be ascribed, as a first cause, their alienation from a never fond but still convenient parent. Had they never requested the elder Cherrygo to call at the repository in Praed Street, for the purpose of matching two shades of orange and one of purple, he would probably have never seen Miss Brownadder, the designing person who subsequently became his wife.

These were all the lady-boarders. Mrs. Donkin made no stipulation as to their age, and even charged them less for their board than she did the gentlemen. The ladies were useful to her. It was part of Mrs. Donkin's policy so to contrive matters that every Sexagenarian should be in love with at least one, if not two, of her female inmates. Most of them fell into Cupid's trap easily enough. Chatwynd, indeed, was shy and reticent; but he was so quiet, and in every way so desirable a lodger, that his want of susceptibility was overlooked. Captain O'Ballygrumble made love to the ladies all round, when he was in a good temper, and always excepting Miss Shandrydan; and as for the poor old Governor, it quite suited Mrs. Cæsar Donkin's purpose that all he had to do with love should be in enjoying the worship of his daughter.

She, the daughter, Mrs. Armytage, was the guest this evening. She often came to dine. She liked to sit next to her darling papa. She complimented Mrs. Donkin. She complimented the ladies. She complimented the gentlemen. There was little individual love-making on the days she came, for all the Sexagenarians were wild after Mrs. Armytage, and their homage was centred in her. Curiously, the older ladies were not jealous of her. She seemed to be so dazzling, so accomplished, so distinguished, as to belong quite to another world. She could not, it was argued, be setting her cap at any of these poor worn-out, creeping, chattering dotards. If her aim was wealthy caducity, she might marry a gouty marquis, or a paralytic duke, if she liked. The Governor was good enough to remark one day that his daughter had refused a Russian Ambassador to a foreign court, who was the owner of half the Ukraine, and half the peasants living thereupon. "But," continued the Governor, "my beloved Florence will never form a fresh alliance so long as her poor old father lives." So the little lady was highly popular in Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, and was a queen there, as she was every where else, save in a certain dingy chamber in Coger's Inn, Strand, and a certain mouldy back-kitchen in Badger Lane, Stockwell. Aha! what king, what queen may there be, I wonder, who in some place or another is not reckoned of any more account than a beggar, and, with crown on head and sceptre in hand, has not to eat the humblest of humble pie.

The Governor did not stay long over his wine. He drank three glasses of sound old port-wine, of which he always kept an abundant store, and which he or his daughter freely dispensed to the company in general, and to Mrs. Donkin in particular. It was not his custom to join the ladies in the drawing-room. He was too much of an invalid to bear so much fatigue. It was a very beautiful and interesting sight to see his tottering steps directed to the door by his devoted daughter. She

always assisted him to his bedchamber; and the parent and child passed an hour or so, in the solace of cheerful and innocent conversation, before the good old Governor retired to rest. He was unusually feeble on this present evening, and leant on his daughter's arm with an unusual pressure. All the Sexagenarians rose as the pair took their departure; and even the ferocious O'Ballygrumble rushed to the door, and held it obsequiously open.

"What a charming creature!" mumbled General Tibby.

"A model daughter," sighed Mr. Bowdler.

"A doosed fine woman," remarked Mr. Fogo, in his peremptory military voice.

The ladies joined their little twitterings in the chorus of applause, and, when they reached the drawing-room, proceeded to criticise Mrs. Armytage's jewellery, her lace, her flounces, and her ringlets. There was but one voice heard in disparagement, and that was, oddly, from goodnatured Mrs. Vanderpant.

"I not like her laugh, he, he!" the good lady remarked, sinking on a sofa; "and, 'pon my word, I tink she paint."

The Governor occupied a large and commodious bedchamber on the second-floor. He had furnished it himself, and, as this involved no diminution of Mrs. Donkin's usual charges, that lady was quite content to allow him to furnish it in what manner he pleased. It was by no means an uncomfortable apartment, and, to judge from the number of books and papers scattered about, the Governor was a gentleman of studious if not literary pursuits.

Florence led the old man into this chamber, and, until they had passed the very threshold, he continued to totter, and she to guide his footsteps, looking up in his face meanwhile with an expression of the tenderest solicitude. They were no sooner inside the door, however, and that door was no sooner closed upon them, and carefully locked, than a very remarkable change took place in the demeanour both of Mrs. Florence Armytage and of her venerable papa. She was no longer the Grecian daughter, the modern Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, ready to quaff a glass of blood as though it were one of Chateau Lafitte to redeem the head of her papa from the glaive of the guillotine. She became, with electric rapidity, our own familiar Mrs. Armytage, the fascinating widow, the laughing tenant of the first-floor in the Rue Grande-des-Petites-Maisons-the airy, saucy, debonnaire little creature, who was wont to shake her sunny ringlets and play with her lap-dag. Her pathetic veneration for the Governor had all vanished; not an iota was left of her affectionate solicitude. She dropped his arm without the slightest ceremony, and tripping to a large easy-chair, flung herself on to the cushions, and laughed long and heartily in her old, merry, satirical, desperately-wicked fashion.

But if the change that had occurred in this pattern of filial affection was sudden and astonishing, not less speedy and peculiar was that which came over the respected gentleman who was dignified with the name of

Governor. The deformed became all at once transformed, and Mr. Hartley Livingstone, who had entered the room a confirmed valetudinarian, to whom the seldom-erring judgment of Mrs. Donkin would have given at least seventy-seven years, sat down in an arm-chair opposite his daughter a hale, strong, personable man, to all appearance short of fifty years of age. For he had plucked off his flowing white locks; he had cast aside his ram-like ear-trumpets; he had discarded his green shade; he had divested his neck of its thick swathings of linen. His halt, his hobble, and his stoop had all disappeared; and he sat grinning with a remarkably fine set of even white teeth, a pair of gleaming hazel eyes, and a closely cropped bullet-head of crisp black hair. It was the story of Sixtus the Fifth over again; and the perfidy of Jaghire was repeated, with five hundred per cent in its audacious deception added.

The first act of this metamorphosed patriarch was to produce from a cheffonier a black bottle and a glass, and to mix himself a comfortably stiff glass of brandy-and-water. He next opened a cigar-case, and, producing a fine havannah, lighted and proceeded to smoke it, with an aspect of cheerful deliberation.

"My medical attendants recommend the use of the aromatic herb tobacco for the poor old Governor," he remarked, with a coarse laugh, entirely different from his former calmly-dignified manner. "Nobody but the invalid Governor is allowed to smoke in this house; but he pays so well, that the Witch of Endor would allow him to walk on the ceiling, or have a brass band at the window, if it was agreeable to him. He does what he likes, the interesting old sufferer. Ho, ho!"

The man's laugh was inexpressibly repulsive. He seldom spoke without a hard metallic "Ho, ho!" as a refrain.. It was his daughter's laugh in its crude and rugose stage;-his was the vocal bronze to her shining silver. He had a habit, too, of speaking of himself in the third person, of flattering himself grossly, and of slapping his large thigh, which by no means enhanced the geniality of his manner.

"He drinks the best and smokes the best, the poor old Governor does," he went on. "Legs and feet, what a start it is!"

"He smokes very strong tobacco and drinks more than is good for him,” his daughter-yes, she was his daughter-replied; "and in private life resembles Gallows Dick the bushranger much more than Mr. Hartley Livingstone, sometime Member of Council at St. Kitts, and said to have been Governor of Nevis."

"It wasn't Nevis," broke in the Governor, "it was Tobago. They all say it was Tobago, down-stairs. Ho! ho! and it was at Demerara, not at St. Kitts, that I exercised legislative functions as a member of the Court of Policy. Won't you have a little drop of something that'll do you good, Flo?"

To a third person-if such a third had been present at this interview -there could not have been from the outset the slightest doubt that Mr. Hartley Livingstone of the West Indies, or Gallows Dick of the

bush, or the Governor of Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, Bayswater, was an undisguised and unmitigated Ruffian. Villain and ruffian, coarse, low, cunning, and unscrupulous, were written in every line of his perfectly healthy face. Withal the man's eyes glistened with an ardent, devouring, almost savage love and admiration for his daughter. Their positions were reversed. He no longer suffered himself to be loved, as at the dinner-table. 'Twas she who endured endearment, and, to do Mrs. Armytage justice, she took all her papa's affection in a philosophical if not a demonstrative spirit.

Just then there came a little knock at the door.

CHAPTER XVIII.

EVE OF THE DELUGE.

THERE were fortunately two doors to the Governor's bedchamber, and the place was as secure from intrusion as the sanctum of Mr. Sims in Coger's Inn. Mr. Livingstone being very subject to colds, was necessarily very much afraid of draughts; and he had not only carefully listed and sand-bagged the top and bottom of the outer door, but, at his own expense, had fitted up an inner portal, covered with green baize. Those who knocked had to use their knuckles pretty freely before the sound penetrated to the chamber itself.

Mrs. Armytage rose at the summons, went to the door, and in a few moments returned.

"It was the woman of the house," she said, reseating herself.

"What! the Witch of Endor? What did the old sorceress want?" "She asked some idle question about gruel, or foot-baths, or something equally trivial. She is always prowling and prying about. Do you think it is mere old woman's curiosity, or do you imagine that she suspects any thing?"

"She had better not suspect any thing," replied Mr. Hartley Livingstone, with a very grim and significant leer. "I don't think she would have many more opportunities for indulging her suspicions."

"What do you mean?" his daughter asked, quietly raising her pretty

eyes.

"He means what he says, this party does," returned the ruffian. "He means this."

He drove one clenched fist against the open palm of his other hand. It made a hard dull sound. Mrs. Armytage smiled bitterly.

"You are still a child, father," she said. "Have you worked and studied so long that you do not know that fists, and knives, and pistols are the weapons of fools? You are a good actor enough, and down-stairs you really look and act like a gentleman. I wish you could divest yourself of your ruffianism when you retire into private life."

"Don't call names, Flo," the Governor responded, with his ugly

grin, half-jokingly and half-angrily. "If Dick's a ruffian, my fine ladyship is a ruffian's daughter. He doesn't like to be called a ruffian, he doesn't. It riles him. Come and kiss me, Flo, or by Jove I'll box your ears."

Mr. Hartley Livingstone-I suppress the many maledictions that garnished his conversation-was a man of his word. His hand was large and heavy, and Mrs. Armytage knew that the threat he had just uttered was not by any means a vain one. So she went up and kissed him, not reluctantly, and still not heartily, but with that calm and equable philosophy which was apparent in her private behaviour towards her papa.

"And now," the Governor resumed, a thorough reconciliation having been effected, "to business. How stands the money-market, my duck of diamonds?"

"Ready money, ready money, nothing but ready money," answered Mrs. Armytage, in a vexed tone. "The business we are carrying on is too large a one. We have too many irons in the fire, father, and we shall be broken for the want of ready money."

"I don't see how that can be. We've two capital strings to our bow. There's Sir Jasper Goldthorpe as good as the dividends on Plough Monday. If ever we want to kill the goose for its golden eggs, you can drive down to Beryl Court, and give the old gentleman a receipt in full for ten thousand down. Why, he's got millions!"

"I don't know. I'm nervous; I'm anxious about Sir Jasper. His life hangs on a thread, and were he to die, we could prove nothing. Besides, when I saw him last, he seemed gêné and embarrassed, and spoke of the scarcity of money."

Surely he can't be travelling to Queer Street. Where did you see him last?"

"In Paris."

"Has he come back to England yet?"

"He returns to-day. He is to bring that Magdalen Hill up from Swordsley, and there are to be grand doings again in Onyx Square." "And the young fellow?"

"What young fellow?" and Florence Armytage first flushed crimson, and then turned deadly pale.

"There, I don't want to interfere in your little love-affairs, my dear. They're expensive; but they give you pleasure, and they don't concern me." "They give me the pleasure of revenge," Mrs. Armytage said slowly; of revenge the most signal, the most crushing, and yet the most secret, over one that I love and one that I hate more than ever man or woman was hated on this side the plains of heaven or the sulphur of the bottomless pit."

"You are poetical, my child. Have your own way. It has cost you a good many hundred pounds since last January twelvemonths; but you know your own affairs best. The young fellow I spoke of is the soldierofficer-the dragoon Goldthorpe."