r heart to address similar language to Lady Clara
Vere de Vere's brother. The last victim always believes that she is to
be the exception to all general rules; she may transgress, but not pay
the penalty--pluck the forbidden fruit, and for doing so not forfeit
Eden--plunge wildly into sin, and sorrow, and shame, and yet find peace
in her heart and the light of heaven lying on her path; but cause and
effect are eternal, and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and the power to
attract gone, and the inward sense of right succeeded by the stings of
conscience and the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep madly and
in vain for

"The tender grace of a day that is dead"?

But we are in Caldwell's,--let us go into the gallery and look down. I
know not the name of the new dances, but how the women swim round the
room, as the music now hurriedly hastens, now softly dies away. The girl
that dances here so modestly to-night in twelve months will have lost her
maiden shame, will be dressed in silks and satins, will be dancing at the
Argyll, and supping at Scott's or Quin's. That girl they call Rose--and
a rose she is, for she might shine in a Belgravian drawing-room, and
walks in beauty as a fairy queen--might have lit up a home with her love,
and made a brave heart proud; but here she comes, night after night, and
domestic life is to her tame after music and dancing such as she has
here. Beauty you will not find much of, nor that overdress which stamps
the character of the women at the Casino or the Argyll in unmistakeable
terms; and the men are the class you usually meet in these places. They
may be pickpockets, or they may be peers; you can scared tell the
difference in these levelling days. If I had not Mr Caldwell's express
assertion to the contrary, I should certainly say that that young fellow
with a pint bottle of champagne in his hand was decidedly drunk,--at any
rate, he has very much the appearance of a tipsy person; but the waiters
seem to be of Mr Caldwell's opinion, and are still offering him more
drink, and the women around seem to think it is rather fun than
otherwise. Ah! little do they reflect how such as he, under the
influences of drink, forget the decencies of life, the claims of duty,
forget even the common instincts of common humanity; so that the wife,
whom he has vowed to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and the
home forsaken, for the orgies of the public-house. Do the women around
u