young man's eyes. He
looked again: then there was a blank in his eyes. Mrs. Mortimer made
no sign, but sat still, half-expectant. He was past her now, but he
flung a last glance over his shoulder. He was evidently very doubtful
whether the lady on the seat, in the heavy mourning robes, were someone
he knew or not. First he thought she was, and then he thought she
wasn't. The face certainly reminded him of--now who the deuce was it?
Harry knit his brows and exclaimed:

"I half believe that's somebody I know!"

And he puzzled over it, for nearly five minutes, all in vain. Meanwhile
Mrs. Mortimer looked at the sea, till Johnnie told her that it was
dinner-time.

II.

WHY MEN DON'T MARRY.

We were sitting around the fire at Colonel Holborow's. Dinner was
over--had, in fact, been over for some time--the hour of smoke, whisky,
and confidence had arrived, and we had been telling one another the
various reasons which accounted for our being unmarried, for we were
all bachelors except the colonel, and he had, as a variety, told the
reasons why he wished he was unmarried (his wife was away). Jack
Dexter, however, had not spoken, and it was only in response to a
direct appeal that he related the following story. The story may be
true or untrue, but I must remark that Jack always had rather a
weakness for representing himself on terms of condescending intimacy
with the nobility and even greater folk.

Jack sighed deeply. There was a sympathetic silence. Then he began:

"For some reason best known to herself," said Jack, with a patient
shrug of his shoulders, "the Duchess of Medmenham (I don't know whether
any of you fellows know her) chose to object to me as a suitor for the
hand of her daughter, Mary Fitzmoine. The woman was so ignorant that
she may really have thought that my birth was not equal to her
daughter's; but all the world knows that the Munns were yeomen two
hundred years ago, and that her Grace's family hails from a stucco
villa in the neighborhood of Cardiff. However, the duchess did object;
and when the season (in the course of which I had met Lady Mary many
times) ended, instead of allowing her daughter to pay a series of
visits at houses where I had arranged to be, she sent her off to
Switzerland, under the care of a dragon whom she had engaged to keep me
and other dangerous fellows at a proper distance. On hearing of what
had happened from George Fitzmoine (an intimate friend of mine), I