"This Captain Everard," remarked Kinnaird, "is one of the most distinguished officers in the service-a man as superior to Lord Vaughan, in mind and manners, as Lord Vaughan is to a chimney-sweep-and, moreover, my most intimate friend."

"So be it," returned Owen, more calmly, but with intense obstinacy of tone, "nevertheless, his pretensions to the hand of Miss Kinnaird are simply ludicrous, and I do not intend that he shall have the opportunity of urging them again. Perhaps you will have the goodness to notify this to him."

66

No, Mr. Forde," retorted Frank, "I must_request you to be the bearer of your own messages-I cannot undertake the office."

'My dear Frank," said I, putting my hand on his arm, "it is not by irritating my brother that we have any hope of changing his resolution. You are naturally excited; now, do go away, and leave me to do the best I can with him. Go to Edith," added I in a whisper, urging him gently towards the door, "I think she ought to hear the truth at once."

He seemed, at first, disposed to resist my suggestion but at that moment a step was heard in the hall, and with a half-laugh and a significant look to me, he quitted the room, leaving me with the consolatory impression that he had gone out to join his friend, and, not improbably, to conduct him to Edith!

By this time Owen had quite recovered his coolness, which, indeed, rarely forsook him, and turning to me he said, with a deliberation which left no room for hope, "There is no use in discussing the subject. The young lady will, I dare say, shed a few natural tears, and pout a little, as in duty bound-but in a fortnight she will be ready for another lover, and by the year's end she will congratulate herself on having some one to act for her, who has the good luck to possess a little common sense. Only let this be distinctly understood, that I allow no interview, no engagement, no correspondence. I won't have an under-current of mystery to keep up sentimental nonsense in a silly girl's brain. Let it all be at an end, and, if she behaves well, I promise to say nothing to her about it. Tell her this, Peggy, and now let me get my luncheon."

"Owen, you are positively cruel. I do assure you this is no new girlish fancy that will pass away. It is unfortunate, I admit, but she is really and thoroughly attached to him."

My brother began to laugh. "I admire the real and thorough attachment of a girl of eighteen," said he. "A pack of nonsense! I beg your pardon, Peggy, but I certainly never made a greater mistake than in selecting you for a duenna--your manner of viewing things is so inimitably youthful. Take her to choose a new bonnet, or talk to her about her court-dress for the spring!"

The tone in which he spoke was inexpressibly provoking, and I felt my temper beginning to give way. "As you say," I replied, "it is useless to discuss the subject our views are so utterly opposite, that each speaks to the other as if in a foreign language. I consider you at least as much in the wrong as you consider me. Only, if you fancy it will be an easy task to induce Edith to give up her engagement, I can tell you you are completely mistaken.".

"You are angry," he answered, "yet you can scarcely be surprised that I don't feel any very profound confidence in your judgment just at present. I know your intentions are the best in the world-but I can't forget that it is scarcely a week since you wrote me word that Miss Kinnaird was in a fair way to become Lady Vaughan. My dear Peggy, if you will walk through the world with your eyes shut, and resist every effort to open them, you must at least suffer yourself to be led by the hand."

I bit my lips and was silent, and Owen withdrew to his bedroom. I went slowly up stairs to Edith's boudoir, where, as I had anticipated, I found both Kinnaird and

"Miss Forde, before I go-and I feel that I must not remain-I am anxious that you should do me justice Till this morning I was not aware of Mr. Forde's existence, much less of Edith's"-(he pronounced the word with a lingering hesitation of tone very unusual with him, and a most eloquent glance at the drooping figure on the sofa)-"much less of Edith's dependence on his will. I imagined that Frank and yourself were her sole guardians, and you know that, even when I thus thought, I was not guilty of the presumption of supposing myself an acceptable suitor."

No, no-not presumption-don't use the word!" murmured Edith."

He looked at her for a moment in silence, and then proceeded, though in a less steady tone of voice, "I am as conscious as Mr. Forde himself can be, that a poor man, and a man of no family, is, as the world judges, without a right-"

But here Edith interrupted him. Suddenly clasping his hand between her own, and lifting her beautiful face, all burning with blushes and suffused with tears, she exclaimed, "Oh, hollow nonsense! it is yourself that I love. One unset diamond is more valuable than a tiara of glittering paste! What could family or fortune have to do with you, except to receive honour from you?”

Recovering himself with an effort, a still keeping Edith's hand in his, Everard continue in a low restrained voice, the calmness of which betrayed the intensity of the agitation which he was repressing, "I should despise myself for ever were I capable of taking advantage of these feelings to involve her in a clandestine engagement; at her age-under her circumstances-it were unmanly and dishonourable. No! I must go for three years we part, and she is as free as if she had never known me."

You can

"She is free!" repeated Edith. "Ah! say it of me if you will; but you do not dare say it to me. not mock me by telling me that I am free, at the very moment when you are riveting my chains. But oh! such a happy prisoner!" she added, relapsing into tears, and speaking in a broken, faltering voice; "we have not time for all this conventionalism-this acting -oh! speak really to me !-this once more— this last time-speak as you are, and as you feel!"

His stoicism was fairly conquered. "My own Edith!" said he, in a voice tender as a mother's to her first-born-reverent as a devotee's to his saint-“I will not wound you any more by false phrases. It is true; you are my own; and were we to part for ten years, instead of three, I should esteem it sin to suffer one doubt of you to trouble my peace. My faith in you comes next to my faith in God; God grant it be not the stronger of the two! Bear these three years, for my sake; knowing that I am with you the whole time, though the wide world be between us, and that, when we meet, we shall meet as though we had never parted!"

She subdued her emotion to listen to him; raising her head, and holding her breath, as though she feared to lose a word. What evil spirit brought to my mind at such a moment her vain and girlish love of general admiration and attention, and suggested to me that she would fail in the refined and impassioned constancy which he demanded of her?

"And, remember this, my beloved," he continued more hurriedly, "that I go from you, a changed man, and that the change is your work. My misanthropy is gone from me. I feel that I have sinned against the world, and the race to which I belong. I feel and confess the folly and self-sufficiency of my distrust of others. Even at this moment, this thought makes me happy; for my faith and love are restored, or rather created

And so ends the history of the first period of my acquaintance with Edith Kinnaird. A nervous fever was the natural result of that day of agitation; but it was neither long nor severe; and Owen classed it with the hysterics and fainting-fits which he believed that all young ladies were capable of summoning to their assistance at pleasure. When I resigned her to the charge of Lady Frances Moore, she had recovered her health, and, in some measure, her spirits; for she was of an elastic and energetic nature, and was now possessed by the one sole purpose of cherishing secretly the recollection of her lover, and endeavouring to employ the three years of separation in rendering herself more worthy of him. I knew how soon this enthusiasm would flag; how wearily the slow hours would struggle onward; but in very pity I would not disturb it. Like the eagerness of a young horse at the foot of a long steep ascent, though transient, it was real, and would carry her forward unconsciously over a portion of the way. But the toil must begin; and, alas! how would she bear it?

With her tacit engagement Owen could not interfere -about the state of her feelings he did not trouble himself; and the next thing I heard was that she had been presented at Court in white satin and diamonds, and all London was raving of her matchless beauty.

ROAD-SIDE SKETCHES OF GERMANY AND THE GERMANS.1

WHATEVER the future fortune of Germany may be, it is to be hoped that its children will never lose their present morai character. They are the most engaging people possible, meaning not sprightly and amusing, but people with whom you rapidly and easily feel your self at home. The first point in their character which strikes one, is the honest simplicity which distinguishes almost every one you meet; there is none of the vainglorious vapouring of the French, or the loquacious impudence of the Yankee, or the morose self sufficiency of the English, but a good-humoured and affectionate single-mindedness and probity of thought and action, which at once sets one at ease even in a company of perfect strangers. From the fat old fellows, with scarce any necks and enormous paunches, whose whole life seems devoted to smoking long pipes and drinking coffee, to the chubby cheeked, yellow haired, round sterned little damsels whose existence is divided between reading romances and knitting stockings, this charming simplicity is universally apparent. And, united to this, is a good humour and kindliness of disposition which renders it still more agreeable: one seldom sces a German in a passion; this may be attributed to their phlegmatic temperament; but then, one still more seldom sees one of a sulky sullen demeanour; on the contrary, they seem always to have a smile and a kind word for every one and everything. All those little inconveniences, which would set an Englishman fretting and fuming for a day, are disposed of with a laugh, or at most a long winded but most harmless execration, and an extra whiff; nor, as they grumble less, do they enjoy less; on the contrary, they not only delight in all the beauties, whether rural or urban, of their land, but always take pleasure in pointing out to strangers whatever may be of interest to them. In fact, I do not know how the Germans ever acquired that character for boorish rudeness and bluntness of bearing which, in former

(1) Continued from page 393.

times at least, was commonly attributed to them. To me it seems that the honest kindliness of their dispositions has led them to exactly the right medium between our own surly reserve, and the chattering showy politeness of the French. The politeness of the French, from the peer to the meanest peasant, as contrasted with the demeanour, especially of our lower orders, has been commented on with admiration from the days of Addison and Goldsmith to our own, till it has become proverbial; and I do not deny them all the merit which they are entitled to claim on this score; but yet the politeness of the French always seems to me to have too much gloss and tinsel about it; the substratum of genuine kind feeling, which is the foundation of all true politeness, I cannot help thinking is generally wanting, or at any rate the outward froth and foam is so superabundant as entirely to conceal the reality beneath. But with the Germans it is quite the contrary: all their politeness seems to spring from, as it is accompanied by, good feeling and kindness of heart, so that, though there may be more homeliness and less finish about them than with their French neighbours, there is a heartiness and benevolence mingled with their courtesy, which makes it far more pleasing. Nor are these agreeable manners confined to the upper and middle classes. I remember, one morning rather early, in a somewhat out of the way place not far from the Rhine, being in want of breakfast, going into a small Gasthaus, or, as we should call it, road-side public house; the only provisions which could be produced without delay were brown bread and beer; and I sat down to discuss this breakfast at a table at which a labouring man was making his way through a repast composed of similar materials. He was but a working mason, and evidently very poor; but he made room for us, and proffered various little courtesies with as much politeness as if he had been a nobleman. Finding we were English, he entered into conversation about the country, and so forth, and, telling us that several of his relations had emigrated to America, asked our advice as to the expediency of his doing so himself, as to the best way of doing it, and various other matters; always apologizing for the liberty he was taking, and uniting in his conversation a degree of simplicity and politeness which contrasted strangely with what would have been the bearing of a peasant in Suffolk or Yorkshire in similar circumstances. When he had finished his breakfast, he rose with an apology and a regret that he was obliged to go, and, with a low bow, wished us good morning and a pleasant journey. Now, there was something very striking about all this to an Englishman, who is accustomed to connect boorishness of address with lowness of station, especially as there was nothing cringing or servile in the man's demeanour, but, on the contrary, a proper respect for himself, mingled with a sense of what was due to others. Then, the upper ranks reciprocate the same politeness of behaviour, and no one can travel in Germany without seeing everywhere numerous instances of perfect affability amongst those highest towards those lowest in station. One meets with very few of the Limkins class, very few of those superb personages who, feeling that

"Nature had but little clay

Like that of which she moulded them,"

are always afraid of the least communication with those of common mould, for fear that the pure china of which they are composed, should suffer from contact with mere earthenware. On the contrary, princes and nobles seem to put their patents of nobility into their pockets, and only to take them out with their passports. Our friend the Bavarian general was a capital instance of this sort of thing. Baron though he was, and knight of I don't know how many orders of merit, from the Black Eagle of Prussia to the Lion and Sun of Persia, he sat at a common table in an inferior inn, with shopkeepers, mailguards, and travelling pedlars, and conversed with them as comfortably as if they had all been titled guests,