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Arthur seemed to flourish on this system: he was growing into a broad-chested handsome young fellow, half a head taller than his father; was developing most gentlemanly tastes, and thoroughly understood pleasing and amusing himself. This was a great relief to his father, who rewarded him by making it a point of honour never to inquire how he had been employing himself. So long as Arthur kept within his liberal allowance, contracted no debts, and kept a good appearance before the respectable circle of acquaintances in which the Wansies moved, he might do just as he chose. And Arthur did so; showing his appreciation of his home life principally by a tolerably regular appearance at the dinner hour. Truth to tell, the cook of the establishment was a very excellent one, and Mr. Wansy's wines were really good. That gentleman himself now stood upon the great rug in front of the drawing-room fire. The steel of the fireplace and fender shone in the light of the flames, and formed a perfect picture of brightness and glow; Mr. Wansy, spotlessly arrayed in evening dress, looked as cheerful as the hearth in front of which he stood. Notwithstanding all this brightness, Arthur closed his eyes for a second, with a slight shudder as he entered. He very rarely came into the drawing-room; when he did, this little spasm inevitably passed through his system. If he ever indulged in champagne and lobster so far into the small hours as to give him bad dreams, his nightmares always enacted themselves in this room. And why-only because it was blue, quite blue; a perfect chaos of stretches of blue carpet, of blue satin couches, of blue satin chairs. A great mirror reflected the blueness and intensified it. In front of this mirror was a

row of artificial indiarubber plants, sticking their stiff green leaves out defiantly, as if they meant to stand by their own colour to all eternity in spite of the unfair majority of the Blues. Near them, in a large blue chair, sat Mrs. Wansy, dressed in black velvet, with many aggressive artificial roses in her cap, and looking as yellow, by dint of her beloved blue drawing-room, as a tolerably well-complexioned woman can be made to look. She was complaining of something, in the peculiar monotone of habitual aggrievement, and Mr. Wansy was not listening to her. He welcomed Arthur joyously, as a happy interruption to the Darby-and-Joanism of the moment. Mr. Wansy made small disguisal of his contempt for the female sex generally, and his wife in particular. He had never made the acquaintance of a woman who could do anything except spend money, and if she could do that pretty well, it was a dead certainty that she would not be able to balance her accounts. Consequently, he was not likely to think very highly of the mental powers of the sex, as the capacity for making money was his measure of human virtue, and accurate bookkeeping appeared to him to be necessary to salvation. It is very doubtful whether he would have been able to regard a person who could not balance his accounts as possessing an immortal soul. Arthur had inherited a business faculty, and it is probable that Mr. Wansy would have regarded the results of a University education in a very different manner if he had found Arthur's brains bestowed upon the making of Latin verse, instead of that young gentleman exhibiting, as he did, a very fine appreciation of the value and virtues of hard cash. Arthur knew exactly how to keep his father in good humour,

and he took the trouble to do it, for he hated to be worried by anyone else being out of temper. So, if he did perchance bestow a few moments of his lordly leisure upon the blue drawing-room, he invariably glanced over the City article of the morning paper, in order to have some topics of conversation. This pleased his father very much; it made him feel that his son was a person of some intelligence; and it suited Arthur, as he generally obtained a few hints worth having in these little conversations-the fact being that he indulged his hereditary tastes by engaging in certain small private speculations

of his own.

In this way the five minutes in the drawing-room, and the hour and a half of dinner itself, was generally got through pretty successfully in the way of conversation. Mrs. Wansy hardly ever said anything at dinner-time. She was a great eater, and was growing stout and flushed by dint of a total absence of exercise and much meat and wine. The substantial—almost aldermanic-repasts which were served in the solemn dining-room of this house were certainly not what would be called in the modern medical jargon, "brainial meals;" but then, as a witty writer recently remarked, it might be as well for people to ascertain the existence of an organ before they troubled themselves about providing it with special food, The Wansies understood the art of eating and drinking according to the usual English middle-class standard; their dinners were as portentous as their sideboard and as solid and heavy as their silver.

Arthur had a smoking-room, which, as his father never smoked, was his own sacred property. He had furnished it himself, and had contrived to introduce into it a certain air of luxury without the

overpowering sense of the upholsterer, which prevailed in every other part of the house. But still the solidity of the mansion penetrated even this sanctum; there was something heavy in the atmosphere, and Arthur could seldom support the solitude of his smoking-room after he had disposed of a couple of fragrant cigars. He always went out in the evening. Rich young bachelors can always find plenty of society in London, of every description, and Arthur Wansy, when he issued upon the door step of his home, a handsome, cultivated, wealthy young man, had practically a little world of societies from which he might pick and choose his amusements and companions. As is frequently the case with the sons of men who have made money, Arthur went into circles both higher than his father could gain admittance to, and lower than he would have cared to have his father know anything about. But Arthur had not been trained up to the standard of Oxford æstheticism for nothing. He knew a good thing when he saw it; consequently, though there were plenty of rich people who would be glad to see him in their drawing-rooms (which were all more or less after the pattern of Mrs. Wansy's), and though there were plenty of another sort of people, to whom the fact that he was rich was a sufficient introductionand who were very amusing-yet his taste led him perpetually to prefer the Hamertons' house to any of them. Here there was never anything to offend the most delicate mind, the most highly educated taste. These people belonged essentially to that charming modern class who make true politeness a principle of life, and who regard amiability as a virtue never to be dispensed with.

And so to-night-as on so many

previous nights-Arthur hesitated which way to turn; and when he had finished his cigar on the broad door step of the house, he eventually let himself in at the Hamertons' garden gate. Why should he not? There could be no reason for Merry's omitting to keep her engagement in the afternoon except the easy forgetfulness of such a light-hearted disposition as hers. And yet, for some undefined reason, he felt one degree less sure about his welcome than usual. But, he argued with himself, this was ridiculous. Merry had a friend with her now, which was all the more reason why she would be glad to see him. Girls always wanted men to amuse them; and so, with that peculiar consciousness of innate value, which lends a dignity to many an empty-headed puppy, Arthur boldly advanced.

"The gentlemen are still in the dining-room, sir," said the manservant who let him in.

"Oh," said Arthur, hesitating," I did not know there were visitors."

"Only Mr. Richard, sir," said the man, shutting the front door, for he knew perfectly well that Arthur would stay; and Arthur did stay. Mr. Richard was a person of whom he had heard a great deal and whom he had never seen; therefore a certain amount of curiosity gave him an additional desire to stay. But he did not go into the diningroom; he preferred to get under the wing of his little friend Merry, who was always kind and sweet, and in whose atmosphere the very thought of ennui departed.

He went upstairs to the large drawing-room, admitting himself quietly through the heavy curtains which hung over the arched doorway. There was no one there, and the lights were turned low. A brighter light which gleamed through a curtain, and a low sound of voices, led him on.

CHAPTER III.

THERE was a quaint little slip of a room hardly wider than a passage between the great drawing-room, and a room beyond which was sacred to certain pictures. This nook was a favourite one of Merry's, and here Arthur found the two girls to-night. The room of the pictures was called the Egyptian room from its peculiar style of decoration. A large picture by a modern master stood upon an easel at one side. It was illuminated so carefully that it never showed its beauty so fully as at night. The little ante-room in which the two girls were sitting had a low-cushioned seat at the far end, from which this great picture, which brought Egyptian life home to the very senses, could be seen at its best. From this seat, looking down the room, the marvellous head of the Pharaoh, with the deep, patient eyes, seemed to be a living thing, only more intense in its silent reality than a changeable human face. Merry was lying back against the great yellow satin cushions of this couch, her eyes fixed upon the eyes of the Pharaoh. Clotilda had been reading aloud from a volume of Mrs. Browning; but she had put the book aside at a remark made by Merry just as Arthur was coming through the drawing-room.

"That face of the Pharaoh," said Merry, in a tone much graver than usual, at least in Arthur's experience of her, "is becoming every day a more intelligible teacher to

me.

Patience, unchangeableness, constancy through all trials, are the qualities which I see in it, and which make it appear so beautiful."

"You are right, I believe, as to the qualities," answered Clotilda ; "and, at all events, there is no doubt that a great moral lesson is embodied in that picture."

"But who needs moral lessons in these days?" said Arthur, coming upon them just at that moment. He shook hands with Miss Raymond (whom he knew slightly and regarded with some contempt as a blue stocking), and then sank into a tempting nook near Merry.

"We are educated beyond those things now," he went on, with the fluency acquired in the debating club, where men learn to talk with ease on subjects to which they have never given a moment's real thought; "we have discovered in this complicated nineteenth century life that a different conscience is needed for every different walk in life. The commercial conscience and the clerical conscience, for instance, are two articles of totally different growth; there is a great gulf fixed between them, and there is nothing for it but to shake hands across. I hope I am not offending you," he said, turning to Miss Raymond, "but I think I am safe; I fancy from what I have seen of your poems that you are not of any avowed religion."

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Oh, no,' answered Clotilda, quickly, "I am an unbeliever, because I know nothing in which to believe."

"An unbeliever?" said another voice, in a tone of surprise. They all looked up a little startled to notice that another person had come quietly in. The voice was as quiet as the speaker's movements, and had a certain sweetness in it which is not very common in masculine voices.

"You have not met my cousin before, have you Arthur?" said Merry, and she introduced the quiet gentleman as Mr. Richard Hamerton. He bowed to Arthur, and then immediately fixed his eyes again on Clotilda's face. He sat down by her and began to speak in that peculiarly low voice which

made Richard Hamerton's conversation so charming to the one person to whom it was addressed.

"You are very young," he said, "to call yourself that."

"Am I?" said Clotilda in her quick way; "is it not better to begin by avowing that I know nothing? If I ever accept any faith it will then at least have the merit of being real."

Mr. Hamerton made no reply for a moment, and, after a little pause, Arthur spoke.

"As I said just now, we are educated beyond great moral truths and religious teachings; we all have a little scientific training, which necessitates a disbelief in unproveable doctrines."

He spoke in that cool tone of condescension towards all things create and uncreate, which has become a common feature in modern conversation. He was in the mood to show off a little before Miss Raymond, whom he despised because she wrote poetry, and before Richard Hamerton, whom he had taken a dislike to at first sight. He never talked in this way to Merry; and he was cut short in his impending eloquence by a sense that the girl's eyes were on his face, and that they were full of an undisguised distress. Richard Hamerton also caught the look, and was interested by it.

"You, Merry," he said, "you don't call yourself an unbeliever?"

Two passionate spots of colour came suddenly in her cheeks; she half rose, as if confused, and then sat down again; there was an eager look in her brilliant, youthful face. She put her hands up as if to hide the glow of expression which shone out from her.

"I," she said, "I believe a great many things which you would all laugh at. I can't help it-I cling to my faiths-they are part of myself and I cannot be so in

constant as to give up anything which I still love, even if you all clearly prove it to be only an idea. I think you must be so unhappy

if you have nothing to believe in! Oh, Arthur, I can't bear to hear you talk so; it makes my heart ache!"

She turned towards him, her eyes fastened on his, he felt her sweet breath as it came in little passionate thrills from her quickbeating heart. She had forgotten the others, she only thought of him of his joy or sadness; and the intensity of her young, ardent feelings, struck through him. He looked into her eyes, and knew in that moment that she was his by virtue of the unasked surrender of a heart as pure and true as an angel's.

"Don't trouble about me," he said lightly; "I can assure you I am very well contented with my own views on matters in general."

He spoke with that air of superiority which always silences a woman who is loving, especially if she is young. Merry felt as if a quiet and cold hand had stilled her emotion, and thrust her back into herself; she became suddenly aware that the others were looking on, and that perhaps she had been too much in earnest for the good taste of avowed unbelievers. She leaned back against the cushion and took up the volume of Mrs. Browning which lay between her and Clotilda. She began to turn the pages, and endeavoured to assume an air of indifference. But the two bright spots upon her cheeks grew large, and gradually the colour covered her face. In the meantime Clotilda had begun to speak in answer to Arthur's remark about himself.

"That is a very unusual state, I think, Mr. Wansy, and I am sure it must be a very delightful one. It is so much more common to find

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"I should think not," said Mr. Richard, drily. He could be very dry in his own way sometimes, and generally that was the only exhibition of his dislike. Merry, who was very familiar with all his mannerisms, knew by the tone in which he spoke that for some reason he did not like Arthur Wansy. She raised her eyes fom the book in her hand, and looked perplexedly at the two men. felt that they did not like each other. Why was that?-how could that be?-when she liked them both so much? That was her first feeling, but the feminine instinct told her in the same moment that this was but natural: the men were not only unlike, they were of absolutely opposite constitution. was fortunate for her tender little heart that she could not guess how strong the antipathy between them

was.

It

Just then a diversion was made by the arrival on the scene of Mr. and Mrs. Hamerton, looking as happy and as handsome as a pair of young lovers. "So," said Mr. Hamerton, when they came upon the little group in the corner, “you have a taste for art, it seems. You are all silent in front of the Pharaoh. It is good to be awestruck in the presence of beauty sometimes; but I should not have

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