Palmer waited impatiently in a room hired for the purpose at the place he had appointed. On the fourth day he had several applications. More than one governess past the age which employers care to engage, was willing to go into lodgings with the young lady; but none of them satisfied the shrewd North-countryman, who trusted to the seeing of his eyes and the hearing of his ears in most things.

At last, on the sixth day, a lady made her appearance with whom he at once felt that he might seriously treat. He could detect the Northern accent in her voice, and her face indicated character and energy. She was not dressed, as most of them were, with ostentatious quietness, but evidently in accordance with her natural taste. She had gold spectacles over her clear but short-sighted grey eyes; her bright hair was turning grey, but her cheek was still fresh, and the teeth pearly white, when the small firm mouth disclosed them. There was no obsequiousness in her manners; on the contrary, they were slightly brusque, though not wanting in courtesy. Miss Macnaughten was Scotch. She began by announcing this fact.

and make her a model of a middle-class lady. But this was far enough from Mr. Palmer's view. He would have scouted the idea of social influence and duty, but he had an impatience of domestic incapacity, and the misrule attending it; and the insipid frivolity of the wives of most of the men he had known disgusted him. He was intensely domestic, and he saw these men becoming less and less sothe women left to themselves to dress and chatter, while they attended to their own business, and sought their own pleasures. He liked to find his pleasure at home, and to bring his business there too if he liked, as his father had done when he took counsel of the thoughtful, hardworking mother. And he hoped his son might do the same, however fast their wealth accumulated. He had seen fortunes greater than his made in his own generation, and flung away by the next already; and not the wealth only lost, but the moral qualities which had gone with it. He could see the worth of these moral qualities from a conservative point of view, though not from a progressive one.

The interview ended in an appointment for an

"I am educating my brother's children," said the lady. "They were sent to me from India when they were little ones, and I could undertake another young lady along with them. I am fond of independence, or I need not do this; but the boys have left me already, and the girls are growing up, and I want more to do. My references are from family friends;" and she named one or two leading savants. "I must add," she continued, "that I could not receive the young lady unless her character and manners are such as will admit of her associating with my girls. My terms are £150 per annum."

Miss Macnaughten's house in Kensington, where she might be duly inspected and accepted, if approved.

CHAPTER X. BEGINNINGS.

"THERE'S a great deal in making a good beginning," was a maxim of Miss Macnaughten's. "If you once get into wrong relations with people, it is ten chances to one if you are ever able to set them to rights." She quoted herself thus with regard to Nelly, for it need hardly be said that Nelly had met with Miss Macnaughten's entire approval. Approval is far too cold a word for the enthusiastic account of her new charge which she carried home to her nieces, who had hitherto been by no means eager for her advent. Miss Macnaughten did not possess the national reserve. Mr. Palmer had not thought it necessary to insist upon it in regard to Nelly's en

"So much the better," Mr. Palmer replied. "I would like her to become a well-informed, capable woman, not a musician. I shouldn't object if she spent the two years reading the Times, if she could understand it from beginning to end by that time.”

Miss Macnaughten was delighted. She liked originality, and here was an original man, who had exactly her own views about a girl's education. He belonged to a great class, whose female members had taken anything but a fair share of social influence and duty. She longed to undertake Nelly,

dear girls, insisting, however, upon the necessity of reserve on their parts.

"It is quite a romance," said Grace Macnaughten. "I wonder how it will turn out," said her sister Jane.

"I know I should not like it for either of you,” said the aunt. "I do not think any wise mother would like it for her daughter; so much may take place in two years."

"I shouldn't like it myself," said Jane. "Ridiculous nonsense! What if they should change their minds ?"

Grace said nothing. She was prepared now to make much of Nelly.

Jane and Grace Macnaughten were good affec

tionate girls enough.

sex.

Miss Macnaughten took her nieces into society. She considered it a kind of duty to do so. She liked it, and profited by it herself, and she was resolved that they should do the same. Her set was a very pleasant one. She and her brother, the father of Jane and Grace, were the children of a Scotch proprietor, who had been afflicted with a mining mania, and had sunk his property in the depths of the earth. His son, left almost penniless, had gone abroad, and had already accumulated a sufficient fortune. His daughter had provided for herself till her nieces and nephews had been placed under her care. She intended to provide for herself still, notwithstanding her brother's remonstrances. She had always believed that he would marry again, and she believed it still, for he was not yet an old man. She was a woman bent on making the best of everything. She was as wise as the wisdom of this world could make herwise and gracious too. She could not have lived for self, and one of her most constant lessons was the impossibility of being happy in so living.

"Usefulness is the only happiness," she would say, and she lived up to her maxim. She demanded diligence from her charges, as fitting them for future usefulness. And her idea of that was a very good one as far as it went. She would have everybody clean and healthy and happy. All children well fed, and well taught, and well washed; and she held it to be everybody's business to see to this as far as in them lay. The doctrine of non-interference she could not abide. Nobody ought to have their own way, if that way was manifestly not good for them.

It was under this rule that Nelly came: into this household, well-ordered, tranquil, liberal, graceful. It was such a change, such a contrast, that it sufficed at first to employ her mind and divert her thoughts almost entirely from herself. Everything was new to her. The very multiplicity of objects in the rooms occupied her mind for the first few days.

Miss Macnaughten had determined that she should have time to become acquainted with her surroundings; that, indeed, she should long for some

else they visited the Museum with the great and beautifully arranged historical collection then within its walls; and the historical allusions made, showed Nelly her ignorance and inspired her with the longing for knowledge-a longing which she could gratify at will in Miss Macnaughten's small but well-selected library.

But Nelly seemed to grow more pensive as the days went by, and to shrink more and more into herself. Jane and Grace were terribly disappointed in their new companion. She disappointed Jane's curiosity and Grace's fondness for a little gushing sentiment. She had never once spoken of herself, though they had tried to draw her out in a variety of ways. They had told her all their own little history. "We were born in India," said Grace, in one of their one-sided confidences. "Mamma died there soon after we had been sent home. We have a photograph of her taken after her death.”

Jane fetched the case. Nelly looked with a thrill of awe. It was the picture of a lovely young lady lying as if asleep. The drapery of death, the sealed eyelids, on which the faithful sun-painter had marked something more solemn than sleep, gave a strange pathetic interest to the little portrait. Tears were in Nelly's eyes as she handed it back to them. Grace kissed her.

"We do not remember her," said Jane.
"And your father is still abroad," said Nelly.

"He has come over to see us twice, and next year he is coming home altogether," said Grace, adding lightly, "I hope he will not marry again, as aunty is always imagining he will.”

"I could not endure a stepmother," said Jane, bitterly.

"And I am sure he will not give us one," said Grace. "I was only jesting. He loves us too well. He never denies us anything," she continued, addressing herself to Nelly; "and so we are obliged to deny ourselves a little. Is it long since your father died ?"

Nelly gave the date and nothing more. There are sorrows worse than death. These kept her dumb. As for her joy, it lay in her heart like a locked-up treasure of which some one had stolen the key.

How long the days seemed now, that used to be so short, too short for all that was to be done in them. The only time that passed with wings as of old, was the afternoon twice a week which she spent with her mother, who was settled comfortably near her. Then each to please the other assumed almost uncon

sciously more of happiness than she felt, or rather Nelly did so, for her mother was simply at peace. Her heart was worn out. No hope made her restless; no fears disturbed her.

"Are you happy, mamma?" Nelly would say, when misgiving, born of her own doubtful heart, would seize upon her, and she would answer

"I am very comfortable, child, and glad to think that you will be happy."

It was reassuring, and yet she was not reassured. "When the time has come," she said to herself, "I will ask Harry to let me have my mother at home with us, then we shall be happy-'when the time has come;"" and she sighed, and looked at the ring.

It used to change colour as she looked, and Nelly trembled before her hidden treasure of happiness as if it might turn to dust and ashes before it was unlocked to her.

There was one other portion of her time that Nelly thought too short, and that was the Sunday mornings. Miss Macnaughten took her young ladies to church, not to the fashionable church in the neighbourhood, crowded with new bonnets, but to one at a considerable distance, within whose walls ministered one of the great preachers of the day, a man whose words had a supreme power over those who could understand him. How any one could fail to understand him was the mystery, for his language was the simplest that ever fell from human lips. It was just because it was so simple that it was misunderstood.

The gay bonnets in that congregation were few and far between. It consisted neither of the very young nor the very old. The men and women there were middle-aged, with grave and thoughtful faces, not a few lighted up with the light of genius. There were faces worn with struggle, and yet sanctified by peace like that of the preacher himself. Nelly, who had lived and suffered, hung upon his lips. He lifted her into a new and congenial atmosphere. She had never breathed the like before. Her father, in spite of his fall, had had true religious feeling; but, perhaps, because of that fall, he had almost banished religion from his home. Besides, his had been a religion of fear. Here the message of the preacher was of love; but it was of a love that must cast out not only fear, but sin. It was a love, too, that embraced all men and the whole life of man. Selfculture was being set before Nelly as a great end; but he made it seem to her only a great means towards the end of living out this highest life of love.

And still she grew more and more thoughtful, till her gentle loveliness became almost severe in expression. She could not help thinking of the women among whom she had worked, and contrasting their hard unlovely lives with the lives of the circle into which she had entered, and yet to these last there

was something wanting. Was it the power to help those others? Would she be able to help them in the future? Would he help her to help them? How she longed that he should share the new light which was dawning upon her; but between him and her stood those two years with their intolerable silence. Miss Macnaughten saw how grave she looked, and thought it was the gravity caused by former sorrows; she did not know how bright and cheerful Nelly had been in adversity, and she thought the shadow would pass away in time, especially when she began to induct her into a regular course of study. This she had been in no haste to do, partly that Nelly might have time to feel her own deficiencies, and partly because it was the holiday season. The Macnaughtens were not going anywhere this autumn, because they had spent the spring in Paris; but they took several excursions into the country in the neighbourhood of London, taking Nelly with them, and making her acquainted with many an historical scene. So the autumn days went by, till at last Miss Macnaughten said, "It is time to begin work; let us commence to-morrow, the first of October."

And so Nelly began to grind at grammar-to learn her French and German verbs and write her exercises, all of which she did with satisfaction to her teacher. "She has a splendid intellect," said Miss Macnaughten, surprised at some of Nelly's feats in the linguistic line. Then, as the evenings drew in, they read aloud by turns the best books of the day. All the most advanced thought of Europe, in some shape or other, came to the ears of Nelly as she listened to what went on in the pretty morningroom, in which they usually sat. It was a little diluted, perhaps, Miss Macnaughten acting as a kind of patent digester, but Nelly became a devourer of books on her own account Thus her mental growth was rapid; while deep down in her heart, like a seed hidden in the ground, was growing the root of a love strong as death. That ordeal, imposed by an arbitrary will, under which a lighter nature would have failed, was just the ordeal to exalt Nelly's simple regard for her lover into a great passion of tenderness, all the more passionate that it was purely ideal. She lost sight of the real Harry Palmer, and substituted in his place something that Harry Palmer was not, if he ever could be, the creature of a high and pure imagination. She had parted with him when he was under a temporary exaltation, which made him appear almost as she thought of him. Meantime what was his life?

CHAPTER XI.

A BAD SET.

MRS. JOBSON took an early opportunity to call on the Palmers, incited thereto by her husband, but quite willing on her own part to go anywhere that promised a day's outing, especially when her husband

Anne.

"What a pretty garden!" she exclaimed, running to the window. "I should not have thought you had such a nice one here."

Anne hardly knew what to say to her. Patricia's stiffness told on her sister a great deal more than on her visitor. Mrs. Jobson made herself at home at once. She looked at everything in the room with the most open childish curiosity, and chattered away quite freely. She had not much natural vivacity, but she was quite impervious to any snubbing conveyed by manner, and so Patricia's stiffness and stateliness were completely lost upon her. After examining and discussing the albums, &c., Anne took her out into the garden, and got a few flowers for her, and before the interview was over, she was begging her to come and spend a day in Bloomsbury Square and bring her sister with her. Anne was glad that Patricia had not heard the invitation.

"You will come, won't you, dear ?" she said at parting, and Anne hastened, in her good-natured way, to answer in the affirmative, quite fearful of Patricia administering any further snubbing.

How can you be so silly, Anne," said her sister, when the visitor was gone, "as to encourage such a little fool ?"

"Poor little thing," said Anne pityingly; "she can't help being a fool, and we have not so many visitors as to make her coming a bore; besides, we live so far from her that it is not likely she will trouble us often. And, you know, I think we are bound to be kind to those we come in contact with, whether we like them particularly or not."

"I am sorry that they are Harry's friends," replied her sister. "It is such a pity to get into a bad set. I would rather not know any one than have such friends as these. She is evidently vulgar as well as shallow, and you did not prepossess me in favour of her husband. I think I had better not go."

"She is a harmless little thing," pleaded Anne, "let us go and see her. I dare say that will end the matter."

But it did not end the matter. The sisters called in Bloomsbury Square. Mrs. Jobson called on them again and again, and at last there appeared an invitation to dinner, which came to be accepted thus.

ness.

Ever since the day of the flower-show there had been growing up between Harry Palmer and his favourite sister a wall of separation. Patricia felt it keenly, though too proud to acknowledge it even to herself. Anne watched it with anxiety and uneasiShe knew the pride and self-will of both. Harry would not yield unless Patricia yielded, and Patricia would not give in unless Harry gave in, and so it had gone on, and might go on for ever, unless they could contrive to meet one another half-way. To Anne this dinner seemed the very thing to bring about a reconciliation between them; if she could only make it appear that Patricia went because they were his friends, Harry would be sure to consider that a sufficient concession. Besides, Anne had the burden of a secret on her mind, and wanted terribly to be rid of it. Patricia did not yet know of her brother's engagement-Anne did. She had not been told to keep it to herself-indeed, her brother had wished the very reverse; but Anne had kept it, out of her usual desire to escape giving pain, and every day and every hour only made it more difficult and more painful to tell. At the commencement of the estrangement between Patricia and Harry, Anne had been offered a very unusual share of her brother's attention, given to her partly to pique Patricia, and partly because there was no one else in the way.

Anne smiled a little sadly. "I don't know how people deserve to be treated, Pat; but did you not notice how beautiful the little creature looked in her black lace mantilla and bonnet? Did you ever see such a skin ?"

"She is certainly pretty, as a doll may be pretty; but her face has about as much expression as if it was made of wax."

"I have promised to go to see her some day." "Well then you must go,” replied Patricia. "I should like you to go with me. They are

to this. She hated to take another's place, and Patricia had always been Harry's friend and confident till now; and above all, she hated giving pain to a degree which made the suffering of the pain the lighter penalty. So when Harry communicated to her the fact of his engagement, in an offhand sort of way, good enough to hide his natural embarrassment from one so simple-minded as Anne, she said nothing about it to Patricia, who, she was sure, would be very much hurt at receiving the intelligence through a third person.

(To be continued.)