"You and I agree upon a great many subjects, Mary." "We do." "And your happiness," he continued, "is about the dearest thing to me on earth." "And yours to me," she replied. "I hope you will get a good husband, and I a good wife, one day, Mary," he said. "I hope we shall meet in heaven," she answered, in her winsome way. He closed cheerfully the door of the cab wherein she had seated herself, and Noel told the burly driver to proceed to Hampstead. "I will be with you in the evening," he said to Mary. "Do not wait dinner for me. I have a great deal to do down at Westminster. But keep a cup of tea warm, at least." "I will," she answered, with a smile; "I know the exact strength you like it, Noel." "Always housekeeping," he replied; "it's your vocation." Mary laughingly nodded in the affirmative, and drove off to Hampstead. "You pine among your halls and towers: Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these." TENNYSON. 'AUVERGNE, as soon as he had parted with Mary at the Marble Arch, re-entered Hyde Park with the intention of proceeding towards the Courts at Westminster, where he expected to meet a London attorney at half-past three o'clock, relative to the information which he was seeking concerning that important will-case in which he was engaged. He walked leisurely along, contemplating with the curiosity of a stranger the display of wealth and nobility moving backward and forward; and more than once he sighed when some girl-face studied him, while its owner, queenlike, reclined amidst the luxurious folds of her lordly carriage. Having reached Hyde Park Corner he stood for a few minutes, leaning against the iron railing, attracted by the sight of "London Society" taking its afternoon exercise. The horses pleased him nearly, if not as much as the silks and satins of fickle Fashion. Now a splendid trotter hurried on, driven by a cool, foreign-looking figure in unpretending costume; next moment a yellow carriage, nicely balanced on the safest springs money could purchase, crawled by, and from the window peered the withered face of some wiry old dowagercountess, who clings to life with the tenacity of a nine-lived cat. He had hardly time to forget the disagreeable vision of the ancient dame, when a landau dashed by, brilliant and "of the period," and graced by two young charming girls, merry with the exultation of their own innocent happiness, and the lovely sight of whom pours healing balm into many a bleeding heart, as they prattle in their girlish joy and seem to know not, or to care not, for the imperial power of their exquisite beauty. D'Auvergne smiled when he saw them, for to look at them made him delightfully happy; it was such a wholesome thing to gaze into faces of good women! He was still glancing amiably after the receding landau, when another followed, and in it sat alone the daughter of a duke— the Lady Marguerita Dashbrook. She turned her eyes languidly, half-contemptuously, towards the footpath, where London loungers moved slowly or paused, yawning with the fatigue of last night's dancing, and leaned, as a nob should lean, against the iron railings. She was an object of interest in many of those eyes that returned her glance expressively, and studied the indefinite points of beauty in her clear-cut face. One or two lifted their newly-shaped hats, and her gleaming carriage rolled rapidly onward; then brightly a sudden interest lit up her passionless countenance, and a hidden fire flashed, spiritlike, from her proud dark eye. She exclaimed to the coachman, "Only drive half way this time. Turn back then.” "All right, my Lady." When she drove back, and was passing the Corner once more, she gazed with intense scrutiny at the group of carefully equipped loungers. She saw not the only one in their midst whom she desired so much -so very much!-to behold again! And again she sank back mournfully within her carriage, with a rigid countenance which betrayed bitter disappointment. "Drive down Piccadilly, and then into Regent Street," she said. The coachman with alacrity obeyed-for my Lady was one not to be disobeyed-and was guiding his horses towards the arch which led out of Hyde Park to Piccadilly, when the sudden interest lit up brighter than before the passionless countenance of Lady Dashbrook. Quick as lightning a strange thought struck her, and she acted straightway upon its unusual prompting. Detaching from her bosom a most valuable brooch, she dropped it from the carriage, close to the arch, at the feet of a quiet-mannered, well-dressed gentleman who stood upon the pavement, waiting there until her carriage should pass on its splendid and leave the dust-subdued road clear once more. He beheld the costly trinket sparkling brilliantly upon the water-refreshed ground, and hastened to pick it up out of harm's reach. Then he shouted to the burly coachman-to the footmen: the latter looked around, and one of them exclaimed, "Stop the horses, Williams!" way "Drive on," said Lady Dashbrook. "A gentleman is calling to us, my Lady, and holding up something in his hand, as if you had lost it, my Lady." "Drive on, I say!" she answered, impatiently. So Williams, well-fed and submissive, drove down populous Piccadilly, and, devoting his skilled atten |