senseless among the snow, where he was immediately mirable coolness, and marking the time with his cane, refer to the decision of his grace the captain-genegrasped by the trumpeters, disrobed of his last remain- while a drummer tapped on his kettledrum, and four ral.' ing garment, and bound strongly to the halberts. trumpeters had, each in succession, given their twenty- "Ach, der tuyvel! viil you?' said the Dutchman, "Meanwhile the other prisoner had been pinioned five lashes and withdrawn; twice had the knotted with a savage gleam in his little eyes which showed and resolutely held by his escort, otherwise he would scourge been coagulated with blood, and twice had it that he quite understood my hint, vell, me vont undoubtedly have fallen also upon Van Wandenberg, been washed in the snow that now rose high around quarrel vid you: gib me de bills and de schelm is who, choking with a tempest of passion that was too the feet of our champing and impatient horses; and yours.' great to find utterance in words, had gathered up his now the fifth torturer approached, but still the com- "Resolving, nevertheless, to lay the whole affair rotund figure, and with an agility wonderful in a man pressed lips and clammy tongue of the proud French-before Marlborough the moment I reached our trenches of his years and vast obesity, so heavily armed, in a man refused to implore mercy. His head was bowed at Aire, I gave a bill for the required sum, and арbuff coat and jack boots ribbed with iron, a heavy sword down on his breast, his body hung pendant from the and cloak, clambered on the back of his horse, as a cords that encircled his swollen and livid wrists; his clown would climb up a wall, and with a visage alter- back, from neck to waist, was one mass of lacerated nating between purple and blue, by the effects of rage | flesh, on which the feathery snow-flakes were melting; and strangulation, he surveyed the prisoner for a mo- for the agony he endured must have been like unto a ment in silence, and there gleamed in his piggish grey stream of molten lead pouring over him; but no groan, eyes an expression of fury and pain, bitterness and no entreaty escaped him, and still the barbarous puntriumph combined, and he was only able to articulate ishment proceeded. one word "Flog!" "I have remarked that there is no event too horrible or too sad to be without a little of the ridiculous in it, and this was discernible here. "On the handsome young Frenchman's dark curly hair, glistening with the whitening snow that fell upon it, and on his tender skin, reddening in the frosty atmosphere, on the swelling muscles of his athletic form, on a half-healed sabre wound, and on the lineaments of a face that then expressed the extremity of mental agony, fell full the wavering light of the uplifted torches. The Dutch, accustomed to every species of extra-judicial cruelty by sea and land, looked on with the most grave stolidity and apathetic indifference; while I felt an astonishment and indignation"'twas quite in the Dutch taste, that." that rapidly gave place to undisguised horror. "Flog! "The other prisoner uttered a groan that seemed to come from his very heart, and then covered his ears and eyes with his hands. Wielded by a muscular trumpeter, an immense scourge of many-knotted cords was brought down with one fell sweep on the white back of the victim, and nine livid bars, each red, as if seared by a hot iron, rose under the infliction, and again the terrible instrument was reared by the trumpeter at the full stretch of his sinewy arm. "Monsieur will be aware, that until the late revolution of 1688, this kind of punishment was unknown here and elsewhere, save in Holland; and though I have seen soldiers run the gauntlet, ride the marc, and beaten by the martinets, I shall never, oh, no! never forget the sensation of horror with which this (to me) new punishment of the poor Frenchman inspired me and sure I am that our great Duke of Marlborough could in no way have anticipated it. ; proaching the other Frenchman, requested him to keep beside me; but he seemed too much confused by grief, and cold, and horror to comprehend what I said. Poor fellow! his whole soul and sympathies seemed absorbed in the mangled corpse of his brother, which was now unbound from the halbert and lay half sunk among the new fallen snow. While he stooped over it, and hastily, but tenderly, proceeded to draw the half-frozen clothing upon the stiffened form, the orders of Van Wandenberg were heard hoarsely through his speaking trumpet, as they rang over the desolate plain, and his troopers wheeled back from a circle into linefrom line into open column of troops, and thereafter the torches were extinguished and the march begun. Slowly and solemnly the dragoons glided away into the darkness, each with a pyramid of snow rising from the steeple crown and ample brim of his broad beaver "One trumpeter, who appeared to have more humanity, or perhaps less skill than his predecessors, and did not exert himself sufficiently, was soundly beaten by the rattan of the trumpet-major, while the latter was castigated by the Provost Mareschal, who in turn for remissness of duty, received sundry blows from the speaking-trumpet of the Baron; so they were all lay-hat. ing soundly on each other for a time." “Morbleu !" said the Frenchman, with a grim smile, waned, the snow-storm was increasing, and there were I and the young Frenchman, with his brother's corpse, left together on the wide plain, without a place to shelter us. "The Provost Mareschal continued to mark the time with the listless apathy of an automaton; the smoke curled from his meerschaum, the drum continued to tap-tap-tap, until it seemed to sound like thunder to my strained ears, for every sense was painfully excited. All count had long been lost, but when several hundred lashes had been given, Van Wandenberg and his half Dutchmen were asleep in their saddles. "It was now snowing thick and fast, but still this hideous dream continued, and still the scourging went on. "At last the altered sound of the lash and the terri ble aspect of the victim, who, after giving one or two "The young Frenchman was dead! “Accustomed, as I have said, to every kind of cruel severity, unmoved and stoically the Dutch looked on "An exclamation of disgust and indignation that with their grey, lacklustre eyes, dull, unmeaning, and escaped me woke up the Baron, who, after drinking passionless in their stolidity, contrasting strongly with deeply from a great pewter flask of skiedam that hung the expression of startled horror depicted in the strain- at his saddlebow, muttered schelms several times, rubed eyeballs and bent brows of the victim's brother, bed his eyes, and then bellowed through his trumpet when after a time he dared to look on this revolting to bind up the other prisoner. Human endurance punishment. Save an ill-repressed sob, or half-mut- could stand this no more, and though I deemed the tered interjection from the suffering man, no other sound broke the stillness of the place, where a thousand horsemen stood in close order, but the sputtering of the torches, in the red light of which our breaths were ascending like steam. Yes! there was one other sound, and it was a horrible one-the monotonous whiz of the scourge, as it cut the keen frosty air and descended on the lacerated back of the fainting prisoner. Sir, I see that my story disturbs you. "A corpulent Provost Marescha!, with a pair of enormous moustachios, amid which the mouth of his meerschaum was inserted, stood by smoking with ad offer vain, I proposed to give a hundred English "Ach Gott!" said the greedy Hollander immedi- “Oh, readily, Mynheer Baron,' I replied, drawing forth my pocket-book, 'I have here bills on his Grace the Duke of Mariborough's paymaster and on the Bank of Amsterdam for much more than that.' "It was now almost midnight; the red moon had "I have little more to relate, save that I dismounted and assisted the poor Frenchman to raise the body from the snow, and to tie it across the saddle of my horse; taking the bridle in one hand, I supported him with the other, and thus we proceeded to the nearest town." THE MAJESTIC OAK. Since the small sapling struggled into light!' FRIZZLED FOWLS. fully keep up the passion, thereby reaping large profits. | nance. Whereupon he asked the old man, whence it To such an extent does this passion prevail near Bos- to be an error by those who do not locate its nativity. FAS cal the bright and cheerful autumn morning. His eye A youth from the city approached the old man, and came that he enjoyed such strength and cheerfulness in the late autumn of life. Geron answered:- My son, these, like every other good thing, are gifts which come to us from above, the we can do something here below to enable us to obtain merit of which we cannot claim to ourselves, and still them." Having uttered these words, the old man arose, and led the stranger into his orchard, and showed him the tall and noble trees covered with delicious fruit, the sight of which gladdened the heart. INDIAN SUMMER. IT is the season when the light of dreams The heavens are full of floating mysteries, By twisted vines are wed. The russet brake A SPLENDID MATCH. MRS. RS. CHESTERTON won the day. She was a good manager and a careful mother, and understood the tactics of society to a nicety. The Crawfords and the Macclesfields, the Thorntons and the Parkinsons were utterly beaten, and their colors lowered. Mr. Fitzgerald, of Ormsby Green, had proposed; and Mrs. Chesterton shed tears as she consented that he should marry her dowerless Eveline to his ten thousand a year. "For you know, Mr. Fitzgerald-you must know by your own love-that I am making a most painful sacrifice for my darling's happiness. If it were not that she loves you so much—the fond, foolish child! -I do not think that I could part with her. But she has fixed her whole heart on you. What can I do but make the sacrifice of all that I have left me now on this earth to love,”—(a retrospective sob for General Chesterton, who departed this life fifteen long years ago)" and ensure her happiness at the expense of my own? No, Mr. Fitzgerald! I am not a selfish mother. Take her, since you love her and she loves you, and God bless you both!" Mrs. Chesterton wept afresh. As she sobbed, Eveline entered the room. Her round, dimpled, waxen cheeks were flushed. She saw her mother, with the lace pocket handkerchief to her face, and she rushed to her, throwing herself on her knees beside the chair; and, caressing her gently, glanced all the time, as if by stealth, at Mr. Fitzgerald: then, lowering her eyes suddenly when they saw that his were fixed broad and wide upon her. 66 His heart. I have promised your hand where you have receive truth, and who did not require it; but who "Charles-Mr. Fitzgerald!" said Eveline. mamma!" she added, hiding her face. Charles was intoxicated with joy; and, encouraged by a sign from Mrs. Chesterton, took the little hand which lay buried beneath the ringlets poured out on the mother's lap. He pressed it nervously. With a strong grasp, it must be confessed, and awkwardly. "O! how he hurts me the clumsy man!" muttered Eveline, disengaging the mangled member, as if from bashfulness, and plunging it among her mother's interlaced fingers. Her ring had made a deep indentation and a broad red mark on her tender little fingers, and Mrs. Chesterton saw that she must have suffered a great deal. However, she gave her an expressive admonition with her knee, which said plainly, "Don't mind a little pain-it is well bought." And Eveline abandoned her small fair hand again to her maladroit lover, who squeezed it even more unmercifully while pouring forth a flood of love and happiness, and child-like security in the bright promises of the future that made Eveline yawn behind her handkerchief; driving her at last to count verses on her fingers. "If this is love," she thought, "love is a horrid bore. O, when will he have done! How tired I am! How I wish that Horace Graham would come in. This little man would be obliged to be quiet, then, and go away." Charles all the time was in the seventh heaven; believing he had carried up his fiancée with him, Poor, dear child!" said Mrs. Chesterton, smooth-seated on the same golden garment of love with himing her hair, with a glance and a gesture that self. As he did not suspect, he understood nothing of demanded Mr. Fitzgerald's admiration. It was very the ennui of sated ambition, which a keener vision pretty hair, glossy bright and golden, and worthy of would have read in every word and gesture of the girl, the time, labor and expense bestowed on it; for and tortured the heart which, he believed, he was Eveline's hair cost her almost as much as her feet. "Ah, Mr. Fitzgerald!" continued the mother, sighing, "what a treasure I am giving into your hands! May you value it as you ought, and guard it as carefully as her mother has done." "What is the matter, mamma? What do you mean?" demanded Miss Eveline in an agitated voice. She raised her eyebrows and opened her large blue eyes with a look of wonder that was perfect. a "Dear innocent creature! She at least has never speculated on this moment! Oh Mr. FitzgeraldCharles, if I may call you so," added the lady with sudden expansiveness of manner, such as people have on the stage when, apropos of nothing, they seize each other's hands and look into each other's faces sideways, "what have you not escaped in those Crawford and Macclesfield girls; and what have you gained in my sweet Eveline! Do you think they would have been as innocent as this dear guileless child?" "Agnes Crawford is a very good girl," Charles said, in a voice that was a strange mixture of timidity and boldness. "I don't think she was either a flirt or a schemer." "Perhaps not," the lady replied hastily ; "Agnes may be an exception to her family." "But what does all this mean, mamma?" again inquired Eveline; seeing an angry spot beginning to burn on her lover's cheek, which she was half afraid might burn through the marriage contract. "It means, my love," answered Mrs. Chesterton, calling up her broad bland smile in a moment, "that I have interpreted your wishes and spoken from your Mrs. Fitzgerald was at breakfast at Ormsby Green, when she received a letter from her son, announcing his intended marriage with Miss Chesterton, “the only child of a deceased General Officer; a Lady as remarkable for her Beauty as for her Virtue," he said, with a nervous flourish among the capitals. The letter was written very affectionately and respectfully but gave not the most distant hint of compliance with the mother's views, should they be opposed to the marriage. On the contrary, the energetic determination expressed under different forms throughout three pages and a half “of making his adored Eveline his own at the earliest possible opportunity," showed no present intention of reference to Mrs. Fitzgerald in any way. He neither asked her advice nor waited her concurrence; but in every line that passionate doggedness of a weak mind which admits no second opinion and requires no aiding counsel. Mrs. Fitzgerald's heart sank within her. She had heard of the Chestertons, and dreaded them. However, as Charles had asked her to the wedding, and as Eveline had enclosed a short note also-written on pink paper with violet-colored ink-Mrs. Fitzgerald determined on seeing the bride herself before she allowed presentiments to degenerate into prejudices. "But Charles is so very very weak!" she thought, "I have always dreaded his falling into the snares of a family of schemers; and few, none indeed, except some rare nature like that of Agnes Crawford, which could see and love his goodness in spite of his mental defects, would marry him except for his money. But enrapturing by the passionate babble of his unanswered such women," she further thought with a sigh, “do love. It was very late before he gave the first threat not write with violet ink on pink paper scented with of going away, and much later before he had gained patchouli; and they do not write such a hand as sufficient moral courage to fulfil it. And even then he lingered till the girl was in despair; telling her in a very doleful voice half sobbing himself "Not to weep; he would come very early to-morrow!" this." Mrs. Fitzgerald determined to go to London, where the Chestertons lived in a pretty little cottage at Brompton, to judge for herself, by knowledge rather Eveline did almost cry from weariness. And, when than by fear; anxious and willing to prove herself in Mrs. Chesterton said, in a dressing-gown and curl- the wrong, and hoping to be self-convicted of injustice. papers, with the air of a workman at supper or a When she arrived, she was obliged to confess that cabinet minister after dinner, with the peculiar satis-everything in the house was arranged with consumfaction inspired by repose after labor-"I give you mate taste, and that Mrs. Chesterton was a well-bred joy, my dear! Ten thousand a year, and only a woman, of the gay, worldly, party-giving kind; of the mother with a mere jointure, charged on the estate. well-fitting sick-gown and family lace cap kind; of the And I have heard that old Mrs. Fitzgerald has a heart-kind that delights in veils; and revels in flounces, and disease." Eveline's only answer was "Ten thousand wears numerous ends of ribbon floating in all direca year dearly paid for too, mamma. As you would tions; of a fashionable, talkative, aud clear-headed say yourself if you were going to be married to half an kind; a very different variety of English gentlewoman idiot!" Then, tearful and pouting she went to bed to to the grave matron who came from her country seat dream of waltzes and polkas with Horace Graham, and like some châtelaine of romance, and who looked on to act imaginary scenes of tempest and storm with the modern world with her deeply set grey eyesCharles. grave with the wisdom of nature-as a sage might Charles Fitzgerald, good and amiable as he was, did watch a child's game beneath the trees. She was in truth almost justify Eveline's harsh expression, from struck with Eveline's extreme beauty. Yet the his excessive weakness of character and tenuity of shallow nature, vain, artificial, and unloving, was eviintellect. He was one of those credulous, generous, dent as well. A dark shadow spread out before her kind-hearted beings who are the chartered dupes of the when she saw standing before her eyes the future wife world. A man who thought it a sin to believe any of her beloved son. Long lines of pain and disapkind of evil, no matter of whom or what; who denied pointment were woven in with every breath and the plainest evidence if condemnatory, and who inter-gesture of the girl. A small, light, childish thing, preted the most potent fact of guilt into so much with large blue eyes, and long bright hair; a figure conclusive proof of innocence: a man who could not perfect in its proportions, and a complexion dazzling in its waxen bloom; a damsel with false, fair words, and was not yawning. He, saddened to think that his his wife; fretted at the constant round of dissipation with caressing ways. She knew what the future must green lanes must be abandoned, his evening walks in in which they lived, and at the breaking up of all his bring; she saw the wreck beating against the treacher- the moonlight in the wood foregone, aud his young fairy castles of bliss and quiet; fretted at this, and at ous sands, and watched the precious freight of love dream of quiet happiness exchanged for the turmoil that, and at everything, and in the fair way of falling and trust scattered to the waves of despair. She called pleasure. Yet, when in town, he found another seriously ill with some brain or nervous affection. knew that Eveline would bring only anguish to her pleasure in the happiness of Eveline. For he had home, and she set herself to endeavor to avert it. been obliged to confess to himself that she was often sad and melancholy in the country; and now it was such a pleasure to see her dimpling smiles and hear her merry laugh again. He said she had got tired of Ormsby Green, because she was away from her mother But remonstrances were useless. Charles was bewitched, and his mother's warnings only irritated him. He asked her coldly, What fault she found with Miss Chesterton, that she should thus endeavor to make him forfeit his plighted honor?" -she wanted to see her mother: dear child! she had "A want of stability of character," began Mrs. never left her before; and it was a very sweet and Fitzgerald. "Too evident to require any proof. It is proved by every word and look." natural feeling in her, and he loved her all the more for it. When they arrived home-Mrs. Chesterton's cottage answering that purpose for the present-the first "You find it perhaps in her beauty?" continued person they met was Horace Graham, looking more Charles. Does this evident instability of character, handsome and impudent than ever. He had called in which you have seen at a glance in your first short by chance, he said; and, hearing that "Mrs. Charles" interview, lie in her eyes, because they are blue and was expected, he had stayed just to shake hands with bright; or in her hair, because it is fine and glossy? his old friend. Eveline thanked him very prettily, and Is it in her small hands or in her tiny feet? for I don't then asked him to spend the evening with them so enthink you know her well enough yet to judge by any-gagingly, that Charles was fain to second the invitathing but externals. You have not probed her mind very deeply." The young man's tone was hard and dry. His manner defiant, and his eyes angry and fixed. Mrs. Fitzgerald had never heard such an accent from her son before. She was shocked and wounded; but her tears fell on desert sand. She applied herself to Eveline. She spoke of her son's virtues, but she spoke also of his weakness; and asked the girl if she had weighed well the consequences of her choice-if she had reflected on her life with a nervous and irritable man; self-willed and unable to accept argument or persuasion?" Eveline tossed her head and said, it was "very odd, that Mrs. Fitzgerald, his mother, should be the only one to speak ill of dear Charles; that, indeed, he was not weaker than other people; and as for being irritable, nothing could be more amiable than he was to her. She thought that if people only knew how to manage him, and cared to give way to his little peculiarities-and we all have peculiarities-he would be quite a lamb to live with!" She added also, "that she saw through the motive of Mrs. Fitzgerald's advice, which was to get a rich wife for her son." The attempt was hopeless. Between folly and knavery the sterling worth and honesty of the mother fell dead, and all that she had done was simply to embroil herself with both her son and her daughter. Things went on without her consent pretty much as they would have done with it, and of all the party she was the only one who suffered. The wedding-day came amidst smiles and laughter from all but her. Even Eveline merged her personal distaste for Charles in her gratified ambition, and Mrs. Chesterton was more pseudo-French, and dressy than ever. Eveline looked undeniably lovely. The church was crowded with the Chestertons' friends, all saying among themselves, "How beautiful she is!" a few, such as Horace Graham of the Guards, adding, "and what a fool she is marrying;" or, " by Jove, what a life she will lead that muff!" After the honeymoon-that prescribed season of legal bliss—Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fitzgerald came back to London. She, radiant with smiles and happiness, at escaping from the tedium of her country life; where she had been bored to death; where she had yawned all day, and where she had slept when she "You will not go to the ball to-night, Evy ?" he said one day, in a timid but querulous voice, flinging himself wearily on a sofa. They had been married about four months, and were very unhappy in secret: although nothing had been said or done openly. 66 Why not, Charles ?" asked his wife, coldly. "I am too nervous, too ill and unstrung to go with you," he answered, “and I thought that perhaps you would stay at home with me, and read. Will you, Evy?" He took her hand-still the same timid manner. "O dear me, no! stay at home? O, no! You had better go to bed if you are ill," Eveline said, leaving her hand cold and dead in his. "That will be much wiser than sitting up half the night reading stupid poetry that only makes one yawn and go to sleep, I will tell Justine to give you anything you want when I am away; but really you had better go to bed at once." "Who is going with you, Charles let her hand fall. then, as I cannot?" he said. tion, which he did with an awkward attempt at cordiality that did his powers of dissimulation no credit. But Horace accepted the invitation in his offhanded way, and the evening passed merrily enough; Eveline walked away to the mirror, humming a tune he singing to Eveline's playing, and Charles applaud- and arranging her bouquet. "My mother-" she said. ing in the middle of bars, and saying, "but the next" And Horace Graham," she added, turning suddenly verse?" when all was finished. A house was bought in Belgravia. It was furnished with extreme elegance, and did honor to the decorative taste of Mrs. Chesterton, she having been extraordinarily active among the upholsterers and decorators. With their new house began the young couple's new life. Charles bore his part in the whirlpool that it became bravely; and, for the first three months, was all that the most dissipated woman of the world could require in the most complaisant of husbands. A strange kind of peace rested between the married pair. Strange, because unnatural-the violent binding together of two opposing natures; the lurid stillness that glides on before a storm; a peace that was not the peace of love, nor of sympathy, nor of respect; that was the peace of indecision, the peace of ignorance, the peace of fear, and, worst of all, the peace of slavery. round, fixing her eyes on her husband with a peculiar look. A look that defied suspicion, and was beforehand with objection. A look that conquered, because it wounded, Charles, and made him humble and submissive. He rose from the sofa slowly, and passed into the library, there to fret like a sorrowing child: scarcely knowing what he thought or what he ought not to think; feeling only that his happiness was slipping from his grasp, and that he was being left alone on a desolate shore without hope and without love. This was the first raising of the mask-the first confessed declaration of indifference-a declaration repeated subsequently every day and every hour. Eveline was never at home. Morning and evening alike saw her drowned in the world's great sea of pleasures; every home affection cast aside, and every Mrs. Fitzgerald was in the country, brooding mourn- wifely duty unfulfilled, Gaiety was her life; and withfully over the angry silence of her son; for he had not out this gaiety, she would die, she would say. Charles yet forgiven her interference in his marriage. But grew ill, and certainly excessively strange and disagreeshe would not understand it thus, and wrote often to able in his behaviour. For hours together he would him and to Eveline grave, kind, earnest letters; speak- sit without speaking, his lips pressed against each ing much to her of her son's goodness, and suscepti- other, and his dull eyes fixed on the ground. Then bility of nature, and feeling sure that Eveline was all came fits of passion, which were like the throes of that a fond mother could wish in the wife of her son. madness-fits that terrified Eveline, and made her fear At last Eveline no longer read the letters; she threw for herself. To these a violent reaction succeeded; a them aside, crying, "The tiresome old woman! as if I period, generally very brief, of frantic gaiety and restdid not know every word of her sermon beforehand!" less pleasure-seeking, such as incommoded Eveline And saying this before her husband too, from whom greatly, binding him to her side without release; and, she did not care to hide her open contempt of his under the appearance of complaisance, giving her a mother. Indeed, emboldened by his timid compliance gaoler and a spy. Often at such times, struck to the with all her wishes, and his weak approval of all her heart with something he had seen, chilled by someactions, she cared to hide very little that was disagree-thing he had heard, Fitzgerald would fall back again able; and more than once startled him with exhibitions into his mournful stupor, and drag out his weary life of temper and of coldness. Charles was fretted at his wife's indifference, fretted at Horace Graham's constant presence, and at the undisguised good understand- The world began to talk. It talked though gently, of ing that existed between him and Eveline; fretted at Eveline's open flirtations with Horace Graham; gently, Mrs. Chesterton's contemptuous manner of interfering because it talked also of Charles Fitzgerald's jealousy, in his household arrangements, and at her assertion of and strange irritability; of his violence and his fearful motherly rights superior and opposed to his own, over temper. On the other hand, it spoke of his evident with the listless, hopeless expression in his face and in his whole manner of a condemned criminal. unhappiness, and of the contempt showered on him by sure of being entreated. Charles had a nervous attack Charles conquered himself at last, and managed to appear at dinner with some show of calmness Eveline was so extremely gay that she became quite overpowering. She armed herself with all the little graceful coquetries she knew so well how to employ, each in their right time and place, and heightened them in revenge for her late enforced cessation from all excitement, while grudgingly going through the dull task of "Well, Charles, my love, I have taken you by sur-pleasing a sick husband and a rigid matron. Even prise!" she said. But her voice failed; he was so Mrs. Fitzgerald, who had expected much, was surprised wild and altered. He kept his eyes upon her for some at the open manner in which her flirtation with Graham time, and then with a cry that came straight from the went on; and, although believing it to be nothing more sad heart, almost breaking it, with sobs wild and fast, real than the folly of a vain girl, yet she could not deny and the tears which fell like blighting rain. Fitzgerald its grave appearance, nor the compromise that it made exclaimed, "Mother, you have come to see me die!" of her son's honor. She determined to speak to EveThe line of ice was thawed, the band of iron was line seriously, and to endeavor-by arguments, if affecbroken, the stifled heart cried out aloud, and the love tion were of no use; by threats if arguments fell dead that had been thrust back into the darkness came forth to open her eyes to the true knowledge of herself again. He was no longer alone, with nothing but in- and her conduct, and to force her to abandon a farce difference or enmity to bear him company. He had that might end in tragedy. Eveline seemed to foresee this lecture; for nothing would induce her to meet Mrs. Fitzgerald's eyes. She shrank from her words and drowned them in thick showers of banter with defiance and bravado, that betrayed as much fear of the Horace; in her behavior to whom there was a kind of now his own best friend, the guardian of his youth, his friend and guide: he might count now on one heart at least, and believe that it loved him. He poured out his grievances to her. They were all very vague and indefinite; simply wounded feelings, or affections misunderstood; no startling facts, no glaring wickedness, no patent actions. But she understood, and sympathised with his sufferings, impalpable as they were. She soothed and comforted him, calming his irritated nerves and weaving bright dreams of hope for the future. Dreams, in which she believed nothing herself, and which smote her conscience as falsehoods when she told them. future as indifference of the present. ace; still coupling it with perfect innocency. Which, was true. For indeed she was too shallow and too intrinsically selfish to commit herself, even where she loved. After this discovery, and the distressing scene between the husband and wife which followed it, Eveline went out more than ever, and was with Horace more than ever also; many pitying her for being married to a jealous irritable fool, and lamenting that such a lovely young creature should have been so sacrificed by an ambitious mother, against her own expressed inclinations; many more deploring her wayward, systematic neglect of her husband. Charles Fitzgerald's eccentricities of temper-his bursts of passion and of violence, mingled with fits of silence and of gloom-became every day more marked. Even his mother was no longer a soothing or a restraining influence; but, capricious, violent, irritable and uncertain, he made his home a Hades for others, as his wife had made his life a torment for him. At last his language became, occasionally, so bitter and infuriated; and, more than once, his arm had been raised to strike, and more than once his hand, twisted in the meshes of her hair, had threatened her with death-that Eveline was justified in demanding a legal separation. She was advised that the law could not grant it, unless both parties consented; and Charles vehemently refused But what the law denied, Nature gave. A thousand airy nothings of speech and conduct, each innocent apart, all maddening together, had worked on the husband's weak brain until they produced an unsettlement of intellect, which a few days of wifely tenderness might have prevented. The worldonly said that Eveline was right in consenting that her husband should be placed in restraint-poor, young, beautiful thing, married to such a terrible person! struck beneath the applaudings of Eveline's wide Charles was placed in proper hands. The blow was circle of admiring acquaintances. She took refuge In the evening they strolled out into the little garden; for they boasted a plot of blackened ground, dignified by that sweet name of fruits and flowers-Eveline his mother returning soon to the house. Speaking to and Horace wandering away together, and Charles and his mother of Eveline, a flash of his old tenderness returned, and with it his old hatred to believe in evil. Next morning she spoke to Eveline, in her grave, After all, Eveline was young and giddy. She meant bland, gracious manner, and gave her serious counsel, no harm, and did not know the full significance of sweetening her censure with assurances of her trust in what she did. She was his wife too-she must be the giddy wife's good intentions-"but then you are gently dealt with. He could not bear to hear her conWhen his mother replied to him, he shrank young, my child, and youth is often curiously heed- demned. less!" But Eveline gave herself unnumbered airs, nervously from every subject, which threatened to lead and was very ill-used, and said "that indeed she was to a discussion on her conduct. Mrs. Fitzgerald read a false fair face, that glided from his clasping hands, a better wife than most girls would have been to any one so cross and disagreeable as Charles; and that Mrs. Fitzgerald had better speak to him about his temper than to her about hers." After a time Charles gradually grew better, and he and his mother wandered away to Brussels; but there his "eccentricities of temper" became more and more violent; so that at last even his mother was forced to arm herself with legal power to protect him from himself. For at length he became mad—mad for life; mad with a lingering madness, that left no hope and that gave no rest; wan, wild, raving-haunted ever by and denied his fevered lips. his heart, and kept silent. But while he was thus careful, he was also haunted, restless, and tormented; Eveline's pensive air, and eyes veiled beneath their and at last, unable to contain himself, he went into the drooping lids (which she knew to be extremely effecgarden, where the shadows had deepened into dark-tive in society), gained more sympathy than the madHowever, Mrs. Fitzgerald's mere presence was a ness, walking slowly and silently towards the quiet man's ravings and the madman's sorrows. People comfort to her son; and he got calmer and milder now trees planted to hide the upper wall. Horace and only shook their heads, and said, "What that young that he could speak of his sufferings, and that some Eveline were there, seated on a bench together. They creature must have suffered in her married life!—and one cared to soothe them away. At first Eveline, were talking low, but talking love-if such frothy van- how heroically she concealed it from the world!" and being awed in spite of herself by Mrs. Fitzgerald, be-ity could be called love—and "dearest Horace," and "Let us be kind to the pretty little woman, for her lot haved with some small attention to appearances, so "beloved Eveline," were often mingled with their talk. has been a sad one, and her anguish meekly borne !" that the young household sat in the sunshine again. They sat, like two silly children, hand in hand. Horace Graham, too, happened to go away just at this moment; consequently a conjunction of favorable stars seemed to have shed rays of domestic happiness over the gaudy, meretricious household. Charles stole back to the house, and entered-a creature from whom life and soul had departed. Eveline had seen him; and he knew that she had seen him. There was no more disguise; and, as she said, But Horace came back one Thursday afternoon, and "discovery had at least spared her the necessity of Eveline invited him to dinner. She pressed him to deception." She threw off the flimsy veil she had come when, as usual, he refused for the childish plea- hitherto worn, and boasted openly of her love for Hor THE PATRIOT. The man who battles for his country's right |