Fairfax-gardens until she should possess a home of her own. At Fairfax-gardens Eleanor lived happily enough until this question of her marriage arose to cause her annoyance. Occasions of difference between the sisters had previously been slight and few, for Eleanor was in the habit of giving way to her sister's whims, and save when she was requested to give up her black dress at the end of six months--a period which Mrs. Chadwick thought quite long enough to show any outward signs of lamentation for her deceased father--she had but little difficulty in doing so. On that point, however, she was firm; and as it would have been impossible for her in her mourning attire to take part in the festivities which commenced so soon as the prescribed time was over, Eleanor did not mix with the general society, but only saw those who were intimate friends at the house. Amongst the latter was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, a dilettante gentleman of five or six and thirty, who, having an excellent fortune and a cultivated taste, chose to pass the 'fallow leisure of his life' with painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and actors, and to attempt himself to shine a little in each of those vocations in which his friends were proficient. Poems signed 'S.P.' were not uncommon in the pages of the fashionable magazines; the President of the Royal Academy (remembering a commission which he had received and executed for painting an equestrian portrait of the late Mr. Pratt for presentation to the Muffletubbe Hunt, of which he had been M.F.H.) had made a very graceful allusion at one of the annual banquets to 'an amateur contribution of great merit which graces our walls,' and all the R.A.s of Spiridion's acquaintance, who were in the habit of dining with him very often, tried to catch his downcast eyes, and in their after-dinner perambulations through the room nudged each other as they pointed out a rather gloomy canvas representing a Rhenish wineglass, a bunch of grapes, half a cut orange, and two boiled prawns, which, under the title of 'Still Life,' had been S.P.'s contribution to the exhibition. It is needless to say that 'Ballads of the Blighted,' words and music by Spiridion Pratt, Esq., are on every piano, and that two of them, 'My Muffineer' and 'Take, O take the toast away,' have achieved an unparalleled success.