Alone of
all the sisters she seemed to me to be wanting in heart. I heard her
several times attempt to snub her father, and once I noted how she spent a
whole evening in moody silence, and refused to play a note, for no other
reason that I could see except that Captain ARBLAST, of the 30th Lancers,
the dashing first-born of the Bishop, who happened to be spending a few
days of his long leave in Archester, devoted himself with all the assiduity
of his military nature to twirling his heavy moustache in the immediate
neighbourhood of SOPHY MAYBLOOM, and not in that of HERMIONE. Indeed, I
have reason to know that, after the guests had departed, poor SOPHY had to
endure from her sister a dreadful scene, the harsh details of which have
not yet faded from her memory. And then I remembered, too, how it was a
matter of family chaff against HERMIONE that once, not very long after she
had entered upon her teens, she had sobbed convulsively through a whole
night, because she had discovered that her juvenile arms were thin and
mottled, and she imagined that she would never be able to wear a low dress,
or shine in Society.

Such, then, was the beautiful HERMIONE, who for some years rode rough-shod
over the hearts of all the males in Archester. Space fails me to enumerate
all her engagements. She broke them one after another without a thought,
and cast her admirers away as if they had been dresses of last year's
fashion. Most of them, it must be said, recovered quickly enough, but the
miserable COPE became a hopeless hypochondriac, and never smiled again. He
died the other day, and HERMIONE's sketch of HANKINSON was found, frayed
and soiled, in an ancient pocket-book which he always carried about with
him. HANKINSON'S fate seemed at first to be worse. He took to poetry,
morbid, passionate, yearning, unhealthy poetry, of the skimmed SWINBURNE
variety, and for a time was gloomy enough. Having, however, engaged in a
paper conflict with one of his critics, he forgot his sorrows, and though
he still declares an overwhelming desire for death and oblivion about six
times a year, in various magazines, he seemed, when I last saw him, fairly
comfortable and happy. But, of course, he has never secured a vicarage.

To return to HERMIONE. She at last married a certain Mr. PARDOE, a
barrister practising on the Archester Circuit, and established herself in
town. Shortly afterwards she became the rage. Her beauty, her wit, her
music, her dinners, her