Nevertheless, it should seem there was naught to dread from them at this season, for neither the one nor the other came near their dwelling, in so far as was known to any within it, from that day forward; so that both May Avis and her faithful maiden were at last fain to believe that they had ridden that way by chance, it being, certes, their nighest road to the Manor Place from the side of Bedfordshire.

But now the country folk round about could talk and think of naught else day and night, save the grand housekeeping and jollity at the Manor-house-the gay hunting and hawking matches, the feasting and wassailing, the dice-playing and wine-drinking from after supper time, that rarely ended afore the morning. For the Lady Eglantine delighted alway in high and luxurious living, and costly and sumptuous array of all kinds; and also the knight her spouse, who had grown rich by robbing and spoiling, setting no store by wealth that had been so lightly won, was as free of expense as heart could desire; and especially at this season, would publicly display his riches by all manner of pomp and rejoicings, after the fashion of his master the Lord Spenser and others of that faction, who took pains by every means to show, that they were now lords paramount in England.

All these tidings of the eating and drinking and revelling at Malthorpe, were gathered up and carried to the Reeve's lodge by Sir Gauchet; who, though he adventured not himself within reach of those two ribalds, was wont at whiles to stay and talk with such of his old familiars of the household as he might light on by the way. From these gossips learnt he also tales of other things which had there betided, whereof, haply, the Lady de Hacquingay had been less willing that folks should hear, than of her grand living and worshipful estate. For, certes, the wedded life of the valiant knight and his fair spouse, resembled not wholly a paradise terrestrial; nor was the talk betwixt them always of their great love one to the other. But she, verily, had made small show of reverence or courtesy toward him after the first; sparing not to mock and flout at him for a churl and an old dotard, in the fellowship of the courtly young knights and lordlings, whom she loved at all times to have about her; which slights and affronts, Sir Lancilot, who in truth was no better than she spoke him, and of a jealous and choleric nature beside, would ever and anon revenge on her by such outrageous fits of fury as were terrible but to behold. And in these, not only would he taunt and upbraid her, in presence of both guests and household, with all such things as Madame Joyce had revealed to her discredit, (whether truly or not none might say,) but with all manner of faults and shames to boot, after his own fancies ; nay, he had more than once gone on to chastise her evil doings, as some affirmed, with blows and kicks, for he was liker at such times to a wild boar than a man, let alone a gentleman of honourable estate. Nevertheless, what with her fair and gracious countenance, what with feigning for a space a more amiable behaviour, the Lady Hacquingay never failed in the end, both to appease him, and likewise to obtain, in amends of his violence, whatsoever new gaud or folly it pleased her to desire; whereupon she would straightway begin the same course over again, until she had wrought the knight into a fresh fit of ire, which was sure to pass off after the manner of the former.

Needless were it to tell, that this proud and scornful dame took no more heed, whilst she tarried in those parts, of Avis Forde, or aught concerning her, than if she had never so much as heard her name; nor that the Lord Prior of Charlewode, who brooked not such rude fellowship, and saw that further condescension on his part should in no wise avail his ward, held himself as wholly at variance from her and her knight; to the great displeasure of the last, who courted above all things the countenance of great lords and persons of noble birth. For though at that time of the ruling faction, yet was he but an underling thereof; and small repair would there have been to his house of young gallants of the court, but for the goodly entertainment they found there, as also for the sake of his handsome spouse; which last cause, albeit at whiles, it inflamed his wrath against her, yet helped afterwards to assuage it with thoughts of the advantage he gained thereby.

May Avis, on her part, cared as little for the slights of the great lady, as the great lady could do for her fellowship; deeming herself far more highly honoured in the countenance of her noble lord, who never passed by the gate but he staid his steed, to see and speak a gracious word to her, than she would have been by all the courtesies and condescensions of the Lady de Hacquingay. And since it seemed that neither she nor the grimly knight her spouse could work her further harm or annoy-that small portion of her heritage they had left, joining not to the rest of the Manor lands, but lying eastward thereof beyond the common, and well nigh closed round by the priory woodlands; and she herself leading a quiet lonely life, out of sight and speech of all save her own small household-she began to hope that they might come and go for this time, without her seeing or hearing more of them or their disorderly retinue.

After this manner the whole rout tarried on at the Manor Place, by the space of three months and more, always after the same joyous and plentiful manner; the knights and young gentles spending their time as has been related, and their squires and yeomanry approving themselves the true followers of their masters, in swearing and brawling, dice-playing and drinking-not seldom also spoiling, beating, and otherwise misusing the poor country people about, and their families, until both young and old prayed for deliverance from their presence. As for those of the Manor Place who had entered into the knight's service, it fared yet worse with them; for this rascal pack of courtbred knaves and pages treated them as they had been brute beasts or born serfs, both working and rating them from morning to night without mercy. The only one that escaped was the old wife Muriel, who had so cunningly wrought herself into the ugly knight's favour, with her tales of the Mourtrays, and the marvellous great likeness he bore to those worthy gentlemen, most of all to Sir Thomas, and his sire, Sir Richard, that she was become second in authority to none there, and demeaned her after a more regal fashion than she had ever done yet-a carriage that in no wise increased toward her the love of her old enemies, Jankin and Anselm, though they made her outwardly as great show of reverence as the rest.

MY AUNT'S NEW COMPANION.

BY ABBOTT LEE.

HEIGHO! what a curious pack of cards this world seems to be ! Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle everlastingly; some people getting all the court cards, others nothing but deuces and trays. What a beggar-myneighbour sort of a game it is! now one hand holds the whole packthe other is reduced to his last card-but then sometimes that card is a knave.

Well, now let us look at a little of the shuffling.

Leonora Keane was left an orphan at nineteen, with blue eyes and somewhere about fifty pounds of the current coin of the kingdom. She had lost her mother in childhood, and her father having held a but so-so-situation in a country bank, the hours of which gave him the gentility of dinner at five, and the profits of which enabling him to make that dinner of what he could get, he was therefore considered to be vastly genteel; but the only legacy he could leave to the world was his daughter, and the only legacy he could leave to his daughter was the aforesaid fifty pounds, derived from the sale of all his household goods and chattels.

Well, we shall see what profit the world had of its legacy, and what use the daughter made of hers.

The first thing she did was to dry her blue eyes, for having enjoyed the advantages of half a year's finishing at a boarding-school, she had learnt amongst other things that vermilion borderings did not harmonise well with blue eyes, however rich and long the fringes might be; and then to consult with herself what she should do with herself and her fifty pounds.

Well, this ill-natured world of ours has good-natured fits now and then after all: fits which will not suffer it to enjoy its own indulgences whilst the orphan is shedding tears or the widow bewailing-at least it loses its appetite for dinner for a day or so; and thus it befel that a country lady, in a fit of humanity, and on the strength of Miss Leonora Keane's half-year's boarding-school finishing, proffered a home and twenty pounds a year as compensation for the care of one little girl— and that too a home and among a grade many degrees higher and better than any she had yet enjoyed. And it also happened that another fractional part of society, a certain world-loving, good dinnerliking old lady, influenced by a similar fit of sympathy, invited her to become her new companion, on the mere condition of bearing with her trifling whims and tempers, and being always agreeable when she herself might feel disposed to be disagreeable.

Leonora Keane was a young lady of understanding: she paused over both these proposals, but she did not pause long. Could she have done nothing better she would have taken up with the governesship, but after weighing the pros and cons, she decided that the companionship was better. In the one case, she knew that she should have to

be shut up in a dull room with a tiresome child: in the other, she should have to go abroad with a tiresome woman; but then with the one she should be out of the world, with the other she should be in it: with the one, she should be immured in the country, and look upon nothing but green trees; with the other, she should be in town, and see live men and women; so she decided upon bearing the tempers of the old lady in London rather than the tempers of the spoilt child in the country.

Now, during all this winding up of her affairs, Leonora Keane found that her blue eyes, properly managed, were the most useful sort of eyes in the world; for they not only enabled her to see everything that happened, but being seen, proved productive of very good per centage. Thus, during the auction of the goods and chattels which had furnished their little cottage, of the sale of the chair which she had sat upon, the bed which she had laid upon, the carpet she had trod upon, and the plate she had eaten from, it was enough for Leonora to sit with these said blue eyes bent down upon the floor in the banker's house, which had been open to receive her, and by the mere lifting up of these cerulean orbs, and then casting them down again, without even the utterance of a word, for Nature had been so kind to Leonora as not to make her a great talker, that great fault, by means of which women, like babbling streams, so often prove their own shallowness; by this mere act, we say, she so worked upon the feelings of those who came near her, for all people are fond of being amiable when it is not over expensive, that the use of her eyes was as good as money to her. By their means she had bed and board found her; for their sake everybody worked for her, everybody ran hither and thither for her; for their sake she had the daintiest bits at table; an arm to lean upon if she walked, a seat found for her if she tottered: somebody to do everything that was disagreeable for her; somebody to undertake every fatigue; somebody to go all her errands. Ay, indeed, those blue eyes judiciously used were very useful, almost a fortune for her; and there were only two or three good-natured friends who were malicious enough to say that Miss Keane used her eyes, (and pray what else were they for?) but then these were nothing but spiteful old maids, and everybody was very indignant indeed at the enormity of the charge.

All this was mighty well for about nine days, and all the world knows that that is the longest time possible for the world to keep in the same temper-as if that were not long enough in all consciencemore especially in a fit of sympathy; at the close of that time, Leonora began to find that instead of having her wants supplied by intuitive induction, she must esteem herself sufficiently well off if she got things for the asking-like the rest of the world.

Not liking this vulgar, ordinary mode, Leonora Keane determined to betake herself and her blue eyes elsewhere, trusting that these last might prove the fashionable colour in the great metropolis. Never had she been of so much consequence in the whole course of her life as during the last few weeks, while everybody had been pitying her, and she did not at all like coming down into commonplace again.

Having thus determined, Leonora proceeded to execute. Her first

step was to write to the Mrs. Moryllion Shrubsole, of Regent's Park, from whom she had received her invitation of companionship, to appoint the day for her arrival and installation, and this she did on the finest of satined paper, with the broadest of black edges, in the most finikin of handwritings, sealed with the most sentimental of seals. All this would have been very fine if she had not had to have taken it to the post herself; but nobody proffered, nobody took a hint, and the servants were busy. Leonora's next step was to purchase a few of the most expensive dresses that the provincial town could boast, and to transfer them to the hands of the tip-top dressmaker, with strict injunctions to have them executed in the first style of fashion; and as it fortunately happened that a friendly railroad which had been recently completed, had just brought up a newly-imported French artiste, whom the spirited country proprietress had resolved to use as an extinguisher to all her rivals, it followed equally felicitously that Leonora Keane's dresses and bonnets and mantillas were more stylish than London, being as stylish as Parisian.

And now it came to pass that Leonora Keane's friends began to show themselves in their true colours. The old banker, whose house had been her home since the commencement of her troubles, and who had hitherto given her the breast of the chicken at dinner, now contented himself with sending her a wing; nay, he had moreover the unkindness to tell her that she had better put as much as she could spare of her fifty pounds into the bank, and save it for a rainy day, than spend it in frippery; and the banker's lady, who had sat with Leonora's hand in hers for half an hour together with tears in her eyes, now neither shook hands nor looked at her at all; whilst the banker's daughters so entirely disapproved of her pride and extravagance, that they would not condescend even to ask for patterns of her finery, but contented themselves in taking them by stealth. In short, under these trying circumstances it was only the banker's son who retained any share of Leonora's good opinion, he being the only one who had the least consideration for her feelings in these matters, neither caring for her fifty pounds, nor objecting to see her as fine as she pleased in her attire, and therefore being the only one in the family possessed of either kindness or common sense.

But Leonora felt that it was really shameful of these people, because they had had opportunities of offering her a few trifling kindnesses and courtesies, to desire to trample her under their feet, and therefore determined to show them that she was not yet so broken down but that she could exert a proper spirit. So thereupon she provided herself with a handsome travelling cloak, such a one as would secure her a proper degree of attention on the road, and exchanged all her shabby old boxes for genteel travelling trunks; pieces of enormity that gave the finishing blow to her popularity with the banker and his lady and their conjoint family, always excepting the banker's son; and these enormities being followed by the fact that she, Leonora Keane, the child of their former clerk, whose whole stipend had never exceeded sixty pounds a year, did coolly and deliberately, and with knowledge and malice aforethought, actually take her place in the first class carriages up to town; an act of extravagance so