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"Fie! fie! Benedict's philosophy does not apply here. Edith is not in mine eye 'the sweetest lady that e'er I look'd upon;' she has

only a second place."

"There thou strikest home. But art thou quite sure that all is settled between thee and thy woodland Venus ?”

"What! Lucy?" said Jacob, laughing at the grotesque leer with which Spen asked the question.

"The same."

"Have no fear, Spen-Edith shall be yours, if you are in earnest." "Raise then the fatal knocker, at once. When your embassy is over you'll find me at the Blue Posts, a fortifying of myself for Coopid's answer;" and away went Spen Whiffler of old, cutting capers across the road, to the intense delight of two small boys, a slipshod girl, and a draper's assistant. The last had been to the big house, hard by, with a bundle of ribbons. He had nothing else left to do but to stare at Spen. Vainly endeavouring to support himself, in an immoderate fit of laughter, on a treacherous yard-measure, the frail rod broke and sent the grinning youth sprawling upon his paper box, before the actor could be said to have pulled a single face at him.

Jacob was admitted to the old schoolroom by a girl with patches of dough clinging to a pair of ruddy arms, which she partly shielded with a white apron.

She didna knaw whether Miss Winthorpe would see him or not. What name wor it? Martyn of Dinsley? Well, she'd go and tell her. He moit sit down a bit.

Jacob sat down, and, happily, before he had made himself very melancholy with the remembrances of the time when he sat in that same room with his father, on the occasion of the memorable visit to Bonsall, Miss Edith Winthorpe entered. She came forward and bowed very politely to Jacob, and said quite naturally that she was very glad to see him.

"Perhaps I should apologise for calling without an introduction," said Jacob, a little at a loss to explain his business.

"I hope it is not necessary for people belonging to the same town to apologise for knowing each other in a strange place."

"Thank you, Miss Winthorpe. I like your frankness; but this is more than a mere visit of courtesy: I have called upon rather a delicate business," said Jacob.

"Indeed,” said Edith, losing her self-possession for a moment.

"Oh! oh!" said the doughy domestic, who had been listening at the key-hole.

Edith has since confessed that she expected a declaration of love from Jacob, and that she was quite prepared to receive it kindly.

"Then in the first place, Miss Winthorpe, I beg to tender to you the most abject apologies of a friend of mine whose love rather outran his discretion this morning."

"Indeed!" said Edith again, and this time in a little confusion, rendered more apparent by a sudden doubt as to the motives of Jacob's visit.

"He is a gentleman, a man of taste and feeling, of noble and generous impulses. I have known him for years; and he has seen you."

Edith blushed and began to twist her handkerchief round her fingers.

"To be plain with you, Miss Winthorpe, he wishes to be introduced to you, and if you can like him, he is ready to marry you whenever you will name the day. There!"

"There! Yes, I think you may say, 'There.' A nice piece of business to come upon and to propound before one has spoken half a dozen words to you, Mr. Martyn," said Edith, rising and opening the door, to the consternation of the domestic, who was so deeply interested in the conversation that she stood gaping at Edith, with only a vague idea that she had been caught in the act.

"I thought I heard you, Mary," said Edith, calmly; "perhaps you will step inside and take a seat ?”.

Mary sneaked away and plunged her arms once more into the dough, which she beat and buffeted and rolled about in the most savage manner; sad illustrations of her wrath being exhibited the next morning 'in the flat hard cakes that were placed on Mrs. Gompson's breakfast-table.

Edith was not much disconcerted at this amusing incident; indeed, she laughed heartily when she had closed the door upon Mary, and turning to Jacob said: "Well, what is this gentleman like? Is he handsome? Has he money? You see I am quite a woman of the world. I have left home to seek my fortune; and I must be my own mamma and solicitor in this matter."

And then she laughed again, at which Jacob was not pleased. "But I think, perhaps, it would be best for me to send for Mrs. Gompson and take her advice," she said, in a graver mood.

"No! no! for goodness sake don't do that," said Jacob.

"But is this proper, Mr. Martyn, to call upon a young lady

when".

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“On my honour," said Jacob "I will answer to her for your conduct."

Then Jacob begged Edith to listen calmly to all he would tell her; whereupon, in a very business-like manner, he described his own position and prospects, spoke of his great esteem for her, and his knowledge of her history; and then entered fully into his early friendship with Mr. Paul Ferris, and related succinctly all he knew about his friend.

When Jacob talked of Spen's confession, Edith's attention became particularly earnest; her bright eyes sparkled with enthusiasm as he related the story of Spen's gradual success. She clasped her hands. with delight when Jacob described his recognition of his old friend on that brilliant night in the London theatre. Seeing how deeply the story interested her, Jacob dwelt longer upon this theme than he would otherwise have done.

“But—but I felt very much insulted, sir, this morning," said Edith, checking her evident interest in Mr. Ferris's history.

"He bitterly repents him of his conduct; only pleading in extenuation your beauty and his love for you."

Finally, Edith granted Jacob permission to introduce Mr. Ferris to herself and Mrs. Gompson: not that there was any necessity that the advice of the latter should be obtained; for Mrs. Gompson, besides having no control over Edith (who had only been in Cartown a few days), had neither the love nor esteem of her teacher; and Mrs. Winthorpe was'a poor weak woman in the hands of two hard-hearted, stiff-necked daughters, who would gladly have encompassed their pretty sister's ruin, who had indeed forced her from home, their cruelty almost surpassing that of Cinderella's wicked persecutors.

So, like many another girl, Edith was thrown upon her own resources. She had obtained her present situation through an advertisement, and it was quite open for her now to use her own judgment and feelings entirely in the matter of the suit of Mr. Ferris, whose delicate attention in gathering flowers for the children had not escaped her notice. His profession, which would have been the greatest barrier to many young ladies, was to Edith one of his strongest recommendations. A girl of spirit, a good musician, possessing a fine voice and an artistic taste, delighting in operatic music, and with a memory filled with her father's stories of theatrical life when he was leader of a London orchestra, Edith would gladly have chosen the stage for her own profession had she known how to begin; but to mention a theatre at

home was to incur the penalty of a lecture from two bad sisters and a weak silly mother, and all sorts of penances besides. Moreover, there was something in Mr. Ferris's manner and appearance which Edith liked; and Jacob's plea in his favour was so eloquent, Jacob's announcement of his own forthcoming marriage so decisive, and the certainty of being relieved from a life of drudgery so attractive, that Edith, weighing all things carefully, and putting into the scale a little liking for the man, and much hope that true love would follow, made up her mind to receive Mr. Paul Ferris very graciously.

Inquiries at the inn and elsewhere led to the information that Mr. Spawling had been succeeded as schoolmaster by Mr. Gompson, from London; who, after a little time, had been joined by his wife, when the Martyn establishment at Middleton was broken up. The town had been a good deal scandalised at the domestic brawls of this uncongenial couple, and had not Mr. Gompson given up the ghost, and retired from the business altogether, the school committee would have discharged him. On his decease, Mrs. Gompson (who had shown great masculine power in dealing with the boys during her husband's illness, and whose mode of instruction seemed to be more successful than his) was appointed head of the school, and she had retained her position ever since.

"She's gotten a rum way with th' lads, sir," said the rural waiter; "when she's goin' to lick one on 'em she pitches th' cane from one end of the room to the other, and makes him fetch it: when he's fetched it she leathers into him like all that."

"And how do the school committee get along with her?"

"Oh, she's master of them too; they're all afraid on her; but she's not a bad schoolmissis, so fur as learning goes, I've heard say. She's up to all the new dodges of spelling, and writing, and 'rithmetics, and all that."

"All is right," said Jacob, dashing into the dingy coffee-room; "I have wooed her for you far more earnestly than Viola, in trousers, wooed the Countess."

"But how have you succeeded? If only after the Viola fashion, then farewell the tranquil mind," said Spen, half theatrically, half seriously.

"Go to--I have unclasped to thee the Book of Fate-thou may'st love her if thou wilt; an' thou wilt not, thou'lt lose a wench of rare mettle

Let still the woman take

An elder than herself; so wears she to him,

So sways she level in her husband's heart."

"Methinks we are a fair and proper match, Jacob; I am several years her senior. We'll speak with the maid ourself, good Jacob;" and Spen strode right royally to the fireplace, and rang the bell.

"Waiter, a bottle of the best-the wine I spoke of," said Spen, to the clown who answered his ringing; "and now, Jacob, without further fooling, let us discuss this matter. What did she say? How did she look ?"

Jacob related as nearly as possible all that had taken place; and the two agreed to wait upon the griffin and the fairy after dinner.

Meanwhile Jacob sat down to write letters, and Spen lit a cigar, in the smoke of which he tried to read his destiny. In his own eccentric way he loved Edith; she was the first sunny thing he saw on revisiting the haunts of his youth, and it seemed to him that the charms of the old place were all personified in her. It may appear strange to some of my readers that this comic gentleman who painted his face and made people laugh, and whose pathos in real life was often almost like burlesque, should be so love-stricken at the first sight of a mere country girl. But Edith Winthorpe was no ordinary person; we have seen how much she interested Jacob, and we must not forget that actors are only mortal after all, with hearts and minds as susceptible as those of other people, and with often a genuine romance in their very natures, which may lift some of them to a loftier and more devoted height of love and friendship than many who follow professions outside the pale of art could hope to attain.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

SOME months after the events recorded in the last few chapters Jacob Martyn was taking authorship in a very comfortable fashion. The library of Mr. Bonsall, which had appeared to him so magnificently cozy, was not more of a book-paradise than the one in which he was engaged upon his "Romantic History of the Welsh," at Neathville, nor so much indeed; for in Jacob's study there was a presiding angel who sat near him and called him husband. What were Jacob's troubles and trials now that his bark, as Mr. Windgate Williams would put it, had sailed gloriously into the harbour of Fame, Fortune, and Matrimony? I really do not know whether Jacob. deserved so much honour and happiness. The critics, it was true, said that his "On the Track of a Sunbeam was one of the most charming works of imaginative genius since "The Tempest" and "Undine." His wife thought there was nothing equal to it in literature.

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