kindly at her favourite. "But I don't see how Dora could have helped it. I don't think you encouraged him, my dear ?"

"Oh, no, indeed I did not, dear!" said Dora pleadingly. "I was as much astonished at it as you could have been. I never encouraged Mr. Lowe, never!"

Patricia put her hand over her eyes. Her burning indignation at Mr. Hamley's ungainly playfulness to herself suddenly died out, and she became chilled, as if the air had grown colder than before, when she heard Dora's deliberate untruth. She knew that Sydney Lowe had been encouraged; did she not remember that walk, and all those long, half-whispered and wholly unintelligible conversations together? She wondered how Dora could have the courage the bad courage— to say such a thing so unblushingly before her.

"I saw how much annoyed you were," continued Dora, turning her eyes meekly on her master; "and I would have given worlds to have stopped him. But I could not! and I was so dreadfully distressed!" It was getting dark now. Leaning forward to impress her grief more closely on Mr. Hamley, Dora slid her soft, caressing little hand into his; and Mr. Hamley, squeezing it-forgave her.

"I think you were hard on Dora to-day," said Mrs. Hamley, as she and her husband sat before the fire in her dressing-room, waiting for the dressing-bell to ring. "It is only what we must expect; she is a pretty girl, and young men will pay her attention, of course. That young Mr. Lowe-I have often thought he admired her; and though Lord Merrian paid Patricia the most attention, still he looked very often at Dora, and he might have talked more to my niece as a blind. Young people will be young people; and though I do not encourage flirting, or anything undesirable, we must expect that the girl will be sought after !"

"I don't want young men about Miss Drummond," answered Mr. Hamley stiffly. 'I have brought her up at great expense to be one of ourselves, and I do not relish the idea of having spent all that money for another man's advantage. We are getting old people, my dear,"when Mr. Hamley wanted to please his wife he used to bracket himself with her, and deny his comparative youth in favour of her age— "and being old people, or on the way, Dora is useful to us. She makes a little life in the house, and she is nice in her ways, and so on."

"Good gracious, Mr. Hamley, we have Patricia!" said Mrs. Hamley sharply. "She is younger than Dora."

"And not half so entertaining," said Mr. Hamley. "Your niece may be a good sort of young person; I do not deny that; but she is horrid heavy on hand all the same. She can't do the things Dora can. I call her a wretched performer on the piano, and she has no manner as Dora has."

"She has not had Dora's advantages of course," said Mrs. Hamley. "No girl brought up as poor Patricia has been can possibly be equal to one cared for and educated by a lady, like Dora. For what she has gone through I consider her remarkable; and at all events she is a Kemball, which counts for something."

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She ought to be able to count something to the good," Mr. Hamley answered. "But make the best of it you can, you cannot make

her a patch on Dora."

"I hate such vulgar expressions!" said Mrs. Hamley crossly. "Well, it isn't quite the thing perhaps," apologised her husband; "but I mean to say you know what I am at."

"To go back to our starting-point, you say you don't wish Dora to marry?" asked Mrs. Hamley.

She had her idea, and she was resolved to ventilate it before dinner. Certainly not. I can leave her comfortable," said the brewer decidedly.

"But I suppose you would not refuse a good offer; say such an offer as Lord Merrian for the girl?" Mrs. Hamley asked this loftily-lords were becoming her everyday acquaintance now.

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Wouldn't I just ?-all the same as if he was that blackguard young Lowe yonder, or the stable-boy!" Mr. Hamley answered, a little more roughly than was usual with him when "conversing" with his wife. "Lord or no lord, I'll have none of them here poking after the girl. I've paid for her bringing up, and I consider I have the right to keep what I've paid for. I've heard speak of pelicans, but I don't feel inclined to copy 'em."

"I'm sorry we cannot put our But whether we do or we don't, leave you full possession of your

"It is rather a novel way of looking at the matter, and I must say a sordid one," said Mrs. Hamley. "I cannot think with you that in adopting a child you are buying a slave." "Don't you?" he answered coolly. horses' heads together in the matter. I must be leader here, Lady; and if I own to do as you like with, you have no cause of complaint. If you are so anxious to get the young ladies a husband with a handle to his name get him for Miss Kemball. I'll give her as handsome a turn-out and make as good a settlement on her if she marries to please me-and you as any girl need have. And I'm sure I can't say fairer for a young person as is no relation to me, and that I don't especially admire."

"You are the oddest compound of generosity and tyranny, Mr. Hamley, I ever saw!" said his wife, half pettishly, half pleasantly; for they had their little conjugal flirtations together when they were alone. At first for policy; but as time had gone on, and Mrs. Hamley had followed the law of habit, she had become both more oblivious to her husband's defects and more tolerant of those she still saw, as well as

personally more affectionate to him. His strength and vigour seemed to stay her own failing powers, and she leant on him more than she had done in the beginning; while he was daily more conscious of the twenty years' gap between them, if daily more careful to conceal that consciousness and go through his appointed task creditably.

"Ah my dear," he answered, his thick lips parted into what he meant to be a fascinating smile, and his small keen eyes turned with such softness as he could command on his aged wife, "I would do more for you than take your niece into my house, and treat her like my own. What I did for my cousin's child I can surely do for your brother's daughter; for though I am but a rough diamond, Lady, I never forget who you are and what I owe you. You have chipped me out of the rough as I may say, and I don't begrudge my thanks."

"You are very good," said his wife softly, and stroked his thick hand almost tenderly with her long bony fingers.

Poor soul, she meant it well, though she did make his flesh creep! "There! I think I have settled the old lady's hash for a bit," was his unspoken thought as, the dressing-bell ringing, he stooped over her gallantly and kissed her powdered flaccid cheek. Then he went into his own room and stood before the glass, fingering his bushy whiskers complacently.

And standing there, large, florid, black-haired, showy, he smiled approvingly at the thing he saw.

"A fine figure of a man when all's said and done!" he said to himself. "I don't know a finer!"

Louis Philippe.

BY THE AUTHOR OF MIRABEAU,' ETC.

THE elder branch of the Bourbons was never famous for its virtues, but it certainly contrasts favourably with the younger, which, to go no farther back than two centuries, has run the whole gamut of crime. Cowardice, treason, blasphemy, debauchery, assassination, poison, incest, were in turns the characteristics of the race, until fratricide and regicide combined with all other infamies in one man to complete the odious chronicle.

That man was Louis Philippe Joseph, the brother of Louis the Sixteenth-a name at which humanity shudders. Of all who fell beneath the guillotine not one, not even Robespierre, so well deserved his fate as that French Cain. The Terrorists were wholesale murderers, but they could at least plead in extenuation of their crimes that they were the avengers of centuries of oppression; but this man was a monster, without palliation of any kind; destitute even of that Satanic grandeur which surrounds many of the exceptional criminals of history; his egotism, his malice, his poltroonery, his lasciviousness, excite in us as much contempt as his unnatural alliance with the excesses of the Revolution inspires us with abhorrence. Such was the father of the future King of the French.

Louis Philippe, né Duc de Chartres, was born on the 6th of October, 1773. His education and that of his brothers and sister was confided to the celebrated Madame de Genlis, a woman whose exceptional talents admirably fitted her for the task. Both mentally and physically her system of training was excellent. Besides instructing her pupils in the ordinary branches of knowledge, making them correct linguists by the constant use of the principal European languages in daily conversation, the Princes were taught all kinds of useful arts, such as surgery, carpentery, gardening. To harden them to endurance they carried heavy burdens upon their backs, descended in winter into damp vaults, and in the midst of frost and snow sat for hours in the open air.

The political ideas of the father, fully shared by the gouvernante, were early imbibed by the pupils, more especially by the Duc de Chartres, who seems to have taken to them with peculiar zest.

When the news was brought them that the people had attacked the Bastille they were performing a play-private theatricals forming an important part of Madame's system of education. So eager were they

to witness the sight that they all started for Paris in their theatrical costumes, and taking seats upon a balcony in the Boulevard SaintAntoine, watched the destruction of the infamous fortress with great manifestations of delight, the Duc de Chartres clapping his hands in gushes of patriotic ardour.

In 1790, following in the steps of his worthy father, he proclaimed himself a patriot and donned the uniform of the National Guard, took the popular oath, and regularly attended the sittings of the National Assembly, of which he ardently desired to become a member; joined the Jacobin club, and gratefully accepted the office of doorkeeper-to admit and let out the patriots, to expel the intruders and drive away the dogs. No member was more zealous, more "advanced," than the Duc de Chartres-I beg his pardon, Égalité Junior; such being the name he was then known by. So delighted was he with this sublime society that he humbly prayed that his brother the Duc de Montpensier might also be admitted as a member. He was on guard at the Tuilleries when Louis the Sixteenth was brought prisoner from Varennes, and showed his uncle no more respect than did citizen butcher or citizen baker. Upon the abolition of all aristocratic titles he wrote as follows:

"You no doubt are informed of the decree which extinguishes all distinctions and privileges. I hope you have done me justice to think I am too much a friend of equality not to have warmly applauded the decree. In proportion to the scorn with which I regard the accidental distinctions of my birth will I hereafter prize those to which I may arrive by merit."

Let the reader bear the tenor of this epistle in mind, as I shall have occasion to refer to it in another place.

He joined Dumouriez's army, and is said to have greatly distinguished himself at Valmy and Jémappes, as well as at Nerwinde, where he conducted a very skilful retreat in the face of a victorious enemy.

While the Revolution stood by him he was ready to stand by the Revolution, no matter to what lengths or atrocities it proceeded. At the very time of the September massacres, when Lafayette and the nobler democrats, horror-struck at this defilement of true liberty, were raising their voices in indignant protest, he accepted a lieutenantgeneralship, ostentatiously repeated the popular oath in each town, and attended every Jacobin meeting. His father voted death to the King, and there are no grounds for supposing that he disagreed with the act; it has even been said that he sat by his side during the trial.

The exuberance of youthful enthusiasm for the cause of liberty has been pleaded in extenuation of these doings. Such might have been urged with an excellent grace for his early revolutionary predilections. Every generous mind was set aglow by the vision of a free and regenerated France. But when massacre and assassination sat in the