pride of the Miltonic Lucifer himself, wherefore the peaceful union of two Jerninghams was an impossibility, said one faction. But the majority were inclined to believe Mr. Jerningham in some manner guilty. Neither his youth nor his middle age had been spotless. Too proud and too refined to affect coarse vices or common dissipations, he had done more mischief and had been infinitely more dangerous than the common sinner. The master of a ruined household had cursed the name of Harold Jerningham, and innocent children had grown up to blush at the mention of that fatal name. For three-and-forty years of his life he had been a bachelor, and had laughed at the men who bartered their liberty for the sake of a wife’s monotonous companionship and the prattle of tiresome children. He had not been a deliberate sinner--indeed, the deliberate sinners seem to be a very small minority, and even the man who poisons his wife with minim doses of aconite will tell the gaol-chaplain that he was a poor, weak creature, led away from time to time by the impulse of the moment. The Tempter took him by the hand, and drew him on, foot by foot, to his destruction. There is a thick and blinding fog for ever hanging over that fatally easy slope which leads to Avernus, whereby the traveller cannot perceive what progress he has made upon the dreadful downward road. Mr. Jerningham had not been a deliberate sinner. He was not altogether vile and wicked. He was too selfish a man not to wish for the approbation of his fellow-man; he was too much of a poet and an artist not to perceive the loveliness of virtue. He was not an honourable man, but he knew that honour was a very beautiful thing in the abstract, and he had a vague sense of discomfort when he acted dishonourably--just such an unpleasant sensation as he would have felt if he had worn an ill-fitting coat or an ill-made boot. He was not without benevolence, and could even be generous on occasion; but in all his useless life he had never sacrificed his own enjoyment for the good of another. He had taken his pleasure--all was told in those few words--and if pleasure was only to be had at the cost of evil-doing, he had shrugged his shoulders regretfully, and paid the price. He had gathered his roses, and other people had been inconvenienced by the thorns. The roses were still blooming about his pathway, but Mr. Jerningham no longer cared to pluck them. A man may grow tired even of roses. His marriage had been the result of one of those generous impulses which redeemed his character from utter worthlessness. A kinsman had died in Paris, in the extreme depths of patrician poverty, leaving behind him a very lovely daughter, and a letter addressed to Harold Jerningham. The lovely daughter came to London, unattended, to deliver the letter, which she presented with her own hands to the elegant bachelor of three-and-forty. If she had not been a Jerningham, there is no knowing what story of sin and folly this interview might