nnections and relations of
any peer so honoured to say, "There is no such Greville, Cavendish, or
Talbot." But Jasper Losely was not without fertility of invention and
readiness of resource. A grand idea, worthy of a master, and proving
that, if the man had not been a rogue in grain, he could have been
reared into a very clever politician, flashed across him. He would sign
himself "SMITH." Nobody could say there is no such Smith; nobody
could say that a Smith might not be a most respectable, fashionable,
highly-connected man. There are Smiths who are millionaires; Smiths who
are large-acred squires; substantial baronets; peers of England, and
pillars of the State. You can no more question a man's right to be a
Smith than his right to be a Briton; and wide as the diversity of rank,
lineage, virtue, and genius in Britons is the diversity in Smiths. But
still a name so generic often affects a definitive precursor. Jasper
signed himself "J. COURTENAY SMITH." He called, and left epistle the
first with his own kid-gloved hand, inquiring first if Mrs. Haughton
were at home, and, responded to in the negative this time, he asked for
her son. "Her son was gone abroad with Colonel Morley." Jasper, though
sorry to lose present hold over the boy, was consoled at learning that
the Colonel was off the ground. Afore sanguine of success, he glanced up
at the window, and, sure that Mrs. Haughton was there, though he saw her
not, lifted his hat with as melancholy an expression of reproach as he
could throw into his face.

The villain could not have found a moment in Mrs. Haughton's widowed
life so propitious to his chance of success. In her lodging-house at
Pimlico, the good lady had been too incessantly occupied for that idle
train of revery, in which the poets assure us that Cupid finds leisure
to whet his arrows and take his aim. Had Lionel still been by her side,
had even Colonel Morley been in town, her affection for the one, her awe
of the other, would have been her safeguards. But alone in that fine new
house, no friends, no acquaintances as yet, no dear visiting circle on
which to expend the desire of talk and the zest for innocent excitement
that are natural to ladies of an active mind and a nervous temperament,
the sudden obtrusion of a suitor so respectfully ardent,--oh, it is not
to be denied that the temptation was IMMENSE.

And when that note, so neatly folded, so elegantly sealed, lay in her
irresolute hand, the widow coul