bidder, and would have erected a nobler and bigger mansion than the palace of the new millionaire. It is just possible that Thomas Lobyer had some vague consciousness that, considered apart from his money, he was a paltry and detestable creature; and that he was therefore eager to make the most of the glamour which splendid surroundings can impart to the meanest object. Aladdin playing in the streets and by-ways of the city is only the idle waif and stray of a defunct tailor; but Aladdin with the command of an orchard whose fruits are rubies and diamonds--Aladdin the tenant of the enchanted palace, and owner of the roc's egg,--is altogether another person. One fancies him arrayed in shining tissues of gold and silver, blazing with jewels, handsome, dashing, elegant, delightful--or, in one word, SUCCESSFUL; and the vulgar antecedents of the tailor's son are utterly forgotten. Mr. Lobyer was neither an exacting nor a tyrannical husband. He had secured for himself the best thing in wives, as he had the best thing in horses and modern pictures and dogs. If he held her a little lower than his short-legged hunter, a little less dear than his fawn-coloured pug, he at least gave her as much as she had any right to expect from him. She had married him for his money, and he gave her his money. She spent as much as she pleased; she amused herself after her own fashion. If now and then, moved by some short-lived conscientious scruple, she made an attempt to consult him or to defer to his pleasure, Mr. Lobyer took good care to show his wife that his pleasure was in no way concerned in hers, and that to be consulted by her was to be inexpressibly bored. He let her see very plainly that she was only a part of his pomp and splendour, and that she had nothing to do but to dress herself to perfection, and excite the envy of his toadies and familiars. If he gave her costly jewels, it was in order that she might be an advertisement of his own wealth and importance; and he scowled at her if she came down to dinner in some simple girlish dress when he wanted her to swell his magnificence. "What the doose made you stick those dam' rosebuds in your hair when Brownjohn the drysalter was over here?" he asked savagely. "What's the good of a fellow givin' you five or six thousand pounds worth of diamonds, if you lock 'em up in your jewel-case, and dress yourself up in white muslin and blue ribbon, like a boardin' school miss tricked out for a dancin' lesson. Brownjohn's fat old wife had a breastplate of diamonds that would have looked as yellow as barleysugar beside your tiara; and Brownjohn is just the sort of man to notice those things." "But what does it matter how I am dressed?" Flo would inquire; "Mr. Brownjohn knows how rich you are." "Perhaps he does, and perhaps he does not. You don't know those Manchester fellows; they believe in nothing except what they see; and Brownjohn knows that I have been struck rather heavily within the last six months."