CHAPTER XXI.

"Fuyez l'amour, l'amour vous suit

Poursuivez le et il s'en fuit."

French Song.

Augusta had followed Ellen's spirited advice. She had shown the most perfect indifference to the defalcation of her three renegade beaux, Sparkleton, Dashington, and Riskwell. She did not adopt, when she met them, a reserve which, foreign to her natural manner, would have betrayed resentment. She was cordial, open, and good-humoured as ever, but the watchful attention and eager deference were gone. She did not keep herself disengaged for the chance of dancing with Dashington; she did not make Sparkleton promise to come to their box, and she

took no notice of Riskwell's new turn-out. She now encouraged no attentions but Julian's; but the trio who had been fashionably supercilious, and sometimes inaccessible, when they thought they were desired, now that they found themselves disregarded, became all devotion and anxiety.

They found out that so lovely a woman, with money, was a very great rarity. They began to think it a dreadful pity that Lindsay, who could afford to marry a poor girl, should have a person whom report had magnified into an heiress, and who now had all the proud and careless manner of one. For the first time, they suspected, what every one else had long known-that they were great dolts; and each privately resolved to try his chance before the beauty should have positively engaged herself to her cousin.

Mrs. Lindsay was all pride and triumph,

but

one;

but

as she said a woman can marry it's a good thing in after life to be able to say to one's husband, if he ever finds fault, or appears to think he might have done better,

VOL. I.

L

"Remember I didn't marry you for want of better offers;" that was a great quietus. It was well to keep all documents to prove the facts. She had stitched all her former offers into a book, which she sometimes produced when Gregory was out of humour, and the mere sight of its outside silenced him at

once.

Mrs. Lindsay's wishes were destined to be gratified.

On the very same morning, the elderly and Honourable Augustus Sparkleton had a very unpleasant conversation with the ear his father on money matters; a writ was served on Captain Dashington of the guards; and Riskwell, the only one of the three who cared at all for Augusta for herself, obtained so brilliant a success in a daring speculation, that he determined, whatever her fortune might be, to marry her at once.

The affair of Sparkleton's whisker had become very public. Dashington, who had a considerable talent for caricaturing, and who was a needy, illnatured fellow, had ad

mirably hit off the scene of Screech and the whisker, and had realised some pounds by having it engraved. Hung up in all the shops, it had been seen by old Lord Gripeall, Sparkleton's father, and infuriated him as being likely to mar the matrimonial prospects of the ci-devant beau. Now, Sparkleton had several times screwed money out of his father, under pretence of a prompt marriage with an heiress; his affairs were growing desperate, and his father refused any assistance, unless he immediately secured a woman with at least twenty thousand pounds.

Sparkleton lost no time in writing a letter to Augusta, enclosed in one to her mother, and announced that he would have the honour of calling, at three in the afternoon, to hear his doom from the lady's own lips. This done, "with no doubt of her acceptance," he set off to a notorious money-lender, and borrowed a thousand pounds for three months, at fifty per cent. As for Captain Dashington, who was no great scribe, he merely wrote an offhand note to Augusta, begging the honour of

five minutes' conference with her at half-past three. Riskwell's letter was different, more humble, much longer, dwelling rather on his fortunes than himself, and also entreating an interview the same afternoon.

Augusta was walking out, when, by a strange coincidence, these letters arrived nearly at the same time. Mrs. Lindsay took upon herself to open and answer them, appointing Sparkleton at three, Dashington at half-past three, and Riskwell at four o'clock; and, in the maternal pride of her heart, she could not forbear seeking Julian in his dressing-room, to let him know what important conquests Augusta had made.

Nor was Julian unmoved by the intelligence. He had no very great doubts that Augusta would refuse them all, and there was a something in Sparkleton's and Dashington's letters which made him anticipate their rejection with a sort of triumph. Mrs. Lindsay took care to say nothing that could lead Julian to declare himself in any way, for these three offers inflated her with the belief