on.

"Do you mind Calder going?" he whispered.

"Well, not much," said Miss Glyn.

Thus it was that the barony of Warmley returned to the house of
Merceron, and the portrait of the wicked lord came to hang once more in
the dining-room. So the curtain falls on the comedy; and what happened
afterwards behind the scenes, whether another comedy, or a tragedy, or
a mixed half-and-half sort of entertainment, now grave, now gay,
sometimes perhaps delightful, and again of tempered charm--why, as to
all this, what reck the spectators who are crowding out of the theatre
and home to bed?

But it seems as if, in spite of certain drawbacks in Agatha Merceron's
character, nothing very dreadful can have happened, because Mr. and
Mrs. Wentworth, who are very particular folk, went to stay at the Court
the other day, and their only complaint was that Charlie and his bride
were always at the Pool!

And, for his own part, if he may be allowed a word (which some people
say he ought not to be) here, just at the end, the writer begs to say
that he once knew Agatha, and--he would have taken the risks. However,
a lady to whom he has shown this history differs entirely from him, and
thinks that no sensible man would have married her. But, then, that is
not the question.

THE CURATE OF POLTONS

I must confess at once that at first, at least, I very much admired the
curate. I am not referring to my admiration of his fine figure--six
feet high and straight as an arrow--nor of his handsome, open,
ingenuous countenance, or his candid blue eye, or his thick curly hair.
No; what won my heart from an early period of my visit to my cousins,
the Poltons of Poltons Park, was the fervent, undisguised, unashamed,
confident, and altogether matter-of-course manner in which he made love
to Miss Beatrice Queenborough, only daughter and heiress of the wealthy
shipowner Sir Wagstaff Queenborough, Bart., and Eleanor his wife. It
was purely the manner of the curate's advances that took my fancy: in
the mere fact of them there was nothing remarkable. For all the men in
the house (and a good many outside) made covert. stealthy, and
indirect steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called
her) was, if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the
material eye a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate
heartlessness--both attributes which challenge a self-respecting mans
best efforts. But then came the fatal obstacle. From he