answer. Mr. Chambers opened the door; in a minute it was shut behind us, and we were walking toward Oxford Street.

PART II.

NICE.

Five years passed away after the marriage in York Place without anything particularly eventful occurring in my life. I finished my education, took a fairly good degree at Cambridge, got called to the Bar, and was, perhaps, neither better nor worse than the majority of bachelors who have uncontrolled possession of a large income. As time passed on, I am ashamed to say that I pretty nearly forgot all about Miss Grey. This seems, no doubt, very fickle and unromantic. But five years is a long time; and the new scenes and circumstances that I was surrounded by after my marriage naturally engrossed my attention in a way that those who have never experienced such a change of fortune can hardly understand or make allowance for.

I shall take up the thread of my story in the December of 187-, when I was stopping at Nice with a Mr. Mervin, who was about my own age, and a great friend of mine. We left London for Nice on the evening after I had gone through the ceremony of being called to the bar; and I devoutly wish that I had space to tell how we left London and Paris wrapped up in cold and fog, and, after traveling all night, woke up in the morning while the train was running along the shores of the Mediterranean, dazzled by the wondrous light of that southern climate. The light seemed a universal presence. It was unlike anything I could have imagined; and the whole of my first day at Nice seemed to me like a continued morning.

On the second night after our arrival we went to a ball at the English club. Why we went there I hardly know, for neither of us was much of a ladies' man. Mervin was somewhat a Bohemian, and the peculiar position in which I was placed made me avoid the society of ladies, lest I should contract or engender an affection that could not be requited.

We had scarcely entered the ballroom, however, when Mervin exclaimed:

"Goodness me! Mrs. O'Flaherty, and Miss O'Flaherty too. I declare. Well, this is an unexpected pleasure."

One of the ladies he addressed was a stout, middle-aged matron, whose countenance bespoke her nationality quite as unmistakably as did her name. Her companion was a tall, fair-haired young lady who seemed to me to have one of the most refined and beautiful faces I had ever seen.

"Why, I protest," continued Mervin, before either of the ladies could say a word in answer to his salutation, "my dear Mrs. O'Flaherty, it must be a year since we have seen each other, and you seem to have grown ten years younger."

"Tell that yarn to the mounted maranes, Misther Blarney," said Mrs. O'Flaherty, laughing, and looking quite pleased.

"Allow me to introduce my friend, Mr. Brooke," said Mervin. "Mr. Brooke, Mrs. O'Flaherty; Mr. Brooke, Miss O'Flaherty."

We bowed.

"Mr. Brooke was wishing for a partner for the next waltz, Miss O'Flaherty. I can thoroughly recommend him as a waltzer, and I am sure you will not blight his wishes," continued Mervin.

I was not wishing for anything of the sort. But I was able to dance, which he was not; and, as I knew that he was maliciously speculating on my being as unaccomplished as he was in this respect, it gave me great pleasure to ask Miss O'Flaherty if I might be her partner. She assented with an easy grace that surprised me; for I could not understand how such a refined and lady-like girl could be the daughter of such an unalloyed mass of vulgarity as Mrs. O'Flaherty was.

"I'll kape me eye on yez so that ye won't have the bother of hunting for me when the dance is over," said Mrs. O'Flaherty. "I'd be askin' Misther Marvin to lade me out himself av I was a few year younger. But we'll be afther havin' some liquid refreshment whilst yer divartin' yerselves. Would ye take yer foot off me tail, if ye plase, sir?"—this last to a gentleman who had inadvertently trod on the train of her dress. The people about us were beginning to titter.

One never knows where little accomplishments, which can be easily acquired, may turn of use. I had learned to dance, not because I intended to go to balls or parties, but because I thought it foolish to run the risk of some time or other being placed at a disadvantage through want of proficiency in so easy an art. On the present occasion I was rewarded by having a most delightful companion during a considerable portion of the evening. At first our conversation was, of course, of a more or less commonplace character. When the first waltz was over we found that Mervin had escaped from Mrs. O'Flaherty. But the worthy dame had got a companion of her own sex and age, and when I had supplied them with some of the "liquid refreshment" they were both partial to, "Polly," as she called her beautiful daughter, was free to join me in another dance. How Miss O'Flaherty could be her daughter was an enigma which completely baffled me. There was not a particle of family likeness between them; and while Mrs. O'Flaherty was the embodiment of good-natured vulgarity, Miss O'Flaherty was a clever, highly-educated young lady, whose perfectly self-possessed and polished manners showed unmistakably that she had been brought up in the society of people who were, to put it mildly, better bred than her mother.

Our conversation, as I have said, was at first about commonplace matters, such as the difference of the climate in England and the south of France in winter; the difference of English and French customs; the light literature of the day, and so on. I have heard a story of an eminent queen's counsel who had been examining the Duke of Wellington before a Parliamentary committee, and who, on being asked by a friend if he had been examining the great duke, replied, "No, it was he who was examining me."

I felt in somewhat the same predicament with Miss O'Flaherty. There was nothing of the blue-stocking or the doctrinaire about her. She was perfectly unpretentious, and unself-conscious. But she was so full of information, and her memory and imagination moved so quickly and naturally, that whatever subject we spoke about she seemed to lead the conversation. At length, as we were sitting in a retired part of the room, and were speaking about music, I told her of a musician I knew, who had a dog that he had to put out of the room before the music began, because it cried so much.

"Indeed," said Miss O'Flaherty, "how thoughtless. If he had left the door open the poor dog would no more have left the room than you or I would—that is," she added with a smile, "if it were music that made the poor animal cry."

"I confess, Miss O'Flaherty," I said, "that I do not understand you."

"What!" she said, looking at me in surprise, "you don't know why some animals, like some human beings—only some—cry when they hear music—not noise, but music?"

"No," I replied, "I have often wondered."

"And all your learning has not enabled you to answer so easy a question?" she said, in a tone of sarcasm.

"I do not pretend to much learning," I answered, "but I have never heard any explanation of the fact."

"Very likely not," she answered; "the man who put the poor animal out of the room knew, possibly, less of his art than his dog did. The dog cried for the same reason that a human being might have cried, because the music roused in its mind unsatisfied longings that tortured it by the vagueness and uncertainty with which they spoke of a state higher and better than the poor animal could understand."

"I am surprised I did not think of so natural an explanation," I said. "My friends say I am music mad, and, indeed, music is almost a mania with me. I wonder it did not occur to me why the lower animals are affected by music as we