be picked up by that designing woman."

When these mysterious forecasts are imparted to Lady Castlecombe, she only smiles faintly, and says in her quiet, well-bred way, "Well, but why not?" My lady has her own views on the subject—views in which the discomfiture and mortification of Theodore Bransby form a conspicuous and pleasing feature. But hitherto nothing has happened to justify the previsions of either lady on this score.

Theodore is not often seen in Oldchester now. The place is full of disagreeable associations for him. His political candidature was a failure: the Castlecombe influence on his behalf having been suddenly withdrawn after his lordship's marriage—greatly to the perplexity of his lordship's agent!

Nevertheless, Mr. Theodore Bransby by no means despairs of being able to write M.P. after his name at some future time. But if he ever does enter Parliament, it will probably be on what our Continental neighbours term "the extreme Left of the Chamber." For Theodore's political opinions have undergone a great revulsion, and he is now loftily contemptuous of the territorial aristocracy. In fact, he has been heard to support advanced theories of an almost Communistic complexion—stopping short, however, at the confiscation of other people's property, and maintaining the inviolability of Government Stock, of which he is a large holder. This sort of theory he finds to be quite compatible with the pursuit of fashionable society.

Although surrounded by every luxury which can minister to his personal comfort, he is not at all extravagant, and, indeed, saves more than half his annual income. This he does, not from positive avarice, but because he feels ever more and more strongly that money is power. Moreover, it will be well to have a handsome sum in hand whenever he marries: for he is still firmly minded to find a wife who will devote herself to taking care of him. Quite recently a paragraph has appeared in the Oldchester newspaper announcing the probability of a marriage between "our distinguished townsman, Mr. Theodore Bransby, whose career at the Bar is being watched with pride and pleasure in his native city, and the Lady Euphemia Haggistown, daughter of the Earl of Cauldkail, etc., etc., etc."

Lady Euphemia is a faded, timid, gentlewoman of some five or six-and-thirty years of age, with neither money nor beauty. She is sometimes haunted by the ghost of a romantic attachment to a penniless young navy officer lost at sea hard upon twenty years ago. But she has a soft, submissive desire to win the kindly