my
head and heart were still full of Dora M'Dermot; and two days after I
had obtained information, the "Antwerpen" steamer deposited me on
Belgian ground.

"Mr M'Dermot is stopping here?" I enquired of, or rather affirmed to,
the head waiter at the Four Seasons hotel at Wiesbaden. If the fellow
had told me he was not, I believe I should have knocked him down.

"He is, sir. You will find him in the Cursaal gardens with madame _sa
soeur_."

Off I started to the gardens. They were in full bloom and beauty,
crowded with flowers and _fraueleins_ and foreigners of all nations. The
little lake sparkled in the sunshine, and the waterfowl skimmed over it
in all directions. But it's little I cared for such matters. I was
looking for Dora, sweet Dora--Dora M'Dermot.

At the corner of a walk I met her brother.

"Jack!" I exclaimed, grasping his hand with the most vehement affection,
"I'm delighted to see you."

"And I'm glad to see you, my boy," was the rejoinder. "I was wondering
you did not answer my last letter, but I suppose you thought to join us
sooner."

"Your last letter!" I exclaimed. "I have written three times since I
heard from you."

"The devil you have!" cried Jack. "Do you mean to say you did not get
the letter I wrote you from Paris a month ago, announcing"----

I did not hear another word, for just then, round a corner of the
shrubbery, came Dora herself, more charming than ever, all grace and
smiles and beauty. But I saw neither beauty nor smiles nor grace; all I
saw was, that she was leaning on the arm of that provokingly handsome
dog Walter Ashley. For a moment I stood petrified, and then extending my
hand,

"Miss M'Dermot!"----I exclaimed.

She drew back a little, with a smile and a blush. Her companion stepped
forward.

"My dear fellow," said he, "there is no such person. Allow me to
introduce you to Mrs Ashley."

If any of my friends wish to be presented to pretty girls with twenty
thousand pounds, they had better apply elsewhere than to me. Since that
day I have forsworn the practice.

MINISTERIAL MEASURES.

Not enviable, in our apprehension, at the present crisis, is the
position of a young man whose political education has been framed upon
Conservative principles, and whose personal experience and recollections
go little further back than the triumph of those principles over others
which he has been early taught to condemn. His range of facts may be
limited, but at the same t