friend. I was going to say, Till then, believe me and trust me; but I need not, for I know that, however unnatural it seems for me to ask you not to allude again to the subject we have just been discussing, you will be satisfied that I would not ask it without having a reason which if you knew you would approve. On my conscience I believe that I am right in reserving from you my full confidence for the first time in my life; but do not let the fact of one forbidden topic alienate us-let it rather act as another link, hidden for the moment, but which may some day prove the most powerful to bind us together." Grandon's face lit up with a bright frank smile. "I trust and believe in you from the bottom of my soul, and you shall bury any subject you like till it suits you to exhume it. Come, we will go to breakfast, and I will discourse to you on the political and military expediency of spending £200,000 on the fortifications of Quebec."

"Well," thought I, as I followed Grandon down-stairs, "for a man who is yearning to be honest, and to do the right thing by everybody, I have got into as elaborate a complication of lies as if I were a Russian diplomatist. First, I have given both Lady Broadbrim and Grandon distinctly to understand that I am at this moment engaged to Ursula, which I am not; and secondly, I have solemnly assured that young lady herself that I am conscious of being occasionally mad."

In this tissue of falsehoods, it is poor consolation to think that the only one in which there may be some foundation of truth is the last. Supposing I was to go in for dishonesty, perhaps I could not help telling the truth by the rule of "contraries." I will go and ask the Honourable Spiffington whether he finds this to be the case, and I parted from Grandon in the hope of catching that gentleman before he had betaken himself to his civic haunts. I was too late, and pursued him east of Temple Bar.

Here he frequented sundry "boardrooms" of companies which by a figure of speech he helped to direct," and was also to be found in the neighbourhood of Hercules Passage and the narrow streets which surround the Stock Exchange, in the little back dens of pet brokers, upon whom he relied for "good things." Spiffy used to collect political news in fashionable circles all through the night and up to an early hour of the morning, and then come into the City with it red-hot, so as to "operate." He was one of the most lively little rabbits to be found in all that big warren of which the Bank is the centre, and popped in and out of the different holes with a quickness that made him very difficult to catch. At last I ran him to a very dingy earth, where he was pausing, seated on a green baize table over a glass of sherry and a biscuit, and chaffing a rising young broker who hoped ultimately to be proposed by Spiffy for the Piccadilly Club. He was trying to establish a claim thereto now, on the strength of having been at Mrs Gorgon Tompkins's ball on the previous evening. "It is rather against you than otherwise," said Spiffy-who was an extremely off-hand little fellow, and did not interrupt his discourse after he had nodded to me familiarly-"I can't afford to take you up yet; indeed, what have you ever done to merit it? and Mrs Gorgon Tompkins has enough to do this season to keep her own head above water without attempting to float you. I did what I could for her last night, but she can't expect to go on with her successes of last year. We had a regular scene at 6 A.M. this morning, 'in banquet halls deserted,'-tears, and all that sort of thing-nobody present but self, Gorgon, and partner. We took our last year's list, and compared them with the invitations sent out this year. The results were painful - only the fag-end of the diplomatic corps had responded, none of the great European powers present, and our own

Cabinet most slenderly represented. Obliged to resort for young men to the byways and hedges; no expense spared, and yet the whole affair a miserable failure."

"Have you tried lobsters boiled in champagne at supper, as a draw?" said I.

"No," said Spiffy, looking at me with admiration. "I did not know this sort of thing was in your line, Frank." He had not the least right to call me Frank; but as everybody, whether they knew him or not, called him Spiffy, he always anticipated this description of familiarity. "To tell you the truth, I could pull the Tompkins through another season, but I am keeping all my best ideas for the Bodwinkles. Bodwinkles' first ball is to cost £2000; he wanted me to do it for £1500, and I should have been able to do it for that, if Mrs Bodwinkle had had any h's; but the crême de la crême require an absence of aspirates to be made up to them somehow. Oh, with the extra £500 I can do it easily," said Spiffy, with an air of self-complacency. "She is a comparatively young woman, you see, without daughters; that simplifies matters very much. And then Bodwinkle can be so much more useful to political men than Gorgon Tompkins; the only fear is that he may commit himself at a late hour at the supper-table, but I have hit on a notion which will overcome all these possible contretemps."

66

"What is that?" said I, curiously. Well, in confidence, I don't mind telling you, as you are not in the line yourself; but it is a masterstroke of genius. Like all great ideas, its merit lies in its simplicity."

"Well, don't keep us any longer in suspense; I promise not to appropriate it.'

"Well," said Spiffy, triumphantly. "I am going to pay the aristocracy to come!"

"Pay them!" said I, really astounded; "how on earth are you going to get them to take the money?"

Wait

"Ah, that is the secret. till the Bodwinkles' ball. You will see how delicately I shall contrive it; a great deal more neatly than you do when you leave your doctor's fee mysteriously wrapped in paper upon his mantelpiece. I shall no more hurt that high sense of honour, and that utter absence of anything like snobbism which characterises the best London society, than a French cook would ofend the nostrils of his guests with an overpowering odour of garlic; but it is a really grand idea."

"Worthy of Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, or the first Napoleon," said I; "posterity will recognise you as a social giant with a mission, if the small men and the envious of the present day refuse to do so."

66

"I don't mind telling you," Spiffy went on, that the idea first occurred to me in a Scotch donkeycircus, where I won as a prize for entering the show, a red plush waistcoat worth five shillings. The fact is, Bodwinkle is so anxious to get people, he would go to any expense; he has even offered me a commission on all the accepted invitations I send out for him, graduated on a scale proportioned to the rank of the acceptor. I am afraid it would not be considered quite the right thing to take it; what do you think?

"Well," said I, "I doubt whether society would stand it. You must bring them to it gradually. At present, I feel sure they would draw the line at a 'commission.' Apropos of the Bodwinkles, I want to have a little private conversation with you."

"I am awfully done," said Spiffy. "I never went to bed at all last night. I got some information about Turkish certificates before I went to the Tompkins; then I stayed there till past six, and had to come on here at ten to turn what I knew to account. However, go ahead; what is it in? Jones here will do it for you. No need of mystery between us. 'Cosmopolitan district' is the sort of thing I

can conscientiously recommendI'll tell you why: I went down to the lobby of the House last night on purpose to hear what the fellows were saying who prowl about there pushing what my wretched tailor would call a little bill' through committee. It is becoming a sort of ring,' and the favourites last night were light Cosmopolitans." "What on earth are they as distinguished from heavy?" I asked. "Jones, show his Lordship the stock-list," said Spiffy, with a swag ger.

The investigation of the "list" completely bewildered me. Why a £10 share should be worth £19, and a £100 share worth £99, 10s., in the same company, was not evident on the face of the document before me, so I looked into Spiffy's.

"Puzzling, isn't it?" said Spiffy. "Very," I replied. "Now tell me," and I turned innocently towards Mr Jones, for Spiffy's expression was secretive and mysterious-"explain to me how it is that a share upon which only £10 has been paid, should be so much more valuable than one which has been fully paid up."

"Ask the syndicate," said Jones, looking at Spiffy in a significant way. I felt quite startled, for I expect ed to see a group of foreigners composing this institution walk into the room; it was not until I had looked again to Spiffy for information, and was met by the single open eye of that gentleman, that I drew an inference and a very long breath.

"Spiffy," I said, "I am getting stifled the moral atmosphere of this place is tainted; take me to the sweetest board-room in the neighbourhood-I want to speak to you on private business."

"Haven't time," said Spiffy, looking at his watch.

"Not to settle Lady Broadbrim's little affair," said I, in a whisper.

Spiffy got uncommonly pale, but recovered himself in a second. "All right, old fellow," and he poured a few hurried words in an incompre

hensible dialect into Jones's ear, and led the way to the Suburban Washing-ground Company's boardroom, which was the most minute apartment of the kind I had ever seen.

I shall not enter into the particulars of what passed between Spiffy and myself on this occasion. In the first place, it is so dry that it would bore you; in the second place, it was so complicated, and Spiffy's explanations seemed to complicate it so much the more, that I could not make it clear to you if I wished; and in the last, I do not feel justified in divulging all Lady Broadbrim's money difficulties and private crises. Suffice it to say, that in the course of our conversation Spiffy was obliged to confide to me many curious facts connected with his own line of life, and more especially with the peculiar functions which he exercised in his capacity of a "syndic," under the seal of solemn secrecy. Without the hold over him which this little insight into his transactions has given me, I should not be able to report so much of our conversation as I have. Nevertheless, I thought it right to tell him how much of it he would shortly see in print.

"Gracious, Frank," said Spiffy, petrified with alarm, "you don't mean to say you are going to publish all I told you about the Gorgon Tompkins and the Bodwinkles? how am I ever to keep them going if you do? besides there are a number of other fellows in the same line as I am. Just conceive the injury you will inflict upon society generally-nobody will thank you. The rich 'middles' who are looking forward to this kind of advancement will be furious; all of us 'promoters' will hate you, and 'la haute' will probably cut you. Why can't you keep quiet instead of trying to get yourself and everybody else into hot water?"

"Spiffy," said I, solemnly, "when I devoted myself to 'mission work,' as they call it in Exeter Hall, I

counted the cost, as you will see on referring back to my first article. I am still only at the beginning. I have a long and heavy task before me; but my only excuse for remaining in society is that I am labouring for its regeneration."

"You won't remain in it long," said Spiffy, "if you carry on in your present line. What do you want to do? Eradicate snobbism from the British breast ?-never! we should all, from the highest to the lowest, perish of inanition without it."

"Society," said I, becoming metaphorical, is like a fluid which is pervaded by that ingredient which you call 'snobbism,' the peculiarity of which is that you find it in equal perfection when it sinks to the bottom and becomes dregs, and when it rises to the surface and becomes crême-though of course it undergoes some curious chemical changes, according to its position. However, that is only one of the elements which pollute what should be a transparent fluid. I am subjecting it just now to a most minute and careful analysis, and I feel sure I shall succeed in obtaining an interesting precipitate.' I do most earnestly trust both you and the world at large will profit by my experiments."

"Frank, you are a lunatic," said Spiffy, with a yawn, for I was beginning to bore him. "I suppose I can't help your publishing what you like, only you will do yourself more harm than me. Let me know when society has 'precipitated' you out of it, and I will come and see you. Nobody else will. Good-bye!"

"He calls me a lunatic," I murmured, as I went down-stairs-"I thought that I should be most likely to hear the truth by applying to the Honourable Spiffington."

The same reasons which have compelled me to maintain a certain reserve in narrating my conversation with this gentleman prevent me fully describing the steps which I am at present taking to arrange Lady Broadbrim's affairs, and which

will occupy me during the Easter recess. Now, thank goodness, I think I see my way to preventing the grand crash which she feared, but I decline to state the amount of my own fortune which will be sacrificed in the operation. The great inconvenience of the whole proceeding is the secrecy which it necessarily involves. Grandon is under the impression that I am gambling on the Stock Exchange, and is miserable in consequence, because he fancies I add to that sin the more serious one of denying it. Lady Ursula, whom I have avoided seeing alone, but who knows that I am constantly plotting in secret with her mother, is no doubt beginning to think that I am wicked as well as mad, and is evidently divided between the sacred obligation of keeping the secret of my insanity, and her dread lest in some way or other her mother should be the victim of it. Lady Bridget is unmistakably afraid of me. The other day, when I went into the drawing-room and found her alone, she turned as pale as a sheet, jumped up, stammered out something about going to find mamma, and rushed out of the room. Did I not believe in Ursula as in my own existence, I could almost fancy she had betrayed me. Then there is Broadbrim. He is utterly puzzled. He knows that I am come to pull the family out of the mess, and put his own cherished little person into a financially sound condition; and he is equally well assured that I would not make this sacrifice without feeling certain of marrying his sister. But, in the first place, that any man should sacrifice anything, either for his sister or any other woman, is a mystery to Broadbrim; and, in the second, I strongly suspect that Ursula has said something which makes him very doubtful whether she is engaged to me or not. Poor girl! I feel for her. Was ever a daughter and sister before placed in the embarrassing position of leaving her own mother and brother in the de

lusion that she was engaged to be married to a man who had never breathed to her the subject of his love, much less of matrimony? Then Spiffy and Lady Broadbrim's lawyer both look upon the marriage as settled: how else can they account for the trouble I am taking, and the liberality I am displaying? There is something mysterious, moreover, in the terms upon which I am in the house. Lady Broadbrim is beginning to think it unnatural that I should not care to see more of Ursula; and whenever she is not quite absorbed with considering her own affairs, is making the arrangement known among mammas by the expression, "bringing the young people together"-as if any young people who really cared to be together, could not bring themselves together without mamma or anybody else interfering. Fortunately Lady Broadbrim is so much more taken up with her own speculations than with either her daughter's happiness or mine, that I am always able to give the conversation a City turn when she broaches the delicate

subject of Ursula. How Ursula manages on these occasions I cannot conceive, but I do my best to prevent Lady Broadbrim talking about me to her, as I always say mysteriously, that if she does, it will spoil everything"-an alarming phrase, which produces an immediate effect. Still it is quite clear that this kind of thing can't continue long. If I can only keep matters going for a few days more, they will all be out of town for Easter, and that will give me time to breathe. As it is, it is impossible to shut my eyes to the fact, that my best friend is beginning to doubt me - that the girl I love dreads me-and that the rest of the family, and those sufficiently connected with it to observe my proceedings, either pity, laugh at, or despise me. This, however, by no means prevents their using their utmost endeavours to ruin me. That is the present state of matters. The situation cannot remain unchanged during the next four weeks. Have I your sympathies, dear reader? Do you wish me well out of it?