she matures: the Hungarian lady of forty is still as
willowy, graceful and capricious as she was at twenty. The
peasant-women, poor things! are ugly, because they work from morning
till night in the vineyards, toiling until their backs are broken. The
wine which the beauties drink costs their humbler sisters their
life-blood, their grace, their happiness. The sunshine of a thousand
existences is imprisoned in the vintages of Pressburg and Carlowitz.
Poor, homely toilers in the fields! Poor human creatures transformed
into beasts of burden! The Hungarian nation owes it to itself to
emancipate these struggling women and show them the way to better
things.

EDWARD KING.

"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER XLVIII ENGAGEMENTS--HOSTILE AND OTHERWISE.

[Illustration]

The fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and
summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and
flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the
bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft.
Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new
life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown
long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air
and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to
him that he had awakened from a dream.

He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to
call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He
could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost
intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came
from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could
work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he
could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for
business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him
so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his
examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in
such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a
small share in the business,--what would be the end of this most
improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in
Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he
loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could
offer him no higher prize than s