night-possets and our pillows. Trevor, give me your arm. Happy dog! You have no bullet in your back! May you never know the agony of existence when even to move some dozen yards is torture!" * * * * * We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful, for the Useful encourages itself.--_Goethe_. * * * * * [From the Ladies' Companion.] THE LADY LUCY'S SECRET. BY MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND. "With clamourous demands of debt, broken bonds, And the detention of long due debts, Against my honor."--TIMON OF ATHENS "How in the turmoil of life can love stand, Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one hand?" LONGFELLOW In a charming morning-room of a charming London house, neighboring Hyde-Park, there lounged over the breakfast-table a wedded pair,--the rich merchant Farrars, and his young wife, the Lady Lucy. Five years of married life had, in most respects, more than realized the brightest hopes which had been born and cherished in the dreaming days of courtship. Till the age of forty, the active mind of Walter Ferrars had been chiefly occupied by business,--not in mean shuffling, speculative dealings, but on the broad basis of large transactions and an almost chivalrous system of integrity. Then, when a secured position and the privileges of wealth had introduced him to that inner circle of English society which not wealth _alone_ can penetrate, but where wealth in some due proportion is an element necessary to hold fast a place, it was thought most natural and proper that he should choose a wife from the class which seems set apart from the rest of womankind like the choice flowers of a conservatory, on whom no rude breath must blow. The youthful, but nearly portionless, daughter of a poor Earl seemed the very bride decreed by some good angel for the merchant-prince.