furnishing and decoration, as well as other matters, the highest ideal is not always the one that succeeds best. CHAPTER V. FREDERICK’S WAY. Frederick Eastwood had leave for a fortnight from his office. He was not hardworked, as a rule. Leave was dispensed freely enough, without any very profound investigation into the urgent affairs which demanded it. The men at the Sealing Wax Office were something like their contemporaries of the Household Brigade, and were allowed much leisure to make up for the severe mental strain which their duties, so long as they lasted, imposed upon them. Therefore he had not much difficulty in getting free at this important family crisis. He left home the evening before his fortnight began, with a very pretty cheque in his purse which his mother had given him. Mrs. Eastwood’s opinion was that, as Frederick was sacrificing himself to family duty, Frederick ought to have a recompense. “You can buy yourself something with the rest,” she said, smiling upon him with that confidence of being liberal and trustful which, perhaps because it is contrary to so many of her superstitions, always makes a woman pleased with herself. “There are pretty alabaster things at Pisa,” said Nelly; “you may buy us all something if you like.” Frederick shut up his pocket-book, as in other days men used to button their pockets. He went out of the house hastily, resolving to do neither one thing nor the other. They closed the door upon him tranquilly, feeling that it was Frederick’s way, and that they knew precisely how he would conduct himself on this expedition. But the truth is that no soul more utterly unknown to that excellent family went out of all London that day. They knew absolutely nothing about him. The anticipations which made his eyes glow as soon as he was safe in his Hansom, and could look as he liked, would have been absolutely incomprehensible to his family. Could they have seen into his mind, they would have refused to believe in the reality of what they saw. I hope it may be in my power to reveal to the reader with less difficulty what Frederick Eastwood really was. He had a fine exterior--dainty, and delicate, and refined. To see him you would have imagined his faults to be faults of the mind; high temper, perhaps, irresolution and weakness in critical circumstances, intentions which were fundamentally good though often mistaken, and a wrong-headed obstinacy and self-opinion when he did decide upon any thing, which is quite compatible with irresolution in great matters. This is what the cursory observer would have supposed him to be; and this is what his family thought of him. He was not clever in managing his own affairs, they knew; he was undecided about matters which required firmness, and obstinate about trifles. He had no idea of the magnitudes of differing objects, but would insist upon some trifling point in an argument while he yielded the great ones. All these faults,