manners and the ideas they impose—not in dress or length of leg, of course. The same winning softness! the same irresistible ascendancy over the female mind! They require virtue for two, I assure you, and so I told Silva, who laughed.
“But the charms of confession, my dear! I will talk of Evan first. I have totally forgiven him. Attaché to the Naples embassy, sounds tol-lol. In such a position I can rejoice to see him, for it permits me to acknowledge him. I am not sure that, spiritually, Rose will be his most fitting helpmate. However, it is done, and I did it, and there is no more to be said. The behaviour of Lord Laxley in refusing to surrender a young lady who declared that her heart was with another, exceeds all I could have supposed. One of the noble peers among his ancestors must have been a pig! Oh! the Roman nobility! Grace, refinement, intrigue, perfect comprehension of your ideas, wishes—the meanest trifles! Here you have every worldly charm, and all crowned by Religion! This is my true delight. I feel at last that whatsoever I do, I cannot go far wrong while I am within hail of my gentle priest. I never could feel so before.
“The idea of Mr. Parsley proposing for the beautiful widow Strike! It was indecent to do so so soon—widowed under such circumstances! But I dare say he was as disinterested as a Protestant curate ever can be. Beauty is a good dowry to bring a poor, lean, worldly curate of your Church, and he knows that. Your bishops and arches are quite susceptible to beautiful petitioners, and we know here how your livings and benefices are dispensed. What do you intend to do? Come to me; come to the bosom of the old and the only true Church, and I engage to marry you to a Roman prince the very next morning or two. That is, if you have no ideas about prosecuting a certain enterprise which I should not abandon. In that case, stay. As Duchess of B., Mr. Duffian says you would be cordially welcome to his Holiness, who may see women. That absurd report is all nonsense. We do not kiss his toe, certainly, but we have privileges equally enviable. Herbert is all charm. I confess he is a little wearisome with his old ruins, and his Dante, the poet. He is quite of my opinion that Evan will never wash out the trade stain on him until he comes over to the Church of Rome. I adjure you, Caroline, to lay this clearly before our dear brother. In fact, while he continues a Protestant, to me he is a tailor. But here Rose is the impediment. I know her to be just one of those little dogged minds that are incapable of receiving new impressions. Was it not evident in the way she stuck to Evan after I had once brought them together? I am not at all astonished that Mr. Raikes should have married her maid. It is a case of natural selection. But it is amusing to think of him carrying on the old business in 193, and with credit! I suppose his parents are to be pitied; but what better is the creature fit for? Mama displeases me in consenting to act as housekeeper to old Grumpus. I do not object to the fact, for it is prospective; but she should have insisted on another place of resort than Fallowfield. I do not agree with you in thinking her right in refusing a second marriage. Her age does not shelter her from scandal in your Protestant communities.
“I am every day expecting Harry Jocelyn to turn up. He was rightly sent away, for to think of the folly Evan put into his empty head! No; he shall have another wife, and Protestantism shall be his forsaken mistress!
“See how your Louy has given up the world and its vanities! You expected me to creep up to you contrite and whimpering? On the contrary, I never felt prouder. And I am not going to live a lazy life, I can assure you. The Church hath need of me! If only for the peace it hath given me on one point, I am eternally bound to serve it.
“Postscript: I am persuaded of this; that it is utterly impossible for a man to be a true gentleman who is not of the true Church. What it is I cannot say; but it is as a convert that I appreciate my husband. Love is made to me, dear, for Catholics are human. The other day it was a question whether a lady or a gentleman should be compromised. It required the grossest fib. The gentleman did not hesitate. And why? His priest was handy. Fancy Lord Laxley in such a case. I shudder. This shows that your religion precludes any possibility of the being the real gentleman, and whatever Evan may think of himself, or Rose may think of him, I know the thing.”
THE END.
THE MONTHS.
OCTOBER.
Considering how many people must know it, it is wonderful how little is said of the charm of London in autumn. The reason is probably the same that is assigned for the autumnal seaside being the only one familiar to the world at large;—that literary people take their holiday between August and November, and thus can describe the coast, and cannot describe the pleasures of London at that season. I have, however, known persons—and literary persons—who would not leave town during those months, if they could avoid it; and I quite sympathise with them.
There have been “charming London seasons” when I could not endure my life there; but I have never known a September or early October which was not full of loveliness. The treats in music, pictures, flower-shows, theatres, and royal and parliamentary spectacles are worth all that can be said about them; but the glare of the streets in the spring sunshine, the noise, the perpetual throng and movement are too much for quiet people. In autumn, we have all the beauty of London and its environs, seen in a mellower light; with a good many privileges in art and literature, and without the din and tumult of “the season.”
A walk in the park—any one of the parks—before breakfast, in October, is as great a refreshment as sea-bathing, taken in a quieter way. Let us hope the middle-class citizens know what it is to see the mists rising above the Serpentine or the water in St. James’s Park;—to see the gleams and reflections on the calm surface first, and then, by degrees, the objects so reflected;—to see the massy tree-forms coming dimly out, and growing clearer every minute till the sunlight catches them, and