“What! a rose for me, dear Mr. Crispin?” she said, stretching out her hand, in which Crispin was unwillingly compelled to place his flower; “how kind of you! The young men of to-day are gallant after all. Look, Eunice, is not this flower charming? almost as charming as you are, Mr. Crispin. The Rose of Sharon—oh, Shiraz—you see I’ve read your book. Now, I have no time to talk, my dear Mr. Crispin, so you must go away for the present at all events. We will meet at luncheon, and if you are very good you may bring me in another rose.” Mrs. Dengelton, having thus vanquished the enemy, disappeared with her daughter and shut the window, upon which poor Crispin walked away in a rage. “Old cat!” he said, which was certainly neither polite nor poetical. CHAPTER VI. SUB ROSA. Secrets absurd Leading to woes, Only are heard Under the rose. Maidens refuse, Lovers propose, Just as they choose, Under the rose. How scandals spread Nobody knows, For they are said Under the rose. When anything marvellous occurs in real life, wiseacres shake their heads, and say, “Wonderful! extraordinary! Truth is stranger than fiction.” But when a novel contains any incident out of the common, these same inconsistent people refuse to believe it on the plea that “Fiction is not stranger than truth.” They entirely forget that fiction is but a reflection of real life, and that man can imagine nothing, but merely reproduces what he sees around him. The sceptic will object,—“Fairy tales!” Well, my dear doubter, how do you know that fairy tales do not contain a germ of truth? there may have been fairies in the earlier ages of the world, and if so, the chronicles of Fairyland are as authentic as those of England—perhaps more so, seeing all histories are tinctured more or less with partisanship. Who would have believed in the mammoth, had not the huge beast been reconstructed by Cuvier? or in the moa, had not the skeleton of that gigantic bird been discovered in New Zealand? Nay, there is doubtless much truth in those extravagant travels of Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and such-like wanderers. The middle ages were times of improbability, not of impossibility, for but little was known of the geographical world. Well, we of this nineteenth century have discovered all possible continents, and assume that we know everything; but such is not the case, for, though we may have exhausted the geographical world, we know comparatively few of the secrets of Nature. The pebble parable of Sir Isaac Newton will here occur to many minds, and it applies as truly to our times as to his own. Earth, sky,