expression of face, and staring at the bill that lay spread out upon the table before him. Then he made a sudden pounce at his pocket, and produced a little memorandum-book. He turned the leaves with a

rapid hand, and looked at the last entry.

"Good God!" he cried, starting to his feet, "one of the notes is the very one that Gervoise Catheron paid me yesterday morning."

Dorothy sprang to her feet too, white and trembling.

"Oh, how can you say that!" she cried. "You cannot think that Gervoise was the man who shot Mr. Holroyde!"

She stood looking at him for a moment, and then exclaimed with a little half-hysterical laugh:

"How silly I am!-as if Gervoise would hurt any one for all the money in the world. The wicked wretch who robbed Mr. Holroyde must have palmed the note off upon Gervoise. It won't bring him into any danger, will it? Oh, Henry Adolphus, tell me that it can't bring him into any danger!"

"I don't know about that," answered Mr. Dobb moodily. "When there's been highway robbery and murder, and an innocent man disposes of a portion of the property within something like twelve hours after the event, the innocent man is rather liable to find himself in a jolly disagreeable fix. I don't know how it may be for Catheron; but I know it's likely to be uncommon awkward for me."

And on this it was Selina's turn to be alarmed. That lady made a rush at her husband and embraced him hysterically, asking if it was to come to this, that a respectable young married man was to be accused of murder; and "oh, didn't I warn you harm would come of being intimate with Gervoise Catheron?" and "oh, Henry Adolphus, they never, never, never shall tear you to the scaffold;" and uttering a great many lamentations of the same character, which would have been extremely appropriate if the myrmidons of the law had been at that moment waiting to carry out the final arrangements for Mr. Dobb's execution.

The clerk extricated himself with some difficulty from the encircling arms of his wife.

"Don't be a fool, 'Lina," he exclaimed, "and don't begin bellowing till we know whether there's any thing to bellow about. I daresay it will all come right enough in the end. Of course Catheron must know where he got the money, and who gave it to him; and I daresay he'll be able to put the detectives on the right scent, and perhaps get the reward for his pains," added Mr. Dobb, rather enviously. "Some fellows are always dropping into luck; and the more idle and good-for-nothing they are, and the less they do to deserve it, the more they drop into it."

Mr. Catheron's career during his residence at Castleford had not been distinguished by any particular success; but for the moment the clerk felt as if his friend had been one of Fortune's most favoured children.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Mr. Dobb; "I'll just run round to the

barracks and see if I can get hold of Catheron. I may be able to put him up to a good thing. Stop where you are till I come back, Doll. I daresay I shall bring Gervoise with me, and we'll both walk home with you."

Dorothy consulted her neat little silver watch. Social tea-drinkings at Amanda Villas took place at a very early hour, and though the evening had seemed quite a long one, it was now only half-past eight.

"Come back as soon as you can, please, Henry Adolphus," said Dorothy; "I mustn't stay here after nine."

But she did stay after nine, for nine o'clock struck while Mr. Dobb was still absent. Poor Dorothy sat in silent agony awaiting his return, though she kept arguing with herself that there could be no cause for terror or anguish. Surely no harm could come of Gervoise Catheron's accidental possession of one of those missing notes. She knew nothing of the law of evidence; she had never studied the science of crime, or troubled herself to think about the details of those dreadful deeds which had been done within her memory, and whose dark records she had listened to, pale and shuddering, when the chief butler deigned to read aloud from the London newspapers in Mrs. Browning's room. She had no notion of the extent of the danger to which her lover was exposed; but she was stricken with fear and anguish nevertheless. It seemed so dreadful that the man she loved should be in any way involved in this dark mystery of crime and horror. So she sat pale and miserable, waiting for the clerk's return, and deriving very little consolation from Mrs. Dobb, whose discourse ran chiefly upon her own feelings, and the prophetic terror with which she had been inspired with regard to Gervoise Catheron, and the numerous warnings she had given her husband upon the subject of his friendship with the lieutenant, and the foreshadowings of the present state of affairs, which had been revealed to her in her dreams.

"I dreamt of riding in a third-class carriage only the night before last," said Selina, "and I think you'll allow that looked like coming down in the world; and Dobb was sitting opposite to me eating green apples. I never did like dreaming of unripe fruit; it signifies failure in your plans, you know, and you'll find it explained in that way in Napoleon Bonaparte's own Dream-book. And then the carriage came to a dead-stop all at once, and we were told to get out; and it wasn't a carriage after all, but a steamer going on dry land, and the paddlewheels had stuck in the ground, which of course I understand to signify that you are sure to come to harm when you choose acquaintance in a higher station to your own and get out of your element, as it were— But I see you're not listening, Dorothy; so I'll say no more."

"Oh, yes, Selina, I am listening. But you frighten me so when you talk of those bad dreams. I shall die if any harm comes to Gervoise."

"It's like your selfishness to think of nothing but your Gervoises.

But I feel myself bound to tell you that I'm afraid there's trouble in store for you, Dorothy. I dreamt last week that I saw you dressed in pink; and I never yet knew any good to come of dreaming of a pink dress."

While Mrs. Dobb was thus feeding the vague fear that oppressed poor Dorothy, the clerk's latch-key sounded in the street-door, and in another moment Henry Adolphus entered the little sitting-room. He was paler than Dorothy, and the humorous faculty seemed to have deserted him for the time being.

6

"Here's a pretty black look-out for us all!" he said; "Catheron has bolted-hasn't shown himself at the barracks since Thursday night; and his commanding-officer came out, as I was making my inquiries, and has been hauling me over the coals to any extent; and accusing me of being concerned in Catheron's going to the bad: low company, and twopennyhalfpenny betting, and pot-houses, and all that sort of thing, has been pelted at my head for the last half-hour. If it wasn't for such as you,' said the swell, there wouldn't be so many junior officers a disgrace to their corps. I have reported Mr. Catheron's disappearance to the Admiralty,' he said, and if he comes back, there'll be a court-martial held for the investigation of his conduct;' and then he called to one of the men: 'See this person out at the gates,' he said; and don't let me hear of him hanging about here again;' and upon that he turned upon his heel and walked off. Oh, shouldn't I have liked to have presented him with a testimonial in the shape of a small piece of my mind?"

Mr. Dobb might have said more in his indignation; but at this juncture his attention was called to Dorothy, who had fainted "dead off,” as Selina said.

The Streets of the World.

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

GENOA FROM FEDER'S HOTEL TO LE FONTANE AMOROSE. AN oyster-we have the authority of William Shakespeare for the assertion, and who dare gainsay that?-may be crossed in love. Why not? Who are we, conceited but petty humans as we are, that we should be so very dogmatic as to where the instinct of sense and sympathy begins or ends, or at what stage of animation the barrier is placed to inhibit entrance into the pays du tendre? There may be love-crossed oysters: why should there not exist constant crustaceæ and jelly-fish that never tell their love, but let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, prey on their transparent pulp? What a wonderful narrative the author of the Water - Babies could write if he chose of the amours of shell-fish, the perfidy of eels-to be skinned afterwards by Nemesis in the shape of a cook-and the blighted affections of the inferior order of sea-weed who had dared to raise their damp heads in admiration of some queen-like coral-reef! You have a vivarium, let us say, in your back-parlour. For aught you can tell, there may be going on in that glass-case, all day long, the most amazing comedies and tragedies and sensation-dramas of love. Among the moss and the pebbles and the shells what hopes, fears, doubtings, raptures may be at work! Every bubble that rises to the surface may be fraught with the last expiring sigh of some fish's flame; every waggle of a tail may be a contemptuous scorning, or a love-rapt writhing, or the sympathetic cadence of a heart half broken. Calumniate not that calm round goggle eye as blank and inexpressive. Mirrored on its retina may be the image of some peerless stickleback; beneath those scales may rage the fire of fishy passion. "An oyster may be crossed in love;" ay, but a gold-fish may find some constant carp as his mate, and a soft shell-crab may, by assiduity and fidelity, obtain his heart's desire. All of which reflections impel me to the conviction that I may have been inditing an intolerable amount of nonsense.

"What's in a name?" Much,-every thing; for it was merely the sound of a curiously-pretty name that led me to indite all this balderdash. "Le Fontane Amorose!" If an amorous oyster, I asked myself, be a feasible subject for the formation of a hypothesis, why should I dissertate upon a love-sick Pump? How did these fountains in Genoa fall in love? How did they speed in their suit? Who was the object of their passion? What came of it, after all? Success, a life-long happiness, as in the fairy tales; or disappointment, misery, and despair, as

VOL. XV.

MM

in the generality of love cases in real life? The fountains, perchance, fell in love with some dark-eyed brunette with scarlet petticoat, beneath which her little bare feet stole in and out like mice-mille grazie, Sir John Suckling, knight,-and with muslin kerchief coquettishly displayed upon her raven locks. Who is to tell, when this capricious irrational passion of love is the theme? It is just as likely that the fountains, like stupid, susceptible pumps as they were, became enamoured of the earthen pitchers or tin pots which the maidens brought with them to fill at their marble basins. Who has not fallen in love with the wrong person? Did not that silly Alton Locke tumble head over ears in frenzy with that vain and vapid Lilian Wynstay when, all the while, the Radical Cleopatra, Miss Stanton, was looking at him not unfavourably with her big black eyes? Who knows but that she might even have jilted Lord Ellerton had the tailor-poet played his cards well; or at least have laid her coronet, her widow's cap, and her snug jointure at his feet, after that sad accident had happened to my lord? But I never had any patience with Alton Locke. Throughout his career he was one of the Fontane Amorose-a now gushing and now dribbling pump, whose handle was plied now by the charity-boy and now by the political agitator. That pump-handle was destitute of the chain and padlock of the will. He a Chartist! He a Republican! I don't wonder that they sent him a pair of plush breeches per Parcels Delivery Company; that Mr. O'Flynn, editor of the Weekly Warwhoop, threw a chair at his head; that the Tottenham-Court-Road Convention "ran him out," as they say in Yankeeland; and after pining three years in gaol for a crime he had never committed, he fell sick of a fever, and emigrated to Texas, to die on his passage out. He wanted nerve. He wanted pluck. Had he possessed any, he would have stayed at home, given up politics, and started an insurance-company, or a working-man's journal, or a coöperative store. But he was always in love; and that love was of the soft and weak and snivelling kind. He fell in love with St. Sebastian, and then with the dean's daughter. He was in love with his books and in love with himself; and the case of that man who loves books for themselves and himself for himself is, from a mundane point of view, hopeless. The self-educated man must be essentially an egotist, as great an egotist as Goethe; but the infinite care he takes of himself, the rigid discipline to which he must submit in order that his self-instruction and self-instruction may progress and fructify,-the selfish self-denial, industry, continence, abstinence, he must practise, must all be directed to the attainment of one end-power. If he be an egotist of the right sort, he will make a good use of that power-the power begotten by knowledge-when he gets hold of it. The worst of it is that nine-tenths of us, when we do come into possession of dominion, forget that the time of living for ourselves has expired, and that that of living for others has arrived; and we make such a use of our new-found sceptre, that the angels turn away their beaming coun