"Sir," said DR. JOHNSON, "let us take a walk down Fleet Street." TEMPLE BAR A London Magazine FOR TOWN AND COUNTRY READERS. VOL. XV. NOVEMBER 1865. LONDON: OFFICE OF "TEMPLE BAR," 122 FLEET STREET. WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, 158 FLEET STREET. NEW YORK: WILLMER AND ROGERS. The rights of translation are reserved. XXXIV. Two Birds in the Bush 557 XXXV. Montague and Capulet 566 219 348 405 II. Margaret 68 IV. Algy Barford's News 81 V. Settling down 203 VII. What their Friends thought 356 VIII. Margaret and Annie 365 IX. Mr. Ampthill's Will 372 X. Lady Beauport's Plot 382 Lloyd's XI. Conjectures XII. Gathering Clouds 286 139 84 TEMPLE BAR. AUGUST 1865. Sir Jasper's Tenant. BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," &c. &c. CHAPTER XXI. A BROKEN LIFE. "I WENT out upon the little rustic balcony, and stood there with the warm evening air breathing softly round me. I could see the row of cottages, the neat little gardens that were so full of the simple flowers familiar to me in my youth. I could see the dim light shining here and there in a window; but I could not distinguish the particular habitation that sheltered my divinity; and I was half inclined to be angry with myself because no special instinct told me which it was. I was startled from my foolish meditations by the sound of a voice mingling with the other voices that floated up to me from the open windows of the parlour below; a voice that set my heart beating faster than it had beat since Caroline Catheron had vanished from my enchanted gaze; and yet it was not Miss Catheron's voice; it was only the base growl of the organist. He was not the rose, but he was, at any rate, the companion of that wondrous flower. I went downstairs, and made a paltry pretence of putting my watch right by the clock in the bar-parlour; and then as I loitered talking to the landlord, he remarked that I might find myself dull in my solitary chamber upstairs, and suggested that I should step into the parlour, where a little knot of the most respectable inhabitants of Weldridge was wont to assemble nightly. "There's Mr. Marles the clerk, and there's Mr. Scott the organist, quite a deep-read gentleman in his way, I've heard; and you'll rarely meet him without a book in his hand. And there's Mr. Stethcopp the baker, and Mr. Brinkenson, an independent gentleman who occupies the first of that row of cottages as you come to directly you leave this door. Weldridge would be a dull place, you see, if there wasn't a little friendliness and sociability between the inhabitants. We've had some out-and-out gentlemen in our little parlour, I can tell you. There's Mr. Catheron, now, at one of the cottages; you might go a long day's walk and not find any one more the gentleman than him.' VOL. XV. B |