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other lady competitor besides myself, and a lot of young men. We spent about as unenviable an afternoon as can be imagined, shut up in the dining-room of the late Sir W. G. Casins's house. For after all, we could not expect our examiners to follow the example of the good-natured kindergarten teacher, whose heart went out to the babies on breaking-up day and who, unwilling to cause any unhappiness, rushed into the room saying, 'Good news, children! Everybody is first, and everybody has won the prize!' I remember how my heart beat when, for the second time that afternoon, I was asked to go up and see the examiners. I had a sort of faint hope then that perhaps I had won it, and I felt pretty certain that this was the case when they asked me if I would consent to go

and study abroad. Consent! I would have agreed to go and live in the Black Hole of Calcutta with nothing but a trombone for company on condition of winning that scholarship! But I suppose, as it had not been won before by a young girl, they didn't know quite what to do with me. At least I got rather nervous, when Sir Arthur Sullivan, who was one of my examiners, turned round and said rather thoughtfully, “You are very young, I'm afraid-very young. (How I wish that were as true now as it was then !) For one moment my heart sank as I thought, • They will give it to a boy after all,' and the next moment I was struggling with a wellnigh irresistible temptation to say, “Yes, I dare say I am very young, but I'm out of Pinafores, and that is more than you can say, anyhow!' (Pinafore was having a tremendous success just then and drawing crowded houses every night.) However, I resisted ; I thought it would be too impertinent altogether; and as a reward for my self-repression the much-coveted scholarship fell to my lot. In spite of which my unqualified sympathies belong to the sporting person who owned frankly that really, if it came to choosing between the two, he would rather lose his life than his joke. My only consolation is that if he had been placed in my position he would probably have behaved with the same contemptible want of spirit which distinguished my conduct on that memorable day in February.

Well, I think I have said enough to show that musical life has its humorous sides, and that however hard one may work one's entire income is not spent exclusively on midnight oil, though all honour to the good old lamp that has burned so steadily during my a long night that would have been miserably dark without it!

Oh, les beaux jours quand on était si malheureux ! When

one was so hard up that one could not even afford a seat among the gods of Covent Garden to hear the 'Meistersinger,' and consequently, or rather most inconsequently, one was reduced (!) to accepting an invitation to the royal box and to hearing it from there. For if any life presents a series of contrasts it is the artist's life, with its strong lights and shadows, its ups and downs, its insight into every sort of society, from the highest to the lowest, associating one moment with the most desperate Philistines and the next with the kindest, cheeriest Bohemians. What a happy life it is after all! How full of gladness and congenial work! It is a life which I for one would not exchange were I offered the choice of a hundred others. For it is a life in which friendship plays a splendid rôle, a rôle worthy of its name. I don't believe any friends love each other better than we do, or are more willing to help each other, or to see each other through bad times, or, when all is well, to rejoice more unfeignedly in each other's success, or to forgive each other more tenderly and absolutely when we have fallen out-which isn't often. I suppose we are-horribly casual and erratic, and we lose the umbrellas our friends lend us, and dine at one house when we are expected at another (this actually happened to me once), and when we are asked to stay in the country from Saturday to Monday, we send a telegram to say, 'So sorry-impossible-writing;' but that letter somehow or other never gets posted! And we even lose our cheque books from time to time, and the only thing we all of us do with unfailing regularity is to overdraw our accounts at the various long-suffering banks who are kind enough to have anything to do with us. I once received a letter from my bank that argued considerable knowledge of my character; it began, 'Dear Miss White,-Have a hunt for your pass-book.' It never even occurred to the writer that I should be able to find it without ransacking the house from garret to cellar! And he was perfectly right. I hadn't the vaguest idea where it was.

Ah, well, they say 'whom the gods love die young;' but I'm not so sure of that. It's my belief that 'der liebe Gott' has reserved a very, very soft corner of His heart for those of His children who grow to a good old age, and who, whatever happens, are willing to look on the humorous side of things, whether the black night of sorrow fall to their lot or the glorious summer day of dearest hopes fulfilled.

VOL. V.-NO. 25, N.S.

MAUDE VALÉRIE WHITE. 6

THE CASTLE INNA

BY STANLEY WEYMAN.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CUTTING FOR THE QUEEN.

Ir was a suggestion so purely in the spirit of a day when men betted on every contingency in life, public or private, decorous or the reverse, from the fecundity of a sister to the longevity of a sire, that it sounded less indecent in the ears of Lord Almeric's companions than it does in ours. Mr. Thomasson indeed, who was only so far a gamester as every man who had pretensions to be a gentleman was one at that time, and who had seldom, since the days of Lady Harrington's faro bank, staked more than he could afford, hesitated and looked dubious. But Mr. Pomeroy, a reckless and hardened gambler, gave a boisterous assent, and in the face of that the tutor's objections went for nothing. In a trice, all the cards and half the glasses were swept pell mell to the floor, a new pack was torn open, the candles were snuffed, and Mr. Pomeroy, smacking him heartily on the back, was bidding him draw up.

"

'Sit down, man! Sit down!' cried that gentleman, who had regained his jovial humour as quickly as he had lost it, and whom the prospect of the stake appeared to intoxicate. May I burn if I ever played for a girl before! Hang it! man, look cheerful. We'll toast her first-and a daintier bit never swam in a bowland play for her afterwards! Come, no heel-taps, my lord. Drink her! Drink her! Here's to the Mistress of Bastwick!'

Name your game

Mr. Parson, if you like! It's all one to me. and I am your man!'

'Then let us shuffle and cut, and the highest takes,' said the tutor.

'Sho! man, where is the sport in that?' Pomeroy cried, receiving the suggestion with disgust.

'It is what Lord Almeric proposed,' Mr. Thomasson answered. The two glasses of wine he had taken had given him courage. 'I am no player, and at games of skill I am no match for you.'

•

A shadow crossed Mr. Pomeroy's face; but he recovered himself immediately. As you please,' he said shrugging his shoulders with a show of carelessness. I'll match any man at anything.

Let's to it!'

But the tutor kept his hands on the cards, which lay in a heap face downwards on the table. 'There is a thing to be settled,' he said, hesitating somewhat, 'before we draw. If she will not take the winner-what then?'

'What then?'

'Yes, what then?'

Mr. Pomeroy grinned.

Why, then number two will try, and if he fail, number three! There, my bully boy, that is settled. It seems simple enough, don't it?'

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The tutor turned a shade paler, and his eyes sank slyly to the table. There'll—there'll be no violence, of course,' he said, his voice a trifle unsteady.

* Violence ? Oh, no, there will be no violence, Mr. Pomeroy answered with an unpleasant sneer. And they all laughed; Mr. Thomasson tremulously, Lord Almeric as if he scarcely entered into the other's meaning and laughed that he might not seem outside it. Then, “There is another thing that must not be,' Pomeroy continued, tapping softly on the table with his forefinger, as much to command attention as to emphasise his words, and that is peaching ! Peaching ! We'll have no Jeremy Twitcher here, if you please.'

'No, no !' Mr. Thomasson stammered. . Of course not.' 'No, damme!' said my lord grandly. “No peaching !'

* No,' said Mr. Pomeroy, glancing keenly from one to the other, * and by token I have a thought that will cure it. D'ye see here, my lord! What do you say to the losers taking five thousand each out of Madam's money? That should bind all together if anything will—though I say it that will have to pay it,' he continued boastfully.

My lord was full of admiration. “Uncommon handsome!'he said. “Pom, that does you credit. You have a head! I always said you had a head!' You are agreeable to that, my lord ?'

if I am noti' “Then shake hands upon it. And what say you, Parson ?'

Mr. Thomasson proffered an assent fully as enthusiastic as Lord Almeric's, but for a different reason.

The tutor's nerves, never strong, were none the better for the rough treatment he had undergone, his long drive, and his longer fast. He had taken enough wine to obscure remoter terrors, but not the image of Mr. Dunborough-impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer-Dunborough doubly and trebly offended! That image recurred when the glass was not at his lips; and behind it, sometimes the angry spectre of Sir George, sometimes the face of the girl, blazing with rage, slaying him with the lightning of her contempt.

He thought it would not suit him ill, therefore, though it was a sacrifice, if Mr. Pomeroy took the fortune, the wife, and the risk, and five thousand only fell to him.

him. True, the risk, apart from that of Mr. Dunborough’s vengeance, might be small; no one of the three had had art or part in the abduction of the girl.

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· Burn me,