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Dear, dear Francis, wel-" There is a fine passage in one of Sheridan's plays, in which death cuts suddenly the speaker's thread, and abbreviates the sentence he was delivering:-Brian's entre on Mrs. Bouverie produced a similar effect; for, with a shriek, she fled back to the opposite side of the apartment. What the devil meaned this? I looked at Brian, and he was pale as old Priam, when a friend kindly informed him he was regularly burnt out, and no insurance. Had the chancellor pronounced the lawyer in contempt, he could not have exhibited more desperate alarm. God help me! I looked from one to another for half a minute, wondering what would follow. Brian first recovered self-possession-over his pale cheek a ruddy flush glowed to the very brow, and, bursting past me, he addressed the intended Mrs. Elliott, and in terms not very complimentary to her elected lord.

"Infamous woman! burden ye still the earth?"

"Wretch ! you slandered me oncewould you again blast my reputation ?”

"I won't waste words upon thee!--thou foulest thing in form of woman! But for that villanous paramour--that assassin of my friend-by heaven! were I to be imprisoned years for breaking his bones, I'll qualify him for an hospital!" And Brian flung the lady of my love aside, and that too with as scanty ceremony as if she had been a drunken fish-wife.

His threat was idle: the Chancery solicitor had slipped into the lady's chamber at the first alarm, and bolted the door. Foiled in his rage for vengeance, Brian, with one Herculean spurn of his foot dashed in the door; but fortunately for himself, the criminal had escaped. A second door opened on the lobby from my lady's chamber, - and through that convenient means of egress the Chancery solicitor had levanted.

The disappointment infuriated the young Irishman. A Malay preparing to run the muck could scarcely have been in higher excitement; and, though an undisputed descendant of as stout a Border family as ever "drove prey from Cumberland," d-n me if I would have been a Chancery solicitor within arm's-length of Mr. Brian O'Linn for a five-pound note!

"Brian, in the devil's name, what means this?" I exclaimed.

My question was unheeded and unanswered; for, failing to overtake him who appeared the object of his unmitigable fury, he leisurely poured out the phials of his wrath on the devoted head of her, who on Monday next was to have blessed me with her hand, and favored me with her Chancery expectations into the bargain. After her first feeble

ors, and, according to the Hibernian metaphor, like a bull in a china-shop, Brian had everything his own way; and, while he fulminated phrases quite inapplicable to ladies who bore such fair reputations as Penelope and Lucretia, Mrs. Bouverie buried her head among the cushions of the sofa and played the insensible.

Leave this contaminated house!" exclaimed Brian, catching my arm-and pushing me literally down stairs, he opened the street-door, and led me out, perfectly unresisting, and marvellously amazed.

Before we reached the Strand the mystery was unfolded. In Mrs. Bouverie, the relict of the departed commander, Brian had at a glance recognized his old acquaintance, Mrs. Montague; and Captain Darnley, by whose hand William St. George had prematurely fallen, had, it would appear, turned his sabre into a pen, and cominenced business as a solicitor.

Of the parties concerned I cannot pretend to say who slept that night. Brian had the best chance, certainly. I never closed an eye; and, on coming down to breakfast, from the morning's information I received, the lady in the opposite house must have been exceedingly busy while" all the world were sleeping;" for she had managed to levant with her traps, save the canary,--that unhappy bird being kindly left by Mrs. Bouverie to assuage with his melody the landlady's grief for the loss of a valuable lodger, or, as an equivalent for a quarter's rent.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The dwarf dines with us.-I commit an assault escape the station-house-and obtain an introduction to the drawing-room.

I FELT like a man in a dream, and could scarcely persuade myself that the occurrences of last night were actual realities. Had I been tricked by a male swindler, and cozened by a courtezan? I had--and no mistake; and, after a flattering self-examination of five minutes, I came to the honest conclusion that the loyal gentlemen, my ancestors, who had their necks disjointed, were Solomons come to judgment compared with me their unworthy descendant; and that in the history of the Elliotts I should be found the greatest ass that ever bore the name.

This agreeable train of thought was broken by the entry of Brian.

"How do you feel this morning?" inquir ed the smiling Patlander.

"That I am the sublimest fool within the bills of mortality," was my conscientious reply.

"I think my return to London was rather opportune, inasmuch as I have delivered you from the hands of the Philistines."

"You delivered me, my dear Brian, from far worse the snares of one of the most specious wretches who ever united a fair face to a depraved heart.”

"Faith, in your estimate of the lady we are likely to agree in opinion. Have you seen or heard anything of her this morning?"

Yes; she beat a retreat last night, and bolted with bag and baggage, leaving the canary, which you see hanging in the window, as the representative of its amiable mistress."

Well," said Brian, " had this devil in the shape of woman, succeeded in entrapping you into matrimony, what would you have done ?"

"Beaten out the male swindler's brains, and afterwards taken a double dose of Prussic acid. By the way, I had better send to the chemist's for a supply before the arrival of that infernal dwarf. Before I am in his company half an hour, I feel that I shall be a candidate for a straight waistcoat. He'll drive me mad. What shall I say? I'll tell him that Mrs. Bouverie died suddenly last night.”

"No, no," replied the young Irishman. He would request permission to have a peep at the corpse. You know the proverbthose who take soup with the gentleman under the cellar, require a long spoon. You have not a chance with yellow-slippers; and, were I in your place, I would pluck up courage, and out with the truth, though it choked

me.

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"I believe you are right, friend Brian; and I'll make a clean breast at once. It requires desperate resolution, however; and, instead of the disclosure, and the pleasant remarks it will elicit from that thing of legs and arms, how willingly would I compound for a month on the treadmill! But comelet us be off somewhere to kill time; for, upon my soul, my morning meditations are far from being agreeable."

Away we went, visited a sight or two, returned at one o'clock-and, a stout determination of dying like a man, as my ancestors had done before me, I awaited the dwarf's arrival.

drawn by a couple of jobbed horses—the near one a pie-balled cob-the outside a longtailed black, which erstwhile had borne the weight of some Antony of the Life Guards, but, from increasing years and general infirmities, had exchanged the pride, pomp, and circumstance of war, for what Cockneys call the "performance of funerals." These remarkable animals were driven by a man in a seedy box-coat and shocking bad hat-a sort of ultimus Romanorum of that extinct race called "jarvies," who flourished some thirty years ago. By the side of this antiquated phaeton Cæsar was seated in all his glory; and, as if his ebony countenance were not sufficiently marked, it had pleased his amiable master to render it more striking still to admiring passengers, by the contrast of a white hat, while a dahlia of snowy hue was placed in the "nigger's" breast, which, from its magnitude, might pass at a shor distance for a cauliflower. Nor had the dwarf omitted to decorate his own person for his intended visit to the bride elect. His toilet had been unusually elaborate. He sported brimstone-colored gloves, and, lik his sable valet, exhibited a bouquet in his buttton-hole large enough to have furnished a bow-pot. With Cæsar's assistance, the little gentleman liberated his person from the leathern conveniency, and next minute the light of his countenance beamed upor us iz the drawing-room.

After receiving our morning compliments with gracious dignity, he intimated his inten tion of honoring us with his company at din ner, and directed his equipage to:eturn at an early hour in the evening. I was sincerely gratified when his turr-ot received orders to be off; for the boys had collected round it by the dozen, and there was not a window within eye-range tha wanted an admiring spectator.

"In love affairs, as well a business ones, men are expected to be punctual; and here I am to the minute. I ust that my exterior will find favor in the lady's sight; for, in order to be eminently presentable, I have sacrificed to the graces most liberally."

And the saffron-faced rascal placed himself before the pier-glass, arranged afresh the bouquet in his button-hole, and emended the tie of his cravat. Brian walked over to the window, he being of the laughter-loving order, who cannot look on the ridiculous unmoved; while I, heaven pity me! felt like a criminal in the presence of a hard-featured judge, when the foreman of the jury responds to the interrogatory of the official a Guilty, my Lord!”

"I sincerely regret, my dear sir, that your elaborate operations at the toilet have been unnecessarily thrown away-it is lost labor for the fair lady is invisible."

"Pooh! pooh!" exclaimed the dwarf

"she must overcome this feminine timidity. You told her, of course, that I was an old friend? Where is her abode? Point out the cage in which this bird of paradise is located ?"

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Upon my soul," said Brian, coming to the rescue, "I fancy it would puzzle even the detective police to give any account of the said bird of paradise."

"I do not exactly understand you," said the dwarf.

"I mean simply," responded Mr. O'Linn, "that the bird of paradise took wing last night, and-"

"What!" exclaimed the little gentleman, "has the relict of Lieutenant-Colonel Bouverie, C.B., disappeared?"

"She has, in sporting parlance," I desperately added, "bolted during the night, leaving a canary to the landlady as a keepsake.' He of the Kilmarnock night-cap puckered his cheeks together, and executed his whistle of astonishment.

"Will you, touching this most extraordinary proceeding of the bride elect, have the kindness to enlighten me?"

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My friend Brian," I replied, " can best do that, who, strange as it may sound, was an old acquaintance, and a favored cecisbeo, had his Irish modesty not stepped in between him and his fortune. On certain passages in the life and adventures of the fair fugitive he will sufficiently enlighten you, and enable you to conjecture the causes of the lady levanting without beat of drum. Having awoke from the dream of love, I am going to see after sublunary affairs in the shape of dinner; and for that purpose I shall leave you together, while I visit my fat landlady down stairs."

I tapped at the parlor door and was invited to come in. There I found Mrs. Lightbody -and, seated beside her on the sofa, one of the sweetest girls imaginable. Surprised at seeing me enter the apartment, the young lady rose to leave the room; but, apologising for my intrusion, I begged her to resume her seat, a request in which the stout gentlewoman united. Blushing to the brows, the fair girl modestly declined it. "Her father," she added, "expected her to resume reading the newspaper, which, from the infirmity of his sight, he could not manage to do himself," and with a smiling adieu to Mrs. Lightbody, and a bow to me, she gracefully quitted the parlor, after demolishing my peace of mind within the minute.

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The morning on which accident introduced me to Julia Harley, was, by a curious coincidence, the nineteenth anniversary of her birth. Fancy a blushing girl, tall, slight, but finely proportioned-with dark blue eyes, teeth like pearl, lips that Suckling has described so well, and hair of veritable auburn, in which the predominant dark brown feebly betrays the tint of gold that dyes it. That face and figure were both positively handsome, no one could deny; but it was the expression of the former that finished me at first sight. She blushed-but her's was not the blush of a vacant school-girl when startled by a stranger. With Julia, it was the impulse of feeling that sent the blood careering from the heart to the brow. Her's was the innate modesty of one little looked upon, and all unused to lover's admiration. But see that countenance in repose, when unabashed" by man's approving," the intellectual eye, and calm but contemplative expression, indicated talent subdued by judgment, and then, and then only, you could estimate the gifted being, whom heaven had granted to the declining veteran, to soothe increasing infirmities and be the stay of age.

"Well," said the jolly landlady, “what think you of Miss Julia ?"

"Think!" I exclaimed, "that she is an angel ready made, and only waiting for her wings to grow."

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"That is impossible, my dear madam."