"Don't you ? Then all I can say is-you must be a far more extraordinary fellow than I am, or else you must be a confoundedly learned one," said Fitz. "Why?"

"Because," replied the sub, with a grin, "you are, beyond all doubt, the greatest talker in the regiment; and if you only talk of what you know something about, the conclusion is obvious, dear boy, to the meanest capacity."

Tiptop laughed now. "At all events," he said, "I don't put on the airs of a field-marshal expect ing the thanks of Parliament and of a grateful country, for what others helped me to do. I suppose every girl you spin round the room to-night will be told, with your confounded assurance, how the decorations were designed and carried out by yourself' alone I did it' and all that sort of thing; while we all just handed you up what you called for, and fooled around."

"Not a bit of it! I'll give you the fullest credit for making that crooked star in front of the gallery, you may depend on it."

Tiptop suddenly stopped this banter to feel nervously for his eye-glass; and having captured and replaced it, he changed his position in order to obtain a better view of some beauty who had just entered the ball-room, and was creating a sensation in her immediate circle.

"I tell you what it is," he said, "only for that too generally pervading sensation of mist and moonshine which these airily dressed and charming creatures always bring with them-the glamour of muslin and beaming faces-all the decorations in the world, including my handiwork and yours, Fitz, wouldn't count for much."

Bateman paused to give effect

to his reply. "I never knew until now that you went in for being a second-rate philosopher as well as a talker. Never mind, old boy-here goes for a plunge into the midst of the mist and moonshine;" and he left in search of a handsome partner.

"The force of example," muttered Tiptop, as he gathered himself together, and prepared to follow. "A fellow's fancy runs away with him, and he goes for a Juno in these dazzling halls of light,' to find his partner nothing but a commonplace cloud of soft seductive millinery. This classical retrospect is all very well; but I'm in for it all the same. Ah! Tynte has secured the red-haired girl already! Perhaps Lieutenant Fitzmaurice Bateman of ours isn't so big a fool as he looks, after all. One must not judge too much by appearances. There may be something up." He paused now to look around him. "I must go and try my luck with Georgie Collyrium, before she gets snapped up by that insinuating Garth." And off he went accordingly.

Georgie was the daughter of the leading doctor of Westerly, and had been "out for-well-for some seasons, we won't say for how many; there is no use in that disagreeable sort of particularity. She was a first-rate dancer, handsome and well made, and had an extremely fine pair of eyes which she knew how to use to the best advantage. It was pretty certain that she would come in for money, as there was no doubt about the father's wealth; nevertheless she had not succeeded in getting a husband, and was gradually settling down to the position of what is familiarly known as a "garrison hack." She was, despite a strong spice of vulgarity, a favourite on the whole; and she danced so

ultra well, that it would have been a loss if she had been taken off to Lumbago Island by Surgeon - Major Colchicum, who had proposed for her the day after her first ball.

If he came back now, and were to ask her again, would she go? Why speculate? She seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and was eagerly sought after for every dance.

On this occasion, though early in the field, Tiptop found his worst fears realised; he was distanced in the race by Captain Garth. However, he was consoled by a nodded promise gasped out over the captain's shoulder as she whirled past; and he found himself rewarded by being booked for the next polka. He wasn't long in finding a substitute for Georgie, pro tem., having very nearly collided with the major and his partner, Miss Harman, in the endeavour to take a short cut towards a particular fair one.

But the major's partner, though introduced to the reader at a public ball and at the end of a chapter, must not be dismissed in so curt a fashion. She is entitled, in our opinion, for many reasons,

to a special one all to herself-and she shall have it.

Meanwhile, do we owe an apology to the strait-laced among our readers if we have any suchfor devoting so many pages to the frivolous subject of dancing? I don't think so. If my memory serves me rightly, even Lucian devotes a whole dialogue to it, and a staid philosopher is thereby converted, and brought to see the error of his ways, and the extent of his prejudice. Nay, more, we are told that even the great Socrates himself not only danced, but actually set about learning to do so after he had arrived at years of discretion ! Surely it is a very strong argument in favour of dancing that, on the authority of a Greek classic, this great philosopher was not above asking Terpsichore to do him the honour of a "spin" on the light fantastic toe; and does not the poet ask and

answer

"What are breath, speech, echoes, music, winds

But dancings of the air in various kinds?

I forget who the poet was, but that has nothing to do with the sentiment or the argument.

by persuading herself that it was no heavier as it grew into an ox. From these instances it would appear that, though the ancients were given to fable, they were pretty much of my way of thinking. You may—

"Convince a man against his will, He's of the same opinion still;

but you can't convince a woman against her will, no matter what the logic of facts may be; though she may often convince herself in spite of either facts or logic-just as the fancy takes her. The mental process which the average feminine mind goes through, in judging others of its own sex, leads generally to the conclusion that the one favoured of men is at best but an actress, or has a happy knack of deception which is more than a match for the over-soft and credulous biped whom she is born to rule, and whom it is her legitimate object to ensnare and capture, and who turns out-it must honestly be owned a worthless "catch "" too often.

But it is only fair to acknowledge that even men disagreed as to whether Lavinia Harman was handsome or ugly, or merely plain; the question was among them an open one, notwithstanding the female assurances that she was a "regular fright." If, however, their opinions differed about her personal appearance, there was a perfect consensus of sentiment among them as to her good qualities.

She was known to be rich, too, so that she had no lack of devoted worshippers, who vied with each other for the honour of her hand; but she took all this ardour and admiration as a matter of course, and discounted it accordingly. She estimated the general eagerness, on the night of the garrison

ball, to secure her as a partner for each dance exactly at its true value.

She was also known to be very clever, without endeavouring to pose or show off as a blue-stocking; and was one of those rare women to whom men pay instinctively the compliment of not talking nonsense- -that is, when they are able to talk sense. They never spoke to her about the weather if they had brains to converse coherently on deeper subjects; and yet the inane type of "young man of the period," who had no brains worth mentioning, liked her too, because she had that happy art of leaving him perfectly satisfied with himself a state of feeling which he seems always to look upon as arguing merit on his part. She never snubbed him, but preferred to get out of the company of those who deserved snubbing as quickly as she could. Her wealth made her suspicious; but she kept her suspicions to herself, and went about among her acquaintances apparently non-observant, but with a keen eye for the reading of character.

Her early history is soon told. She was an orphan-a banker's only child, living now and for many years past with an old maiden aunt whom she loved, and who very conveniently did the chaperon on occasions such as this. Her grandfather had been in trade as a local contractor for the supply of necessaries to the troops, and ended by becoming the owner of the best town-house in Westerly, and a money-lender on a large scale. The moneylending business assumed, in the hands of his son, a more legitimate and respectable aspect, and gradually developed into banking and financial agencies.

He married into one of the

county families—the DeuceatoyMandevills-the head of which was in embarrassed circumstances, and whose only daughter had no alternative between absolute want and a rich husband. The marriage was not a success from either a social or domestic point of view, as the banker came to know by bitter experience. Negotiations with his impecunious father-in-law to take the daughter back for "a consideration" in gold, which would have set him on his legs again, were pending with every prospect of success when the old gentleman died. The banker had to pay the expenses of his funeral, and also the cost of erecting the splendid monument to his memory, which stands in the chancel of Westerly church.

But if plain truth must be told, the banker was considered by his wife to have got far more than his full value-in fact, compound interest-for his matrimonial venture, by being permitted to place on perpetual record in the parish church the fact that he had been the son-in-law of Deuceatoy-Mandevill of Hellverly, and the husband of the last of that longpedigreed and very blue-blooded

race.

The lady was not young when she married; and there was great betting among the clerks in the office, and speculation among matrons, as to whether the Harman race would continue or cease. After five or six years had passed away the point was considered all but settled, when, to the general astonishment of Westerly, the banker found himself likely to become a father. Great preparations were made for the happy event, which, however, turned out to be somewhat disappointing in the result. He had set his heart on a son and heir, but Providence did

not see fit to gratify him. Mrs Harman's life was saved with great difficulty. The daughter, instead of becoming a bond of union between them, only proved to be the reverse. The Deuceatoy-Mandevill blood was hot as well as blue, and resented the decay of that affection on the part of the father, which she had previously done her utmost as a wife to estrange. She died of chagrin and sheer vexation, and her farewell words were but a sardonic expression of the gratification he would have in adding her name to the pompous inscription on the monument.

Rumours got abroad about the domestic life the banker led for many years; but there was no one living, at the time we write of, who had been a witness of the reality save old Aunt Polly Harman, who loved her brother too well ever to tell mortal all she knew. Fortunately Lavinia was too young to remember anything.

Of course the past was raked up, as far as it was known, now and then at social scandal gatherings, by a few of the oldest inhabitants. The most malignant of the bank officials used to say confidentially to certain cronies of his, "It's all very well, my dear sir; but you have a man-devil, a deuce, and a hell in the three names: add a woman to it and take your change out of the remainder." After this he would shake his head. But he came to a bad end; and the male portion of the community was now so entirely and heartily in Miss Harman's favour, that a few spiteful old crones, with the proverbial want of charity, could make no head against her popularity.

She was not offensively strongminded, but she interested herself warmly about everything in the way of improving the social and

in fact, as she deserved to be, a power in Westerly; and learned men whom she brought down from London to advise and help on the work, found in her a "marrowy vein" which delighted them.

Even the bitterest enemies she had among the Westerly girls were obliged to acknowledge that if her hair was red it was all her own; but she got little credit from them for this, because she couldn't, they said, "get any false hair to match it." She didn't paint, they also acknowledged; but Miss Grumblethorpe accounted for this by explaining that her face was like a turkey-egg, and that freckled people never could paint, as it showed up the freckles so dreadfully. She was an authority, as she painted herself; and hoped to succeed by her skill in the art of decoration in captivating a brokendown, pauperised, purblind dragoon, of good family but bad character, who had already proposed for and been promptly rejected by Lavinia. Miss Grumblethorpe had no time to lose; and she held the opinion that after all it was better to have a man without money than money without a man, as doubt less Miss Harman would come to know.

Lavinia didn't give her own sex the satisfaction of being in any way eccentric. She followed the fashions as they changed. They could not call her "dowdy," because she showed her uncommon good sense by merely following these fashions at as great a distance, and with as little extravagance, as was consistent with not making herself in any way peculiar or remarkable. This was specially the case on the occasion

of a public ball like the present. And she was not given to wearing much jewellery. Some people said she was old, but she wasn't; for she could not be more than twentytwo or three, notwithstanding Georgie Collyrium's assertion to Spunner (whom she was conducting through the mazes of "The Lancers") that "unless she was old she couldn't possibly have had time to read all the stupid books that she had got through and knew all about.' This argument might have been conclusive if put before Lieutenant Fitzmaurice Bateman, who never went beyond his own experience for conclusions; but Spunner held out on the question of age, and added a rider declaring Lavinia to be "simply charming."

"Well, that's not bad," said Georgie, "considering that you have not been half-a-dozen times in her company. And I suppose you think her pretty too-you men have such queer notions."

"No, I don't," replied Spunner, promptly-"not half so pretty as you, 'pon honour." This was an effort to recover lost ground.

Georgie swallowed the compliment voraciously, and looked as if it agreed with her.

"Some people are always raving about her. It is quite absurd to listen to them; and it is quite a relief to find one man who considers her plain. I think I'll tell her. I'm very intimate with her, you know.

Besides all that, she's a sort of girl who won't mind."

"You must not do anything of the kind," said the lieutenant, becoming seriously frightened.

"Why?" asked Georgie. "Goodness gracious! don't look so very much alarmed. Are you afraid of her?"

"No; but I don't think her plain. I never said she was plain.