UNKNOWN

Otago Witness, Issue 825, 20 September 1867, Page 3

UNKNOWN

A STORY. *Uf • fi>e JL«thor of " Ahcme Lovhll," &c. ""CHAPTER XV. — A STORY OF FAMILY AFFECTION. In the year eighteen hundred and '-ihirty-four, more than thirty years before the date at which this story commences, two north country gentlemen, of the name • of Fane, were married on tie same day, at the Catholic Chapel of York, to two • sisters, "the young and beautiful daughters of the late Honorable John Vereker," the county newspapers recorded when announcing the wedding. There was "very little money on either side : good ■ birth and good looks being the chief por- • tion of the brides, a commission in the ■army and three or four thousand pounds •each the fortunes of the Fanes ; and neither marriage turned out a particularly •k^PPy one - I n l ess than a twelvemonth Geoffrey Fane, the elder brother, was forced, by extravagance and debt, to sell out of the army ; went away with his .young wife to the Continent, and disappeared there. Ten or eleven years later, ; after a great deal of poverty and discontent, Richard, the younger one, died . suddenly, leaving his widow to subsist, •with her two children, upon her scanty pension and the interest of such money as the recent purchase of his majority had left out of her husband's capital.

Mrs Richard Fane was a very pretty woman still at the time of her bereavement : one of those pink-and- white angelic women with beseeching eyes, mild 111liealth, and fragile, dimpled, helpless hands, so well suited to enact the role of inconsolable widowhood, and so certain •not to enact it overlong ! Before Richard Fane had been eighteen months dead, the Squire of Clithero, walking about on the Scarborough beach, fell in love with this tender creature — still in weeds, and a fair little daughter on either side — and, at the expiration of the conventional two years, Mrs Fane had, to use her own words, *' secured a home and protector for her Richard's children," by becoming Mr Hilliard's wife.

Whether Mr Hilliard had secured his own happiness by marrying her was a problem from attempting whose solution he himself sedulously shrank to his life's ■end. As his wife's suffering state of health and beseeching, ill-used expression of face continued the same, she was ever, traditionally, to him a land of domestic "angel upon whom this lower world bore 100 hard, and whose thorny path it was his duty to smooth through submission to all those little unevennesses of mood by which angels, in domestic life, are beset. ■*' She gave up all for me !" the poor 'Squire would say, with tears in his eyes, when any intimate friend got him on the subject of his household troubles ; " her ■determination of never marrying again, the name that I know now was dearer than life itself to her heart, her religion — all ! I should be a brute, by ! a hrute, if T didn't bear her poor little infirmities with patience. What should I have been, sir, if I had not met with that vroman ? That's what I ask myself." A much happier man, would probably hava been the true answer ; but sach a heresy never even crossed the Squire's imagination. He was one of those commonplace men, who, with silent heroism, will bear the tyranny of a weak and sel£sh woman throughout their lifetime, and in their inmost hearts for ever upbraid themselves that they have not bowed their . necks sufficiently low beneath the yoke ! His wife's bodily feebleness, her incapacity, real or alleged, of getting into the •open air except during the hottest summer -weather, her querulousness, her want of .-reason, all appealed to the Squire's kindly "heart, much as a baby's weakness appeals to a patient nurse. And then — yes, even at this present time, when they were both of them nearer fifty than any other age — he continued not a little in love v/ith her still. She was so delicate and fragile, so foolish, so girlishly fond of dress and attention, even in her advanced middle-age, that the Squire never could realise t© himself that his wife was already an old woman, and loved her, as I think rougher, more sterling wives at forty- eight are seldom loved. "No man will ever care for • me as papa does for you, mother," Katharine would say ; " I'm too strong, and large, and well able to take care of myself ever to be made an idol of !" And Mrs Hilliard, with a little sigh, would take the remark quite as a matter of course ; then bid her daughter be thankful that she was ■as she was. Excessive beauty, excessive attraction, did not bring happiness to their possessors, " or why should I, Kate, have had your dear, dear father, and my rank in life, and religion, and everything ■else taken from me, and now spend the life of suffering that I do ?" That she had been very discontented in the poverty 1 of her first marriage, and was extremely • <»mfortableinthe luxury of her second .one, were the facts of the case ; but Mrs

I Hilliard lived in a sentimental ideal world — with a population of one — from whence facts were rigorously excluded. And even Katharine, with all her stout common sense, could never, in her childish days at least, feel sure that her pleasant home at the Dene, and her garden, and her pony, and the Squire's affection, were not good tilings that had been purchased for her at the terrible price of a mother's martyrdom.

Dora's appearance on the scene did not occur until about a year and a half after Mrs Hilliard's second marriage. Up to this time the Squire had always believed his wife to be an only daughter, and it was by purest accident, and from an alien source, that he abruptly discovered at last that there had been another sister, married also to a Fane, and the mother of one child. On cross-examination, Mrs Hilliard confessed that she had been accustomed to write to the Geoffrey Fanes during the early years of her first marriage, but that, somehow or another, the correspondence had been allowed latterly to drop. In the last letter she ever received from them, more than seven years ago, Geoffrey himself was said to be dying in Paris ; his wife in failing health ; and every shilling of their money spent. " And I sent them twenty pounds, Mr Hilliard," she added, " little as my Richard and I could afford it, and for your sake, and to spare your feelings, have never spoken of poor dear Theodosia since I married you. " "And the child?" cried the Squire, looking for once with indignation, bordering on disgust, at his wife's calm pink-and-white face. " Eight and seven— God bless my soul ! if the girl lives she must be fifteen. What will have become of her in these years, if both of her parents are dead P

Mrs Hilliard answered hysterically, that she was sure slio didn't know ; and it was very cruel, in her weak state, to call up such dreadful images of her own flesh and blood. If Mr Hilliard had the slightest delicacy of feeling, he would know what it must cost any one of her sensitive nature to imagine, even, that a sister or a sister's child could want ! If she had thought such bitter things would have been said, she was sure she never would have mentioned her poor Theodosia's name to him at all : — then to her room and sal-volatile.

The next morning the Squire packed up his portmanteau, and started off alone to Dover, speculating, somewhat, on the journey as to whether sainted invalids have much feeling for a-ight besides themselves or not. He had a good deal of work to do in Paris bufore he could find the faintest clue to Geoffrey Pane or his family ; but English, gold, liberally spent, and assistance from the police, brought him, after four days, on the right track. Geoffrey Fane died on a fifth floor in the Boulevard de l'Hopital about seven years ago ; his wife had only survived him by a twelvemonth ; and his child was, or had been till lately, the apprentice of a woman living Rue Mouffetard, 57, and fripieremodiste (half pawnbroker, half milliner, that is to say) by trade.

With forebodings of he knew not what — with a heavier sense of shame than any that, in his whole upright life, he had ever known before, the Squire took a fiacre, within five minutes after receiving tidings of his wife's niece, and drove, through quarters of Paris into wliich the " walks" of Galignani had never brought him before, to the Rue Mouffetard — the principal street of that singular twelfth arrondissement which borders the Bievre, and where washing, bleaching, and tanning are the exclusive occupations of the community. He stopped, as he had been directed, at Number 57, and discharged the fiacre. " Madame Mauprat V said a little old woman, who was tottering under a hideous pyramid of untanned skins into the court-yard ; the Squire having three times repeated the name before his English pronunciation made it intelligible. "Yes, yes. Madame Mauprat lived on the entresol, of course. Par la, mon petit Monsieur, montez, montez !" So the Squire groped his way to a dirty, very nearly dark staircase ; mounted ; and on the stage of the entresol rang a bell, which he guessed, for it was too dark to read if any name was written there, might belong to Madame Mauprat. It was answered by a child apparently of about eleven years old ; a thin, darke} r ed child, exquisitely neat, in an old black alpaca frock, with gilt earrings in her ears, a ring on her hand, fair hair taken back v la Chinoise from her face, and a little cap on the back of her head. She gave him a cxirtesy and a smile ; the Squire caught an expression like little Katu's at home about the lips, and his heart beat thick.

"What is your name, my dear?" he said, in English. " Don't be afraid ; I've come here to be your friend."

The child made him, another curtsey, or rather another series of bows and smiles and curtsies, and begged him, in French, to give himself the trouble to enter. "Anglais, no — ver leetle .'" she added, turning round, and Rooking' like Kate

again as the Squire followed her into a little shop, with caps and bonnets on a tiny round table, and a rose-tree and bird-cage in the apology for a window. "Donnez vous la peine de vous asseoir, M'sieur. La patronne va r'entrer tout-de-suite — de tree minute — M'sieur comprends ?"

So the poor Squire f oirad himself thrown upon his French, entirely composed of substantives — ' oui,' ' nong,' and ' avezvous' — and in this language proceeded to ask her questions. " Avez-vous pere and mere ? Anglais ? Mort ? Argent ? Beef and moutong ?" assisting his little hearer's comprehension of each question by such pantomimic show of taking out a- gold piece and holding it .to her, pretending to eat and drink, et cetera, as seemed to him best suited to her tender years and capacity.

With perfect self-possession, and with more and more smiles— for his gold watchchain and gold pieces, and the nation to which he belonged, were facts perfectly intelligible to her, whatever his French was — the child stood before him and gave her answers. Her father and mother were dead, more years ago than she could telL They were English, both of them, and had died here in Paris. She had lived with the patronne ever since. Money? Eh, mon Dieu, M'sieur— with a shrug of her small shoulders — not too much of that. And pleasure ? . . . ah, M'sieur would say distractions ; Oh, for that— yes ! There were the balls of the Barreaux Verts, and the concerts at the Petit Bicetre ; and once she had been to Asnieres ; and onee — with conscious pride this — to MabiHe ! M'sieur was English ? M'sieur did not inhabit Paris ? — looking at him with pity. Ah < M'sieur would not be acquainted, then, with the places where she found her distractions, even if she were to name them. ! The Squire looked at the little creature as she babbled on, with pity, for which I can find no name. He was not at all a philosopher. It would never have occurred to him that the life of a milliner's i apprentice in one of the poorest quarters of Paris, making up caps of six sous each, and dancing among the washing-girls at the Sunday balls, might be a life out of which some human creatures could get a good deal of enjoyment. For a girl of English birth, the daughter of an English gentleman, the cousin of little Kate at home, to have spent her childhood among vile, immoral French people (everything not English was vile and immoral to the Squire), was desecration that made his blood boil as he thought of it. And when the patronne herself entered, some minutes later, nothing but the impossibility of being abusive without adjectives withheld him from giving his opinion of her, and of the rest of her countrywomen, on the spot. Madame Mauprat was a stout, wellfeatured woman of about fifty, Norman, not Parisian, by birth, and with something of country frankness still discernible in her speech and manner. Monsieur's business / Ah, ha ! Monsieur wished information about the little Bebe. And how was she to tell then — no offence — that Monsieur's intentions were frank, and that it would be her duty to answer him?

"Argent," answered the Squire, laconically. " Argent Anglais," chinking the money in his pockets. " Vous parly, and I pay."

In all his continental travels, experience had taught him that this was a short but infallible road to the foreign conscience ; and Madame Mauprat proved no exception to the general rule. Her quick Norman instinct for scenting a bargain made her grasp in a second every detail of the situation. The Bebe's English relatives had found her out at last, and wanted to purchase her. Now the thing was to raise the value of the article in demand to the uttermost. She put her arm round Bebe's shoulder — the girl opening great eyes at such a demonstration-— lrew her to her side, and without more than the necessary arabesque of falsehood, told her story. In 1841, Madame Mauprat had had a lodging in a house on the Boulevard de l'Hopital, a poor fifth floor, of which an Englishman with his wife and child shared half. The man died ; and the widow with such money as she possessed, a miserable five hundred francs ! entered into business as modiste — fripiere-modiste Madame Mauprat pretended to be no higher in the world than she was — with her neighbor. "And a bad bargain was struck for me that day, Monsieur," added the woman, shaking her head at the recollection. Madame Veine — that was the English lady's name ? the Squire nodded ; could neither work nor mind the business ; could do nothing, in short, but to take to her bed and weep. Monsieur might figure to himself how prettily a long illness would eat up the profitß of a poor commerce like hers ! Well^ at the end of a year, Madame Veine died, leaving her to pay the expenses of the doctor and the funeral, and with this fillette that Monsieur saw — this Beb6 on her hands ! What to do ? The child was an expense

and no profit ; too small to work— locfc at her now, fifteen years old, and a little doll, an atom, a Bebe as she was I Irafc what will you? Madame Mauprat had the heart of a mother, and couldn't give her up, as her friends advised, to the> police. Since that time Bebe had eaten of her bread, and shared her room, and. been to her as her own child. And Madame Mauprat raised a corner of her shawl to her eyes, and wept. " Combieng V said the Squire, with % face of parchment.

• "Monsieur!" sobbed the Frenchwoman.

"Combieng," repeated Mr Hilliard. "Le petit fill pour moi, Combieng ?" Madame Mauprat became indignant j the Squire spoke of the police ; finally, the child herself was appealed to. She put a little thin hand at once into her new protector's, and said that she would, go with him ; and after this the patronne had nothing to do but make as good & money bargain for herself as possibleThe Squire paid down bis English gold with royal liberality. "After all," said he to himself, "the woman may have saved the child from the foundling hospital ;" and in half an hour's time Bebe, or rather Dora Fane, was seated by hut side in a fiacre, and driving with him. through the tortuous streets of the Faubourg St. Marceau towards the distant Rue de Rivoli, where he lodged. There was no doubt whatever as to the child's identity. The Geoffrey Fanes had lived in Paris at the time of her birth ; and heir certificate of baptism, a few old letters, and a note-book of her father's, had all been sold, one by one, by Mauprat to the Squire. This little work-girl, in her white cap, and with her ideas and manners of the twelfth arrondissement, was the treasure that he had brought up from. the lowest social strata of Parisian life tobe the acknowledged niece of his highbred wife, the daily companion of Bell*and little Kate at home.

The poor Squire was simply and literally too much afraid of his own work to take the child back to England at once ; sa wrote a preparatory letter to Mrs Hilliard first ; then spent two or three days in. * Paris alone with little Dora. Before they had been six hours together a great deal of the child's English, disused rather than forgotten, began to return to her, and. coming to the help of the Squire's French, enabled them to understand each other admirably — under no circumstances, perhaps, would a man with a heart like Mr Hilliard's, and a pocket full of money, find it very hard to make a child understand him ! The first thing to be done, he thought, after returning to the hotel, ordering a room for her, and writing his English letter, was to give her some bee£ and mutton. So taking her hand, he walked her off to the Palais Royal — iar was about five o'clock of a summer's afternoon — and ordered a dinner at the restaurant of the Trois Freres. A dinner suited to Ma'inselle, he told the 'waiter; plain roast meat, and plenty of sweets and fruits, and all the things a child of heir age would like. You may believe how Dora, who had never tasted anything more dainty than galette and cherry compote in her life, and who had only eaten, a platft of water-soup that day, enjoyed herself. The roast meat she would not look at ; but vegetables, hor3-d'ceuvres of all sorts, marrons-glaces, ices, creams— all of these the little famished creature ate greedily, and at last, when she could absolutely do no more in the way of present consumption, waited till the waiter who was serving their table had turned his back, then plunged both her hands into a dish of candied fruits, and began briskly to fill her pockets, with a face and air o£ quiet unconcern that tickled the Squire's, fancy immensely.

This was Dora's first experience of the sweetness of riches. When they had left the restaurant they walked, hand in hand, about the colonnades ; the Squire quite unconscious of the singular discrepancy in their appearance, and the smiles and remarks that were freely bestowed on them by the crowd ; and after a time the child was told that she might buy any little trinket she liked for her own. She was modest as yet ; could not, in fact, realise the enormous wealth of her new protector ; so walked him up to an open stall, where " Imitation" was written in black and: yellow letters a foot long, and chose a pinchbeck locket of three francs. Next morning she proposed a visit to the Palais Royal again ; stopped before a window " en Or," got the Squire inside, and was seized with violent admiration for a tinydoll's watch of one hundred and forty francs. Mr Hilliard gave it her : and. then there must be a chain to hang- it from ;. and then there was a brooch, and a ring—"Ah, but a ring, m'sieur, that would. go so well on my little finger !" And> then the Squire, beginning to see of what materials his new-found treasure was made, got out of the shop and out of the Palais Royal as quick as his legs "would. carry him.

This was on Saturday: they were to leave Paris early on Monday morning;

and Dora conveyed to her friend — her •uncle, «is she already called him — that it ■would be proper for her to have some new clothes, a pretty dress, and a jacket, and a bonnet — how her heart throbbed at the thought ! above all, a bonnet to appear in on Sunday. These, of course, "were matters respecting which the Squire was powerless in the child's hands. " Not too dear," was all he said, as they stopped at the different shops on the Boulevard ; and " not too de-are !" Dora always replied, with a wise shake of her head ; then went in and bought exactly what dress, bonnet, gloves, and parasol suited her fancy.

On Sunday afternoon it must really have been a picture to see the two sally forth for a walk in the Champs Elysees. The portly little Squire with his English frockcoat and light waistcoat, and close-shorn face, Dora in a silk robe, worn long to the ground for the first time in her life, cream- colored gloves, white parasol, tiny pink bonnet, and the airs and graces of a Parisienne of thirty. She walked along in a sort of ecstasy, barely feeling that her feet trod on solid earth through, the Champs Elysees, and just as they,'"were reaching the Bois de Boulogne her cup, of joy was filled to the last drop of overflowing : two of the washing-girls of her old quartier, walking with their sweethearts in blouses, passed ; then turned round and gazed at her. She looked with sublime unconcern at the string of carriages in the road, as though all acquaintances of hers must be there, not on the footpath, and realised how utterly she had done with her old life and all the people belonging to it. It seemed a hundred years since Thursday night, when these very girls, out of their scanty savings, had given her a ticket and taken her with them to the gallery of the Am-

bigu. How delicious to think that they would go home and tell Hortense and Delphine and the rest that they had seen the little Bebe in a silk robe and a bonnet, and walking with a gentleman, and too grand — oh, much too grand and fine a lady to speak to them ! After their walk they had dinner at one of the summer restaurants of the Bois de Boulogne, and as they were sitting at dessert the Squire asked the girl what she would like to do to finish the day ? He

knew that a girl of her age, brought up

in Paris, would have no ideas of Sunday, - save as a day of amusement ; " and if I never commit a greater sin," thought he, " than letting her have a boat on the lake or a ride in a merry-go-round on her last day in Paris, my conscience will be a white one !" And so he put the question to her. "Amusement? somezing give me plaizir?" said Dora, repeating Ids words after him. "Ah, que, m'sieur, est bon ! "We will go " Her heart cried to one of the balls of the Barreaux Verts, to look on, too grand to dance (except perhaps with young Olivier, the butcher of the, Faubourg), and eclipsing Hortense and Delphine, and the whole world she knew, with her dress and her watch, and hei general aristocracy of appearance. This was her first impulse ; then she looked wistfully at the Squire, shook her head with an instinctive feeling that a ball in the twelfth arrondissement would not perhaps be quite the place for him, and said boldly, " To Mabille !" The Squire jumped up from his chair with horror. " Mais, mon Dieu, nous sommes tres J tri> bien !" cried Dora, thinking he might be too modest, perhaps, to present himself in such high society. " Zay refuse — no ! zay admit vs — yes !" "Admit us !" said the Squire ; "yes, I suppose they would ! Me at Mabille — on a Sunday ! Come away, come away, child !" And Dora was walked back to the hotel ; and after a long sermon from the Squire, went to her bed that night with, a sense of a new wide gulf between her and him, and a dim idea that she had better never tell the truth on any subject whatsoever as soon as she found herself among her rich relations in England.

Stunted in her moral as well as her physical growth, the poor little creature had really, Tip to the age of fifteen, continued shielded, by her very incapacity, from the knowledge of evil as of good. A robuster, more loving nature would probably in these early years have contracted far more positive harm than had Dora's. She had liked going to the balls of the barriere, not for any notice that was ever taken there of her own meagre little face, but for the sake of looking at the toilettes, most of them furnished by her own patronnej of the washing-girls ; or of sitting in a corner apart from the crowd, -with seme other child of her own size, and ' ' making believe" that they were grand ladies, in long silk dresses, ■with a carriage and livery servants to conduct them home. Had liked standing tiptoes in the galleries of the cheap theatres, when any one would treat her to a place there, not, as more highlyendowed children of her age will do, dreaming premature dreams of love or jomance, and seeing herself in the beau-

tiful princess, or weeping Avcnturine, with Prince Charming, and all the other handsome lovers at her feet ! Love .and romance were things of which not the faintest whisper had entered the child's prosaic life. At the balls of the barriere she had amused herself with admiring the poor bits of finery of the washing-girls. At the theatre her pleasure had consisted in watching the dresses of the actresses, or of the ladies far down below in their boxes ; wondering what they could have cost ; speculating how she one day would dress if any turn of luck, such as befalls poor orphan girls, on the stage, should find her j with full pockets ! Dress, to this little child of Paris, was the sum of human existence : theatres and balls, and the Boulevards on a Sunday were places to show it in ; and every effort, every sacrifice of life, . means wherewith to buy it. She had never seen very much of virtue ; she had never heard anything at all of vice. Some ladies had to wear high-up cotton dresses ; and others — on the stage, and in the lower boxes — were in such a state of beatitude as to possess shining silks, and necklaces, and to show their bare shoulders. She hoped when she was a woman she would be like these latter ones ; and not, at all events, marry a working-man, a tanner, or rag-collector, as she had known some of her friends do, and live for ever in a miserable room, with dirty children, and kicks from her husband's sabots whenever she tried to go abroad for her ■ pleasure ! This was about the extent of Dora's social generalisations. The Squire, t©o simple of heart, too narrow of mind to have any', save the most literal black-and-white ideas of right, had been absolutely staggered, thrown out of all his bearings of morality, by the girl's unblushing proposal of Mabille on the Sabbath ; and so at once laid the foundation of her whole future deterioration of character — hypocrisy !

" Say as little as you possibly can about Paris, my poor child," was the burthen of all his advice to her during their journey home. "Your aunt is a very pious woman, and your little cousins must never heir the name of — of such places as you mentioned on Sunday."

And the child, nodding her small head, and looking wise, told him always he need not fear. " Bals de la barriere — no ! Theatres, no ! Mabille — no, no, no !" The climax with a burst of virtuous warmth highly satisfactory to the Squire in this his first attempt at moral training.

The five minutes succeeding the arrival of the travellers at the Dene were minutes never to fade frcm Dora's recollection while she lived. The poor little girl had not been used to much kindness ; of love she knew not the meaning ; "but she had been accustomed, at least, to the bonhommie of manner which French people, of all classes and professions, have towards children ; and when the companionship of the kindly Squire was suddenly exchanged for the presence of Mrs Hilliard and her eldest daughter, whatever heart there was in the child's small breast froze up at. once, and as far as they were concerned, for ever. Mrs Hilliard, unapproachably stately in her soft laces, and invalid shawl, and easy chair, just touched her niece's cheek with her lips, then remarked — with a look at the Squire, that made him feel himself an impostor, and Dot the result of some iniquitous conspiracy — that the child was not in the least like either of her parents, and put her handkerchief over her eyes. Arabella, a tall, womanlygirl of her age, shook her cousin's hand coldly ; looked at her from head to foot ; then, turning to her stepfather, asked him what kind of bonnets were worn in Paris ?

"Bonnets? why such as you see on Dora, of course," said the Squire, putting his arm kindly round the stranger's thin shoulders. " When Dora and I walked out on Sunday, we thought ourselves the two best-dressed people in the Changs Elysy, didn't we, Dora 1 Where's Kate ?" ringing the bell. " I want Kate to come and give a kiss" to her Paris cousin."

And then the door opened, and whatever brightness, whatever love Dora Fane's life was destined to know, came in.

Katharine was at this time a fine-grown handsome child of eight, nearly as tall as Dora, more than her equal in weight, and with a baby's innocence upon her beautiful mouth and in her eyes. She rushed up to the Squire, covered his down-bent face with kisses, then turned and looked steadily at her new cousin/ She had been told of a girl the same age as Arabella ; and to a little child of eight a girl of fifteen is a woman ; so seeing a creature of her own height, but in a long silk dress and with an old unsmiling face, she shrank back, and caught tight hold of her stepfather's hand.

"Why — what a dot!" she cried, honestly, but not in a complimentary voice.

" Kate," said the Squire, gravely, " this child has neither father nor mother, nor friend save us. Will you love her ?"

Katharine stood irresolute for a second ; then the forlorn new cousin tried to smile

— holding out her hand, and looking frightened — and in another moment a pair of warm white arms were round her neck. "I do love you !" said Katharine ; "and I'm glad youlre so small. You shall be my friend, not Bell's. Don't think you've no one to care for you, though you are a dot — you'll have me !"

This was how from the first Dora came to be called '* Dot ;" and this, as T have said, was the beginning of the solitary affection destined ever to shine upon the little creature's life.

In a week Kate had made the Squire give Dot a garden of her own, and a fishing-rod, and a setter pup ; possessions the child thought to raise any human creature to the highest pinnacle of happiness. In a week the pink Paris bonnet and white parasol were unceremoniously appropriated by Arabella, the beautiful silk dress confiscated by Mrs Hilliard's orders ; and the* little work-girl of the Fauboxirg Saint Murceau, with bitterest disappointment, had begun to realise what kind of life this was to which her fates had brought her.

She hated it with a hate that every year of her life only tended to strengthen. Not alone the city habits of her childhood, but her naturally weak arid fragile organisation, withheld her from ever entering with pleasure upon the robust out-of-door life of little Kate and the Squire. She could not learn to ride ; she hated fishing, got sick and tired before she had walked half through a turnip field. All the excitement, all the healthy animal enjoyment of country life was, perforce, a sealed book to her ; and as nearly the whole of Kate's afternoons, winter and summer, were spent outside of the house, long and dreary were the hours in which Dora had to sit at her needle by herself and dream of the old life — sweet in spite of its hard "work and privations — from which she had been taken. She never, from the day on which she entered the Squire's house until she finally left it in wliite silk and orange blossoms, had one act of positive unkindness to complain of. Mrs Hilliard, from the first, looked upon the unexpected discovery of her pauper niece as " her cross," and treated the girl always with outward consideration, yet with a smothered kind of meek malignity that Dot was quite sharp enough to feel and return with compound interest. The eldest Miss Fane simply ignored her. " I never knew my poor aunt Theodosia," she would say, " and of course I cannct be expected to feel much interest in her daughter. It was very good of dear papa to act as he did ; and I'm sure I hope, in time, poor Dora will settle respectably. It will be no advantage to Kate, having a girl of her disposition for a companion in the house as she grows up." And so, between the mother and daughter, Dora in these first years came to occupy a place higher than the lady's maid, certainly, because she dined at table, but more fatally dull, more bereft of anything like healthy human interest in life than that of the lowest servant in the Squire's household.

These were the days of her early flirtation with Steven — these were the days ( £ young Hoskins, the surgeon, and of Mr Smith, the curate. Detesting the country, detesting her life at home, shut out by natural incapacity from study of anything deeper than the fashion-books, what was Dot, now eighteen years of age, to do but make up little bits of furtive finery in her own room, and try their affects on the different young men of the neighborhood whenever she had the chance of meeting them in her walks? Arabella Fane, on the eve of marrying old General Dering's three thousand a-year, solemnly warned the girl once about the growing and deplorable frivolity of her character ; and Dot's retort established for life the dislike that had only smouldered hitherto between herself and her cousin. ' ' I don't pretend to be anything but frivolous," she said. " 1 have, as you say, no interests, no serious occupations ; and then, Arabella, you know, you have given me no opportunity of meeting rich old generals ! If I had the chance — va ! do you think I would not have sacrificed inclination to principle just as readily as you, my cousin ?" She had no chance of meeting rich old generals ; and somehow, in spite of the Squire's declared intention of giving her a thousand pounds on her wedding-day, none of the young men in the neighborhood seemed destined to do more than flirt with Dora. Steven Lawrence ran away to California ; Mr Smith went over to Rome ; young Hoskins got into a dispensary practice and married his cousin at Dorking ; and Dora Fane was Dora Fane still. She grew up, as much as she was ever destined to grow : began to feel old, began to look old ; and still no prospect dawned of her leaving her prisonhouse, as in her heart she always called the Dene. Then came Katharine's eighteenth birthday, her introduction into the world, her brilliant first season in London ; finally, her engagement to Lord Petres, and all poor Dora's colorless, hopeless life was changed.

" If people want to be civil to me, they shall be civil to Dot," Katharine would say, stoutly. "If Bella wants me to stay with her, she . shall ask Dot too. We have forgotten toe long, I think, all of us, that the poor little thing may have a few vanities, a few desires for amusement in life, like ourselves."

And Mrs Dering, too good a woman to be uncharitable when the wishes of an embryo peeress were concerned, had not only invited Dora to her house, but in a certain cold and duty-like fashion had done what she could towards assisting the first start of her penniless cousin in the world of London. A present of three silk dresses, in whatever color the penniless cousin chose, but not costing more than six shillings and sixpence a yard ; an introduction to the least valuable of her own partners; and a set of garnet ornaments : with all these benefactions (in addition to the attic up among the servants in Hertford Street) had Mrs Dering loided Dora, bearing, she said, no malice, respecting things past, in her heart.

" And so, whatever the future brings,. Kate," she would reflect, "we shall

always have the satisfaction of knowing that we have performed our duty. Principles, right feeling, no human creature can instil into another ; but as much as it is permitted us to do, our family has done for Dora. Now, if we cculd only help her into making a suitable marriage !"

Which remark brings me back with nice precision to the present point of my story. To render Dora Fane's character intelligible, I have been forced, thus far, to digress. All that concerns her for the future will be written on the same blotted page that bears the record of poor Steven'slife!

(To be continued.)