Pellew has been very kind and useful; it's through her I've got into this capital set, in fact. But I don't want to see much more of her now. She'll hang on to me and hinder me if I don't keep her at arm's length. Don't forget to give me all you can get hold of about the Claymores. I've told old Powell that you stay with some people who know them, and he was down upon me for their names at once: shall I tell him they're the Inchquins? or is Glenfallan a place to be kept dark in the Claymore set? I am wanting some new dresses, but till my next quarter's salary from the journals I'm writing for is due I'll have to go without them unless you will send me twenty pounds. It will be It will be impossible for me to go to the Marchioness's till I've set myself up at a London dressmaker's. My publisher tells me that my next novel, if I carry it on as I've begun it, will bring the world to my feet.

'Your affectionate niece,

'LILY GARWOOD.'

It will be seen from these few passages that Miss Garwood either assumed a great deal or was gifted with the rare Scotch gift of secondsight. And it will be further seen that she did not hesitate to paint the lily whenever she thought that a few skilful touches would improve that pure and simple flower. Miss McTurnan, reading this letter by and by in her substantial comfortable Scottish home, in a pretty little village about five miles from Edinburgh, will feel her maidenly aunt's heart expand with hope and pride at the prospects deftly limned forth by her niece. The dear old lady will not be quite sure whether in due course of time this brother of a marchioness will not develop into a marquis himself; and feeling that it will be a grand thing to

have our Lily in the Peerage, that twenty pounds will come.

CHAPTER II.

BETWEEN TWO STOOLS.

TRIM, brisk, scrupulously neat and well dressed, Mrs. Varney is always a great and pleasant feature at the breakfast-table. The little lady is quite an authority on the war and politics; and the other ladies find it much easier to get up the facts concerning them, which will enable them to look as if they knew a little about what is going on generally, from her light and airy conversation than from the long reports and leading articles. The majority of the newspapers which lie upon the breakfast-table are addressed to Mrs. Varney; and she is magnificent both in lending and reading aloud from them.

But this morning, though she is no less trim, neat, and scrupulously well dressed than usual, she is not by any means brisk or conversational. On the contrary, she is decidedly depressed and silent. She broods over her papers, and takes no part in the discussion that is being carried on between Colonel Wakefield and Mrs. Withers, as to whether it is really well that a young person in Miss Garwood's position should be so lifted out of her sphere as to be taken to the Marchioness of Claymore's.

'It is certain she could not go unless she had been asked; and as she is going, it is certain that the Marchioness must have asked her,' Mrs. Withers (who is very loyal to her boarders so long as they stay with her) says doggedly.

Yes, but how has she been asked?' Colonel Wakefield asks. The gallant officer has been fighting the ground inch by inch around

Miss Garwood against Mr. Powell for the last fortnight, and now that gentleman has fairly or unfairly worsted him, and got him on the hip by getting the Marchioness of Claymore to invite Miss Garwood to one of her Saturday afternoons. 'How has she been asked ?' he repeats, with a reddening face, as he reflects on how cruelly and curtly a scheme, that he has projected for the fair Lily's amusement this afternoon, has been thrown over by the invitation. Miss Lily Garwood is not a young lady to hide her light under a bushel; if Lady Claymore had sent her a note or a card of invitation we should have seen it. Even if she had not pointedly shown it to us she would have left it all over the house for us to see. No! the fact of the matter is that she has got it through that conceited old ass Powell; and he has only done it to establish a claim on her gratitude, and make her fancy that he'll gain still further social favours for her; what do you say, Mrs. Varney?'

That lady, thus appealed to, is compelled to break through her own lines of reserve. Dragged into speech on the subject, she resolves to make her words as damaging to Miss Garwood as may be, for Mr. Powell is a free man, and she (Mrs. Varney) is a free woman; and who can tell what might have been had not this young Scotchwoman and her wiles intervened? So now she says, in her most incisive tones,

'I think Miss Garwood quite capable of inviting herself anywhere; and from what I know of Mr. Powell I should say he had nothing whatever to do with it. As to his wanting to establish a claim on her gratitude, you must be blind indeed not to see how glad he would be to shake her off. There are others who might have monopolised him much more, and

VOL. XXV.

gained an introduction to his sister the Marchioness, if they had been equally pushing and equally vain and thick-skinned.'

'Nonsense! any one can see that the old fellow has lost his head to the girl,' Colonel Wakefield says angrily. 'He follows her like her shadow, and bores her out of her mind.'

'Has she told you that?' Mrs. Varney asks sneeringly.

'Well, she has not exactly told me, but any one can see it with half an eye, and she herself admitted it to me; besides, is it natural that a fine handsome girl like that can tolerate an old whipper-snapper like Powell ?'

'She flatters him about his poetry till he thinks himself a second Browning-only better; and she has got hold of every little rubbishing historical fact concerning the family of Claymore that all the old gossips in Scotland can supply her with,' Mrs. Varney says quickly.

'You have frequently asked him to read his garbage to you,' Colonel Wakefield says wrathfully. 'A woman is obliged to be complaisant when a man is such an egregious ass as to force her to listen to his ravings. Powell writing poetry! Great powers! there's more music in the bray of an ass than in all his verse, I'll venture to say.'

'It's so reasonable of you, so just and manlike, to disparage him and abuse his works because a woman makes herself ridiculous by her intense and strained admiration of him and them,' Mrs. Varney says bitterly. I think the way in which she lays herself out to please him is deplorable, quite deplorable! If I were her mother-I mean her eldest sister-I should feel myself called upon to remonstrate with her; as it is—'

Mrs. Varney is compelled to bring her sketch of what her course

H

of conduct would be under different circumstances to an abrupt close, in consequence of the appearance in the doorway of Miss Garwood herself.

'You are late this morning, my dear; I hope you rested well?' Mrs. Withers says good temperedly. If Miss Garwood stayed up half the night, and laid in bed all the day, and demanded a constant succession of meals daintily served, Mrs. Withers would still feel amiably towards her at this juncture. It seems to Mrs. Withers that her young-lady boarder is on the high-road to splendid promotion. This invitation to his sister's the Marchioness is almost equivalent to a declaration of honourable intentions.

'Yes, I slept well, thank you; but I'm late, I know, because it takes me so long to dress,' she says lazily; and Mrs. Varney, looking at the authoress's cuffless wrists and untidily arranged hair, remarks,

'Does it really! I should hardly have thought that.'

It is an unhappy speech; for neat, trim, scrupulously well-dressed as Mrs. Varney is, she is not impregnable. All her teeth and nearly the whole of her hair are false; whereas Miss Garwood's locks, though they may be untidily arranged, are all her own, and have that unmistakable stamp of reality which locks which have been just previously dipped into a basin of cold water invariably possess. There is not an atom of make-up about Miss Garwood, so on the whole she is justified in saying,

'Well, you see, I don't put my hair on ready done; that stage of my toilet takes a longer time to get over than yours, I fancy. Colonel Wakefield, will you look over and correct a bit of military writing for me this morning? I want to march one regiment out of a garrison town and another into it, and

I never do anything of that sort in my novels without getting some authority to verify my descriptions; that's why my books are so immensely popular and successful,' she adds, looking round the table, as if she thought it only kind to offer them some sort of explanation as to the secret of her success.

'I shall be only too happy!' the warrior says beamingly, feeling that henceforth he will be associated with Miss Garwood's literary triumphs.

'It's very kind of you to tell us that they are so immensely popular and successful,' Mrs. Varney says, leaning forward, and shooting her words out as if they were venomed darts. One likes to hear of something that one can read, and it's quite good of you to mention yours, because we had none of us ever heard of them before you came; I am sure you will forgive us, won't you?' she adds sweetly; but her eyes are dancing with fiery triumph.

Miss Garwood laughs a clear, unstrained, resonant laugh.

'O, I'll forgive you readily enough for proclaiming that you take no interest in what's going on about you; I suppose you live in the past, Mrs. Varney; very likely I'll do the same when I am old.'

She is so perfectly cool and in earnest that no one can imagine for a moment that she means to be insulting. Nevertheless, Mrs. Varney feels insulted, and unadvisedly shows that she does so, by rising and leaving the room in an embarrassingly visible huff.

'Are we to carry out our plan of visiting the Royal Academy this afternoon?' Colonel Wakefield asks. You were mentioning that you must go, on account of that notice you have to send off to Glasgow for Monday's paper.'

She calmly bites a bit of toast, and gazes at him with steady eyes,

full of truth and thought, as she eats. Having done this, and gained time, she answers him.

'I made a mistake and mixed up my papers when we were talking about the notices yesterday. It's It's the Glasgow paper that I have done already, and the Stafford critique needn't go off till the middle of next week. And that's fortunate for me,' she adds ingenuously, 'for I am obliged to go to a reception at the Marchioness of Claymore's this afternoon.'

Her large truthful-looking eyes say as plainly as possible, I wish you were going with me;' but he is too much hurt at the overthrow of his scheme for the afternoon to be softened by their mute eloquence. All he can trust himself to say is,

'O, indeed; I hope, then, as that is the case, that Mr. Powell has succeeded in inducing his noble relatives to take a little notice of him. They give him the cold shoulder and a wide berth generally speaking.'

'Yes, he's a rare joke,' she says, surrendering her absent friend with a celerity that is rather bewildering; 'he and his poetry and his sister the Marchioness ! I get more laughs out of him than out of any one I know.'

'Then now, as you have finished breakfast, let us go and look over the military episode,' Colonel Wakefield says, rising with youthful vigour on the ruins of his friend Powell, and desirous of showing Mrs. Withers (who will be sure to tell Mrs. Varney) that his supremacy over the mind and heart and taste of the clever and versatile Miss Garwood is still undisturbed, although Mr. Powell has been guilty of bribery and corruption by introducing her to the Marchioness of Claymore.

Miss Garwood makes no rejoinder to his remark; nor does

she rise with corresponding youthful vigour when he suggests that together they shall go and 'look over and correct the military episode.' Nor will it be marvelled at that sloth and inertia should seize her for their own, when it is confessed that not only has she not yet written the gaily-alluded-to martial incident, but that she has no design whatever of doing so at all. Accordingly, now she takes out a letter from her aunt, Miss McTurnan, and as she reads she rallies her thoughts, and brings them into good marching order against Colonel Wakefield's plans of happiness.

'Isn't this unfortunate?' she says, appealing to him for sympathy, with a frank air of trouble that touches him intensely; 'just when I'd settled to have a quiet morning's work with you (and the good you'd have done me no one knows better than myself), here comes this letter from my aunt, Miss McTurnan, upsetting everything. She wants me to go right off into town shopping for her, getting her things that she could get just as well in Edinburgh, and I'll have to do it.'

Colonel Wakefield is crushed into feeling considerably more than forty. But he hears Powell's hated step in the passage, and knows he has but a moment.

'Let me go with you-be your escort,' he says hastily.

And she is so sorry to be obliged to negative his daring proposition almost in the face of his enemy.

'Hush! no-not to be thought of,' she says hurriedly. How d'ye do, Mr. Powell? I was just wanting to see you before I go off to town shopping for my aunt, Miss McTurnan, who wants some presents sent over for Inchquin of Glenfallan. You may have heard the Marchioness speak of the Inchquins; they know her.'

'So does her groom,' he would