when Mabel and Lord Mallow were standing in the embrasure
of a window, walled in by the crowd of aristocratic nobodies and
intellectual eccentricities, talking earnestly of poor Erin and her
chances of ultimate happiness, the lady, almost unawares, quoted a
couplet of her own which seemed peculiarly applicable to the argument.

"Whose lines are those?" Lord Mallow asked eagerly; "I never heard them
before."

Mabel blushed like a schoolgirl detected in sending a valentine.

"Upon my soul," cried the Irishman, "I believe they are your own! Yes,
I am sure of it. You, whose mind is so high above the common level,
must sometimes express yourself in poetry. They are yours, are they
not?"

"Can you keep a secret?" Lady Mabel asked shyly.

"For you? Yes, on the rack. Wild horses should not tear it out of my
heart; boiling lead, falling on me drop by drop, should not extort it
from me."

"The lines are mine. I have written a good deal--in verse. I am going
to publish a volume, anonymously, before the season is over. It is
quite a secret. No one--except mamma and papa, and Mr. Vawdrey--knows
anything about it."

"How proud they--now especially proud Mr. Vawdrey must be of your
genius," said Lord Mallow. "What a lucky fellow he is."

He was thinking just at that moment of Violet Tempest, to whose secret
preference for Roderick Vawdrey he attributed his own rejection. And
now here--where again he might have found the fair ideal of his
youthful dreams--here where he might have hoped to form an alliance at
once socially and politically advantageous--this young Hampshire's
squire was before him.

"I don't think Mr. Vawdrey is particularly interested in my poetical
efforts," Lady Mabel said with assumed carelessness. "He doesn't care
for poetry. He likes Byron."

"What an admirable epigram!" cried the Hibernian, to whom flattery was
second nature. "I shall put that down in my commonplace book when I go
home. How I wish you would honour me--but it is to ask too much,
perhaps--how proud I should be if you would let me hear, or see, some
of your poems."

"Would you really lik----?" faltered Lady Mabel.

"Like! I should deem it the highest privilege your friendship could
vouchsafe."

"If I felt sure it would not bore you, I should like much to have your
opinion, your candid opinion," (Lord Mallow tried to look the essense
of candour) "upon some things I have written. But it would be really to
impose too much upon your go