If happiness, at any period or season, did dwell upon the earth, she must have sojourned, about the month of September 185—, so near to the New Holland Club, so near to the person of Ernest Neuchamp, as to have been occasionally visible to the naked eye. Had a company of _savans_ been told off to view the goddess, as in the far less important matter of the transit of Venus, success had been certain. But society never recognises its real wonders—its absolute and imperious miracles. Therefore for a little space that earthly maid glorified the dwelling and precincts of the untrammelled, rejoicing, successful proprietor. She sat by Mr. Neuchamp at the daintily prepared refections of the club, and gave an added flavour to his moderate but intense enjoyment of viand and vintage, so wondrous in variety, so miraculous of aroma, after his long endurance of the unpalatable monotony of the Rainbar cuisine. She whispered in the mystic tones of the many-voiced sea-breezes, as they murmured around his steps when, with Antonia at his side, he roamed through the mimic woods of Morahmee, or gazed with never-ending contemplative joy on the pale moon’s silver tracery o’er wave and strand. She rose with him in the joyous morn, telling him the ever-welcome tale that all cause for anxiety had fled, that a new ukase had gone forth, bringing unmixed joy to every man of his order, always excepting the sheepholders and Jermyn Croker. She sat behind him, on Osmund, displacing ‘the sad companion ghastly pale’ even ‘atra Cura,’ who had been the occupant of a croup seat on that gallant steed for many a day. Once more the rattle of flying hoofs was heard upon the sandy downs and red hill-roads which, near Bondi’s ceaseless surge, overlook the city’s mingled mass, the ocean’s fresh eternal glory. In this season of joy and pride—the natural and becoming pride of him who has suffered and struggled, waited and warred for no mean reward, which at length he has been permitted to grasp—the bright goddess smiled on every act, thought, and hope of Ernest Neuchamp. In that fair brief bygone day of unalloyed triumph, of unclouded hope, it is a truth most absolute and indisputable that she stood by his side in serene and awful beauty; but, like her austere sister of old who cried aloud in the streets to a heedless generation, ‘no man regarded her.’