own wrongs, had no eyes for the humiliation and pain to which her sister had been subjected. "I feel as if I should never see him more," she said, quite subdued and broken down, with a burst of tears, as the two went home; and poor little Rose, who was soft-hearted, forgot all her disapprobation in sympathy. "Never mind them, dear; they have no feeling. We must cling together all the closer, and try to be everything to each other," Rose said, with eyes which were full, but which would not shed any tears. Her mind was overflowing with mortification and wounded pride, and at the same time she said to herself, that all that was nothing in comparison to the wound of the heart under which Barbara was suffering. "Dear, never mind, we will be everything to each other," said poor little romantic Rose; and the elder sister, even in the depths of her dejection, could have

given her a good shake for uttering such an absurd sentiment; for a great deal of good it would do to be everything to each other—as if that could ever replace the orange blossoms and the wedding tour, and the carriage and handsome house, which were included in the name of Cavendish! "And he was such a dear!" she said to herself in her own mind, and wept, and made her eyes redder and redder. If Mr Cavendish had known all that was going on in Carlingford that night, the chances are that he would have been most flattered by those tears which Barbara shed for him under the lamps in Grove Street; but then it is to be hoped he would not have been insensible either to the just reticence and selfrestraint which, mingling with Miss Marjoribanks's suspicions, prevented her, as she herself said, even in the deepest seclusion of her own thoughts, from naming any name.

JEAN PAUL tells us that there never was a nature yet formed without its vein of romance-that the most realistic and commonplace people we have ever met have their moods of romance, and that the cord, however little we may suspect it, runs through the woof of all humanity.

I am not able to affirm that he is right; but certainly a little incident which has just occurred to me leads me to believe that there are cases of the affection in natures and temperaments in which nothing would have led me to suspect them. I need not be told that it is the men who have a most worldly character, who are often seen marrying portionless wives; that traits of self-sacrifice and devotion are being continually displayed by cold, ungenial, and, to all seeming, unim

pressionable people. What I was not prepared for was to find that hero-worship could find a place in the heart of a hard, money-getting, money-lending fellow, whose ordinary estimate of humanity was based less on what they were than what they had. I own that I had no other clue to the man's nature than that furnished by a few lines of a newspaper advertisement, which set forth his readiness to advance sums from one hundred to five hundred pounds on mere personal security, and at a most moderate rate of interest. And though the former amounted to obligations the breach of which would have reduced one to bondage, and the latter varied from eighty to a hundred and thirty per cent, he was so pleasant-looking-so chatty-so genially alive to the difficulties that

beset youth-so forgivingly merciful to wasteful habits and ways, that I took to him from the moment I saw him, and signed my four bills for fifty each, and took up my hundred and eighteen pounds off the table with the feeling that at last I had found in an utter stranger that generous trustfulness and liberality I had in vain looked for amongst kindred and relatives. We had a pint of madeira to seal the bargain. He told me in a whisper it was a priceless vintage. I believe him. On a rough calculation, I think every glass I took of it cost me forty-seven pounds some odd shillings. It is not, however, to speak of this event that I desire here. Mr Nathan Joel and I ceased after a while to be the dear friends we swore to be over that madeira. The history of those four bills, too complicated to relate, became disagreeable. There were difficulties-there were renewals-there were protests -and there was a writ. Nathan Joel was no matter what. I got out of his hands after three years by ceding a reversion worth five times my debt, with several white hairs in my whiskers, and a clearer view of gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion than I had ever picked up out of Ecclesiasticus.

A good many years rolled over— years in which I now and then saw mention of Mr Joel as a plaintiff or an opposing creditor-once or twice as assignee, too. He was evidently thriving. Men were living very fast, smashes were frequent, and one can imagine the coast of Cornwall rather a lucrative spot after a stormy equinox. I came abroad, however, and lost sight of him; a chance mention, perhaps, in a friend's letter, how he had fallen into Joel's hands-that Joel advanced or refused to advance the money-something about cash, was all that I knew of him, till t'other evening the landlord of the little inn near my villa called up to ask if I knew anything of a certain Mr Nathan Joel, who was then at

his inn without baggage, money, papers, or effects of any kind, but who on hearing my name cried out with ecstasy, "Ah, he knows me. You've only to ask Mr O'Dowd who I am, and he'll satisfy you at once."

"So," thought I, "Joel! the Lord hath delivered thee into my hands, and now what sort of vengeance shall I take? Shall I ignore you utterly, and declare that your claim to my acquaintance is a gross and impudent fraud? Shall I tell the innkeeper I disown you?" If this was my first thought, it soon gave way-it was so long since the rascal had injured me, and I had cursed him very often for it since then. It was his nature too; that also ought to be borne in mind. When leeches cease sucking they die, and very probably money-lenders wither and dry up when they are not abstracting our precious metals.

"I'll go over and see if it be the man I know," said I, and set off at once towards the inn. As I went along, the innkeeper told me how the stranger had arrived three nights back, faint, weary, and exhausted, saying that the guide refused to accompany him after he entered the valley, and merely pointed out the road and left him. "This much I got out of him," said the landlord,

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but he is not inclined to say more, but sits there wringing his hands and moaning most piteously."

Joel was at the window as I came up, but seeing me he came to the door. "Oh, Mr O'Dowd," cried he, "befriend me this once, sir. Don't bear malice, nor put your foot on the fallen, sir. Do pity me, sir, I beseech you.'

The wretched look of the poor devil pleaded for him far better than his words. He was literally in rags, and such rags, too, as seemed to have once been worn by another, for he had a brown peasant jacket and a pair of goatskin breeches, and a pair of shoes fastened round his ankles with leather thongs.

"So," said I, "you have got tired of small robberies and taken to the wholesale line. When did you become a highwayman ?"

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Ah, sir!” cried he, "don't be jocose, don't be droll. This is too pitiful a case for laughter."

I composed my features into a semblance of decent gravity, and after a little while induced him to relate his story, which ran thus:

Mr Joel, it appeared, who for some thirty years of life had taken a very practical view of humanity, estimating individuals pretty much like scrip, and ascribing to them what value they might bring in the market, had suddenly been seized with a most uncommon fervour for Victor Emmanuel, the first impulse being given by a "good thing he had done in Piedmontese fives," and a rather profitable investment he had once made in the Cavour Canal. In humble gratitude for these successes, he had bought a print of the burly monarch, whose bullet head and bristling mustaches stared fiercely at him from over his fireplace, till by mere force of daily recurrence he grew to feel for the stern soldier a sentiment of terror dashed with an intense admiration.

"Talk of Napoleon, sir!" he would say, "he's a humbug-an imposition a wily, tricky, intriguing dodger. If you want a great man -a man that never knew fear-a man that is above all flimsy affectations-a man of the heroic stampthere he is for you!

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As for Garibaldi, he's not to be compared to him. Garibaldi was an adventurer, and made adventure a career; but here's a king! here's a man who has a throne, who was born in a palace, descended from a long line of royal ancestors, and instead of giving himself up to a life of inglorious ease and self-indulgence, he mounts his horse and heads a regiment, sir. He takes to the field like the humblest soldier in his ranks, goes out, thrashes the Austrians, drives them out of Milan,

hunts them over the plains of Lombardy, and in seven days raises the five per cents from fifty-one and a half to eighty-two and a quarter for the account.' Show me the

equal of that in history, sir. There's not another man in Europe I could have done as much for the market."

His enthusiasm knew no bounds; he carried a gold piece of twenty francs, with the King's image, to his watch-chain, and wore small coins, with the cross of Savoy, in his breast, as shirt-studs. An ardour intense as this is certain to bear its effects. Mr Joel had often promised himself a trip to the Continent, of which he knew nothing beyond Paris. He took, then, the season of autumn, when the House was up, and money-lending comparatively dull, and came abroad. He told his friends he was going to Vichy; he affected a little gout. It was a disease gentlemen occasionally permitted themselves, and Mr Joel was a rising man, and liked to follow the lead of persons of condition. Very different, however, was his object; his real aim was to see the great man whose whole life and actions had taken such an intense hold on his imagination. To see him, to gaze on him, to possess himself fully of the actual living traits of the heroic Sovereign; and if by any accident, by any happy chance, by any of those turns of capricious fortune which now and then elevate men into a passing greatness, to get speech of him!-this Mr Joel felt would be an operation more. overwhelmingly entrancing than if Spanish bonds were to be paid off in full, or Poyais fives to be quoted at par in the market.

It is not impossible that Mr Joel believed his admiration for the Re Galantuomo gave him a bona fide and positive claim on that monarch's regard. This is a delusion by no means rare it possesses a large number of people, and influences them in their conduct to much humbler objects of worship than a

king on his throne. Sculptors, authors, and painters know something of what I mean, and not uncommonly come to hear how ungraciously they are supposed to have responded to an admiration of which it is possible they never knew, and which it would be very excusable in them if they never valued. The worshipper, in fact, fancies that the incense he sends up as smoke should come back to him in some shape substantial. However this may be, and I am not going to press it further on my reader's at tention, Mr Joel got to imagine that Victor Emmanuel would have felt as racy an enjoyment at meeting with him, as he himself anticipated he might experience in meeting the King. It goes a very long way in our admiration of any one to believe that the individual so admired has a due and just appreciation of ourselves. We start at least with one great predisposing cause of love-an intense belief in the good sense and good taste of the object of our affections.

Fully persuaded, then, that the meeting would be an event of great enjoyment to each, the chief difficulty was to find a "mutual friend," as the slang has it, to bring them into the desired relations.

This was really difficult. Had King Victor Emmanuel been an industrial monarch, given to cereals, or pottery, gutta-percha, cotton, or corrugated iron, something might have been struck out to present him with as pretext for an audience. Was he given to art, or devoted to some especial science?-a bust, a bronze, or a medal might have paved the way to an interview. The King, however, had no such leanings; and whatever his weaknesses, there were none within the sphere of the money-changer's attributions, and as Mr Joel could not pretend that he knew of a short cut to Venice, or a secret path that led to the Vatican, he had to abandon all hopes of approaching the monarch by the legitimate roads.

See him I must, speak to him I will, were, however, the vows he had registered in his own heart, and he crossed the Alps with this firm resolve, leaving, as other great men before him have done, time and the event to show the way where the goal had been so firmly fixed on.

At Turin he learned the King had just gone to Ancona to open a new line of railroad. He hastened after him, and arrived the day after the celebration to discover that his Majesty had left for Brindisi. He followed to Brindisi, and found the King had only stopped there an hour, and then pursued his journey to Naples. Down to Naples went Mr Joel at once, but to his intense astonishment nobody there had heard a word of the King's arrival. They did not, indeed, allege the thing was impossible; but they slily insinuated that if his Majesty had really come and had not thought proper to make his arrival matter of notoriety, that they as Italians, Neapolitans surtout, knew good manners better than to interfere with a retirement it was their duty to respect. This they said with a sort of half-droll significancy that puzzled Mr Joel much, for he had lived little in Italy, and knew far more about Cremorne than the Casino!

Little dubious sentences, shallow insinuations, half-laughing obscurities, were not weapons to repel such a man as Joel. His mind was too steadfastly intent on its object to be deterred by such petty opposition. He had come to see the King, and see him he would. This same speech he made so frequently, so publicly, and so energetically, that at the various cafés which he frequented, no sooner was he seen to enter than some stranger to himall were strangers-would usually come up in the most polite manner and express a courteous hope that he had been successful, and had either dined with his Majesty or passed the evening with him. It is needless to say that the general im

pression was that poor Mr Joel was a lunatic, but as his form of the malady seemed mild and inoffensive, his case was one entirely for compassion and pity.

A few, however, took a different view. They were of the police, and consequently they regarded the incident professionally. To their eyes, Joel was a Mazzinian, and come out specially to assassinate the King. It is such an obvious thing to the official mind that a man on such an errand would attract every notice to his intentions beforehand, that they not alone decided Joel to be an intended murderer, but they kept a strict record of all the people he accidentally addressed, all the waiters who served, and all the hackney cabmen who drove him, while the telegraphic wires of the whole kingdom vibrated with one name, asking, Who is Joel trace Joel; send some one to identify Joel. Little poor Joel knew all this time that he had been photographed as he sat eating his oysters, and that scraps of his letters were pasted on a large piece of pasteboard in the Ministry of Police, that his handwriting might be shown under his varied attempts to disguise it.

One evening he sat much later than was his wont at a little openair café of the St Lucia quarter. The sky was gloriously starlit, and the air had all the balmy softness of the delicious south. Joel would have enjoyed it and the cool drink before him intensely, if it were not that his disappointed hopes threw a dark shadow over everything, and led him to think of all that his journey had cost him in cash, and all in the foregone opportunities of discounts and usuries.

A frequenter of the café, with whom he had occasionally exchanged greetings, sat at the same table; but they said little to each other, the stranger being evidently one not given to much converse, and rather disposed to the indulgence of his own thoughts in silence.

"Is it not strange," said Joel, after a long pause, "that I must go back without seeing him?"

A half impatient grunt was all the reply, for the stranger was well weary of Joel and his sorrows.

"One would suppose that he really wanted to keep out of my way, for up to this moment no one can tell me if he be here or not." Another grunt.

"It is not that I have left anything undone, heaven knows. There isn't a quarter of the town I have not walked, day and night, and his is not a face to be mistaken; I'd know him at a glance."

"And what in the devil's name do you want with him when you have seen him?" exclaimed the other, angrily. "Do you imagine that a King of Italy has nothing better to do with his time than grant audiences to every idle John Bull whose debts or doctors have sent him over the Alps?" This rude speech was so fiercely delivered, and with a look and tone so palpably provocative, that Joel at once perceived his friend intended to draw him into a quarrel, so he finished off his liquor, took up his hat and cane, and with a polite felice sera, Signor, was about to withdraw.

"Excuse me," said the stranger, rising, with a manner at once obsequious and apologetic. "I entreat you to forgive my rude and impatient speech. I was thinking of something else, and forgot myself.

Sit down for one moment, and I will try and make you a proper reparation-a reparation you will be satisfied with.

"You want to see the King, and you desire to speak with him : both can be done with a little courage; and when I say this, I mean rather presence of mindaplomb, as the French say-than anything like intrepidity or dar ing. Do you possess the quality I speak of?"

"It is my precise gift-the essential feature of my character," cried Joel, in ecstasy.