impudent assurance!" said Shirley, with great indignation.

"Verily, yea!" replied the Page, raising his heels a little from the ground, and instantly touching it again. "Moreover, I have sent for the horse-leach, who is of opinion that the animal must be dispatched forthwith."

"And what lie, Philip Altham, wilt thou be pleased to relate to my Lord withal? Or dost thou think to curry favour with him by such an exploit ?” demanded Shirley.

My business lieth altogether with my Lady, as thine doth, it seems, with the whole household," replied the Page, with undismayed effrontery. “So hie thee to my Lord, and make out for his ear what tale shall best please thee, whilst I wend unto my Lady, and tell her of this mishap. Good night, Master Steward; my ride has tired me, and I will presently to bed; first warning thee

not to let an accident sit heavily on thy heart, which presses but lightlyon mine, or it may, perchance, counteract the effect of thy potations, a consequence which I shall devoutly pray against."

And with another bow of mockery to the Steward, and one something more courteous to the stranger, the Page lightly withdrew.

There was a silence of some seconds, during which Shirley made sundry efforts to recover his equanimity. But as a gun, when its barrel contains too much powder, will surely burst with a violent explosion, so the particles of wrath which the Page had infused into the mind of the Steward, flew out, carrying with them the following ebullition:

"Ah, that boy, that boy!" said he, turning towards the door whence the youth had disappeared, his eyes contracted with a glance of peculiar shrewdness, accompanied by a correspondent

gesture of the head; "my Lady's favour will be the ruin of him! Aye, and not my Lady's only, but that of the principal personages of this household, myself excepted, before whose understanding there are not the same mists, I seeing him in his every-day apparel, and they only in his holiday suits.

And talking of apparel, to flounce and trick out the lad in silken garments like those in which you have now seen him, is enough to render him the prey of that pride born of Lucifer, which he would not have felt, if clad, as had better beseemed him, in a gabardine. His face, as fair and bright as the day, is but a bad index of a heart as dark as a November night. And yet, verily, that face of his hath, it appears to me, wrought for him not a little with my Lady. For the judgment of women, Master Secretary, is apt to be sadly warped by silken rags, and patches, and a point device accoutrement, and such like pigments of the body."

"And yet, methought, there was a strange beauty mingling with the wild fire of his countenance," observed Lewen musiugly.

"

"It is one of the masks in which Satan is accustomed to bedeck his imps,' returned the Steward; his violence getting very much the start of his moderation, and throwing his charity completely in the rear. "The irreligious child of perdition! the perfect hypocrite! his sweet words being but the honey in the body of the dead lion, of which they that eat, must, by the edict, die!"

The Steward took a very large draught, perhaps for the philosophical purpose of drinking down his passion, a recipe prescribed in the story-book.

"Of what communion is he?" demanded Lewen, taking advantage of the Steward's pause.

"Of none-or rather of all," returned Shirley. "Neither Catholic nor Reformed, and yet the first to my Lady

and Father Valerius, and to Mr. Russell half the last, cajoling the worthy man by pretending a desire after things not of this world, and a thirsting after spiritual meat, and a wish to be able to learn to eschew the evil, and to choose the good, affecting to believe that Mr. Rus sell alone can give him the butter and honey which shall bestow on him this power of discernment. Verily, that he is an infidel seems a fair conclusion; for I pray you to tell me, Master Secretary, whether he who professes faith in all creeds by turns, can care much after any?"

"Has he been long one of the household of Arding?" demanded Lewen, evading the Steward's question.

"No, and therein lies the mystery of the ascendancy he has gained here, which could not have been obtained unless the father of lies, which is Beelzebub, or Satan, had given him a power not of