By this time they had got into a hansom, and were driving down to the South Kensington Museum.  Lavender would have preferred going into the Park, but what if his aunt, in driving by, were to see them?  He explained to Sheila the absolute necessity of his having to tell that fib about the four-o’clock engagement; and when she heard described the drive in the closed brougham which she had escaped, perhaps she was not so greatly inclined as she ought to have been to protest against that piece of wickedness.

“Oh yes, she likes you awfully,” he repeated, “and you must get to like her.  Don’t be frightened by her harsh way of saying things:  it is only a mannerism.  She is really a kind-hearted woman, and would do anything for me.  That’s her best feature, looking at her character from my point of view.”

“How often must we go to see her?” asked Sheila.

“Oh, not very often.  But she will get up dinner-parties, at which you will be introduced to batches of her friends.  And then the best thing you can do is to put yourself under her instructions, and take her advice about your dress and such matters, just as you did about your hair.  That was very good of you.”

“I am glad you were pleased with me,” said Sheila.  “I will do what I can to like her.  But she must talk more respectfully of you.”

Lavender laughed that little matter off as a joke, but it was no joke to Sheila.  She would try to like that old woman—­yes:  her duty to her husband demanded that she should.  But there are some things that a wife—­especially a girl who has been newly made a wife—­will never forget; which, on the contrary, she will remember with burning cheeks and anger and indignation.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SOME PASSAGES IN SHELLEY’S EARLY HISTORY.

Shelley’s connection with Stockdale is one of the curiosities of literary history.  It is as if Miranda had attached herself to the fortunes of Caliban.  An inexplicable thing, except upon the assumption of the young poet’s inexperience of men and his ignorance of affairs.  It is, moreover, a new passage in his life which has hitherto eluded the most sagacious of his biographers.  Who was Stockdale, and what was the relationship between these two personages, so opposite in character, intellect and pursuits?  Stockdale’s name was altogether unknown to honest folks before Shelley gave it currency and introduced the owner of it to polite society—­at all events on paper.  He owes his notoriety, therefore, entirely to the boy-poet, into whose way the good man was thrown by one of those inexplicable freaks of chance which often bring about such strange results both to subject and object.