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and trot about the Continent together, attended merely by a valet and a waiting-maid.

All had been arranged, and the spirits of both had revived under the prospect of change, and an easy life with no demands upon it, when suddenly Mrs. Lavenham had exclaimed: 'But what about the girls? We cannot possibly take Monica and Isabel with us.'

'Certainly not,' her husband had replied promptly. They are expensive young women, and we shall not now have more than just enough to keep ourselves comfortably. We have spent a lot of late, living in the manner we have done, and it has been principally for their sakes. I am sure the balls, and parties-both of them ought to have been off our hands long before this time. And I don't know where their money goes to, if it is not spent, every penny of it, on their backs. They have each a hundred and fifty pounds a year: a hundred and fifty pounds a year and only themselves to spend it upon; they ought to have been able to do more than just clothe themselves out of a sum like that. They'

'Oh, well, my dear!' Mrs. Lavenham was easy-going, as we have said. 'Oh, well, a hundred and fifty a year is no great amount; and they are lovely girls, and have to be properly dressed' (conscious of having more than once quieted a dressmaker by small sums out of her own pocket, both Monica's and Isabel's having run dry). 'All the world allows that your nieces

are'

'Never mind-never mind. They must learn not to look upon themselves as my nieces now,' somewhat shortly; 'they must be someone else's nieces in future.'

'My dear, what do you mean?'

'Why, what I mean is clear enough, if you will take the pains to see it. Who is that uncle they have got, down there in Lancashire, that brother of their mother's-Schofield is his name, eh? I have been making inquiries about him, and I find he is as rich as Crœsus, unmarried, and quite disposed to be friendly. It is a perfect Providence for the girls that there is such a person. As you say, they are nice girls enough: pretty, and-'

'Pretty! Why they are far more than--'

'Than anything he is ever likely to have met with, at any rate. They ought to do well down there. A Liverpool or Manchester magnate is not to be sneezed at in these days. By Jove! I think we have been fools to have neglected such an opportunity before. Directly I made up my mind to retire, and go in for health and that sort of thing along with you, I saw at once it would never do to take girls like Monica and Isabel to Monte Carlo, and '

'Are we going to Monte Carlo?'

'We shall winter there. It will be the very place for us. But we should get into a sea of troubles if we had two such appendages as these two hanging on to us. They would be flirting all over the place, with every scoundrelly and beggarly "Count" they might pick up. Foreign health resorts are the very deuce for girls like Monica and Bell,' he had concluded, decisively.

In this his wife, who had been really ailing, and who was now as much taken up with her own invalid habits and prospects as she had formerly been with her rounds of pleasure, had acquiesced almost with a sigh of relief.

She was fond of her young beauties in her way. She had been proud of them; had been indebted to them; had perceived that they had been of use to her in society; had brought the best men to her house, and made her what she never otherwise would have been-one of the smartest, most sought after hostesses in London. But she instinctively felt that all this was now at an end; nay, that with her retirement from the social stage, and adoption of an altered routine, Monica and Isabel would no longer suit their requirements to hers. They were still in their heyday, still demanding their full measure of fun and frolic, still requiring her to bear her part in their triumphal progress, and still, it must be owned, intolerant of any hindrance or obstacle which impeded it.

She could not say that they had been unkind-nay, Monica had been positively sympathetic and pitiful when informed that her aunt was suffering; but she had read disappointment and vexation on her brow, as on Bell's, every time a new prohibition had had to be made, or a new hour kept; and though nothing would be said, there had been for some time past a growing anxiety, quite unconnected with any other anxiety, in the breast of the faded, sickly woman, who yet clung to the remembrance of past triumphs and successes-namely, the apprehension of what would be the final attitude of her gay young nieces towards her final self. If she were about to turn into a peevish tyrant of a sick-room, what would the girls think?

Mrs. Lavenham could not endure that the girls should think her a bore, a marplot, or a nuisance. Other chaperons were, she knew, often enough regarded in some such light; but it had been her pride to believe that she was on better terms with her two superb nieces, of whose opinions she stood in no small awe, and whose approbation of her appearance, or of her toilette, was a thing to be obtained. If they should begin now to think her humdrum, or tiresome! And she really did want to be humdrum, that was the truth. She felt fit for nothing else, could not rouse herself to be anything else.

It had ended in a letter being written to Mr. Schofield. Mr. Schofield had responded with an alacrity that had almost surprised himself, and that would have been deeply resented by some other branches of his family had they known of it; as, however, it had been the outcome of several rather important admixtures, we had better inform our readers of these, and then leave them to judge for themselves whether or not such resentment would have been a natural and creditable one.

The new uncle, who, according to Colonel Lavenham's theory, had been created in the very nick of time to meet an awkward necessity, was more of a man of means than a man of culture. Yet he was not a vulgar man. He had no vulgar propensities, nor tastes. He was neither ostentatious nor purseproud, and his daily life was on the whole a praiseworthy one.

But there are many gradations between a mind superior, refined, elevated; and one of ordinary capacity, satisfied with poor pasturage, and confined within a narrow range. Mr. Schofield read his newspaper, and fancied he cared about many things which really no more interested him, no more moved him nor touched him, than if they had been written in an unknown language. He read his paper because other men read theirs. As he went to business every morning he took his 'Daily Post' with him into the railway carriage as a matter of course; then he opened it, scanned it, and folded it hither and thither, making a remark to his opposite neighbour during the process, as a part of his day's work; but we may safely affirm that from the moment in which it was laid aside, (he generally left it behind in the carriage,) till the following morning when its successor was taken up, no single thought of anything contained therein, with the exception of the market reports, ever crossed our merchant's brain.

Thus it will be seen that he was not what might be called an intellectual man.

On the other hand, Mr. Schofield had his opinions, and
VOL. XVII. NO. XCVII.

G

they were opinions which did him credit. His views of his duty towards God and his neighbour were clear and defined, and, we may add, were carried out in a manner that might have shamed many a more pretentious Christian. He worshipped devoutly and gave liberally, and he lived a quiet, blameless life.

Now we come to his receiving Colonel Lavenham's letter.

That letter came to Mr. Joseph Schofield, as the recollection of himself came to its writer, at a most opportune moment. He had just finished building and decorating the handsome and luxurious residence which Monica's cruel tongue now termed 'a mere villa.' He had planted the grounds and gardens, stocked the vineries, laid on the hot-water apparatus; he had arranged the stables, seen to it that every horse had a loose box; purchased a few new vehicles, enlarged and readjusted the whole establishment, within and without, and was caught, as it were, in the very act of wondering what there could possibly remain to do which he had left undone?

It was dull to be doing nothing. He had been living in a round of small excitements which had given a zest to every day of the week; every evening, when he had come back from his work, there had been something to be seen to and decided upon; and on Sundays, when no workmen were about, and no orders were being awaited, he had found a quiet and intense satisfaction in strolling from place to place, and examining in each particular department all that had been effected since he had last thus strolled.

But at length a point had been reached where it had seemed there remained absolutely nothing which could be improved, or altered; and he had had one long, lonely evening in which to digest the unpalatable truth. He had felt as if he never could be so busily employed, nor so well amused again.

The next morning's post had brought Colonel Lavenham's letter; a letter which had been penned with considerable skill and adroitness; a diplomatic, wily epistle, wherein the beauty, talent, and amiable qualities of our and your charming nieces' had been no less dwelt upon, than had the forlorn condition and dependent circumstances of the orphans.

Colonel Lavenham had lamented in feeling terms his utter inability to do for the girls what he would 'so gladly, so readily have done;' he had bemoaned the hard necessity which had compelled his dear invalid wife and himself to recognise that a parting was inevitable; - but he had also contrived to insinuate in pretty round terms-although not offensive ones-that his brother's children were equally related to Mr. Schofield as to himself, and that he had, if anything, rather stepped out of his way than otherwise to make a home for their 'mutual nieces' hitherto.

'Mutual nieces' might not be good English, but it went straight to the mutual uncle's' heart. Mr. Schofield fancied that he had received a manly, straightforward letter-one in which there had been no patronising tone of superiority-one in which a nobleman's son, a colonel in the Life Guards, a swell in every way, had treated him as an equal and as a relation, and he was pleased accordingly.

He was very much pleased. It seemed to him all very fair and right.

It was perfectly true that Charles Lavenham's brother had so far been a father to Charles and Mary's children; and that being a married man, though not a family man, he had undoubt edly been the proper guardian and foster-parent hitherto.

That he had himself never been asked to take any charge of the orphans-nay, that he had never so much as once set eyes upon them, was nothing. He had not wanted to see them; he had not thought about them. He had supposed they were all right; indeed he had known that they were being properly cared for; but as he had never once met his sister during the few years which had intervened between her marriage and her death, he had in his quiet way taken it for granted that she had, as it were, become a naturalised Lavenham, and no more a Schofield.

Without resenting this, its effect had been to free our elderly bachelor from any further interest or responsibility as regarded his unknown relatives. He had his own friends, his own surroundings, his own regular and congenial mode of life; and if any thought of his aristocratic connections, denizens of another sphere; ever crossed his mind, it was to be well content that they should be in existence, but to be equally resigned to their entire abstention from any personal intercourse with himself.

Now, however, he experienced a new and sudden revulsion of feeling.

Heyday! What was about to happen now? What would people say of him now? Here was he going to have two fine nieces, two young women of fashion, come down to keep house for him, and do the honours of his new mansion! It would be said that he had known beforehand for whom he was preparing draw

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