t say a
word about the chrysanthemum for a week, and then it all came out with
a rush. I let him talk. With the servants flinging out the
flower-pots faster than I could water them, what more could I have
done? A coolness between us was inevitable. This I regretted, but my
mind was made up on one point: I would never do Gilray a favor again.

MR. O'LEARY'S SECOND LOVE

By CHARLES LEVER

"You may easily suppose," began Mr. O'Leary, "that the unhappy
termination of my first passion served as a shield to me for a long
time against my unfortunate tendencies toward the fair, and such was
really the case. I never spoke to a young lady for three years after,
without a reeling in my head, so associated in my mind was love and
sea-sickness. However, at last, what will not time do? It was about
four years from the date of this adventure, when I became so oblivious
of my former failure, as again to tempt my fortune. My present choice,
in every way unlike the last, was a gay, lively girl, of great animal
spirits, and a considerable turn for raillery, that spared no one; the
members of her own family were not even sacred in her eyes; and her
father, a reverend dean, as frequently figured among the ludicrous as
his neighbors.

"The Evershams had been very old friends of a rich aunt of mine, who
never, by the by, had condescended to notice me till I made their
acquaintance; but no sooner had I done so, than she sent for me, and
gave me to understand that in the event of my succeeding to the hand of
Fanny Eversham, I should be her heir and the possessor of about sixty
thousand pounds. She did not stop here; but by canvassing the dean in
my favor, speedily put the matter on a most favorable footing, and in
less than two months I was received as the accepted suitor of the fair
Fanny, then one of the reigning belles of Dublin.

"They lived at this time, about three miles from town, in a very pretty
country, where I used to pass all my mornings, and many of my evenings,
too, in a state of happiness that I should have considered perfect, if
it were not for two unhappy blots--one, the taste of my betrothed for
laughing at her friends; another, the diabolical propensity of my
intended father-in-law to talk politics; to the former I could submit;
but with the latter submission only made bad worse; for he invariably
drew up as I receded, dryly observing that with men who had no avowed
opinions, it was ill-agreeing; or tha