the screen, which I know where to get, and the little piano and an easy chair for you-a very easy chair for you, sir-when you are disposed to be lazy and sociable, I will have nothing new. When you come up here you can forget you are in Palace Gardens; we can make believe we are back in the dear old den at Islington; that was the nicest house we ever had. Do you remember those breakneck stairs, and the unexpected steps, and the queer little rooms, and the delightful windowseats where I read all my fairy tales, and the endless cupboards, and the twisting twirling passages? O papa, why did you ever leave it? We shall never get such pears and peaches again as grew in that garden. And that mulberry tree! It was a sin to forsake such a place.'

Sir John laughed.

'You forget, dear, that it forsook me. It would not have me any longer at any price. It is all pulled down, and a street cut through the garden, and the mulberry-tree fallen under the axe, and the pears and peaches grubbed up, and a staring new terrace built on the ground which the old house covered. It was a nice house, Rachel, but I am afraid no one would think so except two such old fogies as we are,' and he stroked her fair young face lovingly as he uttered those words, and drew her hand within his arm while he led her from the room.

As they descended from floor to floor they looked once again into the several apartments, and walked at length from the boudoir on to the terrace.

'We shall have to give a housewarming, I suppose,' said the girl thoughtfully as they walked.

'I suppose so,' answered her father, and he sighed more deeply,

perhaps, though not so loudly as Mrs. Hemans, who had been thinking her thoughts in the kitchen, and found that she was growing very anxious indeed.

'I don't like the look on it,' she argued; they have been here an hour and more, and people never stop like that if they have not some notion of a place. What I want to know is, where I am to go-nothing may come of it after all; but still they may buy the house. I suppose all houses are bought some time, though I did think this one would never go off. I hoped it would stay empty my time, at any rate.'

She hovered uneasily about the basement staircase and the neighbourhood of the back hall, and hearing the visitors at length preparing to depart, met them as they came in from the terrace.

'I beg pardon, sir,' she said apologetically, but would you please to leave your card? The "gentlemen" always likes to know the name of the gentlefolks as call to look over the house.'

'They know mine,' was the answer, for I have been to them frequently about the matter. However, there is my card,' and he gave that and another half-crown to the old woman, who felt that the worst had come, that already the bitterness of death was past.

The young lady said 'goodmorning,' and again smiled pleasantly upon the caretaker as she passed out; but Mrs. Hemans felt incapable of response.

She tried to answer, but the words seemed to stick in her throat. She had feared the blow, and yet now when it fell it found her unprepared.

Been to the gentlemen, has he?' she thought as she watched the pair walk down the carriagesweep together. I suppose it is all as good as settled, then. I wish I had told them the first evening

about the damp in the housekeeper's room, and the rats in the larder-but there! I don't suppose it would have made a pin of difference. What do such as they care about damp, or rats, or what becomes of such as me? I should not have minded so much the first four months, but now I have got used to the place, and the place has got used to me;' and so lamenting that her occupancy of about forty rooms, only one of which she ever used, was drawing to a close, Mrs. Hemans shut the hall-door and turned back into the empty house.

She went down into the kitchen and stood for a minute in silent woe beside the dresser, still unconsciously holding in her hand the card with which the owner apparent had presented her. All at once her eyes fell upon it, and turning it over, she read,

'SIR JOHN H. MOFFAT,

Carlton Hill,

'Well, you do not look much to be a Sir John,' she muttered disparagingly. I wonder who you are and what you are; but it cannot make any difference to me, when once I have to leave my comfortable home, and go out into the world.'

As the managing partner in the firm of auctioneers she vaguely styled 'the gentlemen' said to her when the question of her final departure was being settled,

The fact is, Mrs. Hemans, you lived so long in the house, you thought you were going to stop in it for ever.'

CHAPTER III.

THE NEW TENANT.

UPON the whole, those who were interested in Holyrood House, and those who interested themselves in the subject, felt well satisfied

that the long-vacant residence should pass into the possession of Sir John Moffat.

The trustees were pleased, naturally, to get the purchase money; the solicitors were pleased because they were enabled to run up another nice little bill of costs; the auctioneers were pleased, for they at length received their commission, so long, to their thinking, overdue; and the creditors were pleased, as it seemed possible they might get some small share of the amount paid in hard cash by Sir John.

As regards other persons-the outside world-the multitude who had not the slightest occasion to busy themselves about the matter, they rejoiced exceedingly. Those who felt their own hold upon prosperity to be eminently insecure were glad to see one scarecrow removed out of their sight. To them there had been a terror, and yet a fearful fascination, about the empty house. It seemed a matter for rejoicing, that henceforth the place where such a downfall had been witnessed was to be inhabited by a perfectly solvent

man.

Concerning Sir John's position, there could be no question. He had not made his money by any commercial coup d'état, by any juggling, or rigging, or finessing. It was well known where he came from, who he was, where he had been born, how he climbed from height to height, and grew in favour with all those grave and notable persons in the City whose favour is worth having.

Scandal had never touched him. Envy herself could pick no flaw in his character. Of him not a man in London could say he was gluttonous or a wine-bibber; those who had dealings with his firm were unanimous in saying their word was their bond, and that

they would rather trust John Moffat's yea and nay than another person's solemn oath.

on

Generally there is another side to such a reputation — one which writers of fiction are somewhat fond of enlarging; but, in this case, the picture might have been reversed and the canvas revealed without compunction and without fear. Simply, in himself Sir John Moffat was exactly what he appeared to the worldan honest honourable gentleman, who had made his money fairly and hardly, who entertained a high idea of the responsibility of riches, who believed he should be held answerable for all the talents intrusted to him, who had a most tender conscience and a child-like heart, who, when he had done. wrong, rested not by day, thinking how he might repair his error or make atonement for it; who, educated the straitest of Calvinists, and holding sin in the most deadly abhorrence, was yet merciful even in his thoughts towards those who went wrong, knowing that sometimes the sturdiest soldier may drop out of the ranks, the bravest sailor make a mistake which shall shipwreck the whole of his after life.

Not to the possession of 'City influence,' or to any of those adventitious aids which often push a very commonplace person up the heights of fortune, did Sir John owe his worldly success and the respect in which his fellows held him.

That he had done well, and that he was regarded with the highest esteem, was due entirely to the weight and worth of his own character. Though he did not possess the great modern advantage of coming out of a gutter, or rising from the sweeping of offices to the ownership of them, he had worked very hard indeed

VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXVII.

early and left it late; he did not waste either his health or his money in the pursuit of pleasure, he did not leave to subordinates the conduct of transactions requiring thought and caution. Different from Mr. Seaton, all his commercial transactions were entered upon soberly and carried on quietly. His offices were plainly furnished, and their appearance was unobtrusive. While getting on in the world he kept no carriage, or riding horse, or expensive bachelor establishment. He lived in accustomed lodgings, and generally walked to and from the City; in his personal habits he was economical, and he had no luxurious or gluttonous tastes. If he looked forward in those days to any future, which might hold a greater happiness than his present supplied, it was that, at some period, he would perhaps be able to purchase a small estate in the country, and retire there with a competence and a pretty wife; but he had then no special estate in his mind's eye, was uncertain as to the exact amount competence should represent, and felt that the pretty wife must as yet be considered as vague a quantity as the special shire in which the house and land he meant hereafter to buy were situated.

When at length he did take a wife and settle down, both of which events happened much sooner than he intended, he lived even more quietly than before his marriage.

He found, in the then suburb of Islington, an old-fashioned redbrick house with a fine garden, where he located himself and his belongings and resided for ten years. During the whole of that time, it might be said, he saw no company, and did not seek to make acquaintances. His wife

knew a few-a very few people in the neighbourhood, and sometimes paid a morning call, and sometimes went out to tea; but of visiting, in the ordinary sense of the word, the Moffats were guiltless. Each year Mrs. Moffat, the children, and the servants went off to the sea; sometimes it was Lowestoft, sometimes Brighton, sometimes Torquay, sometimes Margate; but it was never any of the watering-places upon the west coast.

There Mr. Moffat proceeded by himself. He had relations in Lancashire, who could not, Mrs. Moffat's few acquaintances thought, have approved of his choice, for he never took his wife with him when he went to see them, and never asked them to his house. Moreover, he did not take the children down for their grandfather and grandmother to make much of, and he seemed as little proud of his handsome sons as a parent could well be.

In the household it was no secret that 'master and missus' had their differences.

They did not quarrel-at least he did not quarrel-but they were not of one mind. He went one way, she another. She was not an easy lady to serve, the servants asserted; and as time went on the idea somehow got abroad, fostered by her own exceeding disagreeableness, that she had been above her husband in rank, and only married him for his money.

'She does not care one straw about him,' the domestic detectives decided. If he were to be carried home dead some day, she would not shed a tear.'

It was perfectly true; she did not care for her husband in the very least; but she possessed the negative virtue or active vicewhich may it best be called?— of caring for no one else.

Of all scandal of that sort the house was perfectly clear. Whatever the cause of the coolnessand a coolness there undoubtedly was-it had nothing to do with undue fondness for any one, male or female.

Mr. Moffat could leave his home and wife with feelings of the most perfect security.

Living a life of such unusual retirement, and working hard at a business which proved more than ordinarily remunerative, Mr. Moffat found himself eventually not merely a rich, but a very rich, man; and when at the death of his father he inherited the bulk of a large fortune, he could have retired altogether from City anxieties upon a handsome income.

How much he was worth his wife did not know, and she might never have had an accurate idea of his wealth if he had been able to renew his lease of the house at Islington.

Not succeeding in this, however, it became necessary for him to shift his quarters; and under the delusion perhaps that he could lead the existence which seemed best to please him in one place as well as another, pitched his tent at Carlton Hill.

There honours were thrust upon him; there his wife finally made up her mind that she was the most ill-used woman in the whole world; there very plain words passed between the pair, and the first step into society was taken, which drew the husband and wife by almost insensible degrees into the vortex of fashionable life.

During the time of the distress in Lancashire, Mr. Moffat, unknown to his wife, had taken a prominent and distinguished part in alleviating some portion of the misery which was then endured by the manufacturing population.

He put his hand in his own purse freely, and money was put freely into his hands by others, who knew how ably all funds intrusted to him were administered. In charity, as in business, he left nothing to subordinates he thought he could do better himself; and while the cotton famine lasted he was in Lancashire almost continually, travelling there, investigating here, finding out cases of bitter poverty, helping all those who were willing to help themselves, pitiful to the weak, sympathetic with the strong who stood compulsorily idle, an assistance to those who, while anxious to assist, seemed bewildered at the extent of the assistance required.

He was never idle, never tired; his resources seemed almost inexhaustible, and yet so quiet and so modest was he withal, that not one of his colleagues but felt something ought publicly to be done to show that the whole country appreciated his efforts.

Amongst others, a certain nobleman, possessed of large political influence, was so strongly imbued with this feeling, that he worked unceasingly to obtain due recognition of his services; and when he felt almost certain his request was in the way of being complied with, mooted the matter to Mr. Moffat, then stopping in Lancashire.

To his astonishment Mr. Moffat instantly, and almost peremptorily, declined the proffered honour.

For the little I was permitted to accomplish,' he said, 'I thought of no reward, and I will take none. I appreciate your kindness, my lord; but the greatest kindness you can show so humble an individual as myself is to permit me to remain in obscurity.'

If he had desired a recognition of his services most probably he would have been suffered to go to his grave without any being pro

posed; but as matters stood, people refused to be satisfied.

So long as he lived quietly at Islington it might have been imagined his income would not warrant the assumption of any fresh dignity, and that he had good reasons for refusing the baronetage pressed upon him; but once he left that retirement, and went even so far out into the world as Carlton Hill, the world began to realise the fact that he was a very rich man, who could not, and should not, be permitted to please himself.

'Live like a hermit-pooh!' said wealthy gentlemen who knew him on 'Change, and were aware he had gone to a house near Regent's Park. You have remained buried far too long. Now that you are in our neighbourhood we shall not permit you to stand aloof from all of us; you must come and dine. Name an early day. Now we cannot take any refusal.'

But Mr. Moffat did give a refusal, and successive speakers had to take it. He was quite firm. He said he never was much of a visiting man, and he never could become one. Business was quite enough change for him; he had no aptitude for mixing in general society. He was a quiet person, who liked quiet ways.

Repulsed in front, the enemy attacked him in flank. Unable to conquer Mr. Moffat, the besieging party bethought them their wives might seduce Mrs. Moffat.

Unless she is an exception to all rules, she must like to go into society,' said the ladies, preparing to win victory.

Mrs. Moffat was an exception to almost all rules, nevertheless she was fond of visiting.

'She would accept their invitations,' she said, willingly, but she could not answer for Mr.