" for a few minutes, after which they both looked at Alice, and Harry, with his best company manner on (which was merely his own natural manner brushed smooth), crossed over to her.

"She really is a Countess," he began, “and a very charming refined style of young woman too. She wants to be introduced to you, so come along."

"But, Harry, dear, I shall break my neck, or tumble into the sea, if I attempt to walk; just see how it's rolling about!" remonstrated Alice, whose essentially terrestrial education had given her rather a horror of all nautical

matters.

"We will fall in together then," returned Harry, laughing; "at all events don't let us fall out about it. Come along, little wife, and trust yourself to me; I've paced a vessel's deck when the sea's shown rather a different sort of surface to that which it wears to-day." As he spoke, he placed his arm round his wife's slender waist, and half supported, half led her across the deck in safety.

"What is her name, Harry?" inquired Alice, as they were effecting the transit.

"Bertha seems to be her christian nameof course her surname is something unpro

nounceable; but if you call her Countess Bertha, that will do; at all events, as long as our acquaintance with her is likely to last," was the reply.

Alice having never before encountered a real live Countess, felt a little shy at first; but the young foreigner's manner, which was perfectly easy without being particular, soon reassured her, and the two girls (for the Countess appeared little older than Alice) chatted away at first in French, but when it came out that the stranger likewise understood English, in that language, to their mutual satisfaction. But in about half-an-hour a breeze (not metaphorical but literal) sprung up, and the Countess signified her wish to retire to the cabin, upon which Coverdale summoned her maid, and then assisted her to effect the desired change of locality.

"There now, I consider I've done the polite in the first style of fashion and elegance," observed Harry self-complacently, as he rejoined his wife. "Horace D'Almayne himself could not have polished off the young woman more handsomely, for all his moustaches."

"How you do hate that poor Mr.D'Almayne!" returned Alice, laughing. "Do you know, I think you are jealous of him."

"I was once, and that's the truth-very savage it made me too; for if you could have been fascinated by such a puppy as that, I felt I had mistaken your character in toto, and that the Alice I loved was a creature of my own imagination, not a reality—but I soon saw my error."

Alice glanced at him archly. "Are you quite sure you did not fall into a greater when you fancied yourself so certain of my indifference?" she inquired.

Harry fixed his eyes upon her with a look of surprise, which, when he saw that she was joking, changed to an expression of tenderness:

"I could not look into that dear face, where every thought can be read as in a book, and remain jealous for five minutes," he answered.

Alice made no reply, unless placing her little hand in that of her husband with a confiding gesture, can be called so.

The wind continuing fresh, the unfortunate Countess did not re-appear; but Coverdale and his wife, being so happily constituted that the tossing produced no ill effects upon them, remained on deck till the vessel reached Dover. Amid the scene of confusion attending the arrival of a steamer, Harry, having secured his luggage, was standing sentinel over a moderately-sized pyramid, which he had caused to be erected of the same, when Alice, then

seated upon a large black trunk which she had seduced her husband into buying in the Rue St. Honoré, and which would very easily have held her, bonnet, cloak, and all, suddenly exclaimed,

"Oh, Harry! do look at that young exquisite who has just come on board; why he's the very moral, as the old women say, of the person we've been discussing-Mr. D'Almayne !"

"By Jove, he's more than the moral!" returned Coverdale, as the individual thus alluded to advanced towards them bowing and smiling, "it's the veritable Horace himself, I vow-talk of the devil -. My dear fellow, how are you? who'd have thought of seeing you here! You've not turned Custom-house officer, have you? I've nothing contraband about me except this morning's Galignani; if you're inclined to make a seizure of that, you're very welcome."

"You're nearer the mark than you imagine, my dear sir," was the reply; "though not exactly a professional attaché to the Customs, I must own that I am here as an amateur in that capacity, my object being to facilitate the transmission of a lady's luggage."

"Yes?-how interesting! I hope she is young and pretty," observed Alice. "Come, Mr. D'Almayne, having let us so far into the secret, it is no use to affect the mysterious, so tell us who and where she is."

"Where she is, perhaps you may be able to inform me, my dear Mrs. Coverdale," replied D'Almayne, smoothing his moustaches. "The object of my search is a young German lady, the Countess Bertha Von Rosenthal, to whom I have promised my friend, the Honourable Mrs. Botherby, to act as preux chevalier. Accordingly I came down by train this morning, provided with an order from the Board of Customs to the people here to pass the Countess's luggage unexamined, and show her every attention which may facilitate her transit; thence I am to escort her and her property to Parklane; by all which double, double, toil and trouble,' I secure an early introduction to, and confer a favour upon, a young and lovely heiress."

"That's my Countess as sure as fate!" exclaimed Harry. "She said her name was Bertha"-and he then related to D'Almayne the circumstances with which the reader has already been made acquainted. "And," he continued in conclusion, as a female figure, leaning on the arms of the soubrette and Don Whiskerandos, emerged from the ladies' cabin"and here she comes, looking rather poorly still-nothing of the water-witch about her, at

all events. Have you met her before, or shall I introduce you a?"

"Do, by all means, mon cher, we are total strangers to each other," was the reply. And with an injunction to Alice to remain where she was till he should return, Harry seized D'Almayne's arm, and hurried him away. Before two minutes had elapsed, Coverdale returned alone.

"It's all right," he said: "but come along, D'Almayne's order will clear our luggage also, and we can all get away together."

Then ensued a grand scena of bustle and confusion, during which, supported by her husband's stalwart arm, Alice caught glimpses of D'Almayne smiling to show his white teeth, and striving vigorously to enact the part of guardian angel to the rich young heiress.

"That puppy is in his glory now," observed Coverdale, snappishly, "and I daresay that silly woman will take him at his own price, and believe in him to any extent to which he may like to lead her-perhaps marry him after all, and make him Count von Rosenthal: that would suit his complaint exactly, the fortunehunting young humbug!"

"My dear Harry, what words!" exclaimed Alice. "You are really quite savage to-day; I shall be obliged to take Mr. D'Almayne under my protection, if you go on so.”

"No need to do that, my dear," returned Harry, his face resuming its usual bright, kind expression, as his glance fell upon his wife, "your protégé is quite certain to take the best possible care of himself-now, come along;" and in another five minutes they had left the vessel and entered a railroad-carriage, in which the Countess and D'Almayne had already established themselves.

The journey to London was a very agreeable one; the Countess, having recovered with marvellous celerity the moment she placed her pretty little foot on terra firma, exerted herself to make up for lost time, and succeeded so well that D'Almayne, who became more and more empressé and devoted every moment, determined, if he should be able to ascertain beyond a doubt that her fortune was as large as it had been represented, to give up every other speculation, and devote all his energics to secure the hand and purse of this fascinating foreigner. As they approached the London Bridge terminus, the Countess, turning to her new guardian, inquired whether it was very far to Park-lane.

"About half an hour's drive. The carriage will, I trust, be there to meet this train, though, owing to our having avoided all delay at the

Custom-house, we shall be in town some two hours sooner than the other steam-boat passengers. However, if we arrive earlier than is expected, it will only be an agreeable surprise to our kind friend, Mrs. Botherby."

"Mais oui!" returned the Countess, with a look of innocent perplexity; "and who may be cette chere Madame Bodairebie?"

"Mrs. Botherby, my dear Countess," returned D'Almayne, who began to think his charming friend must be slightly insane, "Mrs. Botherby, the Honourable Mrs. Botherby, is the lady who obtained for me the pleasure of rendering you this slight service."

"Quelle drôle de chose. I shall not know some Mrs. Bodairebie any veres," was the astounding reply.

"But-but-" stammered D'Almayne, for once surprised out of his usual sang froid, excuse me; but surely you are the Countess Bertha von Rosenthal ?"

66

A peal of silvery laughter was the only reply the unhappy exquisite could at first obtain; but as soon as she could recover herself, the mysterious lady began: "Milles pardons! I am so rude to make a laugh at you, but I am so gay I alvays must laugh ven I see a ridiculous thing in front of-bah!-vot you call before me. Mon cher Monsieur, you have, I know not how, tumbled into a delusion. I am not at all zie Countess Bertha von Rosenthal, but zic Countess Bertha Nasimoff, en route to stay viz my friend, Lady St. Clare, in Park-lane, London, till my hosband shall capture zie permission of die Czar to leave Petersburg and transport himselfs after me."

Coverdale, Alice, and the Countess Nasimoff, glanced first at D'Almayne, then at one another, and then-but if they were heartless enough to laugh consumedly, we will draw a veil over such unfeeling conduct.

CHAPTER XX.

THE MORNING OF THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER.

THE first of September! We wonder, if we were a covey of partridges, what we should think about the first of September, and how, generalizing from that idea, we should feel towards the race of men,-sons of guns, as in partridge parlance we should, doubtless, metaphorically term them! We wonder from what point we should regard pointers (disappointers, as a witty friend of ours called a couple of "wild young dogs" who ran in upon their game, and cheated him of a promising shot), or how we should look upon a setter making a "dead set" at us! Reasoning by analogy, and

not supposing partridges to be better Christians than Christians themselves, we fear we should consider sportsmen (the very name is an addition of insult to injury) greater brutes than their four-footed allies, and that the idea of standing fire (either kitchen or gun), the notion of the roasting we must undergo-of the sauce which, after we have been plucked, would be certain to be heaped upon us-of the way in which we should be cut up by a set of blades, who are, after all, glad enough to pick our brains, and avail themselves of our merrythoughts, would put us in such a flutter that it would be a mercy if we were not to show the white feather, and refuse to die game after all. Such, however, were by no means the sentiments with which Harry Coverdale looked forward to the first of September. On the contrary, although he endeavoured to disguise the fact from his wife, and indeed from himself, as far as in him lay, the truth was that he was as much delighted at the prospect of a good day's partridge shooting, as the veriest school-boy released from the drudgery of dictionary and grammar. Markum, that trustworthy custodian of game, and original specimen of a complete letter-writer, who had been safely reinstated in his office, and received such handsome presents of baby-linen and other infantry accoutrements, that the illustrious "little stranger," who had wisely postponed his arrival till the evil day had departed, bid fair to be clothed in a style befitting the heir-apparent to a dukedom rather than to a double-barrelled gun-Markum reported, that although the hares and pheasants (which he persisted in calling peasants) had suffered some diminution from the practices of the dishonest steward, yet that he'd never in all his born days seen such a blessed sight o' partridges. Stimulated by this information, and by the recollection that on the preceding first of September he had been kicking his heels and cursing his evil fortune, as he performed quarantine in a red-hot port of the Mediterranean, Harry-having greatly amused Alice by the earnest zeal with which, on the 31st of August, he examined and re-examined his Joe Manton, and the exact and stringent orders he gave in regard to the feeding of his dogs, than whom the most fastidious invalid could not have been more delicately and precisely dieted-awoke at four o'clock on the eventful morning, and, without disturbing Alice, who was sleeping as calmly as a child, rose and dressed himself in a thoroughly workmanlike shooting costume. Having accomplished this feat without waking Alice, he wrote on a bit of paper, "Good morn

ing, and good-bye, dearest. As I intend to have a glorious day of it, do not expect me till near dinner time, when I hope to return with a full bag and an awful appetite. Yours ever, H. C.," and, placing it on his wife's dressing-table, stole on tiptoe to the door, closed it noiselessly after him; and when, three hours afterwards, Alice opened her eyes, he was striding through stubble on the farther side of the estate, having bagged four brace of birds and a wellconditioned and respectable Jack hare.

Mrs. Coverdale was some few minutes before she was, literally, awake to a sense of her situation, and the lady's-maid entering while she was still between sleeping and waking, she half unconsciously asked the not unnatural question-"What has become of your master ?"

"If you please, Mem, Master's been out shooting partringers ever since five o'clock, Wilkins says. If you please, Mem, there's a note for you, Mem, lying on your dressingtable, in Master's hand-writing."

come again

Rousing herself, Alice read it eagerly. The contents did not seem particularly to please her, for, as she refolded the paper, she looked grave, and gave vent to a mild sigh. "Do not undraw the curtain," she said, 66 in an hour, Ellis; I feel sleepy, and there is nothing to get up for," she added, in a slightly pettish tone. Falling asleep the moment she laid her head upon the pillow, Alice dreamed that when she came down to breakfast she found Harry had returned, saying that he could not bear to leave her alone all day, and so had come back and wished to drive her to call upon that agreeable woman, Mrs. Felicia Tabinette (a name with which she was inspired for the occasion, as no such neighbour existed), to which proposition, she gladly assenting, they had gone out in a pony-chaise made of coral and mother-of-pearl, and drawn by two lovely little sea-green ponies with lilac manes and tails, and harness made of the best point lace. And she was just advancing the unanswerable proposition that, as lace was the fittest material of which to make a lady's collar, it must also be the properest fabric for that of a horse, when the inexorable Ellis appeared for the second time, and dispelled all her bright visions by awakening her to the dull reality. Alice, however, took her revenge upon that "dis-illusioning "—as a Frenchman would have called it-lady's-maid, for she was more fastidious and difficult to please, and almost snappish, than Ellis had ever known her before, insomuch that the excellent Abigail afterwards propounded her opinion in the

servants' hall, that "Missis was tuter fay outer sorts," which disheartening fact she accounted for by the hypothesis, that sheMrs. Coverdale-must have got out of bed with the wrong foot foremost.

While the tea for her solitary breakfast was drawing, Alice, having no one else to look at, amused herself by regarding her own naturalno term could be more appropriate-face in a large pier-glass, and was quite startled to behold the unmistakeably cross expression which characterized it. Taking herself to task for this, she, sipping her tea, which did not taste nearly so good as when Harry was at home, mentally decided that she was very unreasonable, and childish, and ridiculous-that when Harry had been devoting himself for the last month to her pleasure and amusement, going to balls and all sorts of places which he did not care a pin about, solely to please her, it was horribly selfish in her to grudge him a few hours to devote to a favourite pursuit; though how men could find delight in killing those poor birds, she could not tell. She did not so much wonder about other people; she believed men were generally cruel; but Harry was so unusually kind-hearted. She supposed it must be the excitement, and the beautiful scenery, and the interest in watching those dear, clever dogs stick out their long tails to point at the partridges with, which, looking at it in a Chesterfieldian point of view, was decidedly impolite, if not positively rude, of them; and yet she had heard gentlemen talk about their sporting dogs being so well bred.

Having thus reasoned herself into a wiser frame of mind, she resolved to make the best of it, and suddenly recollecting she had at least a thousand things to do, which she was continually putting aside till some time or other when Harry should be out, she decided that this was the time, and that now or never must they all be done. Accordingly, she set vigorously to work, and wrote three letters one after another, to three former school-fellows, wherein she described her husband as a species of modern demi-god, compounded of equal parts of Solomon and Adonis, with a dash of Achilles thrown in to do justice to his heroic qualities; and depicted matrimonial felicity in such glowing colours, that the richest and prettiest of her correspondents eloped the next week with her dancing-master; and one of the others, who was neither rich nor pretty, turned

pious out of spite, and went into a sort of High Church Protestant nunnery-and-water, to punish the men, who, it must be confessed, appeared to submit to the trial with the most cheerful resignation. Then Alice brought out a large roll of bills, and a thick house-keeping book, ruled with blue lines, and having a business-like smell of new leather about the binding, which Alice flattered herself would impress even the stately housekeeper (who was old enough to be her mother, and stiff enough for anything, and of whom Alice, in her secret soul, stood very much in dread) with a deep sense of her being a very dragon of housewifery, prepared to be down upon the slightest attempt at peculation like an avenging fury. But the bills were so complicated, and never would add up twice alike, and the butcher was so inconsistent and slippery about his prices, sometimes charging 7d. and sometimes 7d., as if "once a pound of mutton, always a pound of mutton" were not an incontrovertible axiom; and the baker was as bad, besides choosing to spell dough, d.o.e., which at first made her think that he was the butcher, and sold venison; and the hams seemed always to come from the tallowchandler's with the candles, which wasn't by any means an agreeable association of ideas; and the footman was evidently of Esquimaux descent, and lived sumptuously upon lamp-oil at 8s. the gallon; and the coachman appeared to feed the carriage-horses upon sponges, washleather, and rotten-stone, which she was sure could not be good for them; and she thought the under-housemaid had ordered herself a "Turk's-head" dessert-cake, for her own private eating, but it turned out to be a particular species of broom; while the amount of hearthstones and house-flannels that girl consumed would have served to build an "Albert pattern" model-cottage once a quarter, and furnish the pauper inhabitants thereof with winter clothing: so that by the time luncheon arrived, poor Alice, tired and confused, with inky fingers and an aching head, had come to the conclusion that she had nothing in common with Joseph Hume, M.P., and that for the future she should resign the glory of managing the housekeeper's book to Mrs. Gripples, and restrict her department to the equally dignified, but less onerous, duty of making Harry sign the cheques, and handing them over to that august domestic to pay the bills with.

(To be continued.)