lady was at least successful. In the course of a week
Mary Anne Waters became extinct, and from her ashes rose the
surprizingly fine, and surpassingly vulgar, Mrs Augustus Brammel.
Augustus, notwithstanding his vapoury insubjection, visited his father
and the partners in the bank, leaving his bride in snug lodgings at a
respectable distance from all. He remained a few days at the
banking-house, and then absented himself on the plea of finally
arranging his incompleted affairs in Oxford and elsewhere. He had
engaged to return to business at the end of a month. Nearly three had
passed away, and no tidings whatever had been heard of him. Allcraft, as
it has been seen, grew anxious--less perhaps for his partner's safety,
than for the good name and credit of the firm. He had heard of his
precious doings, and reports of his inauspicious marriage were already
abroad. No wonder that the cautious and apprehensive Michael trembled
somewhat in his state of uncertainty. As for Mr Augustus Brammel
himself, the object of his fears, he, in conformity with general custom,
and especially in compliance with the wishes of his wife, had quitted
England on a wedding tour. With five hundred pounds in his purse--a sum
advanced by his father to liquidate his present outstanding
liabilities--he steamed from Dover on the very day that he was supposed
to have reached Oxford for his final arrangements. From Boulogne, he,
his wife, and suite, proceeded to Paris; and there they were, up to
their eyes in the dissipation of that fascinating city, when Allcraft
started on their track, followed them, unwittingly enough, from town to
town, and came upon them at length in the great city itself, and in the
very hotel in which they lodged. It was at night that Michael first
caught sight of the runaway. And where? In a gaming-house, the most
fashionable of the many legalized haunts of devils in which, not many
years since, Paris abounded. Allcraft had entered upon the scene of
iniquity as into a theatre, to behold a sight--the sight of human nature
in its lowest, most pitiable, and melancholy garb; in its hour of
degradation, craziness, and desperation. He had his recreation in such a
spectacle, as men can find their pleasure in the death-struggle of a
malefacter on the gibbet. He came, not to join the miserable throng that
crowded round the tables, exhibiting every variety of low, unhealthy
feeling; nor did he come, in truth, prepared to meet with one in whos