"Kill her, nonsense! I'm going to be a child no longer, I can tell you. Let me ring the bell. Don't stop me."

"You poor creature," went on Mrs. Talbot, in a low husky voice. "I am ashamed of myself when I think how long I have made an idol of such an object. The precautions, the miserable, childish precautions I have taken. I am humiliated when I think of it. You are not worth it an hour."

"How dare you——”

"Don't! don't forget what I am entitled to. I won't listen to it. It is like your weak soul, to have mistaken all my tenderness and watchings, for fear of yourself! Now, however, that is all at an end, and you must speak plainly. What is your course going to be,

after this? I know what mine shall be."

"It shall be whatever I choose it to be. There!" said the Beauty, dismayed and most uncomfortable at this situation. "I'm not going to be a cipher in this house any longer."

"I ask you again, what is your course?"

"And I tell you again, I sha'n't be questioned and put down in that way. It's all folly. It's my wish, as the head of this house, that we should keep to this arrangement with the Hardmans, and I shall take care that it is done. And they are determined in it, too. Where's Olivia? Here, Olivia, come here."

That poor fluttering heart was not far off. She heard the angry voices piercing upwards through the ceiling to her little bower, where, as every tone was raised higher, it made her young heart shrink. She was down in an instant.

"Listen, Livy," said her mother, sternly. "Mr. Talbot, your father, wishes you to go back on that last step you have taken. Come, dearest child do what you will about it. Think only of your own

happiness."

"Oh, it is only yours, papa and mamma, that I care for," sobbed the young girl. "It is terrible to see all this going on! I cannot bear it. I do not care what becomes of me, when you, dearest father and mother, are in this way."

"Oh, childish nonsense!" he said. "I am not going to be made a fool of in my own house, I can tell you. To have the whole neighbourhood laughing at me. I think it was very uncalled-for, your taking this step without consulting me, your father,-very uncalled-for."

"Oh, don't, Beauty dearest," she began, in a sort of agony.

"And I must beg, too, that you will stop that! I have put up with it too long. I tell you what you have done a foolish thing,

and you must make up your mind to keep your promise, and marry that young man. Beauty, indeed!"

"Livy knows all that she said to me last night. She will not degrade her poor broken-hearted mother."

"I shall be master in my own house," he said; “and if you

to disobey me

dare

The agony in her face could not be described. Now she looked at him, not at her mother.

“Kill me, if you like, Livy!" said her mother.

"Think of your

self. I am weary. I long for rest, and the sooner it ends the better." "Oh, yes, this is very romantic. I know the one who is weary,

and who has suffered. I am sick of it too."

"Oh," said Mrs. Talbot, fiercely, "that I could express the contempt I feel for myself-that I should have thought such a precious treasure worth the guarding,-that womanish nature of yours, which could be so upset by some ridiculous speeches. I do not despise you; but I do myself, for my own blindness.”

His voice trembled with rage. He seemed to spit forth these words: "You needn't talk. I have heard stories enough about your adventures

"Stop, stop!" she said, agitated. "Be generous before her. I have been a good and devoted wife to you

"Oh, we know all that," he went on, sneeringly. "I am under no compliment because you accepted me. Every body knew the reason of that." The malignant way in which he said this made Livy shrink and shiver within herself. Was this her loved Beauty, and not some loathsome and powerless adder, trying to sting? Was this what she had loved, worshipped, and reverenced? Oh Heaven above! what was to become of her, listening to these horrors?

The Beauty thought he had brought the matter to a point by his last speech, and like every foolish man, fancied he had struck home where he had missed. "Come, now," he said, with complacency, "do what I tell you at once. Get out the ponies, and we shall drive

over."

"Livy, you know me, and what you said to me. You will not at this moment cease to be what you always have been--a good daughter?"

The Beauty was getting into a fury. "My house, and my daughter! I'll not be treated in this way. Do what I tell you!"

Our poor Livy, with distress and agony on her face as though she were called on to witness a death, and, indeed, here seemed to be a death of all that had been so dear to her, hovered in a

miserable uncertainty between father and mother, and knew not what to do.

"A fine mother, indeed, to give lessons! I could tell some stories that I only learnt lately, and which have been kept from me all these years back. You were once a model daughter yourself!"

Into the faded Chalon face came such a flush, so tender, and even modest, as though the unworthy charge, coming from him, had forced a rush of blood to that unfamiliar place. The look of physical pain—as though it had been some stab-almost extorted a cry from her child, who rushed to her, and putting her arms about her, by this simple act seemed to proclaim that she was driven to take part with her against all the world. Into that gentle face came a look of defiance and scorn. The foolish father and husband-his breast fluttering in him with vexation and a little alarm-standing undecided at one end of the room; that fair, excited lady and daughter at the other. A space stretched between.

"Oh, for shame, father!" cried she, and it was the first time almost that she used that word; "for shame, father! Oh, mother dearest, I am with you always. I shall stand by you, and give up the whole world for you. No one shall insult you when I am with

you,"

"Oh, a nice conspiracy," sneered the Beauty. "Stand by each other as much as you like. I shall look to myself now. I have put up with it much too long."

He literally shrank from the look of contempt on his child's face, and walked-slunk, rather-out of the room.

(To be continued.)

NOTES & INCIDENTS.

WE are only in the second year of our New Series; yet death has taken from us two contributors of note. Last year we lost William Jerdan. He had written in the old numbers of The Gentleman's, no doubt; this month a pen which belonged to our New Series is laid by for ever. Mr. H. H. Dixon died on Wednesday last. He was suffering from a painful and harassing disease when we enlisted his services; but he loved his work, and received our proposition for a series of papers on sports and pastimes and rural life, as if we had secured to him a new lease of literary life. Mr. Dixon was educated for the bar; but he entered upon a journalistic career at an early age, his principal business having been in connection with The Mark Lane Express. He was more familiarly known as "The Druid." His latest work, "Saddle and Sirloin," was published this year. It is made up chiefly of a revised compilation of articles that have appeared in the paper just mentioned, The Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, and The Gentleman's Magazine. "The second part, 'South,'" he says, in his preface, “will (D.V.) see the light in the course of the present year." It has pleased the highest Power of all that “Finis" should come earlier than the author had arranged; but our friend was always prepared for the end. He was a high-minded, kindly gentleman; and his memory will live long amongst men who, loving rural life for its own sake, take a pride and a pleasure in the horse and the dog, uninfluenced by the mania for gambling.

YE gentleman of England who dine at home at ease, bestow a minute's thought upon their dinners on the seas. Lend an ear to the wails of the merchant sailor, who is most undeservedly the worst-fed being in Christendom. The commonest labourer on the land can choose his food according to his means. The sailor, like a caged beast-and he is far less cared for-must take what is thrown to him. Bread made of blighted grain and damaged flour; mahogany beef, that may have any fault, so long as it does not positively stink; biscuit bought at a price that forbids the idea that it is made of edible meal, and stored in porous bags and leaky casks that are colonised by weevils and worms; tea and coffee that actually spoil the good water in which they are infused ;-these are the qualities of nourishment doled out to poor Jack in his water-bound prison. Seldom do we hear of sailors' grievances from themselves; but upon this one they have, in their own organs, lately spoken with deep

feeling; and it is the duty of every echoing medium to resound their murmurs. Let, then, this assertion reach all ears it can: that if the food now being given by shipowners to their men went before a common market inspector, one half of it would be condemned as unfit for human mouths. The cause is clear enough. And the cure? That, too, is so obvious that it will surprise most people to hear that it is not provided for. Let seamen's food be placed under inspection. The supplies shipped for emigrants, for troops, even for convicts, are officially examined. Is it not, then, a cruel neglect to leave the sailor to the mercy of his parsimonious purveyor? There may be talk about interference between employer and employed; but was not the "Lime-Juice Act" such an interference? For this Jack has expressed his warm thanks. He says, with reference to what he had before and after it came in force, that he could not understand how two things bearing the same name could taste so differently. That, it may be said, was a sanitary measure. Let the provision question be dealt with as a sanitary one, too. Bad food must cause what bad lime juice could not cure.

POOR Faraday! It would seem that the Fates have interfered to prevent his having either a worthy biographer or a fitting memorial. Of lives there have been several more or less pretentious. First, after his death, came one from a foreigner, Professor De la Rive, the veteran electrician of Geneva, than whom, perhaps, no one could better appreciate Faraday's labours. This memoir was brief and exclusively scientific. Next came a longer history, also scientific, from Professor Tyndall; but this was not a book for those who wanted to know the philosopher as a man out of the laboratory and the lecture room. By-and-by appeared the fragmentary obituary compiled by Dr. Bence Jones for the Royal Society, from Faraday's diary and correspondence. This was very interesting; but it was not in readable form, and, not being published in the common way, few people saw it, though some of the periodicals connected the leading facts into short narratives. Lastly, the same editor multiplied his extracts to the production of the two volumes entitled the "Life and Letters of Faraday;" but these, from their size and the form of their contents, must be regarded rather as a collection of materials than a digested biography. So, after all, a people's book-not necessarily a popular book-on the boy's struggles and the man's achievements has yet to be written. Then with regard to the memorial scheme; it does not seem to prosper. Some five or six months ago it was publicly announced that the subscriptions thereto amounted to 1,400/.; yet now, by the latest quotations, the sum remains the same. The committee appear to have been a little unlucky in forming their plans. The restriction of individual donations to amounts no higher than five pounds doubtless robbed the fund of many handsome contributions; and it is more than probable that

• In justice it must be stated that there are some shipping firms against whose provisions the seamen make no complaint.