There is an idea already fermenting in the brains of many publishers that their present method of printing personal assurances as to the merits of their new productions is unsatisfactory. It is felt that these eulogies are open to the suspicion of prejudice and should be replaced, or supplemented, by the advance publication of the final chapter of the author's work. Mr. Punch, anxious to promote this excellent change by the publication of a specimen finale, has pleasure in anticipating the fifty-first, and concluding, chapter of Mrs. H-mphry W-rd's projected romance, The Winning of Aurora; and he is convinced that his readers will not rest till they have secured the remaining fifty chapters.

Aurora let fall the book she was reading, a celebrated pamphlet on the Oxford Tractarian movement, in a cover which was a miracle of Italo-Moroccan tooling, and gazed thoughtfully at the scene before her. Viewed thus in outline, her head in repose had something of the delicacy of a Tanagra figure, while to the eye of a connoisseur the magnificent yet girlish torso might have recalled a Bacchante by Skopas. To her right rose the rugged sides of Garthfell, purple and scarlet in the subdued light; to the left was Felsbeck, and from her feet the ground fell away abruptly till it met the immemorial woods of Supwell. Among them Aurora could distinguish the massive Boadicean keep of Supwell Castle, strangely yet harmoniously blended with the neo-Byzantine portico of white marble designed by Inigo Jones for the thirty-first Earl. She remembered vaguely that she was attending a reception there to-night; but her gaze soon left the noble pile—so typical of all that is best in English architecture—to rest upon the humbler neighbouring group of Lowmere cottages. In one she knew old Ralph, the shepherd, was dying of a painful form of spinal catarrh, directly attributable to the cesspool at his front door; in another the mother of fifteen children was nursing the only remaining one through an attack of mumps, and in a third the breadwinner was lying in the malignant grip of abdominal influenza. Aurora mentally reviewed the chief points of Socialism, Individualism, Syndicalism and Socinianism, as represented by the select group of thinkers to which Cecil belonged.

Following a noiseless footman in the gorgeous Supwell liveries, Mrs. Lovelord and Aurora took up their position under a rare palm at the head of the great ebony staircase, which a royal personage was said to have coveted, and watched the Earl and Countess receive their guests. Mrs. Lovelord's keen eye noted that the Earl was standing on the Countess's train, a priceless piece of Venetian point which had once belonged to the Empress Theodora. Aurora's attention was attracted by a tall grey-haired man wearing the Ribbon of the Garter half-hidden under a variety of lesser decorations; he was talking eagerly, vivaciously to the notorious Duchess of Almondsbury. Cecil, who had joined Aurora at once, whispered that the man was Professor Villeray.

"They say he knows every crowned head in Europe," he said. The great scientist was relating anecdote after anecdote of the people he had known—Charlemagne, Machiavelli, Newman, Dickens, the Shakspeares, father and son. There followed a racy story, inimitably told, of Miss Mitford in her less regenerate days. Aurora turned away.

"Would you care to take a turn through the rooms?" Cecil asked. "The Rembrandts are in tremendous form to-night—what?"

The house was one of historic interest and importance, with that blend of magnificence and domesticity so typical of all that is best in English life. Aurora's eyes wandered from the massive emerald chandeliers, the envy of every connoisseur in Europe, to Raphael's masterly "Madonna," which, with a daring harmony by Sargent, filled the niches on either side of the great mantelpiece, itself a triumph of the art of Niccola of Pisa.

"There's Sir John. I didn't think he'd be here with all this rumpus over the Bill," said Cecil. The Prime Minister was deep in conversation with the Marquis of Falutin, P.T.O., Q.T., R.S.V.P., the famous diplomat, whose recent intervention in the Nice imbroglio had saved the European situation. Aurora could see the flashes of his wit illuminating Sir John's saturnine countenance. Her further progress was barred by Lady Highflyer, who nodded to her, and said to Cecil, whose petite intimitÉ with all this great world struck Aurora anew:

"You heard Philip's got Jericho?" He nodded. "Such a relief. The Duke's delighted, of course, especially after poor Erskine's fiasco, or perhaps I should say fiancÉe. He's infatuated, I hear. Only £20,000 a year between them! Ah, there's Madeline Duchess. Well, a rivederci."

She passed on, her dress, which had taxed the resources of the first modistes of the day, Rue de la Paix, trailing heedlessly over the priceless Aubusson. Aurora turned to find the Home Secretary at her elbow. Instantly she was all eagerness and vivacity.

"Will there be a division?" she asked.

"Dear lady," he replied, "qui vivra verra. The Anabaptists are up in arms, but——" He screwed his glass into his eye. "Had anything to eat?" he asked, as three of the footmen passed with a jewelled tray of PÊches Melba. "A Benvenuto Cellini, if I am not mistaken," he continued, tapping the tray with his ring, a unique Pompeian intaglio of Venus Anadyomene with the iynx. "The plates are fourteenth-century Venetian. The only other set is in the Vatican, you remember." He removed a drop of the Earl's champagne from his moustache. "Ah, I see Cantoforte's going to sing. Marvellous man! I remember him in Paris in the 'forties—the roaring 'forties, as poor Dizzy called them."

"He only plays when Royalty's present," a woman behind Aurora whispered, as the great artist broke into Palestrina's Andante Furioso. "They say he charges a thousand a minute."

A memory of the Lowmere cottages assailed Aurora. At last she saw her way clearly. Never had she so realised the possibilities of life.

"I will marry Cecil," she said to herself. "With his brains, a million a year, and the breeding to which only the highest circles can attain, we will regenerate England."