ve after the family collapse.'

'I do not know,' said Lady Petherwin, taking up another sheet of paper.
'I have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up to no
profession, became a teacher of music in some country town--music having
always been his hobby. But the facts are not very distinct in my
memory.' And she dipped her pen for another letter.

Ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-in-
law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want to
torment their minds in comfort--to her own room. Here she thoughtfully
sat down awhile, and some time later she rang for her maid.

'Menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a footstep
that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her chair and
speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go down and
find out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in this house?
Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by directly inquiring; you have ways
of getting to know things, have you not? If the devoted George were here
now, he would help--'

'George was nothing to me, ma'am.'

'James, then.'

'And I only had James for a week or ten days: when I found he was a
married man, I encouraged his addresses very little indeed.'

'If you had encouraged him heart and soul, you couldn't have fumed more
at the loss of him. But please to go and make that inquiry, will you,
Menlove?'

In a few minutes Ethelberta's woman was back again. 'A gentleman of that
name stayed here last night, and left this afternoon.'

'Will you find out his address?'

Now the lady's-maid had already been quick-witted enough to find out
that, and indeed all about him; but it chanced that a fashionable
illustrated weekly paper had just been sent from the bookseller's, and
being in want of a little time to look it over before it reached her
mistress's hands, Mrs. Menlove retired, as if to go and ask the
question--to stand meanwhile under the gas-lamp in the passage,
inspecting the fascinating engravings. But as time will not wait for
tire-women, a natural length of absence soon elapsed, and she returned
again and said,

'His address is, Upper Street, Sandbourne.'

'Thank you, that will do,' replied her mistress.

The hour grew later, and that dreamy period came round when ladies'
fancies, that have lain shut up close as their fans during the day, begin
to assert themselves anew. At this time a good guess at E