"And do they mean to introduce you to him?”

"How do you mean, to introduce me?"

66

Why, to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome."

"Oh, we are going to Rome for our voyage de noces !" said Francie, gaily.

"And won't you have to have a Catholic marriage? They won't consent to a Protestant one."

"We are going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brécourt took me to see at the Madeleine."

"And will it be at the Madeleine too?"

"Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame."

"And how will your father and sister like that?"

"Our having it at Notre Dame?" "Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church."

66 Oh, Delia wants it at the best place," said Francie, simply. Then she added: "And you know father ain't much on religion."

"Well now, that's what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking about," Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp.

Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of the latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in relation to the drive. Delia, at this, looked grave, asseverating that she didn't know that it was right ("as" it was right, Delia usually said,) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen after she was engaged.

"Intimate? You wouldn't think it's very intimate if you were to see me!" cried Francie, laughing.

"I'm sure I don't want to see you!" Delia declared; and her sister, becoming strenuous, authoritative, went on: "Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn't been for Mr. Flack we would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn't been for that

"He told us he couldn't bear him : that's what he told us," said Delia.

"All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise," Francie went on.

"That's just what I do," returned the elder girl; "but things that are very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons."

"I have others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in the paper about it." "About your picture?" "Yes, and about me. the whole thing."

All about

"Well, I

Delia stared a moment. hope it will be a good one!" she said, with a little sigh of resignation, as if she were accepting the burden of a still larger fate.

X.

WHEN Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles Waterlow's studio she found Mme. de Cliché before the great canvas. She was pleased by every sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston's second sister's coming all that way (she lived over by the Invalides,) to look at the portrait once more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of their

:

making her acquaintance, and they went into considerations about it which had not occurred to the original and her companions-frequently (as we know) as these good people had conversed on the subject. Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the merit of the work and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but it didn't make her look like a lady. His father, on the other hand, had no objection to offer to the character in which it represented her, but he didn't think it well painted. "Regardez-moi ça, et ça, et ça, je vous demande!" he had exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas, at spots that appeared to him eccentric, with his glove, at moments when the artist was not at hand. The Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. "Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!" Gaston had explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. novelty of Charles Waterlow's game had already been a mystification to Mr. Probert.

The

Francie remembered now (she had forgotten it) that Margaret de Cliché had told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a lady. Mme. de Cliché smiled at her, at any rate, and kissed her, as if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on Francie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked where the others were the papa and the grande sœur -the girl replied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only of herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliché became very stern indeed assumed an aspect that brought back Francie's sense that she was the individual, among all Gaston's belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the second impression was most com

forting. It was just this second impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others behind it, but the girl had not yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow might not have been very fond of Mr. Flack, but he was none the less perfectly civil to him, and took much trouble to show him all the work that he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, taking him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliché expressed to Francie the confidence that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie replied that she was not going home, she was going somewhere else with Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this gentleman was an editor.

Her interlocutress echoed the term, and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only editor, but one of the many editors, of a great American paper. He was going to publish an article about her picture. Gaston knew him perfectly; it was Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her. Mme. de Cliché looked across at him, as if the inadequacy of the cause projected an unfavourable light upon the effect: she inquired whether Francie thought Gaston would like her to drive about Paris alone with an editor. "I'm sure I don't know. I never asked him!" said Francie. "He ought to

want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us." Soon after this Mme. de Cliché withdrew, without looking afresh at Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached the door. She didn't kiss our young lady again, and the girl observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words, " Adieu, mademoiselle." She had already perceived that in proportion as the Proberts became majestic they had recourse to French.

She and Mr. Flack remained in the studio but a short time longer; and when they were seated in the carriage again, at the door (they had come in

Mr. Dosson's open landau), her companion said, "And now where shall we go?" He spoke as if on their way from the hotel he had not touched upon the pleasant vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that particular alternative. But she only answered, rather impatiently:

"Wherever you like, wherever you like." And she sat there, swaying her parasol, looking about her, giving no order.

"Au Bois," said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy elastic start they were silent; but presently he went on, "Was that lady one of your relations?"

"Do you mean one of Mr. Probert's? She is his sister."

"Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn't say goodmorning to me?"

"She didn't want you to remain with me. She wanted to carry me off."

"What has she got against me?" asked Mr. Flack.

Francie seemed to consider a little. “Oh, it's these French ideas.”

"Some of them are very base," said her companion.

The girl made no rejoinder; she only turned her eyes to right and left, admiring the splendid day, the shining city. The great architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose into the sunny air. The colour of everything was cool and pretty, and the sound of everything gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. "Well, I like Paris, anyway!" Francie exclaimed at last. "It's lucky for you, since you've got to live here."

"I haven't got to, there's no ob

ligation. We haven't settled anything about that."

"Hasn't that lady settled it for you?"

"Yes, very likely she has," said Francie, placidly. "I don't like her so well as the others."

"You like the others very much?" "Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you.'

"That one at the studio didn't make much of me, certainly!" "Yes, she's the most haughty," said Francie.

66

66

Oh, it would take me three hours to tell you," the girl replied, laughing. "They go back a thousand years."

"Well, we've got a thousand years -I mean three hours." And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "I do enjoy this drive, Miss Francie," he went on. "It's many a day since I've been to the Bois. I don't fool round much among the trees."

Francie replied, candidly, that for her too the occasion was very agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with a smile, irrelevantly and cheerfully: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid."

"Well, they tell me you like them better after you are married."

"Why, after they are married they're worse-I mean the ideas. Every one knows that."

"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk," Francie said.

"And do they talk a great deal?"

"Well, I should think so. They don't do much else, and they talk about the queerest things-things I never heard of."

"Ah, that I'll engage!" George Flack exclaimed.

"Of course I have had most conversation with Mr. Probert." "The old gentleman?'

66

Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives."

"Mme. de Brives?"

"Yes, she's lovely," said Francie. "She isn't very young, but she's fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliché can't bear Mme. de Villepreux."

"Lord, what a low character he must be!" George Flack exclaimed.

"Oh, his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the marriage."

"Who had?-against what marriage?"

"When Maggie Probert became engaged."

"Is that what they call herMaggie?"

"Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de Cliché had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her."

"Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much. And who is Mme. de Villepreux?"

Oh, I see I see!" murmured George Flack, responsively. They had reached the top of the Champs Elysées and were passing below the wondrous arch to which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on splendid Paris from its immensity, and across at the vain mask of the Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame, painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages-a sounding stream, in which our friends became engaged-rolled into the large avenue leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour that they had yet to spend there, of the rest of Francie's artless prattle, of the place near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the bench where they might sit down. "I see, I see," he repeated with appreciation. "You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand monde."

HENRY JAMES.

MR. GARDINER opens the first chapter of his new volume 1 with some suggestive observations on the respective characteristics of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. These observations appear to suggest, among other things, that the contempt which the genuine Puritan showed for art, literature and science was an indispensable element of his strength, and that if he had not despised the knowledge and culture in which Milton and Hutchinson so much delighted and so eagerly applied themselves to, he would have been weak as other men. "Then as ever," are Mr. Gardiner's words,

"It was not in the lap of ease and luxury that fortitude and endurance were most readily fostered, nor was it by culture and intelligence that the strongest natures were hardened. The spiritual and mental struggle through which the Puritan entered on his career of divine service was more likely to be real with those who were already inured to a hard struggle with the physical conditions of the world and whose minds were not distracted by too comprehensive knowledge of many-sided nature. The flame which flickered upwards burnt all the purer where the literature of the world, with its wisdom and its folly, found no entrance. It is not in the measured cadences of Milton, but in the homely allegory of the tinker of Elstow, that the Puritan Gospel is most clearly revealed."

Such words almost compel the reader to ask again the question, "What, after all, is Puritanism?" Perhaps it may not be altogether useless even in these late days to make yet another attempt to reach a more satisfactory answer to that question than has yet been found. And in our endeavour to find such an answer we shall not, I think, be far from the truth if we say, that Puritanism represents a type of mind which, when

the mind becomes Christian, determines the view it will inevitably take of God and of the world and of human nature and of the Church. Openness

of mind is not a characteristic of this type. Puritanism believes in law rather than in life; in finality rather than in development. The truth which it thinks it has reached, it regards as final, as a truth which it has got once for all, to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken away; a system of truth absolutely complete. Such a notion is hardly consistent with openness of mind. Puritanism refuses to entertain the idea of development beyond the point itself has reached.

Not that (regarding revelation as completed in Jesus Christ) truth develops; for truth in itself is always the same. But life develops; and as spiritual life grows by a wise use of the truth to which it owes its origin and by which it lives, it becomes a wider life and obtains larger views of truth. In other words, truth is gradually disclosed to the spiritually living mind as that mind widens by the growth of its life.

And what is true of the individual Christian mind is true also of the collective mind of the Church. As the Church's life expands, the Church's way of stating the truth she believes is modified so as to come into a more perfect agreement with her widening apprehension of it. But Puritanism seems to be founded on a denial of this. The truth, as formulated by it, it holds to as something rigidly final which cannot be modified except by the sacrifice of the truth. I am speaking of full-grown Puritanism as we now know it, either as a thing of present experience, or as a phenomenon that has appeared in the