first at the sky, then at her broom, and then at his umbrella. "Do you think it will rain?" she asked. Rain," he replied, with a faint inflection of irony in his tone"my dear lady, après nous le déluge' is not on the cards." Why do you put so much emphasis on nous? there is nothing between us. "There may be one umbrella between us before long," he answered impatiently. It was evident that there was to be war to the knife between them, and every inch of ground would have to be contested. He had served in many engagements-sometimes with widows, sometimes with ingénues, always with women with histories and uncomfortable backgrounds; but he had never quite met with a woman like Diana. She puzzled him as she had done others, and this determined him to finesse. She saw this, and doubled back. He hedged, she ditched that is to say, she dug a pitfall for him. She offered him a nut. "She wishes to find out if they're false," he thought. "She shan't." Centuries of civilisation and refinement were swept away in that brief moment, and the look of the wild early settler overspread his delicately cut features. He took the proffered nut, and looking her steadily in the face, said, very slowly, and with the clearest pre-, not post-nasal enunciation, "You bet," and spun the nut into the air with the velocity of a catapult. It was to be point and counterpoint to the very end.

At that moment Saracinesca strolled out of the Ark, looking very sulky, and as if he had been quarrelling with his dear wife, which is, I am sorry to hear, a habit into which he has fallen of late. "Lady Baby" instantly tacked herself on to him, in order to play him off against "Sir Peter"

silly little girl! But Sir Peter, who was just behind, swung himself up on to the outside of the Ark, and watched the pair go off with an amused smile on his face. "They may go to Jericho if they like; they will find me sitting here on their return; or if not, they know my address in town." So saying he lit a cheroot.

And now a strong smell of seawater and vitriol was borne on the breeze,-Mehalah was coming on to the scene, followed by Anthony Hammond, looking very shabby and sheepish, and as if he had just been refused- or accepted. He and Mehalah cannot have had much in common. I should have thought his tastes lay in the opposite direction from strong language and vitriol; but he was ever shillyshallying, and willy-nillying, and thus found himself landed on a surf-beaten shore of new and possibly tempestuous experiences.

I had not time to follow up this strange concurrence of atoms, for just then "Lady Dolly" came out quickly, evidently agacée, because the "Moths" had got at her valuable furs while shut up, and because worthy "Mr Smith" had been kind enough to say he would devote "a part of his life " to seeing her safe home. She was very young and lovely, but her daughters were elderly women; she always called them her aunts when at Trouville, and made them wear poke-bonnets, and go about in bath-chairs.

"Je connais mon

époque," she would say, and rising and risen generations could make no head against her.

And now another panel of the door was opened, and instead of a pas de deux there began a regular stampede, and dozens of figures flashed down the plank and away. Some were carrying hansom-cabs, some suspicious-looking bundles

RARELY, if ever, has the political world been thrown into such a state of confusion and excitement as that which had its beginning during the last week of November, and can hardly be said to have sobered down and settled at the present time of writing. In order to arrive at a clear comprehension of the situation, it is necessary to recall the position of affairs at the commencement of the month, and the anticipations with which the coming session of Parliament was regarded at that time. The autumn campaign, alike of Unionists and Gladstonians, had scarcely closed; the fierce and unscrupulous attacks upon the Irish policy of the Government upon one side, and the courageous defence of the same upon the other, were still ringing in our ears. The charge of obstruction, freely and loudly advanced, and as fiercely repudiated by men who in almost the same breath intimated their intention to obstruct in the future, was attracting an amount of attention which would probably have been greater but for the promised excitement upon the subject of Tipperary and its patriotic destroyers; and the principal question of practical importance seemed to be whether Government would be allowed to make such substantial progress with the two bills which they had undertaken to introduce as to justify them in having called Parliament together for the despatch of business upon the 25th November. All at once a change came over the whole political horizon change so strange, so sudden, and so unexpected as to have almost paralysed men's faculties, confused the issues which had heretofore

a

appeared to divide political parties, and altered the whole of the relations which had for some time past been established between two large sections of politicians. During the whole of the recess the speeches delivered by Gladstonians and Parnellites had assumed the most cordial alliance and concord between the two. Long and loud had been the denunciations by both of the Coercion Government; confident the announcements of the gradual but certain change of public feeling in the direction of Home Rule; and bitter the taunts and invective hurled against her Majesty's Ministers, on account of their apparent inclination to be content with their present majority in both Houses of Parliament, and their refusal to plunge the country into the turmoil of a premature dissolution at the bidding of their opponents. It was in vain that in the columns of this Magazine, and in other Unionist writings and speeches, it was again and again pointed out that no definite plan of Home Rule had been placed before the country since 1886, and that the first attempt at any such practical step would infallibly rend and split up the English and Irish Home Rulers as it had done in that year. All such observations were contemptuously disregarded and scouted as the perverse pleadings of the enemies of Home Rule; and, contenting themselves with vague generalities and idle platitudes about "selfgovernment" and "Ireland for the Irish," the Gladstonian party continued to avoid coming to close quarters, and to uphold their leader in his evident determination to seek the suffrages of the constituencies at the general elec

tion, uncommitted to any definite scheme, and unencumbered by any definite principle upon the question of Home Rule.

The undoubted intention of Mr Gladstone and his colleagues was to conceal all ascertained or possible differences of opinion between themselves and their Irish allies until after the general election; or, in other words, to give the constituencies,no opportunity of pronouncing upon the merits of any proposed legislation, but to induce them to restore Mr Gladstone to power with such a majority as should enable him to treat the question of Home Rule with a free hand. In order to accomplish this result, it was of course necessary to present before the country an unbroken front, and to make it appear that perfect unanimity existed between the English and Irish Home Rulers. The game was well played. It might indeed have succeeded for a time, although deceit and insincerity are vices so unpalatable to the British people that in the longrun they invariably recoil upon those who seek to utilise them for party advantage. In the present case, the exposure of the trick could not have been long delayed, and a Home Rule victory at the polls, followed as it must have been by the bursting of the Home Rule bubble at the first attempt at practical legislation, would have assuredly brought about the exposure and discomfiture of the politicians who had climbed to power by such insidious devices. Fate, however, had an earlier disgrace in store for those who had so craftily laid their plans, and their detection and disappointment came upon them in an unexpected shape, and from an unlooked-for quarter.

Many months ago there had been rumours of an approaching

suit in the Divorce Court O'Shea v. O'Shea, in which Mr Charles Stewart Parnell was to figure as co-respondent. But it was understood that the Irish leader had given assurances that he could and would emerge unscathed from this attack upon his character; and remembering his escape from the ordeal of the Special Commission, and the failure of the charges then brought against him upon the testimony of the Pigott letters, men generally believed that he would be no less successful in the present case, and the majority were probably inclined to attribute the whole affair to personal or political animosity seeking its revenge in uncertain charges against private character. Great, therefore, was the surprise when the divorce suit really came on, and it appeared that Mr Parnell offered no defence, and that judg ment was given against him. The particulars and merits of this case are not within our range of discussion to-day. It will be sufficient to say that it was a bad case in a bad class of cases, inasmuch as it showed an abuse of friendship, an habitual depravity, and an elaborated system of deceit, which are happily of rare occurrence even in such cases.

Up to this point the narrative is clear and simple enough, and does not bear upon the political crisis which presently arose. was more than a week after this

It

trial, and with a full knowledge of the facts disclosed thereat, that the Irish Parliamentary party deliberately and unanimously reelected Mr Parnell as their chairman and leader. Thereby, indeed, they only indorsed the proceedings of a large Nationalist meeting which had been held in Dublin upon the 20th November, three days after the verdict had been given At this meetin the O'Shea case.