pulled out again! For there on his back, even as I lay on mine, lay Mr. Bob Tyncker; and on her knees beside him, bending low over his face, was Miss Kitty Dobson. And the golden scarf (sadly changed for the worse) lay midway between us.

One glance was sufficient to assure me that Mr. Bob Tyncker was nearly as far advanced on the road to recovery as I was myself, and that Miss Kitty held a most exalted opinion of his late exploit ; and that she was, by words and in other ways still more engaging, trying to let him know it. They made a pretty picture.

But the old gentleman's face grew cloudy as he looked at it. He leant over me in irritated silence, brandy-flask in hand, and I thought it was time to speak.

"How are you, Dobson?" I said with a faint smile. "I am afraid you don't recognise me in this draggled condition, but—”

"Why, so it is!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "It's Mildenhall! Why, how do you come to be down here? I say," he continued in a sort of stage whisper, and with a troubled look at the others; "I am very glad you have come; "I'm half afraid, as it is, you are too

late."

"Too late for what?" I asked, trying to sit up, and presently succeeding.

Why, that!" he whispered testily, and nodding his head in a disturbed way in the direction of the young couple. Man, don't you recollect you were to have the first say in that sort of thing?" "So I was," I rejoined; "and the present will be a very good time for beginning. I will speak to Kitty at once."

"Good!" said Mr. Dobson, looking much relieved at my alacrity and calling the young lady. "Come here, Kitty; this gentleman here wants to speak to you. Mr. Mildenhall, Kitty," he explained grimly, seeing how reluctantly the girl left her charge in order to

come to us.

Her sunny face, that had been flushed with the pleasure and excitement of coaxing the lucky Bob back to life, grew white (I much regret to be obliged to say) as she heard my name. It was a very limp hand that I managed to get hold of and shake as heartily as I could.

"You see that I have lost no time in coming down to see you, Kitty," I said, holding her hand the while, and thinking it best to plunge at once in medias res. "You reach the age of twenty to-day, don't you?"

"Yes," said poor Kitty faintly, and trying feebly to get her hand away; but I still held on.

"There is something in a certain will which concerns you and me; I want to talk to you about it."

"Yes?" whispered poor Miss Kitty, still more faintly, and with another feeble and futile attempt to draw her hand from mine; "would not some other time-when you are dry?"

"No, my dear," I said (I am a grim old bachelor enough, in an ordinary way, and that last expression slipped out quite involuntarily, and must be put down to my half-drowned condition), "I would rather do it now. You are a very pretty girl, and a very brave and clever one; and you have just saved my life with your scarf, as I realise very plainly, so that you will always hold a very dear place in my heart. heart. And so I come to the conclusion"-I couldn't help pausing a moment to enjoy her consternation-"that I will have nothing more to do with you or your hand, however earnestly you may offer it to me "-letting it go at last. "I reject you entirely, and hand you over to that young villain (whom I hope to call my friend for the rest of my life) Mr. Bob Tyncker."

It was a queer way of doing things, no doubt, and has (as I have said before) occasioned a good deal of head-shaking among people who do not know the whole story; but I flatter myself it was both neat and effectual.

I was very much surprised by the effect of my words upon Mr. Dobson. (But it appears that Tyncker had known him for a very long time, and had always been a prime favourite of his, while Kitty was as the very apple of his eye.) He ran hastily over to the young gentleman, where he had been left lying alone on his back disconsolately enough all this time, and shook him furiously by the hand. "You hear what my friend Mildenhall says? I cordially agree with every word of it; you are an obstinate young villain—you are a fine fellow, Mr. Bob Tyncker; and Kitty is the prettiest and bravest girl in the country-and the wilfullest. Mildenhall won't have her at any price, so you will have to take her yourself, and a fine pair you will make a couple of wilful young rogues. think," continued the old gentleman, looking fondly round as he spoke, at his niece, who stood midway between Bob and me in shy uncertainty as to what to do," that we ought to have a big dinner to-night, to rub the edge off our late quarrels; and we will have up that young fellow Tattler as well. I roasted him so heavily at lunch that I should like to see how he feels now."

I

How Tattler had been "roasted" I learnt later on in the afternoon. He poked his head in at the door of the smoking-room where I was smoking a meditative pipe.

"Seen Bob Tyncker lately?" he asked.

"Not just lately," I said (not quite truthfully I am afraid, for I knew perfectly well where Bob was to be found at that very moment,

but I felt that Tattler would be more in the way than ever, just then).

He came in, and presently spoke again.

"I say, that old gentleman that I went to lunch with to-day is a queer sort of customer, I think; couldn't make him out a bit. He was jolly enough at lunch-friendly and all that; but I rather thought he was trying a little humbug on me, now and then."

"In what way?" I asked rather interested.

"Oh, all sorts of ways; 'bout telescopes chiefly though; wanting to know if you could see through a brick wall with them, and that sort of thing, you know. I'm never sure," said Mr. Tattler, fixing his eyeglass in his eye and looking at me very inquiringly through it, "whether, when people try that sort of talk on you, they are not trying to humbug you. What do you think?"

"My dear fellow," I rejoined, I fear a little drily, "I know Mr. Dobson pretty well, and I really don't think he would try anything of the sort on any one-unless, perhaps, they had been treating him previously to a little of the same thing."

Upon my word, I don't believe he grasped my meaning. At any rate, at dinner that night at Mr. Dobson's he showed not the slightest sign of discomfiture; on the contrary, he was in what he himself called "very great form," and more than once drew from poor Kitty the epithet "You wretch, Mr. Tattler!"

English Whist and English Whist Players.

PART II.

LEAVE these dull northern skies and travel into brighter climes. Wherever he goes, the Englishman carries with him the same tastes, the same ways of life. Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt is as true of us as it was of the Roman in the

days of Horace. Gibbon at Lausanne notes with regret the arrival of a Communion Sunday. "Where am I to spend my evening?" That is his cry. If thoughts of business intruded into the mind of the Swiss on that day, the lips were closed against any mention of commerce. There was "neither business nor parties." Alas! and alas! "They interdict even whist on this day." Gibbon's notion of his life was not materially different from that of Judge Buller. His idea of happiness was to devote the morning to work and the afternoon and evening to society and recreation, not" disdaining the innocent amusement of a game of cards."

all."

Speed over a few years of time, and cross the Alps into Savoy. You are an Englishman, my dear A——, a man who, like Ulysses, has seen much, and has the advantage over him of being able to read. As soon as your arrival is known you will be asked to the weekly reunion of Mrs. Trollope. Every English-speaking visitor receives an invitation from that kindly dame, and among her guests appear every one of any note and many of no note at You, as a whist-player, will be welcomed even more warmly than is her wont. When she expected to find that a particular person was a devotee of her favourite game, and was mistaken in the supposition, her expressive face could not conceal the marks of her disappointment. Mrs. Jameson came to one of her parties, was received with great empressement, but it soon turned out that the illustrious art-critic "did not know one card from another." This was too great a blow for the older lady; she could not suppress her mortification, and Mrs. Jameson saw it depicted on her face.

I should have enjoyed a few days with you, my dear A, at

Nice in 1825. A very pleasant company was gathered together in that Mediterranean elysium, chief of whom was Talleyrand, attended by his niece the Duchess of Canino. Yes, Talleyrand whose mournful prophecy to the young man, ignorant of whist, on the old age that he would be doomed to drag out in unrelieved dulness is written on the heart of every player, Talleyrand, whose jests at the game are familiar to us all. Did he not, for instance, when playing at long whist one evening, drawl out in a slow voice to the old lady who had married her footman, "at nine one does not count honours." His mode of life at Nice was very simple and his habits were very regular. He would play his rubber until midnight, he would then begin to write his memoirs, and in their composition the hours would pass away until the clock struck three. He would then seek his repose, and would rise "after a few hours' sleep fresh and ready for the occupations of the day."

This wily old diplomate was the Bishop of Autun, and among his clerical compeers were many zealous card-players. George Ticknor has shown this in his account of a visit to the Borgheses on a Sunday evening in 1836. The first thing which he saw on entering the stately rooms was a select company of seven cardinals. They were clad in the habiliments of their order, conspicuous in red skull caps and pieds de perdrix, whatever that article of dress may be, and were sitting at cards, four at one table and three at another. Similar exhibitions this accomplished American, one of the choicest specimens of his country, witnessed all the season through. Twenty-one years later the traveller returned again to Rome. The scene was changed. In 1857 he did not see a single cardinal indulging in the pleasures of the card table. A pope had risen who knew not the joys of cards. He disapproved of the game. That was enough; the cardinals around him abandoned their favourite pursuit.

Talleyrand was a prince of the church and a prince among diplomates. No one has ever attained to his reputation for cunning and dexterity of intellect. The English race is much too slow and too direct in its modes of thought to attain to pre-eminence in such fields. They are apt to acquire a strong hold in other lands by the valour of their soldiers, and to lose it again through the simplicity of their representatives in the council-chamber. The nearest position to Talleyrand among our countrymen, and he, truth to say, is separated longo intervallo from the Frenchman, would by common consent be given to the cautious and glozing old Chesterfield, and he was at one time as eager for cards as the diplomatic old ecclesiastic across the "narrow streak." In his