contributor to several periodicals of a high class. My work in this way brought me in a good deal of money, which I saved for Caroline. Mr. Catheron had told me incidentally that it would be utterly absurd of me to talk of marrying until I had the nest-egg of a modest fortune. I remembered this; and when I went dinnerless, as I very often did in those days, it was for Caroline's sake that I was economical.

"The autumn faded into winter-a hopelessly wet and cheerless winter-and I was working quietly on, with the dull round of my labours only broken by the Sunday visits to my divinity, who received me with smiles or frowns, according to the caprice of the hour. I might have spent my Christmas at Pierrepoint Castle, where my father and mother were keeping house, and dispensing old-fashioned charities and hospitality, in the absence of my uncle Weldon, who could only support the winter in a southern latitude. My mother wished me to be with her. My own heart yearned for her presence; but I was invited to spend the day with Caroline, and I could not break the chain that dragged me towards her. My literary work was a good excuse for my stay in London; and I added the sum that my journey would have cost me to the little hoard it was such thrilling pleasure to amass-for Caroline. My reward was the sulkiest reception I had ever yet endured at Miss Catheron's hands. She scarcely spoke to me half-a-dozen times during the dreary winter's day; and she only answered her father in monosyllables when he addressed her. Mr. Catheron tried to entertain me; but Caroline refused to play when he asked for music; and while I was trying to devise some means of seeing her alone, she announced that she was suffering tortures from a splitting headache, and wished me good-night, utterly regardless of my entreating looks, and the whisper in which I implored her to tell me what was amiss. Her father affected to believe the story of the headache, and completely ignored his daughter's ill-temper. I went home alone in the coach, through slushy roads and drizzling rains, very much cast down by my divinity's chilling behaviour, and thinking sadly of the lighted windows of Pierrepoint Castle shining out upon the dark night, and the pleasant party gathered round my father and mother in the cedar-panelled saloon.

"I was not permitted to write to Miss Catheron, so I was likely to remain in utter ignorance of the cause of her temper until the following Sunday, when I might find an opportunity of questioning her. I felt assured that something out of the common course had happened to disturb her; and the thought of this filled me with perplexity. I even found a difficulty in concentrating my mind upon my work, and waited uneasily for the end of the week.

"It was on Saturday night that an event occurred which decided the issue of my life. I had been writing for the best part of the day, and had sat at my desk till my head ached, and my cramped hand would scarcely form the characters upon the page before me. I left off at last from sheer exhaustion, and taking a volume at random from the pile

of books before me, I began to read. But I had read a very few pages when my heavy eyelids drooped, and I fell into a doze-a doze that deepened into a profound slumber, in which I dreamed of wading kneedeep in a sluggish stream, with a starless sky above me, and a pitiless rain beating down upon my head. Amidst the thick darkness that surrounded me, I saw a light burning feebly in the far distance, and it was towards that distant glimmer I was trying to make my way. But spite of all my struggles I found myself receding rather than advancing, dragged backwards by some horrible weight that hung upon me and paralysed my movements. It was only a very common form of nightmare, I daresay, natural to the condition of an over-worked brain but sometimes I have been weak enough to imagine that the moral of my miserable life was set forth in that uncomfortable dream. I was wakened from it suddenly by the falling of my book, which had slipped from my loosened hand, and had dropped heavily upon the ground.

"There were two sounds in my ears when I awoke,—the pattering of the rain which I had heard in my sleep, and the sound of a hurried knocking at my door. I got up to answer the impatient summons, and on opening the door I beheld a woman, whose figure was undistinguishable under the voluminous folds of a heavy shawl, and whose face was hidden by a thick veil.

"Before I could address her she flung the dripping veil off her face, and I recognised Caroline Catheron.

"Caroline!' I exclaimed, 'what in Heaven's name has brought you here at such an hour? Your father-'

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Oh, there is nothing amiss with him, if that is what you mean!' she answered impatiently, though he is the cause of my being here to-night. There is nothing the matter with him except wickedness, and that seems to agree with some people. Let me sit down by your fire, please, Godfrey, and don't stand staring at me as if I were a ghost. Take my shawl,-and now my bonnet,' she said, handing me the dripping garments. Have you any woman-servant? No; I remember your charwoman only comes in the morning. However, that's no matter; I shall only stop with you till my shawl is dry, and then I want you to take me to an hotel of some kind, where I can have a lodging. It is not the least use your staring in that absurd manner, Mr. Pierrepoint. I'm never going back to Weldridge again, or to any other "dridge," where my papa resides.'

66 6 But, Caroline-'

"She tossed her head impatiently. I had never seen her look more brilliantly handsome than she looked that night in her dark stuff gown, and with her black hair pushed carelessly off her face. I was too much bewildered by her presence to do any thing but stare at her, as she flung herself coolly into the chair in which I had been seated, and planted her wet feet on the fender. There was nothing bold or im

modest in her familiarity; it was rather the easy manner of a popular queen who takes refuge in the dwelling of a subject, and is aware that she confers an honour by her presence.

"It is not the least use your preaching to me about duty, or any thing of that kind,' she exclaimed. 'Come what may, I will never go back to any house in which my father lives. We have been quarrelling ever since I was old enough to quarrel, and on Christmas-eve matters came to a crisis. We have not spoken to each other, except under compulsion, since that night. Of course it's a very dreadful thing for a father and daughter to quarrel as we have done. I know that quite as well as you do; but papa's temper is unendurable to me, and I suppose my temper is unendurable to him. We are too much alike, I think. Papa is a tyrant, and wants to reign supreme among stupid, submissive people, who would never oppose him; and I am not submissive, or stupid, so far as I know; and the end of it all is, that we cannot exist any longer under the same roof. There's not the faintest reason for you to look so horrified, Godfrey; I am only going to do what girls in my position-and in more comfortable positions than mine-are doing every day of their lives. I am going out as a governess. If I had proposed such a thing to papa, he would have talked all sorts of pompous nonsense about the Catherons and Edward the Confessor, though he owns himself that Edward the Confessor never was the slightest use to him in any stage of his career. In fact, what papa would like would be for me to wait upon him, and play Mozart to him until my hair was gray, and to submit to be thwarted in the dearest wishes of my heart, and, in short, to be an uncomplaining slave. So, instead of fighting the matter out with him, I quietly left Weldridge by this evening's coach, and have walked from the coach-office here, not having enough money to pay for a cab. So I want you to lend me some money, please; and I want you to get me some kind of lodging.'

"But have you no friends in London to whom I could take you, Caroline?' I asked, looking anxiously at my watch. You would be more comfortable in a friend's house than in a strange lodging.'

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""Of course I should,' Miss Catheron answered impatiently; 'but I have no friends to whom I can go at ten o'clock on a Saturday night, and say, "I have run away from papa, and I am going out as a governess: please accommodate me in the interval." Those sort of friends are not very common.'

"This was an unanswerable kind of argument; so I put on my hat and hurried out, after assuring Caroline that I would do my best to secure her safety and comfort. I had only one person to whom to appeal in my dilemma, and that person was my laundress, whose address I fortunately knew. I was also so fortunate as to find her at home, and up; and having made her my confidante, she informed me that she did know of a humble, but thoroughly respectable lodging, where the young lady could be accommodated at this short notice, and where

she would be far less open to suspicion, orexposed to impertinent curiosity, than at an hotel.

"Poor dear young creature,' said the laundress, she must be terrible cut up and timid-like, finding herself in London promiscuous like this, and with not a place to lay her pretty head in!'

"I informed the worthy woman that the young lady in question was a very high-spirited young lady, and not prone to timidity. Was I proud of her, or was I ashamed of her, because she was so different from other women? I can scarcely tell. I only know that the influence of her presence enslaved me, as the opium-eater's vice enslaves him, even when he knows most surely the ruin which it involves.

"The respectable lodging turned out to be a very tidy place in a little square behind Fleet Street; a quaint old-fashioned little square, so hemmed in and surrounded by taller and more important buildings, that a man might live close to it for half a century without being aware of its existence. I saw the landlady of the lodging-house, and having satisfied myself that she was a respectable and civil person, who would receive Caroline kindly, I parted from my laundress and went back to my chambers.

"I found my divinity sitting by the fire in the same attitude in which I had left her,-a very discontented and moody divinity, and by no means inclined to be enraptured with any arrangements I had made for her comfort. I remember now how completely she ignored any discomfort I might have suffered in my search for her lodging; but in the days of my folly she was as charming to me in her sulkiest temper as in her brightest mood, and I attended her that night with slavish humility, and saw her comfortably installed in her little third-floor sitting-room before I went back to my own chambers. I had taken five golden sovereigns from my hoard, and gave them to her when I wished her good-night. This was something to have worked for, this delightful privilege of ministering to her necessities, however coldly she might receive my service. I went home to think of her and dream of her; and I had the honour of attending her to the Temple Church next day, and of walking with her in the St. James's Park afterwards.

"It was during that walk that I urged upon her all the miseries of the step she contemplated taking; the difficulty of obtaining the assistance of her friends so long as she remained at variance with her father; the utter impossibility of finding any situation without the help and recommendation of friends; and, lastly, the absence of motive for such a course. Was I not at her command, ready to find a home in which she would be no dependent, but sole mistress, if she would only accept a home of my finding? Why should she not marry me at once, I argued; since she was determined not to go back to her father; and since, as she said herself, she was of an age to do what she pleased, without consulting any one? After I had pleaded for a long time, she agreed to consider my proposition, and to give me an answer on the following day.

All that Sunday evening I sat alone in my garret-chamber, unable either to read or write, and with no better occupation than to count the hours and minutes which must elapse before I could know my fate.

"When I called on Caroline the next morning, I found her still irresolute, and had all my pleading to go through again; but at last I wrung from her a half-unwilling consent to an immediate marriage, and I left her by and bye, feeling unutterably happy and unutterably important, with an enormous amount of business on my hands. But all at once, now that the critical moment had arrived, I was seized with a sudden feeling of doubt as to whether my father and mother would consent to this early marriage. Was it not almost certain that they would oppose such a step, on the ground of its imprudence that they would even forbid it? I knew my mother well enough to know that she would wish to become intimately acquainted with Caroline before she received her as a daughter-in-law; and how could Caroline remain in a square at the back of Fleet Street until my mother could be brought up from Yorkshire to make her acquaintance; or how could I take my betrothed to Pierrepoint an uninvited guest, and in the very doubtful position of a runaway daughter? And then there was another question which I scarcely dared ask myself, so very doubtful was the answer. If there were time and opportunity for my mother to become familiar with Miss Catheron, would the result of the acquaintance be very satisfactory? The changeful temper, the imperious will, which were so charming to me, might fail to fascinate an anxious mother when exhibited by the future wife of her son. Debating my position in long and painful meditations, I became impressed by the conviction that I must follow the dictates of my heart at all hazards, and trust to the future to reconcile matters with my relations. A year ago I should have as soon dreamed of jumping over London Bridge as of marrying without the knowledge or consent of my father and mother. But the bondage of affection and duty was only a spider's web in comparison with the chains that Caroline Catheron had riveted about me; and I flung every consideration to the winds rather than incur the hazard of losing the woman I loved.

"Early on the following day I made arrangements for our hasty marriage. As I was under age, and there would therefore be difficulty about a license, I had our bans put up at St. Dunstan's; for though I was base enough to keep the secret of my marriage from my relations, I was not prepared to perjure myself before a proctor. So, on the following Sunday and for two Sundays afterwards, the scanty worshippers in St. Dunstan's Church were asked if they were aware of any just impediment to the marriage of Godfrey Pierrepoint, bachelor, and Caroline Catheron, spinster; and on the fourth Monday after my divinity's arrival in London I stood by her side before the altar, in the semi-obscurity of a black winter's day, while a curate in a dingy surplice joined our hands in surely the most fatal union that was ever solemnised in that old City