knows, and she expects him to call to-day, so she insisted upon it, that I should come back to be shown off. Cheer up, my dear, and I'll find plenty of beaux for you, never fear."

With this comforting assurance Patty departed, and the two sisters were left alone to meditate upon her words.

"Sweet kind-hearted creature she is, to be sure!" said Miss Matilda, after a silence of some minutes: "it is quite impossible not to love her!--and I am quite sure she is right too, about me. She is an uncommonly sharp girl for her age, and catches things quicker than any body I ever saw. That about letting every body know, was excessively clever of her. Don't you think it was, Louisa?"

"Letting every body know about your only having five hundred pounds, Matilda? Why I am sure if the doing it would prevent any more such horrid adventures, I should think it was the best thing that could be done. Only, my dear, I don't think it would answer about your getting married, which I am afraid you have still got in your head. Don't you think, my dear, that perhaps after all the best thing would be to give it up altogether? I am sure it would save you a deal of trouble and vexation, Matilda."

Poor Miss Perkins was almost terrified when she perceived, by the heightened complexion of her sister, how very distasteful this proposed improvement of their plans was likely to be.

"I wish, Louisa, that you were not always forgetting the enormous difference in our ages," she replied tartly. "It is all very well for you to talk of making up your mind against marriage, but you must please to recollect that it may not be quite so easy for me. When I find my

self noticed like other young women, I should like to know how I am to help thinking about marriage? I am sure it is very shocking, and very wicked, not to be thinking about marriage, when people are making downright love to one. What would you have me think about, I wonder?"

"Well, my dear, I dare say you know best," returned the unresisting Louisa. "And God knows that my first wish is that you should be made happy and contented, if I did but know how to bring it about."

"You could bring it about, Louisa, easy enough, if you really wished it," replied the younger sister.

"Good gracious, how, Matilda ?" returned the elder one. "I am sure I never in my life did any thing to stop your getting married, whatever I might think about it in my own heart."

"I did not say you did," replied Matilda, in the sharp tone to which her quiet senior was a little too much accustomed. "But there is a great difference, you know, between not stopping a match, and doing something sisterly to help it on."

"But what can I do, Matilda? Nobody would marry you a bit the more for my telling them to do it."

"But there is a way, Louisa, that if you would put it in practice, would take me off your hands in no time."

"Is there? Then I wish you would tell me what it is, my dear. Not that I want to get you off my hands, Matilda; I am sure I love you very dearly indeed; but certainly it would make me a deal happier if I could see you easy in your mind," said the kind lady, with something very like tears in her eyes.

"Can you have any doubt, Louisa, after all you have seen and heard, that if you were to make over to me half your fortune-only half, mind-I should find husbands enough ready to marry me?" said Matilda, in rather a bitter accent.

"Indeed, I am afraid you might find plenty, my dear?"

"Afraid? What do you mean by afraid? Isn't that cruel, savagely cruel, when you know it is the first wish of my heart!"

"But surely, Matilda, it cannot be the first wish of your heart to have a husband that could be bought for 25751. 10s., which is just half of what I stand for in the stocks."

"It is very easy, Louisa, to turn the most serious things into ridicule. And as to what I would, and what I would not do, I must certainly be old enough to decide for myself. I am the best judge of what is for my own happiness. It is no good now, to dispute about that-I have made up my mind to ask you, Louisa, and now I do it, in an honest, straightforward manner-Will you let me tell Mrs. O'Donagough, who is truly a friend to both of us, and would take care to make proper use of the information, will tell her, Louisa, that you fortune my is rather more than three thousand pounds,―because of my own five hundred, you know?"

"I don't believe, Matilda," replied Miss Perkins, very gently, "that I could prevent you telling Mrs. O'Donagough any thing you liked; but as to the thing itself, it is certainly what I do not intend to do."

On receiving this definitive answer, the indignant Matilda suddenly made a large roll of her rather untidy-looking work, and thrusting it under the sofa, left the room.

"Poor thing!" murmured Louisa, as she shut the door, which had been banged, but not closed. "Poor thing!-she shall have it all when I die. But I should not like to spend 25751. 10s. to buy such a man as Captain Foxcroft for her, and she still so well-looking, as she says I am sure it would be very wicked if I did."

CHAP. XXVII.

THE FRIENDSHIP OF MR. ALLEN O'DONAGOUGH AND MR. FOXCROFT RIPENS INTO CONFIDENCE-MRS. ALLEN O'DONAGOUGH ENJOYS THE GRATIFICATION OF RECEIVING A VISIT FROM AN OLD FRIEND-HER PREPARATIONS FOR IT, AND THEIR PERFECT SUCCESS-HER HUSBAND AND DAUGHTER ARE INTRODUCED TO LORD MUCKLEBURY.

"No go, my dear fellow!-I must find out some other scheme," said Mr. Foxcroft, in a bravado sort of tone, as he entered with a swing into the sanctum of Mr. O'Donagough's library, "Matilda Perkins has absolutely nothing."

"Then how the devil do they contrive to live?" demanded Mr. O'Donagough, knitting his brows with an expression that was by no means conciliatory.

"The money all belongs to the old one," replied his friend.

"All! Then, Foxcroft, you may make just twice as good a thing of it as you hoped to do. Contrive to pick a quarrel with the youngest ; turn about and fall in love with the eldest, and you will exactly find yourself master of all, instead of half. I presume you are not very particular as to which of the two ladies you get with it?"

"No, not I. But I am not quite such a fool as you seem to take me for, O'Donagough. I had wit enough to hit upon that scheme myself, and I tried it too, in pretty tolerable good style, I can tell you. But I might just as well make love to your iron coalbox there as to the old one. Egad! I never saw such a cold-blooded old jade in the whole course of my life. She listened very quietly, but with just about as much sensibility as a post; and the real truth is, that women never do listen to love-making when they have got money, in the same way as when they have not.'

"That is very likely, Mr. Foxcroft, and probably your own experience has suggested the observation; but I must beg leave to observe that it affords vastly little comfort to me, under my extremely inconvevient disappointment. I should be sorry to press any gentleman uncivilly; but you must be aware, sir, that affairs of this kind are very peculiar as to their immediate consequences. My name has just been put down by Sir Henry Seymour at two of the first-rate clubs, and you must know that it will be impossible for me to permit our acquaintance to continue under circumstances, excuse me, Mr. Foxcroft, so very disgraceful."

This was listened to with a wonderful degree of gentleness and equanimity, not a shadow of anger appearing on the long-visaged countenance of the ex-lieutenant.

"True, O'Donagough, true as gospel!" he replied, "and if bleeding me could pay the money, upon my soul I'd hold out my arm for the operation. But what on earth can I do, my dear sir? I have never gone out of the gentlemanlike line yet, and I should be monstrous sorry to do it, because you know it is so devilish hard to get up again. But if there is nothing else for it, I suppose I must e'en submit, and get God enrolled among some regular set of equalizers of property. knows I would do any thing, rather than not settle my account with you."

"Well, sir, that is feeling and speaking exceedingly like a gentleman; and I beg to say in return that no man would be more unwilling than myself to harass a man of honour, under such circumstances. But the fact is, Foxcroft, and you know it very well, that if this transaction between us is not closed and settled, you are, in point of fact, placed quite beyond my power to help you. I know, therefore, but of one mode by which I can prove how sincerely I still feel myself your friend, but this mode I cannot adopt without placing a degree of confidence in you which the length of our acquaintance, perhaps, hardly warrants. Professions at such a moment, we all know, come easily, and therefore if I consent to return the IO U which I hold, it must be done upon condition of your immediately giving me proof that you are ready to go all lengths to deserve it."

"Name your proofs, O'Donagough!" exclaimed Mr. Foxcroft eagerly, and with the refreshed aspect of a man to whose parched and despairing lips the revivifying cup of hope is once more offered; "name your proofs, and if I shrink from them, proclaim what has passed in every gaming-house in London."

"Foxcroft!" replied Mr. O'Donagough, with a very unusual degree of solemnity, "I will speak to you with the most perfect sincerity. The truth is, that in order to carry out the purpose I have in view, I must trust somebody, and it is obvious, my good friend, that the most

eligible person upon whom such confidence can be reposed, must be one whose reputation is in my power. This, to a man of your capacity and clear comprehension, is preface enough; and I shall therefore proceed at once to state what I shall require of you. The proofs to which I have alluded, will be given on your part by the skill and the will with which I shall see you conduct yourself on the first occasion that they may be called for."

No hungry dog, waiting with watery mouth for the scraps expected to fall from his master's hand, ever fixed his eye upon that master with sharper eagerness than Mr. Foxcroft now did upon the face of Mr. O'Donagough.

"You may well look anxious to listen to me, my good fellow," resumed the master of the house, with a benignant smile; " for if I do not greatly miscalculate, a much finer career is at this moment about to open before you, than you can ever have hoped for, during the whole course of your existence. In my younger days, Foxcroft, I was once fortunate enough to pass a season in Paris under very favourable auspices. The wig which it suits me to wear now, my good fellow, may perhaps render it rather difficult for you to believe what a capital good-looking, dashing blade I was, some five-and-twenty years ago. This helped me very greatly. I had one exceedingly serviceable introduction, and the rest of my good fortune grew out of it. In short, I had the entrée to some of the best houses in Paris, by which, as I presume you will conjecture, I do not mean the mansions either of the richest, the highest-born, or the most illustrions, in any of the ordinary and old-fashioned senses of the word. But in its way, the society I was thrown amongst was perfect, and I do not believe that even yet there are many houses in London which receive exactly on the same principle as those of which I speak in Paris. In the first place, high play is here almost entirely confined to the clubs; an exceedingly clumsy way of using an exceedingly good thing. Of the immense advantage and utility of these gambling clubs to society, of course nobody in their senses can doubt; nevertheless, there are many little peculiarities of play among many very fashionable, and highly-distinguished men, which render the variety afforded by meeting quite young players in a private drawing-room extremely convenient and agreeable.

"Of such drawing-rooms, Foxcroft, there are abundance in Paris, and I am determined that there shall at last be one here. How it will answer, of course remains to be proved; but in this, as in every other experiment, almost every thing depends upon the style and manner in which it is made. One essential feature in the scheme, and one, as you will believe, never lost sight of in Paris, is the obtaining by some means or other such a sprinkling of really good company, according to common vulgar parlance I mean, as may act as a decoy, or rather as an authority for the presence of such tyros as are at once, perhaps, the most difficult to lay hold of, and the most valuable when caught. In this respect I am very peculiarly well situated, and, indeed, I question whether without this advantage I should have ever ventured upon the scheme at all. My wife's connexions are, as you know, of a class that renders the presence of any of them a guarantee for the perfect respectability and bon ton of the salon in which they are seen; and though General Hubert and his family are at this moment abroad, Frederic Stephenson, a much more manageable person, by the way,

than the stiff-backed general, comes to town immediately after Christmas, and will, I feel no doubt, extend to me exactly the sort of protection I want, and that, too, without having the slightest consciousness that he is doing it. There is a certain nobleman, also, an old crony of my wife's, who is already in town, and has promised to visit her. I have inquired about him, and find he is the very man for us-sufficiently easy and liberal-minded to go wherever he can be amused, yet not at all permitting himself to drop out of good society. The two men you met here the other day at dinner, are, each of them in his respective way, highly valuable. Armondyle is one of the best and most gentlemanly players in London, and Seymour, as I am told, about the richest quite uncontrolled young man about town. Of course, if

I get into the clubs, my list will rapidly increase; but you must be aware, my good friend, that let me get who I will here, nothing effectual, nothing masterly, can be done without a coadjutor. You understand me. Are you willing to become such?"

With the air of a hero, about to pledge his untarnished faith to the maintenance of some noble enterprise, Mr. Foxcroft held out his hand, and solemnly received that of O'Donagough in its grasp.

"Let me hold this station near you, my most valued friend," he said, "and never shall you repent the choice. You have probably perceived something in my manners, and in my character, which has led you to believe I am not altogether unworthy of, or unfitted for, this situation; and, without unseemly boasting, I may venture to say that you are not deceived. I am conscious that I may have many things against me, but, nevertheless, I am conscious also, that I possess both faculties and qualities, which peculiarly fit me for the task. The outline of your scheme is distinctly clear before me; the filling up must, of course, depend both upon circumstances and your own individual inclinations. You have mentioned Sir Henry Seymour, for instance, and there can be no doubt in the world that he is quite a first-rate man to obtain as a frequenter of your salon. But, between friends, I should have thought that you had other prospects for him. I have a great notion that your beautiful Patty has a fancy for him, and it would be a capital match, O'Donagough. However, that's your concern, not mine. I can have no objection to your throwing open the preserve, as it were, and letting us share and share alike, if you think that a more profitable scheme than the other."

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Why, I am not sure that I should, Foxcroft, if that other were fairly in my hands to take or to leave; but I doubt it. I know perfectly well that the young fellow has been devilish sweet upon her, and that the poor little soul is over head and ears in love with him; but I strongly suspect that he never thought seriously about her, and that he has only been amusing himself by turning her young head for pure fun, -a suspicion, as you will readily believe, not very likely to make me spare him at the board of green cloth. I have a hold upon him too, upon which it is not necessary to enter now, that I think will keep him effectually within my reach, and, as he will serve me both as a decoy-duck and a pigeon, I mean, remember, in all ways to cultivate his acquaintance, and stand well in his eyes."

"It shall not be by fault of mine if you do not," replied the faithful associate; and presently added, with the air of one who was making a very shrewd remark, "By the way, O'Donagough, that daughter of