ders, entered his boat. Miss Dorian was standing on the highest of the old steps with her crisp gown gathered carefully about her. "Thank you a thousand times," he said as he pushed off, "for the most splendid fun." As he swung out into the stream, Thomas came running from the house. "Hi!" cried he; "stop! I am going with you."

"No, you are not," said Orlando, unable to row for laughter. Thomas was seriously annoyed. He was unable to see the humour of this schoolboy trick. It was embarrassing to be left when the hero had gone out of the story. The romance was to end, as some romances do, with a woman's sorrow and patience; and there was clearly no place for him. He humbly asked pardon of Miss Dorian, and promised to go away by train. He went gloomily into the house and sat down to Bradshaw; but as he found himself, after half an hour's study, earnestly endeavouring to reach the Isle of Man, he abandoned the book and turned to packing. Having packed till he felt silly, he left the task to the footman, and went out to have a last look at the place. There was nobody about. Mr Dorian had gone to town for the day. Miss Tubb was doing the elegant English hour with the Misses Letitia and Josephine. Play-time was over, and all the vitality of the place seemed to have gone with that frank young creature, who was far down the stream poised on extended sculls, and laughing to himself.

Thomas went round the lawn and through the shrubberies, visited the stable, where he cast an unfavourable glance at the ponies and the farm, where he chucked a stone at the turkey-cock. Thence he sauntered into the country lane, and, strolling aimlessly onward, entered the path which leads up to

the easy-sloping downs. The path passes through a wood of beechtrees, which for the most part meet above it. On the left these trees are a mere belt, and Thomas stopped again and again to look with wonder on visions of sweet country framed in leaves. In some places the land sloped gently downward from the wood, and was heavy with upright wheat or barley glancing in the sun like a polished silver floor; in others it fell sharply away, and the gazer saw the country below like another world in which were no unquiet thoughts and longings. Sunlight lay broad and deep on all the land, and far away the blue-grey earth and grey-blue sky melted together as thought and dream. Thomas sighed as he saw below him the smoke rising straight from the hidden house. He was in a very sensitive mood, and some deep feeling of sympathy was stirred within him as he watched the brown path quiver with light and shade. He saw the sunlight tangled in the beech-leaves, and started as a long shaft slipped through and touched his upturned face. He was alone, and yet about him was a presence and a power. He passed the old gate, which hung idle on its rusty hinges, and came out upon the open slope. A few yards from him Miss Dorian was seated, and, as she turned with a slight start, he saw a tear upon her cheek.

'I did not know you were here. I am afraid I startled you."

"Oh no; but I am so sorry that all the fun is over."

They both spoke very quick, as if eager to avoid all misunderstanding. An awkward pause followed, and then Thomas made a stupendous effort to say something pleasant.

"I wish I was Orlando," he said, "he is so free, and can come here whenever he likes-at least, I mean whenever you like."

friendship of the former was accepted, and General Manteuffel sent to negotiate the terms either of alliance or "understanding" which should subsist between Prussia and Russia. France was bamboozled, over-reached, and betrayed. "Dilatory negotiations," a new term in diplomacy, were prosecuted for her amusement, in which she betrayed to her implacable enemy that policy of "taking tips" (une politique de pour boire) which Bismarck scorned. If a Power which had ceased to take and had begun to give up, was deemed by him, rather hastily, to be an exhausted Power, what must have been his idea of a Power which, no longer able to take, stood hat in hand to a powerful rival vainly asking for its grateful acknowledgments? He was ready to sell it the bearskin, well knowing that it would fail to catch or kill the bear; but there his complaisance ended. He would not even allow it to purchase Luxembourg from the King of Holland. He tempted it with Belgium; took an authentic project of a treaty on the subject in M. Benedetti's handwriting, with Napoleon's marginal notes, into his possession: but no sooner was the Peace of Prague concluded with Austria than he was averse to "creating ill-feeling between Prussia and England," and in good time divulged the project to England and the world. But the secret treaty, or project of a treaty, relating to the Rhine, was at once laid before the Southern Confederate States, which, according to the preliminaries of Nikolsburg, were not to be included in the new Confederation governed by Prussia. The triumph of French mediation had been that they should form a restricted union amongst themselves, having solicited and obtained the French Emperor's help for that purpose. But no sooner did Count Bismarck

explain to them that so far from the Emperor protecting them, he was seeking an understanding with Prussia at their expense, than they gave way and concluded with him secret offensive and defensive treaties. These were kept rigorously secret; but from the date of the peace with Austria, Bismarck could rely on the armed co-operation of the whole of Germany, the silent aid of Russia, and the certainty of being able to destroy all hope of English interference. France knew that her alliance had been declined in favour of Russia; but it does not appear that she suspected the magnitude and completion of the precautions which Prussia was taking against her. "That powerful agent of civilisation and progress" which France had done so much to call into a vigorous life, was already plotting her destruction, to wrest from her the admitted supremacy in Europe. What may have been the exact terms of the arrangement which General Manteuffel was commissioned to make with Prince Gortschakoff is not known; but M. Klaczko's observations with regard to it are interesting, for the Eastern question must at all times be largely affected by any understanding between Germany and Russia. It was suspected that another bearskin was being disposed of on the banks of the Neva; but this time. "it was a bear of the Balkhan, who had not felt well for some time past, and whom the Emperor Nicholas had declared to be very sick twenty years before."

And during the Eastern troubles both Austria and France made significant advances to the Court of St Petersburg. The French Cabinet was willing to reopen the whole Eastern question and pacify the East with heroic remedies. Count Beust could not refuse to sympathise with the Christians in Turkey, and to en

courage amongst them "a wider development of their privileges, and to promote the establishment of a system of self-government, to be limited only by a tie of vassalage." He actually proposed to revise the Treaty of Paris of 1856 in the sense of assigning a very great rôle to Russia. He wished for a collective interference of the Powers in the affairs of Turkey, and to release the Czar from his Black Sea engagements in order to secure his sincere co-operation. Prince Gortschakoff had declared before the Treaty of Prague that the only value of the Treaty of Paris depended on the agreement existing between the great Powers to see it respected. But Europe had recently shown itself without unity and without public law, and Count Beust wished to re-establish the European union at least in reference to the affairs of Turkey; and he was willing to sacrifice to this end the Black Sea clauses of the treaty. France wished to dower the Russian Queen of Greece with the island of Crete, and to demand from Turkey the annexation of Thessaly and Epirus. In return, Austria and France desired the assistance of Russia in the menacing complications in the West. Prince Gortschakoff was in raptures; M. Beust, he declared, was inaugurating a new era in the political history of Austria-an era whose views would be liberal and lofty. The French Minister's principles and assurances had a peculiar value, since they emanated from the thoughts of the Emperor Napoleon. But the Prince, notwithstanding the exclusion of Russian interests in the German Confederation, kept close his intimacy with his Prussian friend he showed no consideration for France in the affair of Luxembourg; he encouraged the violent Slavonic opposition then rife in the empire of the Hapsburgs.

In the face of this manifest duplicity, of the obvious understanding between St Petersburg and Berlin, Austria and France retired from the East. The "Pan-Slavonic propaganda" attracted the attention of M. Benedetti, who never failed to urge upon his Government that while Bismarck was free to operate in Germany, Russia was at work in the East and in the Slavonic provinces of Austria. "Mighty projects," says M. Klaczko, "had indeed been cherished on the banks of the Moskva and the Neva during the whole of the feverish and agitated period which separated Sadowa from Sedan." The world was to be divided between Slavonia and Germania. Napoleon himself had declared that "an irresistible power was impelling all nations to form great agglomerations, and to abolish all minor States." The Congress of Moscow followed, Russia seeking to adopt towards the Slaves the same course of action which Prussia had adopted towards the Germans. The Congress and the Cretan insurrection served to keep the Christian populations of Turkey in a state of ferment and of expectation, and appealed directly to the sympathies of the Austrian Slaves. After the Congress was dissolved, a permanent committee under the auspices of a Grand Duke was appointed to watch over the interests of Slave unity. The Ruthenes, the Czechs and the Croats of Austria, the Princes of Montenegro and Servia felt its influence. Bulgarian committees were established at Bucharest and other towns on the banks of the Danube to provoke disturbances in Bulgaria, and disorderly agitations took place. But, as M. Klaczko observes, in the period between Sadowa and Sedan, although these disturbances were the subject of numerous and energetic representations by the Cabinets of Lon

don, Paris, and Vienna, to Roumania and Greece, the Cabinets of St Petersburg and Berlin maintained a continuous silence. "By a curious change in earthly matters which must have astonished the Nesselrodes and Kamptz in their celestial abode, the voices of the Western Powers-those of England, France, and Austria. were now denouncing the underhand and revolutionary proceedings of the European demagogues; while Prussia was silent, and Russia denied the fact, or pleaded extenuating circumstances." A conference was held in Paris; Turco-Grecian difficulties were smoothed over; but the universal belief remained that Russia would assume an offensive position in the East as soon as complications arose in the West. In 1869, Fuad Pacha on his deathbed addressed his last political testament to the Sultan, in which he pointed out the approaching inevitable conflict between France and Prussia, declared that the great Ottoman empire was in danger; and concluded, an internal war in Europe, and a Bismarck in Russia, and the face of the globe would be changed."

66

The completion of Italian and Germanic unity brought no comfort to the Tuileries. M. Benedetti was the first to perceive the altered position of France; and M. Klaczko pays every honour to the insight and judgment which he displayed in the four years between Sadowa and the Franco-Prussian war. Grossly and painfully deceived as he had been during the negotiations which preceded the war with Austria, he constantly drew the attention of his Government to Count Bismarck's schemes; his propagandism beyond the Main; his intrigues with the revolutionary party in Italy, designed to aid him in fighting Victor Emmanuel as well

as Napoleon with revolutions in case of necessity; his negotiations with Russia through General Manteuffel; his intrigues with General Prim respecting a Hohenzollern candidate to the Spanish throne. Napoleon despatched General Fleury to the Court of Russia; and Bismarck's relations with his Hungarian allies of 1866 showed that he did not contemplate surrendering to Russia all German interests and claims on the shores of the Danube and at the foot of the Balkans. And at the Paris Conference in 1869, the views of the Berlin Cabinet diverged from those of Russia. Convinced that no definite solution could be arrived at without the aid of a united Germany, Count Bismarck did not wish in the then state of the Continent to commit himself with either the friends or the foes of the Sultan. The collapse neither of Turkey nor of Hungary would suit his views; and a struggle in the East might force him to borrow a card in the game of his Russian friend, a change of rôle to which he was at all times strongly opposed. Then, as now, Count Bismarck maintained his own liberty of action, resolved, however, not to pre-engage German forces in an Eastern crisis, but rather to reserve to himself the part which Napoleon ought to have played in the Prusso-Austrian war— the part of umpire of the contest, at whose word the combatants must separate and come to terms. Russian policy, it seems, was to wait; and when the power and public opinion of Europe were paralysed by the tremendous strife which was plainly imminent, to step in and seize its plunder. Prince Gortschakoff no more than the French Emperor dreaded the increase of Prussian power; and, like Napoleon in 1866, he never dreamed of the tremendous victories which Prussia was about to win. Bismarck had

moment; but it had opened, and Zoe was on fire with jealousy and suspicion.

Fluctuating Fanny regretted the turn things had taken. She did not want to lose a pleasant male companion, and she felt sure Zoe would be unhappy, and cross to her, if he went. "Surely, Mr Severne," she said, "you will not desert us, and go back for so small a chance: why, we are a hundred and fifty miles from Homburg, and all the nearer to dear old England. There, there we must be kinder to you, and make you forget this misfortune."

Thus spoke the trimmer. reply took her by surprise.

The

"And whose fault is it that I am obliged to get out a hundred and fifty miles from Homburg? You knew all this. You could have got me a delay of a few hours to go and get my due. You know I am a poor man. With all your cleverness,

you

don't know what made me poor, or you would feel some remorse, perhaps; but you know I am poor when most I could wish I was rich: you have heard that old woman there fling my poverty in my teeth; yet you could keep this from me-just to assist a cheat and play upon the feelings of a friend. Now, what good has that done you, to inflict misery on me in sport, on a man who never gave you a moment's pain if he could help it?"

Fanny looked ruefully this way and that, her face began to work, and she laid down her arms, if a lady can be said to do that, who lays down a strong weapon and takes up a stronger; in other words, she burst out crying, and said no more. You see she was poor herself.

Severne took no notice of her; he was accustomed to make women cry. He thrust his head out of the window in hopes of seeing a station

near, and his whole being was restless as if he would like to jump

out.

While he was in this condition of mind and body, the hand he had once kissed so tenderly, and shocked Miss Maitland, passed an envelope over his shoulder, with two lines. written on it in pencil:

"If you GO BACK TO HOMBURG, oblige ME BY REMAINING there."

This demands an explanation, but it shall be brief.

Fanny's shrewd hint, that the money could only be obtained from Mademoiselle Klosking, had pierced Zoe through and through. Her mind grasped all that had happened, all that impended, and, wisely declining to try and account for or concile all the jarring details, she settled, with a woman's broad instinct, that, somehow or other, his going back to Homburg meant going back to Mademoiselle Klosking. Whether that lady would buy him or not, she did not know. But going back to her, meant going a journey to see a rival, with consequences illimitable.

She had courage; she had pride; she had jealousy. She resolved to lose her lover, or have him all to herself. Share him she would not, nor even endure the torture of the doubt.

She took an envelope out of her satchel, and, with the pencil attached to her chatelaine, wrote the fatal words, "If you go back to Homburg, oblige me by remaining there."

At this moment she was not goaded by pique, nor any petty feeling. Indeed, his reproach to Fanny had touched her a little; and it was with the tear in her eye she came to the resolution, and handed him that line, which told him she knew her value, and, cost what it might, would part with any man for ever rather than share him