"Your figures are not provocative of insatiable appetite," returned

his wife, with inimitable sang-froid, staying her paper knife that

she might examine an engraving.

"Your appetite needs further excitants, then? So did mine until I

began to suspect that the history might be authentic, and not a

figment of the raconteur's imagination. The hero's name at first

disposed me to set down the entire relation as a fiction. It is

romantic enough to perfume a three-volume novel--Julius Lennox!"

Mabel's instinctive thought was for her husband, but, in turning to

him she could not but notice that Mrs. Aylett sat motionless, the

paper-cutter between two leaves, and her left hand pressed hard upon

the upper, but without attempting to sever them.

Herbert twisted his head upon the pillow until he faced the back of

the sofa, and a convulsion went through him, hardly quelled by the

clasp of Mabel's hand upon his.

"Julius Lennox!" reiterated Mr. Aylett, between the fragrant puffs,

"A lieutenant in the navy--the good-looking, but, as the sequel

proved, not over-steady, spouse of a lady who was the daughter of

another naval officer of similar rank. The latter was compelled to

leave the service on account of incipient idiocy, and retired, upon

half-pay, to an unfashionable quarter of a certain great city, where

his wife, a smart Yankee, opened a boarding-house for law and

medical students, and contrived not only to keep the souls and

bodies of her family together, but to marry off her two still single

daughters--the one to a barrister, the other to a physician. The

lovely Louise Lennox--a pretty alliteration, is it not?--remained

meanwhile under the paternal roof, her husband's ship being absent

most of the time, and the handsome Julius having unlimited

privileges in the line condemned by "Black-eyed Susan" in her

parting interview with her sailor lover--finding a mistress in

every port. It is woman's nature and wisdom to seek consolation for

such afflictions as the deprivation of the beloved one's society,

and the almost certainty that he is basking his faithless self in

the sunlight of another's eyes. Our heroine, being at once ardent

and philosophical, put the lex talionis into force by falling in

love with one of her mother's lodgers, a sprig of the legal

profession. The favored youth--so says my edition of the

romance--remained preternaturally unconscious of the sentiment he

had inspired, attributing her manifestations of partiality to

platonic regard, until she opened his modest eyes by proposing an

elopement. He had completed his professional studies, taken out a

license to practise law, was about to quit her and the city, and the

no-longer-adored Julius was coming home--a wreck in health and

purse--upon a six months' leave of absence. It must be owned the

Lady Louise had some excuse for a measure that seemed to have amazed

and horrified her cicisbeo. Recoiling from the proposition and

herself with the virtuous indignation that is ever aroused in the

manly bosom by similar advances, he packed up his trunk,

double-locked it and his heart, paid his bill, and decamped from the

dangerous precincts.




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