Mildred: An Autumn Romance.

MILDRED : AN AUTUMN ROMANCE .

BY BBO . EMRA HOLMES , Author of " Tales , Poems , and Masonic Papers ; " " The Path of Life : An Allegory ; " " Amabel Vaughan ; " " Notes on the United Order of the Temple ancl Hospital , " etc ,, etc .

CHAPTER V . GONE TO THE ! fPHE first mail to England brought a letter to General Mathew from his son , making - * - a sort of confession of all he had done ; asking for no forgiveness , for he expected nonebut merely requesting that his things miht be all sent after him .

, g It was a letter difficult to understand , ancl the General , never a very clear-headed man , did not quite comprehend it . The son accused himself of some most unwarrantable piece of folly , if not of crime , but at the same time did not distinctly say what the nature of that crime was . He stated that he should not return to England for many years , perhaps never . The General gathered that there was a woman in the case . He knew that Marmaduke had been in money difficulties ; vague

rumours had reached him of his manner of living ; and he felt sure that whatever it was , his son had ruined himself ancl disgraced his family . And let it here be said that Marmaduke had been badly brought up . His mother died young , and the General , a passionate , proud martinet , had ruled his family with a rod of iron . He was naturally a disagreeable man , and possibly was all the more severe because in early life he had not been so circumspect in his conduct as he miht have been . A

injug very dicious father he had been—fickle as a woman , stern as a Roman soldier . One day making much of his youngest son and petting and spoiling him as a boy , another punishing him most severely for the faults he had himself by his conduct ancl teaching encouraged .. What wonder , then , if the son who had inherited some of his father ' s bad qualities—pride , a hasty temper , ancl obstinacy amongst them—but who also possessed

much of his mother ' s sweet , loveable nature , and an affectionate and forgiving disposition , should have grown up , as he had done , a wild , dissipated , careless young rake , always in hot water . AVomankind had ever been his bane ; would the time ever come when one woman would be both bane and antidote ? The effect of the Jamaica letter was soon felt at the Abbey . The General , who was extremely angry , but very reticent , quietly gave orders to have his

son's things sent after him , and then desired that Marmaduke's name should never be mentioned by any of the servants in his presence on the pain of instant dismissal . Mr . Mathew's sudden departure from St . Benet ' s , ancl the subsequent rumours which got abroad , most of them without the slightest foundation , of course , only tended _ to perplex the good folk of St . Benet ' s , and afford them almost as constant and interesting a topic of conversation for the first month or two as that inevitable to

subject Englishmen—the weather . But by-and-by even Marmaduke ancl the Abbey ceased for the time at least to occupy the attention of the old ladies who met for tea and scandal at Mrs . Pierpoint ' s and Mrs . Maynard ' s , for the General went off to his shooting box in the Highlands , and the Abbey was shut up . The valet , in putting up his young master ' s clothes felt something in ' the pocket of his dress coat , took it out , and finding it was a letter addressed to Miss Bethune . quietly put it into the post , and said no more about it . It was not the first letter addressed to a lady he had posted from his master , not