cool calculation, fertile invention, and dauntless courage, rose up to battle with difficulty or danger. She loved a complicated affair, and went into it heart and soul; no one could say how many cases that had been given up as hopeless, she had carried through auspiciously, with an exceptional good fortune. With mere politics she meddled very seldom (though she never sought for a place or promotion for one of her own favourites, or an adopted _protégé_, without obtaining it), but in her own circle there scarcely was a marriage made or marred, of which the result might not have been traced to the secret police of Lady Mildred's _boudoir_. If she had a _specialité_, it was the knack of utterly crushing and abolishing--in a pleasant, noiseless way--a dangerous Detrimental. The victim scarcely ever suspected from what quarter the arrow came, but often entertained, in after days, a great respect and regard for the fatal Atalante. Yes, the work had told even on that calm, well-regulated nature: Lady Mildred's smile was still perilously fascinating; but a certain covert subtlety, when you looked closer, half neutralized its power; and the bright, dark eyes were now and then disagreeably searching and keen. At such times you could only marvel at the manifest contradiction; with all the outward and visible signs of youth about her, she looked unnaturally older than her age. In all probability, at no one period of her life had she been more attractive than at the present moment. There was extant a miniature taken before she was twenty, and the resemblance of that portrait to the living original was very striking. One charm she certainly never could have possessed--_La beauté du Diable_. Now we are on the subject, I wish some one would explain this paradox or misnomer. Do we take it in a passive sense, and suppose, that if any emotion of love could fall on "the blasted heart"--like water on molten iron--it would be stirred by that especial type of loveliness--seen now so seldom, but remembered so well? It may well be so. _Voe miseris!_ Every other phase of mortal and immortal beauty has ten thousand representatives in Gehenna, save only _this_. Surely few lost spirits carry the stamp of innocence on their brows, even so far as the broad gate with the dreary legend over its door: "Leave hope behind you." Seen very seldom--only when across the great Gulf, the souls in torment catch a glimpse of angelic features melting in intense, unavailing pity; but, perchance, well remembered, for where should freshness and innocence be found, if not in the faces of the Cherubim? And his punishment would be incomplete if it were given to the Prince of Hell to forget sights and sounds familiar to the Son of the Morning.