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8 the great annoyance of Aunt Winifred, who had conceived a violent dislike to her, calling her “a finical little thing,” and also taken great offence at her wearing a gold cross on her neck. She returned to her hunt after Paul with renewed vigour, after a short lull, and went out one morning to secure the services of a detective from a Private Inquiry Office. Her manner, however, was so strange, that the person to whom she applied doubted her sanity, and sent a man to the address she had given to inquire into particulars. By great good fortune Alice saw the man, and impressed as she was with the idea of her aunt’s derangement, she had little trouble in persuading the detective of the fact, but suggested that, to keep her quiet, he should bring fictitious accounts to her from time to time. Nothing could have happened more opportunely. I thereby escaped telling falsehood upon falsehood, and Aunt Winifred received accounts of Paul’s whereabouts. He was taken from Cadiz to Baden, from thence to Switzerland, whence he was conveyed to Paris. She said, exultingly, to Alice:

“I can lay my finger on him when I choose! That’s a comfort!”

The detective’s services were engaged for a month, at the end of which time he informed her that her quarry had returned to England, and was now at Brighton, No. —, Oriental Place, under an assumed name. She told this to Alice in confidence, but Alice did not repeat it to me. At this time, I could quite conscientiously have affirmed that Aunt Winifred was not of sound mind; by constantly dwelling on one idea her intellect had been shaken, and I had directed Alice to keep a strict watch over her. We supposed, afterwards, that an advertisement of an excursion train to Brighton had caught her eye, and led to the disastrous consequence that followed. One morning, she did not appear at breakfast, and we heard that she had left the house at five o’clock,, in a cab, ordering the man to drive her to the London Bridge terminus. Alice immediately suspected that she had gone to Brighton, and made me acquainted with her suspicions, but we thought no more of it. In the course of the day, however, I heard that a terrible accident had happened on the Brighton line, and on making inquiries found my worst fears confirmed. Aunt Winifred had been killed by a collision that had taken place, and I broke the melancholy tidings to Alice as gently as I could. Alice lamented loudly that her poor aunt should have met with her death while labouring under so great a delusion, and I was obliged to hear her regrets, knowing all the time that the unfortunate woman had only told the truth. That was my hardest task.

Aunt Winifred was buried in Woking Cemetery, and after her interment I wrote to Paul. He answered my letter in person, and shocked poor Clara by telling her that his absence had been caused by his having received information that their marriage had not been properly solemnised; that it was informal, in fact, and that it was necessary that they should be re-married. Clara submitted to him without a murmur, and I gave her away at a church in London. The instant the ceremony was concluded, a weight appeared to be lifted off my mind, and I prayed devoutly that I might never again become the depository of a similar secret. But was I wrong in keeping it? I think not. 2em

has sent us a state paper, which is not only of strong interest in itself, but which stimulates the minds of readers to a retrospect which is as good as an epic poem. Under the prosaic name of a Budget, we are presented with an invitation to look back through a hundred generations, and see how the vast population of India lived in the days of their country’s greatness, and what is the prospect for those hundreds of millions of people of a better lot than their ancestors ever enjoyed. I, for one, find the invitation irresistible; and I shall indulge,—not in writing about finance for readers who can study that view in the newspapers of the day,—but in seeking glimpses of the life of the people of Hindostan, ages before they knew of the existence of our country and nation, and in observing whether, in fact, “the former times were better than these” for the Hindoos, and whether, on the whole, they owe to England the most adversity or prosperity.

Our first glimpse of the country is very dim and uncertain. Of the southern half of the great peninsula of India in the old days we indeed know nothing, except that it was despised by the inhabitants of Hindostan Proper, in comparison with their own holy land. We first find the people of the plains, from the Vindhya mountains northwards, looking up with fear and admiration to the great range of the Himalayas,—the Abode of Snow, as they called it,—where they supposed the gods to reside. The proudest part of the inhabitants liked to talk of their ancestors having come down through those mountains from a country beyond, where the common men were heroes and sages: but there is no knowing how much truth there was in the boast. However it might be with the proud, it is pretty clear that the plains were full of a humbler people from time immemorial;—a people who tilled the soil, and made garments, and did the rough work of life. Under the social system, which is the first we know of the Hindoos, these aborigines were regarded as the lowest class, under the name of the Sudra caste; and they met with much the same treatment that the aborigines of newly discovered countries always do meet with from the wiser and stronger race of men who are able to reduce them to subjection.

At this stage, we see the inhabitants spread over the plains, and in the valleys of the hilly parts, living a more prosperous life than in after ages, but still, according to our notions, a very uncomfortable one. Their religion entered into all their concerns, causing an infinity of trouble and anxiety, without any sufficient compensation of comfort and welfare. It introduced order, certainly; but it left no room for progress. For