among assistant secretaries and the like, which even in an official point of view was something. But the triumphs of Adolphus Crosbie had been other than these. Not because he had been intimate with assistant secretaries, and was allowed in Whitehall a room to himself with an arm-chair, would he have been entitled to stand upon the rug at Sebright's and speak while rich men listened, rich men, and men also who had handles to their names! Adolphus Crosbie had done more than make minutes with discretion on the papers of the General Committee Office. He had set himself down before the gates of the city of fashion, and had taken them by storm; or, perhaps, to speak with more propriety, he had picked the locks and let himself in. In his walks of life he was somebody in London. A man at the West End who did not know who was Adolphus Crosbie knew nothing. I do not say that he was the intimate friend of many great men; but even great men acknowledged the acquaintance of Adolphus Crosbie, and he was to be seen in the drawingrooms, or at any rate on the staircases, of Cabinet Ministers.

Lilian Dale, dear Lily Dale- for my reader must know that she is to be very dear, and that my story will be nothing to him if he do not love Lily Dale Lilian Dale had discovered that Mr. Crosbie was a swell. But I am bound to say that Mr. Crosbie did not habitually proclaim the fact in any offensive manner; nor in becoming a swell had he become altogether a bad fellow. It was not to be expected that a man who was petted at Sebright's should carry himself in the Allington drawing-room as would Johnny Eames, who had never been petted by any one but his mother.

And this fraction of a hero of ours had other advantages to back him, over and beyond those which fashion had given him. He was a tall, well-looking man, with pleasant eyes and an expressive mouth, a man whom you would probably observe in whatever room you might meet him. And he knew how to talk, and had in him something which justified talking. He was no butterfly or dandy, who flew about in the world's sun, warmed into prettiness by a sunbeam. Crosbie had his opinion on things, on politics, on religion, on the philanthropic tendencies of the age, and had read something here and there as he formed his opinion. Perhaps he might have done better in the world had he not been placed so early in life in that Whitehall public office. There was that in him which might have earned better bread for him in an open profession.

But in that matter of his bread the fate of Adolphus Crosbie had by this time been decided for him, and he had reconciled himself to fate that was now inexorable. Some very slight patrimony, a hundred a year or so, had fallen to his share. Beyond that he had his salary from his office, and nothing else; and on his income, thus made up, he had lived as a bachelor in London, enjoying all that London could give him as a man in moderately easy circumstances, and looking forward to no costly luxuries, such as a wife, a house of his own, or a stable full of horses. Those which he did enjoy of the good things of the world would, if known 'to John Eames, have made him appear fabulously rich in the eyes of that brother clerk. His lodgings in Mount Street were elegant in their belongings. During three months of the season in London he called him

self the master of a very neat hack. He was always well dressed, though never over dressed. At his clubs he could live on equal terms with men having ten times his income. He was not married. He had acknowledged to himself that he could not marry without money; and he would not marry for money. He had put aside from him, as not within his reach, the comforts of marriage. But We will not, however, at the present moment inquire more curiously into the private life and circumstances of our new friend Adolphus Crosbie.

After the sentence pronounced against him by Lilian, the two girls remained silent for awhile. Bell was, perhaps, a little angry with her sister. It was not often that she allowed herself to say much in praise of any gentleman; and, now that she had spoken a word or two in favour of Mr. Crosbie, she felt herself to be rebuked by her sister for this unwonted enthusiasm. Lily was at work on a drawing, and in a minute or two had forgotten all about Mr. Crosbie; but the injury remained on Bell's mind, and prompted her to go back to the subject. "I don't like those slang words, Lily."

"What slang words?"

"You know what you called Bernard's friend."

“Oh; a swell. I fancy I do like slang. I think it's awfully jolly to talk about things being jolly. Only that I was afraid of your nerves I should have called him stunning. It's so slow, you know, to use nothing but words out of a dictionary."

"I don't think it's nice in talking of gentlemen." "Isn't it? Well, I'd like to be nice if I knew how."

If she knew how! There is no knowing how, for a girl, in that matter. If nature and her mother have not done it for her, there is no hope for her on that head. I think I may say that nature and her mother had been sufficiently efficacious for Lilian Dale in this respect.

"Mr. Crosbie is, at any rate, a gentleman, and knows how to make himself pleasant. That was all that I meant. Mamma said a great deal more about him than I did."

--

"Mr. Crosbie is an Apollo; and I always look upon Apollo as the greatest you know what that ever lived. I musn't say the word, because Apollo was a gentleman."

At this moment, while the name of the god was still on her lips, the high open window of the drawingroom was darkened, and Bernard entered, followed by Mr. Crosbie.

"Who is talking about Apollo?" said Captain Dale. The girls were both stricken dumb. How would it be with them if Mr. Crosbie had heard himself spoken of in those last words of poor Lily's? This was the rashness of which Bell was ever accusing her sister, and here was the result! But, in truth, Bernard had heard nothing more than the name, and Mr. Crosbie, who had been behind him, had heard nothing.

"As sweet and musical as bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair,'" said Mr. Crosbie, not meaning much by the quotation, but perceiving that the two girls had been in some way put out and silenced.

"What very bad music it must have made," said Lily; "unless, indeed, his hair was very different from

"It was all sunbeams," suggested Bernard, But by that time Apollo had served his turn, and the ladies, welcomed their guests in the proper form.

"Mamma is in the garden," said Bell, with that hypocritical pretence so common with young ladies when young gentlemen call; as though they were aware that mamma was the object specially sought.

"Picking peas, with a sun bonnet on," said Lily. "Let us by all means go and help her," said Mr. Crosbie; and then they issued out into the garden.

The gardens of the Great House of Allington and those of the Small House open on to each other. A proper boundary of thick laurel hedge, and wide ditch, and of iron spikes guarding the ditch, there is between them; but over the wide ditch there is a footbridge, and at the bridge there is a gate which has no key; and for all purposes of enjoyment the gardens of each house are open to the other. And the gardens of the Small House are very pretty. The Small House itself is so near the road that there is nothing between the dining-room windows and the iron rail but a narrow edge rather than border, and a little path made with round fixed cobble stones, not above two feet broad, into which no one but the gardener ever makes his way. The distance from the road to the house is not above five or six feet, and the entrance from the gate is shut in by a covered way. But the garden behind the house, on to which the windows from the drawingroom open, is to all the senses as private as though there were no village of Allington, and no road up to the church within a hundred yards of the lawn. The steeple of the church, indeed, can be seen from the lawn, peering, as it were, between the yew-trees which