did not notice his outstretched hand, and passed him with a slight bow.

with you.

"Never mind, my Lord-never mind! muttered Mr. Meeson after that somewhat pompous but amiable nobleman's retreating form. "We'll see if I can't come square I'm a dog who can pull a string or two in the English press, I am! Those who have the money and have got a hold of people, so that they must write what they tell them, ain't the sort to be cut by any Colonial Governor, my Lord!" And in his anger he fairly shook his fist at the unconscious peer.

"Seem to be a little out of temper, Mr. Meeson," said a voice at his elbow, the owner of which was a big young man with hard but kindly features and a large moustache. "What has the Governor been doing to you?"

"Doing, Mr. Tombey? He's been cutting me, that's all-me, Meeson !-cutting me dead, or something like it. I held out my hand, and he looked right over it, and marched by."

"Ah!" said Mr. Tombey, who was a wealthy New Zealand landowner; "and now, why do you suppose he did that?"

"Why? I'll tell you why. It's all about that girl.” "Miss Smithers, do you mean?" said Tombey the big, with a curious flash of his deep-set eyes.

"Yes, Miss Smithers. She wrote a book, and I bought the book for fifty pounds, and stuck a clause in that she should give me the right to publish anything she wrote for five years at a price-a common sort of thing enough in one way and another, when you are dealing with some idiot who don't know any better. Well, as it happened, this book sold like wildfire; and, in time, the young lady comes to me and wants more money, wants to get out of

the hanging clause in the agreement, wants everything, like a female Oliver Twist; and when I say, 'No, you don't,' loses her temper and makes a scene. And it turns out that what she wanted the money for was to take a sick sister, or cousin, or aunt, or some one, out of England; and when she could not do it, and the relation died, then she emigrates, and goes and tells the people on board ship that it is all my fault."

"And I suppose that that is a conclusion which you do not feel drawn to, Mr. Meeson ? "

"No, Tombey, I don't. Business is business; and if I happen to have got to windward of the young woman, why, so much the better for me. She's getting her experience, that's all; and she ain't the first, and won't be the last. But if she goes saying much more about me, I go for her for slander, that's sure."

"On the legal ground that the greater the truth, the greater the libel, I presume?"

"Confound her!" went on Meeson, without noticing his remark, and contracting his heavy eyebrows, "there's no end to the trouble she has brought on me. I quarrelled with my nephew about her, and now she's dragging my name through the dirt here, and I'll bet the story will go all over New Zealand and Australia."

It never seems to

"Yes," said Mr. Tombey, "I fancy you will find it take a lot of choking; and now, Mr. Meeson, with your permission I will say a word, and try and throw a new light upon a very perplexing matter. have occurred to you what you are, so I may as well put it to you plainly. If you are not a thief, you are, at least, a very well-coloured imitation. You take a girl's book and make hundreds upon hundreds out of it, and give her fifty. You tie her down, so as to provide

for successful swindling of the same sort during future years, and then, when she comes to beg a few pounds of you, you show her the door. And now you wonder, Mr. Meeson, that respectable people will have nothing to do with you! Well, I tell you, my opinion is that the only society to which you would be really suited is that of a cow-hide. Good-morning," and the large young man walked off, his very mustachios curling with wrath and contempt. Thus, for a second time, did the great Mr. Meesor hear the truth from the lips of babes and sucklings, and the worst of it was that he could not disinherit Number Two as he had Number One.

Now this, it is obvious, was very warm, and indeed exaggerated advocacy on the part of Mr. Tombey, who, being called in to console and bless, cursed with such extraordinary vigour. It may even strike the discerning reader-and all readers, or, at least, nearly all readers, are of course discerning: far too much so, indeed-that there must have been a reason for it; and the discerning reader will be right. Augusta's grey eyes had been too much for Mr. Tombey, as they had been too much for Eustace Meeson before him. His passion had sprung up and ripened in that peculiarly rapid and vigorous fashion that passions affect on board ship. A passenger-steamer is Cupid's own hot-bed, and in this way differs from a sailing-ship. On the sailing-ship, indeed, the preliminary stages are the same. The seed roots as strongly, and grows and flowers with vigour; but here comes the melancholy part-it withers and decays with equal rapidity. The voyage is too long. Too much is mutually revealed. The matrimonial iron cannot be struck while it is hot, and long before the weary ninety days are over it is once more cold and black, or at the best glows with but a feeble heat. But on the steam-ship there

is no time for this, as any traveller knows.

Myself—I,

the historian-have with my own eyes seen a couple meet for the first time at Madeira, get married at the Cape, and go on as man and wife in the same vessel to Natal. And, therefore, it came to pass that this very evening, a touching, and on the whole melancholy, little scene was enacted near the smoke-stack of the Kangaroo.

Mr. Tombey and Miss Augusta Smithers were leaning together over the bulwarks and watching the phosphorescent foam go flashing past. Mr. Tombey was nervous and ill at ease; Miss Smithers very much at ease, and reflecting that her companion's mustachios would well become the villain in a novel.

Mr. Tombey looked at the star-spangled sky, on which the Southern Cross hung low, and he looked at the phosphorescent sea; but from neither did inspiration come. Inspiration is from within, and not from without. At last, however, he made a gallant and a desperate effort. "Miss Smithers," he said, in a voice trembling with agitation.

"Yes, Mr. Tombey," answered Augusta quietly; "what is it?"

"Miss Smithers," he went on-"Miss Augusta, I don't know what you will think of me, but I must tell you, I can't keep it in any longer. I love you!"

Augusta fairly jumped.

Mr. Tombey had been very,

even markedly, polite, and she, not being a fool, had seen that he admired her; but she had never expected this, and the suddenness with which the shot was fired was some

what bewildering.

"Why, Mr. Tombey," she said in a surprised voice, "you have only known me for a little more than a fortnight."

"I fell in love with you when I had only known you for an hour," he answered with evident sincerity. "Please listen to me. I know I am not worthy of you! But I do love you so very dearly, and I would make you a good husband; indeed I would. I am well off; though, of course, that is nothing; and if you don't like New Zealand, I would give it up and go to live in England. Do you think that you can take me? If you only knew how dearly I love you, I am sure you would."

Augusta collected her wits as well as she could. The man evidently did love her; there was no doubting the sincerity of his words, and she liked him, and he was a gentleman. If she married him there would be an end of all her worries and troubles, and she could rest contentedly on his strong arm. Woman, even gifted woman, is not made to fight the world with her own hand, and the prospect had allurements. But while she thought, Eustace Meeson's bonny face rose before her eyes, and, as it did so, a faint feeling of repulsion to the man who was pleading with her took form and colour in her breast. Eustace Meeson, of course, was nothing to her; no word or sign of affection had passed between them; and the probability was that she would never set her eyes upon him again. And yet that face rose up between her and this man who was pleading at her side. Many women have seen some such vision from the past and have disregarded it, only to find too late that that which is thrust aside is not necessarily dead; for alas! those faces of our departed youth have an uncanny trick of rising from the tomb of our forgetfulness. But Augusta was not of the great order of opportunists. Because a thing might be expedient, it did not, according to the dictates of her moral sense, follow that it was lawful.