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"The fun's, my lady, maybe,” meekly hinted the rebuked housekeeper.

"Ay, the Funds, or the National Debt, or the Bank Stocks, or the what's-his-names," pursued Lady Goldthorpe snappishly. "Drat the City; I wish there had never been such a place as the City, I do declare, though we were as poor as church-mice before we went there, and got all our money out of it. The City! bother the City; it's the bane of every woman's life. If your husband comes home as cross as two sticks, and as surly as a bear with a sore head, things are sure to have been going contrariwise in the City. If you wish him to take you to Greenwich or Richmond, he's got an appointment in the City. If he comes home at two in the morning, with one collar up and the other down, and a lighted cigar-end in his waistcoat-pocket, he's been meeting a friend in the City. If you want the horses, he's going to take them into the City. It's all City, City, City, though it's made us as rich as Water Creases" (presumably Croesus); "and I wish the City was at Jericho, that I'm sure I do."

I wonder how many ladies of my acquaintance are of the same opinion with Lady Goldthorpe, albeit they may express their thoughts in language slightly more refined.

These were the cares of the wife of Mammon. Her preoccupations were to find a wife for her son Ernest, and a husband for her adopted child Magdalen Hill.

"I don't see why they shouldn't come together now poor dear Hugh's gone," she reasoned to herself. "Her fortun' would join very nicely with Ernest; they're both clever, and pious, and charitable, and they'd make a very pretty pair. Ah, but would they? Would they agree, I wonder? He's proud, and she's proud. He's got a will of his own, and so has she; and when pride and pride come together, Old Scratch comes and sits bodkin.”—You must really excuse Lady Goldthorpe's want of refinement, but you must remember that she was of humble extraction, and had once been the wife of a small shopkeeper." No, I'm afraid the match wouldn't do. As for Ernest, I must and will marry him off before he's a year older; but Magdalen-I don't think she would have any body, if he was Emperor of Japan, and had a mint of money: 'I wear the weeds of a virgin widow,' she told me yesterday. Stuff and nonsense. Girls ought to be married, particular when they have plenty of money. I hadn't any money when Goldy married me. I had but two frocks,-a brown merino, and a silvergray lustring for Sundays,—and I was as happy as the day was long. But Maggy loved Hugh too dearly to be false to his memory; so she said. Ah, Hugh, Hugh! poor dear Hugh! We shall meet in Heaven, where the wicked cease from worritin', and there's no more bother, and the weary are nice and comfortable."

This was the usual burden of the good woman's complaints, and although she misquoted the sacred text she thoroughly believed in it.

There were more persons in Onyx House besides Lady Goldthorpe and

the confidential Cashman who shrugged surmises and whispered misgivings about Sir Jasper's altered manner, his bowed and drooping head, his anxious face. His footmen noticed it; but as it did not affect their wages, their uniform, or their hair-powder, they did not trouble their ineffabilities about it, much. Argent, Sir Jasper's body-servant, remarked it. Argent was a shrewd man, and ventured to sound Mr. Drossleigh, the financial factotum, who still came backwards and forwards between Onyx Square and Beryl Court, Sir Jasper's ill-health frequently compelling him to absent himself for days together from business. Argent did this with great fear and trembling; but Mr. Drossleigh did not, as he expected, reprove him with any extraordinary sternness.

"It's no business of yours, and none of mine, Argent, for the matter of that," he remarked, "and it would be worth both our situations if Sir Jasper found us out prying into his affairs; but between you and me, his goings-on puzzle me quite as much as they do you. I suppose we both see about as much of him, you in your way, and I in mine. I can't understand what's up, Argent. There's something in the wind, and that's the truth. I do hope that Sir Jasper hasn't got into any trouble about a bit of white muslin."

For, as the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the confidential Cashman was to imagine that there could be no trouble without a derangement of the stomach and liver, so did the confidential Drossleigh attribute every moral and physical ailment to one source-namely, to white muslin; otherwise, the womankind enveloped therein. Mr. Drossleigh was a confirmed misogynist, and those familiar with his personal history affirmed that in early life he had been the victim of a subtle adventuress habitually wearing white muslin, who, having decoyed him into presenting her with his portrait, and addressing to her some absurd versicles, in which "utter" rhymed with "butter," and "pledge" with "edge," had, on his declining to purchase a special license and make a handsome settlement upon her forthwith, brought an action for breach of promise of marriage against him, and recovered damages to the extent of three hundred and fifty pounds. Drossleigh paid the damages and costs, and thenceforth looked with an evil eye on white muslin, constantly traducing the wearers of that textile fabric, and ascribing to their agency all woe that is worked beneath the sun. Nor did Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's condition escape the notice and the comments of two young ladies at that time resident in his mansion. Magdalen Hill saw his sorrow, and grieved. Letitia Salusbury saw Magdalen's grief in a stronger light than even she did Sir Jasper's, and sympathised with her to the full. They were not a very well-assorted pair. Magdalen was as little communicative as ever; and her frank and voluble companion was compelled to judge mostly by inference of that which was passing in the mind of her taciturn companion.

I have said that they were ill-assorted. Seldom, perhaps, were two young ladies brought together who had so few tastes in common, or who seemed so widely to diverge in their views and dispositions. Magdalen

grew sterner and more ascetic, so to speak, every day. In a few cold words she told her friend that she, Magdalen, had long neglected her duties; that she had long been blind to her responsibilities; but that her eyes were at length opened, and that she was determined to discharge the task which she knew devolved upon her, and to which she felt that she was called.

"What is the task, Meg?"-Miss Salusbury persisted in addressing Miss Hill in the least refined diminutives."What is the duty? What are the responsibilities? Have you got any bills to take up, like the young men in the Heavies whom one knew at Swordsley? Are you obliged to get up early in the morning for drill, or stable-duty? Do you want to go to matins at St. Barnabas, or, better still, at the Oratory at Brompton? Or do you feel it your solemn vocation to wear a horse-hair next your skin, and whip yourself three times a day, like St. Catharine of Sienna, or the saints and martyrs you are always painting?"

Ah, those saints and martyrs !-'tis the writer who puts in the interlocutory. How we have degenerated from the fine old times of maceration and mortification! The saintesses of old wore horse-hair chemisettes our modern devotees only wear them in the form of crinoline skirts. The primitive pietists scourged themselves with wire: the saints of Belgravia make the wire into "cages," to distend their skirts withal.

"I think," Miss Hill calmly answered, "that I have painted saints and martyrs enough. I hope to look henceforth at those holy exemplars from quite a different point of view. I have done with those vanities of gold and vellum and gaudiness."

"Ah, I thought what it was coming to. I guessed what was going to happen. A narrow cell, a hard pallet, a crucifix, a rosary, a skull, a big book, and a pair of shears for your back hair;-all is vanity, that's it. You are going to take the veil."

"I have no such intentions. Although the communion by which I hold recognises, under certain circumstances, the excellence and usefulness of the monastic system; although conventual institutions, properly modified, are not wholly foreign to my views on Church matters,-I look at utter seclusion from the world, and denial of the claims which the world has upon our services, as selfish and hypocritical. When I feel that I can no longer do good, I may think again of becoming a nun.”

"I dare say you've thought of it over and over again; as it is, you're a walking Lady Abbess. I'm half afraid that you'll order me to be bricked up for my sins in the wall of Tattersall's yard. Charmingly edifying it would be; just like Constance de Beverley in Marmion. Fancy the skeleton of Lord Chalkstonehengist's daughter being discovered fifty years hence standing bolt upright in a niche made in the bricks and mortar: nothing on her but some mouldy grave-clothes, nothing beside her but an empty pitcher."

"You jest upon every thing, Letitia."

"I jest upon monks and nuns, because I believe the vast majority of the tales told about them to be silly trash. Do you think I believe all those old women's fables about dungeons, and living sepulchres, and iron rods, and clanking chains, and the like? Constance de Beverley's niche was in all probability a rabbit-hutch. I've no patience with your monks and your nuns, and the stupid girls who allow artful priests to caricature nowadays horrors that never existed. Convents in England are not, and never will be any more but a caricature. Abroad you have the genuine article,—and what is it? Do you think it's all midnight chanting and mortifying of the flesh? I knew a girl at school in Paris who had been brought up at the Sacré Cœur. She said that the young nuns did nothing out of class-hours but talk scandal and abuse the abbess, and that the old ones were always taking snuff and quarrelling as to who made the best preserves and the nicest cherry-brandy. I believe they're all the same, monks and nuns, and that they'd all be much better if they could go across country a bit, and back a horse now and then for a trifle."

"And the Sisters of Charity?"

"Well, they're bricks; that I'll admit. When we were staying in Brussels, there were some good girls, called Petites Sœurs des Pauvres, who not only nursed the poor, but went out begging for them. Only imagine a young lady by birth and education going out every morning in a donkey-cart full of tin-cans, and begging broken meat and tea-leaves from hotel to hotel. There's no kissing the pavement, no thrashing oneself, and no midnight chanting among the Sisters of Charity or the Petites Sœurs, you may be sure; and I don't see why there should be any among the nuns, or the monks either."

So the Honourable Letitia Salusbury said, thinking herself exceedingly wise in her generation. She had been to Brussels. She may have visited Louvain. I wonder whether she had ever heard of a certain Monastery of the Fathers of Good-Works, at a place called Hoogendracht?

Miss Salusbury, however, outspoken as she was, by no means regarded Magdalen's expression of opinion as to the laxity with which her duties had hitherto been performed with any thing approaching aversion or contempt. She respected her friend. She was glad to recognise in her superior qualities of mind, and a stronger sense of rectitude. It might not be within poor Letitia's power to understand the purport of Magdalen's mission; but she could admire her for the inflexible manner in which she began to carry it out.

If the heiress had consulted her own tastes, and had been selfish enough to have her own way now that she had come to be the guest of the Mammon family in Onyx Square, she would have employed her time in a very different manner to that which made the programme traced out for Miss Hill. For operas, or balls, or concerts, Miss Salusbury did not much care; but she was very fond of the theatre; she was fonder of the park; she delighted in what she called "jollifications," whether those

So,

jollifications took place at flower-shows, at public breakfasts, or at pic-nics. Mundane entertainments of that description did not enter into the social scheme of Miss Magdalen Hill. She did not insist upon Letitia's accompanying her in her daily pilgrimage, but she looked sadder and graver than her wont when the other manifested a disinclination to join her; and with a good-humoured protest against the whole thing being immensely slow and a great-I am afraid she said a confounded-bore, she went willingly enough whithersoever she was led. As to Lady Goldthorpe, she declared point blank that she couldn't be bothered with Magdalen's whims and fancies, and that she would be glad enough to give any money to the little beggars and the destitute crossing-sweepers, but would prefer not to cultivate their personal acquaintance. "Go along with the likes of such ragamuffins." Such was Lady Goldthorpe's more expressive locution.

Magdalen and Letitia did however "go along," and mingle with not only the likes of the classes just alluded to, but among men, women, and children of even lower degrees. Each morning was devoted to the exploration of the wretchedest-often of the most depraved-haunts of London. They entered hovels, and passed through scenes, and conversed with and succoured miserable beings, such as even the clergyman, the city missionary, and the police-officer seldom saw-such as the sunlight seldom glanced upon. Their reception was various. Sometimes the inquiries they made were received with respect; the relief they gave, with gratitude. Sometimes, but not seldom, they were met by sullen denials, by hypocritical lies, by rudeness, and abuse. But Magdalen went on her way, and the more rebuffs she met with seemed the more determined not to swerve from her appointed path.

It was not all black and dismal, however; now and then they visited some place where there was brightness and cheerfulness and hope. Now it was a training school, a ragged school, a school of industry, or cookery, or housekeeping; now the workroom of some associated seamstresses; now a new and improved habitation for the poor.

"There is a place," Magdalen Hill said one morning, "which I have never visited, and about which "(she mentioned some philanthropic bishop or nobleman's name) "has often talked to me. It is a kind of model lodging-house,-not exactly for the poor, but persons of the male sex very reduced in circumstances, or struggling hard against adversity. Shall we go there, Letitia ?"

"Any where," answered Miss Salusbury blithely; "any thing for a change after the sweeps and the beggars. What's the place called, Maggy?"

"It is called," Miss Hill answered, referring to her list for the day, "the Monmouth Chambers, and is situated somewhere in Soho; we will drive there at once."

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