had never fallen
across his dreams.

CHAPTER IV.

Love and AEsthetics.

Spring had returned, primroses and violets were being sold at the
street-corners, Parliament was assembled, and London had reawakened
from its wintry hibernation to new life and vigour. The Dovedales were
at their Kensington mansion. The Duchess had sent forth her cards for
alternate Thursday evenings of a quasi-literary and scientific
character. Lady Mabel was polishing her poems with serious thoughts of
publication, but with strictest secrecy. No one but her parents and
Roderick Vawdrey had been told of these poetic flights. The book would
be given to the world under a _nom de plume_. Lady Mabel was not so
much a Philistine as to suppose that writing good poetry could be a
disgrace to a duke's daughter; but she felt that the house of Ashbourne
would be seriously compromised were the critics to find her guilty of
writing doggerel; and critics are apt to deal harshly with the titled
muse. She remembered Brougham's savage onslaught upon the boy Byron.

Mr. Vawdrey was in town. He rode a good deal in the Row, spent an hour
or so daily at Tattersall's, haunted three or four clubs of a juvenile
and frivolous character, drank numerous bottles of Apolinaris, and
found the task of killing time rather hard labour. Of course there were
certain hours in which he was on duty at Kensington. He was expected to
eat his luncheon there daily, to dine when neither he nor the ducal
house had any other engagement, and to attend all his aunt's parties.
There was always a place reserved for him at the dinner-table, however
middle-aged and politically or socially important the assembly might me.

He was to be married early in August. Everything was arranged. The
honeymoon was to be spent in Sweden and Norway--the only accessible
part of Europe which Lady Mabel had not explored. They were to see
everything remarkable in the two countries, and to do Denmark as well,
if they had time. Lady Mabel was learning Swedish and Norwegian, in
order to make the most of her opportunities.

"It is so wretched to be dependent upon couriers and interpreters," she
said. "I shall be a more useful companion for you, Roderick, if I
thoroughly know the language of each country."

"My dear Mabel, you are a most remarkable girl," exclaimed her
betrothed admiringly. "If you go on at this rate, by the time you are
forty you will be as great a linguist as Cardinal Wiseman."

"Langua