threadbare black is very effective. The lovely Lasciver remained entirely passive; such is discipline.
Here, at last, was an opportunity to beat a retreat. The Captain rose, and shaking Mewker's unemployed hand, which, he said afterward, "felt like a bunch of radishes," left the room without so much as a word to the future Mrs. Belgrave. So soon as the door closed upon him, Mr. Mewker raised his eyes from the handkerchief, and smiled sweetly upon his sister. The thing is accomplished.
As some old bear, who had enjoyed freedom from cubhood, feels, at the bottom of a pit dug by the skillful hunter, so feels Captain Belgrave, as he rides home sorrowfully. His citadel, after all, is not a protection. Into its penetralia a subtle spirit has at last found entrance. The air grows closer and heavier around him, the shadows broader, the bridges less secure, the trout-brooks blacker and deeper. How shall he break the matter to Augusta? "No hurry, though; the day has n't been app'inted yit;" and at this suggestion the clouds begin to break and lighten. Then he sees Mewker, threadbare and vindictive; his sky again is overcast, but filaments of light stream through as he conjures up the image of the lovely widow, the dimpled hand, the closed eyes, the long radiate lashes, checks, lips, and the temptation which had so unexpected a conclusion. Home at last; and, with some complaint of fatigue, the Captain retires to his high tower to ruminate over the past and the future.
The future! yes, the future! A long perspective stretched before his eyes; and, at the end of the vista, was a bride in white, and a wedding. It would take some months to gradually break the subject to his sister. Then temperately and moderately, the courtship would go on, year by year, waxing by degrees to the end.
Mr. Mewker altered the focus of Belgrave's optics next morning, by a short note, in which he himself fixed the wedding-day at two weeks from the Captain's declarations of intentions. This intelligence confined the Captain two days in the tower, "codjitating," during which time every body in Little-Crampton was informed that Widow Lasciver and he were engaged to be married. The news came from the best authority—the Rev. Melchior Spat. On the evening of the second day, a pair of lead-colored stockings, a fustian petticoat, a drab short-
