JtfDOB. 19 and a fellow is almost sooner pardoned for bemg a bore than for being brilliant. They think there is something so intensely respectable about mediocrity. But still he has so many qualities that might get his cleverness forgiven him, even there. He is a marvel- lously good man of business, a financier, I will warrant, such as has not sat on the Treasury Board, and he has an acumen that cannot be over-rated. I will certainly get him into St. Stephen's: once in, he will make his own name." " Chandos," said the Duke of Crowndiamonds, in the stable-yard, two mornings later, when his Grace, with the rest of Chandos' London set, had come down to Clarencieux, " did you hear what that fellow of yours —your factor, your protégé, what is it?—has been do- ing while you were away?" • " I have no protégés, my dear Crown," said Chandos. wilfully failing to apprehend him. "I abhor the word." , . _ , "Well you have the thing, at any rate. ïou know whom I mean—that witty rascal, Trevenna. Do you know what he's been about?" "No. Spending his time to some purpose, I dare say, which may be more than can be said of us." The young duke laughed. " Doing an abominably impudent thing, to my mind. Been down somewhere by Darshampton (democratic something or other out-and- " in the papers!" said Chandos, with a little hour. Few houses can boast so much. According to the seasons, they rode, drove, smoked, played baccarat or billiards, had drives of deer in the forest, and curées by torchlight, French vaudevilles and Italian operettas in the private theatre, spent the day each after his own fashion, free as air, met at dinner to have some novel amusement every evening, and were from pain; and it was a keener pang still—the grief of one who strives for what incessantly escapes him. " Wait," said Chandos, gently. " Are we sure that nothing lives of the music you mourn? It may lfve on the lips of the people, in those Old-World songs whose cause we cannot trace, yet which come sweet and fresh transmitted to every generation. How often we hear naît. »uinr; liuvei _t,mu»c:iitcitL ccj t..vn.iJ6, »"« ........ -. «...,........*.— -~ ~-—, o-----, , „„„.«. m'^Qi +1... the envy and marvel of the county, the county being some nameless melody echo down a country-sicie. tne place, you know), talking somethin_ out radical. Why. it was all in the papers 1 " Never read the papers, " shrug of his shoulders. " Addressing the masses, you know, as they call it; coming out no end at an Institute, or a what d'ye call 'em. Tell him, Jimmy," said Crowndiamonds, wearily, appealing to a certain fashionable hanger-on of his, who played the part in society of the duke's mnémo- nique. " Workingmen's place at Darshampton—all working- men there," supplemented Jimmy, obediently. "Fel- lows that look awfully smutty, you know, and throw things they call clogs at you, if they cut up rough; though why they use women's clogs, /don't know. Trevenna been down there; asked to lecture; did lec- ture ! Talked out-and-out liberalism—ail-but Socialism, by Jove! Town wondered; thought it deuced odd; knew you couldn't like it; couldn't think what was his game." With which Jimmy, having performed his office of encyclopœdia, turned to the more congenial one of examining a beautiful little mare of the Godol- phin strain, which had won the Oaks the year before. Chandos listened, surprised. " Trevenna at Darshampton !" he repeated mus- ingly. " Ah, I knew you couldn't be aware of it," resumed Crowndiamonds. "Told them all so ; knew yon'd have Interfered, if you had." "Interfered! How so?" " Why, forbidden it, you know, and all that, of course." . ,,, _ " Why? I have no more right to forbid Trevenna's actions than I have to forbid yours." " Oh, hang it, Ernest, you don't mean that. The fellow belongs to you,—one of your people, quite; can't have any title to go dead against your political opinions.'' " Never had a political opinion," said Chandos, with a shade of weariness at the mere idea; " wouldn't keep such a thing for worlds. There is nothing more annoy- ing to your acquaintance, or more destructive to your own nervous system." "Then, the deuce, Chandos! you don't mean that you'd let that fellow go on talking radicalism all over the country without checking him, or calling him to order?" chorused the duke, M. de Neuilly, Prince Paul, and the others in the stables, all of them strict mon- archists, conservatives, and aristocrats. Chairdos laughed, but with a touch of impatience. " You talk as if Trevenna were my slave, instead of my friend! Call him to order 1 What do you mean? I may think what I like of his actions; but I have no shadow of right to interfere with them." "What! not if you saw him joining a party that threatened the very preservation of your own property, the very existence of your own class?" " Still less then. Self-interest is the last motive that could excuse an aggression on personal liberty." "Good gracious!" ejaculated the duke, as though foreseeing the deluge. " Then, if you put him into the Commons, as you intend, you will let him choose his own party, go his own ways, run as dead against all your interests and all your opinions, just as he pleases?" „ . . . "Certainly. Do you suppose I only sell my friend- ship to secure partisanship?" "God knows what you do do 1" cried Crowndiamonds, hopelessly. "All I do know is, that I should as soon have thought of seeing Clarencieux turned into a hos- pital as of hearing you defend radicalism!" " My dear Crown," laughed Chandos, " I am not defending radicalism; I am defending the right of per- sonal liberty. I may deeply regret the way Trevenna takes in the House; but I shall certainly have no busi- ness to control him there because superiorities of 1roperty might enable me to do so. You say, 'You have bought him, therefore you have a right to coerce him;' I say, 'I have aided him, therefore I am bound never to make that accident a shackle to him.' The man who puts chains on another's limbs is only one shade worse ttan he who puts fetters on another's free thoughts and on another s free conscience. But, for mercy's sake, drop the subject, we are talking like moral essayists, and growing polemical and dull ac- cordingly!" . , , And Chandos turned to give some Paris bonbons to his favorite Circassian stallion, who was rubbing his sleek steel-gray head caressingly against his hand for the sweet-meats, leaving Crown diamonds in the con- viction that the constitution was coming to an end, and the Legitimist due and the Tuscan prince strongly of Lady Chesterton's persuasion, that when a man was also a poet Clarencieux might be his inheritance, but Colney Hatch would be his destination. Clarencieux was filled with guests on the carefully- chosen invitations of which Trevenna had spoken. He had the very social tactics that enabled him unerringly to mark out harmonizing tints and effective contrasts so as to make a charming whole. His plan was bold and daring, but it never failed ; he always asked special enemies together, that they might sparkle the more for being ground against each other's faces, lik« two diamonds on a lapidary's revolting wheel ; and under bis directions the visitors that met at Chandos' house »ever were wearied, or wearied their host, for a single little wanted in, and generally shut out from, the ex- clusive gatherings of Clarencieux. Yet, well amused as his guests kept him in the Easter recess, which fell very late in spring that year, Chan- dos had a certain restlessness he could not conquer, a certain dissatisfaction utterly unlike his nature: he could not forget the Queen of Lilies. Never before had a love touched him that was unwelcome to him, never one that he had attempted to resist; love had been the most facile of all his pleasures, the most poetic but also the most changeful amusement of his life. For the first time he had to resist its passion, and the very effort riveted its influence. He had always forgotton easily and at will; now he could not so well command forgetfulness. Now and then all the variety of entertainments that chased one on another failed to interest him, all the brilliance of his companions to suffice for him: the wit and beauty of the young ladies who adorned the drawing-rooms of Cheveley almost tired him ; he was conscious of wanting what was absent. It was a phase of feeling very new to him, nor with the nonchalance and contentment of his temperament and the gayety of his life could it have the rule over him always. But it was there, a diss "itisfied passion, from which there was no chance of wholly escaping. Moreover, recalling the soft glance of the Lily Queen, he wondered, with a touch of self-reproach, if she had really loved him. He knew many who had ; nor was his, conscience wholly free from self-accusation on their score and on hers. The Countess de la Vivarol, radiant at Clarencieux, played in Figarotohis Almaviva, riding a little Spanish mare that would have thrown any other woman, always enchanting, whether she talked of Faïence-ware or European imbroglio, lapdors or protocols, fashions or mesmerisms, flattered herself that her rival the Eng- lish Lily was wholly forgotten and deserted; but the keen little politician flattered herself in vain. Trevenna, with his habitual sagacity, made no such mistake, but pronounced unerringly, in his own reflec- tions, on the cause of his host's needing so much more care to rivet his attention and so much more novelty to amuse him than usual. He guessed why the Prin- cesse Vallera, the Marchesa de Lavoltra, the Comtesse Lucille, de Meran, and other fair queens of society, reigning through this recess at Clarencieux, failed in charming or winning their entertainer. " If he meet her again, shall I let it go on?" thought that astute comptroller. " Yes: may as well. It will be another complication, as the diplomatists say. Nothing like fine scenic arrangements for a tragedy 1" So the Queen of Lilies would apparently have no foe in John Trevenna, although he had put the pin through the butterflies under the cedars. "Reading some unintelligible score of your ances- tors, Lulli ?" asked Chandos, as, having wandered out alone one morning, taking the freedom himself that he left his guests, he came upon the musician lying in the sun beside the river that wound through the deer- park. The woodlands were in their first fresh leaf; the primroses, violets, anemones, and hyacinths made the moss a world of blossom ; nothing was stirring except when a hare darted through the grasses, or a wild pigeon stooped down from a bough to drink or to bathe its pretty rosy feet among the dew. It was peaceful and lovely here in the heart of the vast deer-forest, with a gleam of the sea in the dim distance at the end of a long avenue of chestnut-trees. " How crabbed a scroll!" he went on, throwing himself down a moment on the thyme and grass. " The characters must baffle even you; the years that have yellowed the vellum have altered the fashion. Whose is it?" " An old Elizabethan musician's," answered Lulli, as he looked up. ¦ " Yes; the years take all—our youth, our work, our life, even our graves." Something in his Provençal cadence gave a rhythm to his simplest speech; the words fell sadly on his listener's ear, though on the sensuous luxuriance of his own existence no shadow ever rested, no skeleton ever crouched. "Yes; the years take all," he said with a certain sadness on him. " How many unperfected resolves, unachieved careers, unaccomplished ambitions, unma- tured discoveries, perish under the rapidity of time, as unripe fruits fall before their season ! Biehât died at thirty-one—if he had lived, his name would have out- shone Aristotle's." " We live too little time to do anything even for the art we give our life to," murmured Lulli, withhisdeep- brown Southern eyes dreamily wandering down the green-and-golden vista of the sun-lighted avenue. "When we die, our work dies with us: our better self must perish with our bodies; the first change of fashion will sweep it into oblivion." " Yet something may last of it," suggested Chandos, while his hand wandered among the blue bells of the curling hyacinths. " Because few save scholars read the ' Defensio Populi ' now, the work it did for free thought cannot die. None the less does the cathedral enrich Cologne because the name ofthe man who begot its beauty has passed unrecorded. None the less is the world aided by the effort of every true and daring mind because the thinker himself has been crushed down in the rush of unthinking crowds." " No, if it could live !" murmured Lulli, softly, with a musing pain in the broken words. " But look ! the scroll was as dear to its writer as his score to Beethoven —the child of his love, cradled ill his thoughts night and day, cherished as never mother cherished her first-born, beloved as wife or mistress, son or daughter, never were. Perhaps he denied himself much to give his time more to his labor; and when he died, lonely and in want because he had pursued that for which men called him a dreamer, his latest thought was of the work which never could speak to others as it spoke to him, which he must die and leave, in anguish that none ever felt to sever from a human thing. Yet what re- mains of bis love and his toil? It is gone, as a laugh or a sob dies off the ear, leaving no echo behind. His name signed here tells nothing to the men for whom he labored, adds nothing to the art for which he lived. As it is with him. so it will be with me." His voice, that had risen in sudden and untutored eloquence, sank suddenly into the sadness and the weariness of the man whose highest joy is but relief singers cannot tell you whence it came; they only know their mothers sang it by their cradles, and they will sing it by their childrens'. But in the past the song had its birth in genius." Guido Lulli bent his head. "True; such an immortality were all-sufficient; we could well afford to have our names forgotten-----" " Our names will be, infallibly forgotten unless we attach them to a great sauce or to a great battle ; noth- ing the world déifies so much as the men Who feed it and the men who kill it. Paradox in appearance, but fact in reality!" cried a sharp, clear, metallic voice— the voice to ring over a noisy assembly, but in no way the voice to suit a forest solitude—as Trevenna dashed through the brushwood with a couple of terriers bark- ing right and left at hares and pigeons. The musician shrank back instantly and irrepressibly, as a sensitive plant or a dianthus shrinks at a touch. "Halloo, mon prince!" pursued Trevenna, cheerily. "You mea dis- ciple of the dolce, and no mistake : Easi«st lounging- _ chair in-doors and wild thyme out; luxurious idleness really is a science in your hands. If ever you do die— which 1 think highly doubtful, you are such a pet of Fortune?—the order of your disease will surely be to ' die of a rose in aromatic pain.' Nothing harsher could possibly suit you." ; . "You antithesis of repose!" cried Chandos. You will scare all my breeding-game, frighten all my song- birds, and drive me to a new retreat.' Trevenna laughed as he dashed himself down on a bed of hyacinths fit for Titania's wedding-couch, that sent out their delicious fragrance, bowing their delicate bells under his weight: Trevenna weighed a good deal, though a small man. Chandos glanced at them. "Wanton waste, Trevenna! You are the genius of destruction." . , , , , " Well, destruction's very pleasant—of anybody else s property. Everybody thinks so, though nobody says b The man had a natural candor in him, with all his artifice of action. He hated hypocrisy with an oddly genuine hatred, seeing that he was as cool a liar as ever was born. It seemed as if, like Madame du Deffand, he wished to render virtue by his words the honor he robbed her of by his actions; for he talked truths sharply, and as often hit himself with them as other PexBut why can you want to kill all those poor flowers for nothing?" asked Chandos, tossing him his cigar- case. .....* -,. • u " For nothing ! Sac â papier!—is it for nothing when I lie at my ease? To be comfortable is your first re- quisite of life. Cœsar killed men by millions to he at hit ease on purples; why mayn't I kill flowers by mil- lions to lie at mine on hyacinths? Flowers, too ! A lot of weeds." . , -, , , " Oh, Peter Bell the Seconal" cried Chandos, shrug- ging his shoulders. , " A m imrose on the liver's brim A yellow primrose was to Mm, And it was nothing more." quoted Trevenna. "Now, what the deuce more should it be ? How that unhappy fellow has been abused for not being able to see a thing as it wasn't-always the thing for which poets howl at sane men? Why are he and I required to rhapsodize our hyacinths and prim- roses'—nice little flowers, one blue, t'other yellow,with a pleasant smell, but certainly nothing remarkable. What is this miraculous tongue that talks to you artists in a scrubby little bit of moss or a beggarly bunch of violets?" ,, „ "Grimm asked Diderot the same question. You would have wondered, like Grimm, what there could be to listen to from an ear of wheat and a little corn- flower." ,., , Certainly: Grimm was very like me—a regular gos- sip," responded Trevenna, pulling a handful of hya- cinths and tossing them up in the air. "My dear weeds you must die if I choose. Ah!—it's fun to have power over anything, great or small. Fouquier-Tin- ville enjoyed cutting off necks by a nod of his own; I understand that; yon don't understand it, monseigneur. If we'd been in the Terror, you'd have gone to the guil- lotine with the point ruffles over your hands, and a mot on your lips, and a superb smile of disdainful pity for the mob; and I should have tossed up my red cap and spun round in the " Ça ira,' and cheered the Sansons, and gone safe through it all. But good-bye ; I'm going to your outlying farms. Did you know I was a first- rate agriculturalist? Of course you don't; what do you know about any Bucolics, except the Virgihan? With which Trevenna, much too mercurial to sit still five minutes, went on his way switching the grasses right and left, and with his two little terriers barking in furious chorus. Lulli looked after him; Chandos himself, even, was glad he was gone. He enjoyed the merry society of his fidus Achates in a club or over a claret; but there were times when, cordial as was his good will to him, Tre- venna irritated rather his tastes than his temper, and his incessant banter grew wearisome. " You trust that gentleman?" asked Lulli, suddenly. "Entirely," answered Chandos, surprised. "I would not," said the Provençal, softly, under his breath. "Indeed! Andwhy?" Over Lulli's face came the troubled, bewildered look which made those who noticed him cursorily think his brain was unsettled. He felt, but he could not define. To a mind only used to desultory dreamy thoughts, It was impossible to trace out its workings by logic. " I cannot tell," he said, wearily: "but I would not trust him. The eyes are bright and clear, the face looks honest; yet there i craft somewhere. The dogs all slink from him; and the birds, that come, tous, h, -rom him. He is your friend ; but I do not think he bear» y°He ceased, looking down, still with that bewildered pain upon the clear brown river rushing, swollen and melodious, at his feet. Like a woman, he had intuition, but no power of argument. Chandos looked at him, astonished more at the words than he had been at the secluded dreamer's distaste towards the busy and tren- chant man of the world. "I hope you are wrong, Lulli," he said, gentby. / do not doubt you are. You and that gentleman Jan