Moffat;' and then, as with one voice, the fair temptresses begged of her not to trouble herself about her husband.

If you come,' they declared, 'he is sure to follow,' and the result proved the justice of their argument. Mrs. Moffat came, and Mr. Moffat followed; and then society was delighted and thought it had done a very clever thing, and that it had performed a 'really charitable action when it drew those people out of their shell.'

'What can Mr. Moffat be thinking about!' the ladies cried. 'He has a daughter growing up, and sons getting on, and another daughter still; and how can he expect the girls to marry or the boys to make a figure in the world if they never see any one and never go anywhere? Mrs. Moffat, I am sure, seems quite rusted with the solitary existence she has led. She says herself she feels almost bewildered when she gets amongst a number of guests.'

'I fancy she has been some poor great man's daughter that Moffat met when she was quite young,' said one individual, speculating about the lady, as indeed every one did who spoke to her. 'Well born and without a sixpence most likely, living in utter retirement, and then Moffat no doubt came by with his money-bags. She seems to me as if she had never been anywhere, or seen anything in her life; but is not she handsome? What must she not have been in the way of beauty when she was a girl!'

Certainly there did seem to be a mystery about Mrs. Moffat. She never spoke of her early life; never said where she was born, or by whom educated; had never a word to say concerning father or mother, brother or sister, or the friends of her childhood and the companions of her girlish days.

She was not a Londoner-some clever questioner extracted much; but beyond that fact no one could get. She might have come from some island mentioned in no chart, for any information that was elicited from her.

As for trying to pump the children, that was worse than useless; it was irritating; they knew nothing, literally nothing, of their mamma's relations and antecedents. No old servant had there ever been attached to the family to tell them anything of their mother's early days; her beauty; the gentlemen who were crazy for love of her; the way their papa met her.

They had never been down to any grand place in the country which had once belonged to her people; they knew nothing of any field-marshals, or admirals, or bishops, or deans, or lords, or celebrated commoners, whose names were preserved in the family archives, and with whom mamma claimed kindred; they had never heard anything about their mamma's mamma or papa; they could tell nothing, for they knew nothing. If secrecy concerning her antecedents were desired by Mrs. Moffat she had taken an admirable method to insure it, for children no more than grown-up people can talk of things concerning which they are totally igno

rant.

In sober earnest, if Mrs. Moffat had appeared in London as suddenly as Mr. Seaton had disappeared from its midst, less could not have been known or found out as regards her origin.

That she was not clever or accomplished her visitors soon discovered; but they found she had a temper which made up for all deficiencies of culture and education. A haughty defiant temper, that would have swept down, or

by, or over any obstacle which came in her way; a restless ambition; a discontented dissatisfied nature; and a heart colder than ice.

Here were the elements of sufficient domestic misery, and yet the household at Carlton Hill could not have been described as thoroughly wretched.

Husband and wife seemed to go on their separate ways with as little dissension as might be.

Mr. Moffat did not interfere with the conduct of the house, or with Mrs. Moffat's penchant for society. He went to the City as he had always done. She began to visit a great deal, which she had never done. The same daily governess who was engaged for the girls when they lived at Islington still continued to teach them after the removal to Carlton Hill. They had masters, and were well taught; and the eldest daughter made good use of her opportunities, and learned rapidly and well.

The boys were sent to school, and, consequently, if Mrs. Moffat had ever recognised the claims of domestic duties, she must have found them considerably curtailed.

Literally from morning to night she had nothing to do except dress, drive, visit, and receive visitors. It was a life she took to kindly for a time, and comparative peace reigned in the household until that question of the baronetage was raised over again, and this time, unhappily, in Mrs. Moffat's hearing.

She had never heard a word of it before. Her advice had never been asked, her opinion never taken. Long, long previously her husband had declined the honour, and hoped and believed the subject could not be revived; but friends were officious, and acquaintances troublesome.

'Why should he not be a baro

net? It would be nice, they all felt, to call him Sir John, and the ball was accordingly set rolling again, with the result that, for the second time, Mr. Moffat was sounded on the subject and found to be as firm in his refusal as ever.

'But, my good sir, only consider,' urged a gentleman, who would have undertaken to convince any one of the error of his ways. Think what you are throwing away-position, influence, distinction. You are not merely refusing all these for yourself, but you are flinging them away out of the reach of your children. In the interests of your eldest son I doubt greatly whether you have a right to decline a title so gracefully offered.'

'I do not doubt at all,' answered Mr. Moffat. 'I have said before, and I can only repeat my words, that no inducement you could hold out would tempt me to accept this offer.'

But why?' persisted his offici ous friend.

'Am I bound to give my reasons?' asked Mr. Moffat.

'Well, no; I won't go so far as that, yet still-'

'Cannot you see,' interposed another gentleman, 'that our friend is of the opinion of the individual who said, when offered a similar honour, "May I entreat the king to commute the sentence to knighthood, so that the disgrace may die with me"? There was another Irishman, who, one morning, rode forty miles after the knighting Lord-Lieutenant to ask him to undo the evil he had done in his cups, and remove the Sir from before his name.'

There was an awkward pause. Sometimes an anecdote holds within its tortuous twists some truth which never appears bitter till told under special circumstances to some particular man.

Mr. Moffat broke the silence.

'I thank you,' he said gravely; 'you have exactly expressed my feelings, only much better than I could have expressed them myself.'

'You cannot be serious.'

'I am perfectly serious. If I were to accept a baronetage I should feel it my duty to set aside a large portion of all I possessed for the benefit of the baronet who should come after me, and I do not feel inclined to do anything of the kind. Amongst many other reasons that is one for my decision.'

'Do you mean you intend to refuse this honour?' asked Mrs. Moffat breathlessly.

'I have already done so, more than once,' he explained.

'Then it is a shame,' she broke out. 'If you have no consideration for me, you ought to have for the children. What has Philip done, poor boy, that you snatch this chance from him? What have I done that you will not give me rank and standing when the opportunity presents itself.'

Mr. Moffat did not answer her in words, but he looked at her steadily.

'I think you have not considered the subject in all its bearings,' he remarked after an uncomfortable pause, and there was a significance in his tone, as there had been in his glance, which did not escape the notice of one man at all events who was present.

'I wonder what there is wrong in the house,' he marvelled, as he strolled down the Edgware-road. 'She is not easily stopped when once she gets the bit between her teeth; but he pulled her up in a second. Nobody would imagine Moffat had so firm a hand.'

A few days after, some one told him Moffat was going to be knighted.'

'He consents to what he considers the lesser evil,' said this

gentleman, laughing. 'Queer fellow, isn't he?'

'My lady wins,' thought the other. 'At last she has been given and has taken half a loaf upon the principle of that being better than no bread.'

Yes, my lady won; she wanted the title and he gave her that; when she desired the house in Palace Gardens he got her that. She had to fight for both a little, but the subsequent possession seemed sweeter for the struggle.

'What can your fancy be for living in Palace Gardens ?' said Sir John wonderingly.

Over dinner a few days previously a member of the firm of solicitors who still held the Seaton estate in trust had been talking about the place, and remarked,

'Now that would be just the house for you, Sir John, and you might have it for an old song. If you made anything of an offer I know we could accept it.'

'That is an offer you are not very likely to receive from me,' answered Sir John; but he reckoned without his host.

My lady had her clique of associates, and with one consent they all began, when she mentioned the place, to sing the praises of Palace Gardens.

'Dear Lady Moffat ought certainly to live there. Sir John should be compelled to buy the

house.'

'Why, such a chance might never occur again. Positively, my dear, he must be mad-stark staring mad even to think of letting such an opportunity slip through his fingers.'

'I know the house perfectly. What a place it is! Perfect, my dear, simply perfect; the very rooms for company; certainly you must go there. I can only say it would be wicked of you to let any one else get it; and with your

girls growing up too! Why, Rachel must be over twenty, and she is neither married nor engaged.'

'And with all my heart and soul I hope she never may be,' said Sir John, when his wife repeated this amongst many other utterances to him.

'Why should she not?' asked Lady Moffat, turning upon him furiously. There is no reason she should be ashamed of her father, I suppose?'

Sir John said nothing; but he looked at her fixedly with the look which had before attracted the notice of more than one.

'Do you mean she has reason to be ashamed of me?' demanded

Lady Moffat, answering that look with eyes that never sank under her husband's gaze.

'I did not say that,' he replied. 'Only implied the fact.' 'Take any meaning out of my words you prefer,' he answered wearily.

'O, yes, it is all very well for you,' she was beginning, when he stopped her with a warning gesture.

'I won't have any more of this. I cannot bear it. Do not I suffer enough? Have I not suffered enough without your adding to the torture? If you have no memory, I have. If you are devoid of conscience, I am not so fortunate.' Then instantly he checked himself. It was wrong of me to say that,' he went on; 'I am sorry, but you try me-you try me sometimes almost more than I can bear!'

I was very much struck by a leading article which appeared in the Times many years ago during the Second Empire, which showed a great deal of political sagacity and prescience. At the Paris elections the devoted supporters of the Empire were defeated by the Opposition candidates. This petted, jewelled, marbled, enriched Paris' -so said the Times leader, or in some such words-' has suddenly turned round and struck the Emperor a violent slap in the face.' That slap in the face was the precursor of the political volcano which broke out some seven years later, directly after the catastrophe of Sedan. I am afraid that the Emperor did not receive that political slap in the face very artistically. Otherwise he might have made a better thing out of it. In these days such slaps should be treated after an artistic fashion. Simply to give a return slap may be straightforward and vigorous, but it is excessively inartisticcoarse rough work below criticism. When a borough returned a member contrary to the wishes of its noble proprietor, that noble proprietor, in return for that slap in the face, declared, what Napoleon III. could not declare of Paris, that he would cause the grass to grow in the streets. He made the vow and kept it. He did not, however, in the long-run gain very much by the notion; for his treatment of that borough was made a very strong argument in the House of Commons for the passing of the Reform Bill.

A slap in the face is a very unpleasant infliction. It makes the nerves tingle, the cheeks to burn, and the eyes to dance. It is a shock to the nervous system generally. It is only physically administered-judiciously or injudiciously-to very young people. I generally hold out to them in terrorem the fate of that unfortunate young pig who was put to death because he had too much cheek. It is the cheeky individual, the puffed-up person, who seems to invite and almost to constrain the slap in the face. At the same time, we may be quiet and humble-only 'trust our modest worth,' as the Laureate has it-and yet be the recipients of the unmerited slap. Certain slaps in the face come to most men. Some of them may not really be intended as slaps; we are thin-skinned, and in our sensitiveness we take them to be such; but after all deductions, we witness in ourselves and others, after a metaphorical fashion, the administration of very real and resounding slaps. Your next-door neighbour, with whom you have long been on familiar terms, gives a party to the principal people of the neighbourhood, and he evidently does not consider you one of the principal people, for he passes you over. You think that your last article was decidedly brilliant, and the friendly editor slips you a private note, just to hint that you are getting prosy. You have a slight weakness for oratory, and you go to some institution of which you think your