LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2392, 2 December 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

SELINA’S REVENGE. (‘ London Society.") {Continued. ) Header, not peers of renown alone penetrate the future and forecast events ; pradeut young men accomplish it. Everything fell out an Theodore Fodger hud anticipated. He married. Selina married. In each case the, full approval of their parents crowned the union. Tho paronts thorns elves went quietly down life’s decline. Podger the older died, end was Im-ird with pro digious plumage and mummery, aadabvvo his ashes rose a splendid tombstone of Aberdeen granite Here, in an inlaid scroll his virtues were set forth ; that he was a good cit’zsn, a good Liberal, a good Baptist, a good father, a good husband—the mourners did not eay a good grammarian, perhaps from a fear of cracking the granite. Splendidly entombed slept Robert Podger, Esq., not with his fathers, since ho never had auy, bat in g eat state all by himself. Him thrre followed in silence, first, his friend William Stiokey ; then Mrs r-tickey ; and, last of all, the dowager Podger, for whom one line of the scroll had been reserved, in which sho was, with brevity, described as wife of the above, but not a virtue mentioned. So all tho old people departed. No more ’37 port with opened windows oa warm July evenings. No more prognostications about the jam for the impending season. It was all over ; just as much as if It had been the toils of statesmen or tho pleasures of kings. Think, my reader, what a world is this, when even for a farce acted on a hearthrug there must be such a complex machinery of coming and going, living and dying, or the piece will not run. But now we have got through the graver interlude, the clouds roll off tho tale, and it aparkles into farce once more.

Fivo-aad-twenty years later, one warm August morning, in the stately coffee-room of a fashionable hotel in Hastings, there sat eating hia breakfast what wo may call tho remains of Theodore Podger, Esq. ‘ Tho remains ’ is said advisedly, because in the space of time which has elapsed since last we saw him Theobald has grown wonderfully thin, shrunk from the diminutive plumpness of other days into a little bard man of fifty. Thin hands, thin arms, thiu legs, thin face and body, thin everything. Notwithstanding this ho eats hia breakfast with good appetite, and makes away with bacon and eggs, toast and oofLe, like a full-sized Briton. The visitors’ list is in hia hand, and he is running hia eye down the lines. ‘Goodness gracious!’ he exclaimed all at once.; ‘she is here!’ He looked at the list more cloeoly. * Yes, I declare ! Here—in Hastings—here in the building!' He rang the bell, and on tho appearance of the waiter pointed out the name. ‘ Is that lady—Mrs Monteagle Vfillers—in this house, now ?’

‘Yea, sir. Private rooms, sir. Thirtyeight, nine, and forty, sir.’ ‘My dear heart!’ sighed Theobald Podger, resting his chin upon his hand j ‘ does she remember me, I wonder?’

Had he been in number thirty-eight at that particular moment he needed not have asked the question. Mrs Monteagle Viliiers was reading the visitors’ list also, and, looking over tho names at the hotel to see if her own were correctly spelled, her eyes alighted on the familiar word—‘ Pudger.’ Mrs Monteagle ViJlioru had grown very stont since she sat as Selina Sticky in that sammer-honso ; and now sho is vastly arrayed in widow’s robes, tier face—that -pretty little face!—has become large nnd suited to her portly frame ; and the lips, where kisses played at hide-and-aoek loeg ago, have lost their carnation—the hue has fled upwards and settled on her checks. ‘Theobald here,’ she murmured, 1 how strange it is ! My Monteagle removed and his Violet removed—what a coincidence ! Has he forgotten me, I wonder ?' No Selina, he has not. Hal! an hour later there came a knock at the door, and the waiter entered with a card. ‘ Gentleman would like to call on you, ma’am,’ he said, with a moat unprofessional note of melancholy in his voice; he must have caught it unconsciously from Theobald ; ‘if half after twelve will suit, ma’am. Leave was granted at once, nnd during the interval of time Mrs Monteagle Villlers sat before her glass trying to remember what she was like twenty-five years ago, and to plan a reproduction of Selina Stickey. ‘This crape is the great difficulty,’ she sighed ; ‘ that can’t be got over, do what I will.' Then she thought of Theobald ; how constant ho was—‘ Little darling !’ she murmured. Then she remembered the summer house and how he cast her off, and hia composure and her rage, and the vow she vowed—’Old wretch!’ she ejaculated. At which she clenched her fiat, the very fiat that made his ears ring that evening, only now a more terrible weapon by far; and with that fist in this menacing form, she said—‘Theobald, Theobald, I shall have you; but you shall pay me first.’ Punctually at half-past twelve she seated hersaif on the sofa at the further end of her great drawing room ; and while the silver ball of the little timepiece was still echoing tho stroke of the hammer. Theobald knocked at tho door. ‘ Come in,’ she cried, in a languishing voice. Had ho aeon her heart, and tho feminine malice there.

The door opened, and he entered. In that vast sitting-room ho looked smaller than usual, and, ss ho timidly made his way in, she was reminded in some mysterious way of a moose creeping round her wainscot. He reached her at last. Their eyes met. Their hands ’clasped. That was a oom'ort. The first shock was over, and tho widower picked up his courage a little. The next few minutes were not so painful as might have been expected ; and, when the usual commonplace preliminaries of conversation had been gone through, Theobald Podger, with a sigh and a downcast look, asked, ‘How long ago is it ?’

‘Two years and a month this very day,' the widow replied, with a pathetic application other handkerchief.’

"* Mine Is not quite two years yot,’ replied Theobald gently, Yon got the atari of me, Selina.’

‘So I did, Theobald, ’ she answered, ‘ those things are ordered for us; are they not V

In this way Ja dialogue was established ■which tho widower, with excellent taot, guided ever nearer and nearer to tho business of his bosom.

‘Times have changed both or nc, Selina,’ said Theobald; ‘I am not the man I was, nor are you the woman you were, I mean,’ he added, catching himself up haalily,‘you are not quite the woman you were, hut very nearly—very nearly.' ‘There is a change,’ said the widow, with fresh pocket handkerchief symptoms ; ‘look at this.’ Bhe gracefully spread out her hands, and drew his attention to her ‘ Bait of woe.’

‘Oh, that, ef course,’ cried Theobald, much more at hia ease, ‘that is a matter for the dressmaker. But in other respects, Selina, you are very little changed. Indeed, I might Bay,’ ho continued, with growing courage, ‘ you are not changed at all. ” Selina sighed anew, and put her handkerchief aside.

‘Now, I am changed,’ ho went on, ‘ greatly changed, changed in my physical frame. I only weigh nine stone. Great change that fiom eleven, you know, Solina! Then lam changed in my mind. I used to read Lord Byron, but of late years I have taken a fancy to Mrs Eemans. That, I venture to think, dear Selina, is not a disqualification for domestic happiness. Lord Byron was a sad dog, after nil. Indeed. I am afraid that I was a sad dog myself—once ! That is all over now.’

Something in Selina’a eyo as she glanced at him seemed to signify that if a little of this particular Byronic sadness had been left she would not have made it an insuperable obstacle. Bat the eyes of Solina Villiera can express two feelings at a time ; she is thinking of the hour when she called him selfish goose and boxed hia ear. Revenge ia sweat, and she means to toste it. Meanwhile he begins his proposal of marriage. Ho goes through their joint biographies from infancy (To hr continued,')