had tried it before without effect, and would have drowned himself but that he did not want to die, came down and made an open declaration of his love to Gertrude, and a formal proposal for her hand to Skrymshire _père_. Alick Derinzy had had Luck for his friend several times in his life; he had "pulled off" some good things in sweepstakes, and been fortunate in his speculations on "events;" but he never made such a _coup_ as when he took Gertrude Skrymshire for his wife. She undertook the _ménage_ at once, sold off his unnecessary horses, and paid off outstanding ticks; made him get an invitation for himself and her to Muswell Hill, and spent a week there, during which she ingratiated herself with the old gentleman, and specially with Paul; speedily took the reins of government into her hands, and drove her husband skilfully, without ever letting him feel the bit. When his father died, and Alick was for crying out at the smallness of his legacy, Gertrude stopped his mouth, pointing out that they had a sufficiency to live on, to which the sale of her husband's commission would add; that they could go and live in a small house in a good suburb of town, where they could make it very comfortable for Paul, who would doubtless see a good deal of them, and who, as he was never likely to marry, would most probably leave his enormous fortune to _their_ Paul, their only son, who, of course without any definite views, had been named after his uncle. It was a notable scheme, well-planned and well-executed, but it failed. Alick sold out, and they took a pleasant little house at Brompton, a suburb then not much known, and principally inhabited, as now, by actors and authors; and they furnished it charmingly, and Gertrude herself went down in her deep mourning into the City, and penetrated to Paul's sanctum in Gough Square, and insisted on his coming to stay a day or two with them, and gained his promise that he would come. On her return she said she had found Paul very much altered, but when her husband asked her in what manner, she could not explain herself. Alick himself explained it in his own peculiar barrack-room and billiard-table phraseology, after he had seen his brother, expressing his opinion that that worthy was "going off his head, by G--!"