a hundred children," Ethel said, who was rather jealous of disposition, "he would spoil them all." He found a fine occupation in breaking a pretty little horse for her, of which he made her a present, and there was no horse in the Park that was so handsome, and surely no girl who looked more beautiful, than Ethel Newcome with her broad hat and red ribbon, with her thick black locks waving round her bright face, galloping along the ride on "Bhurtpore." Occasionally Clive was at their riding-parties, when the Colonel would fall back and fondly survey the young people cantering side by side over the grass; but by tacit convention it was arranged that the cousins should be but seldom together; the Colonel might be his niece's companion, and no one could receive him with a more joyous welcome, but when Mr. Clive made his appearance with his father at the Park Lane door, a certain gêne was visible in Miss Ethel, who would never mount except with Colonel Newcome's assistance, and who, especially after Mr. Clive's famous mustachios made their appearance, rallied him, and remonstrated with him regarding those ornaments, and treated him with much distance and dignity. She asked him if he was going into the army? she could not understand how any but military men could wear mustachios ! and then she looked fondly and archly at her uncle, and said she liked none that were not gray.

Clive set her down as a very haughty, spoiled, aristocratic young creature. If he had been in love with her, no doubt he would have sacrificed even those beloved new-born whiskers for the charmer. Had he not already bought on credit the necessary implements in a fine dressing-case, from young Moss? But he was not in love with her; otherwise he would have found a thousand opportunities of riding with her, walking with her, meeting her, in spite of all prohibitions tacit or expressed, all governesses, guardians, mamma's punctilios, and kind hints from friends. For a while, Mr. Clive thought himself in love with his cousin; than whom no more beautiful young girl could be seen in any park, ball, or drawing-room; and he drew a hundred pictures of her, and discoursed about her beauties to J. J., who fell in love with her on hearsay. But at this time Mademoiselle Saltarelli was dancing at Drury Lane Theatre, and it certainly may be said that Clive's first love was bestowed upon that beauty; whose picture, of course, he drew in most of her favourite characters; and for whom his passion lasted until the end of the season, when her night was announced, tickets to be had at the theatre, or of Mademoiselle Saltarelli, Buckingham Street, Strand. Then it was that with a throbbing heart and a five-pound note, to engage places for the houri's benefit, Clive beheld Madame Rogomme, Mademoiselle Saltarelli's mother, who entertained him in the French language in a dark parlour smelling of onions. And oh! issuing from

the adjoining dining-room-(where was a dingy vision of a feast and pewter-pots upon a darkling table-cloth) could that lean, scraggy, old beetle-browed yellow face, who cried, " Où es tu donc, maman?" with such a shrill nasal voice-could that elderly vixen be the blooming and divine Saltarelli? Clive drew her picture as she was, and a likeness of Madame Rogomme, her mamma. A Mosaic youth, profusely jewelled, and scented at once with tobacco and eau-de-Cologne, occupied Clive's stall on Mademoiselle Saltarelli's night; it was young Mr. Moss, of Gandish's, to whom Newcome ceded his place, and who laughed (as he always did at Clive's jokes) when the latter told the story of his interview with the dancer. "Paid five pound to see that woman. I could have took you behind the scenes" (or "beide the seeds," Mr. Moss said), “and showed her to you for dothing." Did he take Clive behind the scenes? Over this part of the young gentleman's life, without implying the least harm to him-for have not others been behind the scenes; and can there be any more dreary object than those whitened and raddled old women who shudder at the slips?— over this stage of Clive Newcome's life we may surely drop the curtain. It is pleasanter to contemplate the kind old face of Clive's father, that sweet young blushing lady by his side, as the two ride homewards at sunset. The grooms behind in quiet conversation about horses, as men never tire of talking about horses. Ethel wants to know about battles; about lovers' lamps, which she has read of in "Lallah Rookh,” "Have you ever seen them, uncle, floating down the Ganges of a night?" About Indian widows,-"Did you actually see one burning, and hear her scream as you rode up?" She wonders whether he will tell her anything about Clive's mother: how she must have loved Uncle Newcome! Ethel can't bear, somehow, to think that her name was Mrs. Casey,-perhaps he was very fond of her; though he scarcely ever mentions her name. She was nothing like that good old funny Miss Honeyman at Brighton. Who could the person be?—a person that her uncle knew ever so long ago-a French lady, whom her uncle says Ethel often resembles? That is why he speaks French so well, He can recite whole pages out of "Racine." Perhaps it was the French lady who taught him. And he was not very happy at the Hermitage (though grandpapa was a very kind good man), and he upset papa in a little carriage, and was wild, and got into disgrace, and was sent to India? He could not have been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking at him with her honest eyes. Last week he went to the Drawing-room, and papa presented him. His uniform of grey and silver was quite old, yet he looked much grander than Sir Brian in his new deputy-lieutenant's dress. "Next year, when I am presented, you must come too, sir," says Ethel. "I insist upon it, you must come too!"

“I will order a new uniform, Ethel," says her uncle.

The girl laughs. "When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle, and asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the same question in my mind; and I thought when you went to the Drawing-room, perhaps the King will knight him. But instead he knighted mamma's apothecary, Sir Danby Jilks-that horrid little man --and I won't have you knighted any more."

"I hope Egbert won't ask Sir Danby Jilks how many people HE has killed," says the Colonel, laughing; but thinking the joke too severe upon Sir Danby and the profession, he forthwith apologises by narrating many anecdotes he knows to the credit of surgeons. How, when the fever broke out on board the ship going to India, their surgeon devoted himself to the safety of the crew, and died himself, leaving directions for the treatment of the patients when he was gone! What heroism the doctors showed during the cholera in India; and what courage he had seen some of them exhibit in action: attending the wounded men under the hottest fire, and exposing themselves as readily as the bravest troops. Ethel declares that her uncle always will talk of other people's courage, and never say a word about his own; and "the only reason," she says, "which made me like that odious Sir Thomas de Boots, who laughs so, and looks so red, and pays such horrid compliments to all ladies, was, that he praised you, uncle, at Newcome, last year, when Barnes and he came to us at Christmas. Why did you not come? Mamma and I went to see your old nurse; and we found her such a nice old lady." So the pair talk kindly on, riding homewards through the pleasant summer twilight. Mamma had gone out to dinner; and there were cards for three parties afterwards. "Oh, how I wish it was next year,” says Miss Ethel.

Many a splendid assembly, and many a brilliant next. year, will the ardent and hopeful young creature enjoy; but in the midst of her splendour and triumphs, buzzing flatterers, conquered rivals, prostrate admirers, no doubt she will think sometimes of that quiet season before the world began for her, and that dear old friend, on whose arm she leaned while she was yet a young girl.

The Colonel comes to Park Lane early in the forenoon, when the mistress of the house, surrounded by her little ones, is administering dinner to them. He behaves with splendid courtesy to Miss Quigley, the governess, and makes a point of taking wine with her, and of making a most profound bow during that ceremony. Miss Quigley cannot help thinking Colonel Newcome's bow very fine. She has an idea that his late Majesty must have bowed in that way: she flutteringly imparts this opinion to Lady Ann's maid, who tells her mistress, who tells Miss Ethel, who watches the Colonel the next time he takes

wine with Miss Quigley, and they laugh, and then Ethel tells him; so that the gentleman and the governess have to blush ever after when they drink wine together. When she is walking with her little charges in the Park, or in that before-mentioned paradise nigh to Apsley House, faint signals of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She knows the dear Colonel amongst a thousand horsemen. If Ethel makes for her uncle purses, guard-chains, anti-macassars, and the like beautiful and useful articles, I believe it is in reality Miss Quigley who does four-fifths of the work, as she sits alone in the schoolroom, high, high up in that lone house, when the little ones are long since asleep, before her dismal little tea-tray, and her little desk, containing her mother's letters and her mementos of home.

There are, of course, numberless fine parties in Park Lane, where the Colonel knows he would be very welcome. But if there be grand assemblies, he does not care to come. "I like to go to the club best," he says to Lady Ann. "We talk there as you do here about persons, and about Jack marrying, and Tom dying, and so forth. But we have known Jack and Tom all our lives, and so are interested in talking about them, just as you are in speaking of your own friends and habitual society. They are people whose names I have sometimes read in the newspaper, but whom I never thought of meeting until I came to your house. What has an old fellow like me to say to your young dandies or old dowagers?"

"Mamma is very odd and sometimes very captious, my dear Colonel," said Lady Ann, with a blush; "she suffers so frightfully

from tic that we are all bound to pardon her."

Truth to tell, old Lady Kew had been particularly rude to Colonel Newcome and Clive. Ethel's birthday befel in the spring, on which occasion she was wont to have a juvenile assembly, chiefly of girls of her own age and condition; who came, accompanied by a few governesses, and they played and sang their little duets and choruses together, and enjoyed a gentle refection of sponge-cakes, jellies, tea, and the like.-The Colonel, who was invited to this little party, sent a fine present to his favourite Ethel; and Clive and his friend J. J. made a funny series of drawings, representing the life of a young lady as they imagined it, and drawing her progress from her cradle upwards: now engaged with her doll, then with her dancing-master; now marching in her back-board; now crying over her German lessons: and dressed for her first ball finally, and bestowing her hand upon a dandy, of preternatural ugliness, who was kneeling at her feet as the happy man. This picture was the delight of the laughing happy girls; except, perhaps, the little cousins from Bryanston Square, who were invited to Ethel's party, but were so overpowered by the prodigious new dresses in which their mamma had attired them, that they could admire

nothing but their rustling pink frocks, their enormous sashes, their lovely new silk stockings.

Lady Kew coming to London attended on the party, and presented her grand-daughter with a sixpenny pincushion. The Colonel had sent Ethel a beautiful little gold watch and chain. Her aunt had complimented her with that refreshing work, "Alison's History of Europe," richly bound.-Lady Kew's pincushion made rather a poor figure among the gifts, whence probably arose her ladyship's illhumour.

Ethel's grandmother became exceedingly testy when, the Colonel arriving, Ethel ran up to him and thanked him for the beautiful watch, in return for which she gave him a kiss, which, I daresay, amply repaid Colonel Newcome; and shortly after him Mr. Clive arrived, looking uncommonly handsome, with that smart little beard and mustachio with which nature had recently gifted him. As he entered, all the girls who had been admiring his pictures, began to clap their hands. Mr. Clive Newcome blushed, and looked none the worse for that indication of modesty.

Lady Kew had met Colonel Newcome a half-dozen times at her daughter's house: but on this occasion she had quite forgotten him, for when the Colonel made her a bow, her ladyship regarded him steadily, and beckoning her daughter to her, asked who the gentleman was who has just kissed Ethel? Trembling as she always did before her mother, Lady Ann explained. Lady Kew said "Oh!" and left Colonel Newcome blushing and rather embarrassé de sa personne before her.

With the clapping of hands that greeted Clive's arrival, the Countess was by no means more good-humoured. Not aware of her wrath, the young fellow, who had also previously been presented to her, came forward presently to make her his compliments. "Pray who are you?" she said, looking at him very earnestly in the face. He told her his name.

"H'm," said Lady Kew, "I have heard of you, and I have heard very little good of you."

"Will your ladyship please to give me your informant?" cried out. Colonel Newcome.

Barnes Newcome, who had condescended to attend his sister's little fête, and had been languidly watching the frolics of the young people, looked very much alarmed,