almost into an object of worship. It has been exalted as an amulet in cases of epilepsy and insanity; its aid has been invoked for the detection of witches and hidden treasures; that of Mantu, indeed, was formerly termed the 'goddess.' Still, our chemist will, with paste, oxide of copper, and nitre of potash, create something wonderfully similar, or, more elaborately, he may employ numerous different materials, including the invaluable silver-sand. The true hyacinth of Ceylon, often confounded with the orange sapphire and the saffron topaz, and known also as the brown diamond,' can be counterfeited almost to perfection. So with the water sapphire, hyaline, the common amethyst, the 'smoke diamond' of Alençon, the cats' eye, and the agate. Onyx and coral need scarcely be enumerated. There is a notorious manufacture of onyx nearly all over Europe, from German pebbles, treated with acids; and the false can scarcely be distinguished from the true, except by their weight and price. We should recommend very great caution in purchasing what purports to be onyx. In no kind of precious stones is more deception practised. As regards coral, there are also false kinds as well as the reality. By the aid of the real or pink coral, many beautiful imitations are effected; sometimes with the assistance of diamond-dust, for application to mosaic, to furniture ornaments, and enamel. The opal is, in its way, peerless among precious stones, and the only one which, when extracted from the earth, as in Hungary, is soft, hardening and diminishing in size through exposure to the air. It is rarely larger, with its milk-blue beauty, illuminated by sun-tints, than a nut, but has always been marvellously esteemed. In fact, the flamboyant opal of Mexico, representing an admixture of silica, iron, and water, is a magnificent gem, and its family is mentioned in the Apocalypse as including 'the most noble of stones. In consequence of their being excessively prized, and of a quickly fading nature, sham specimens are fabricated to an extraordinary extent.

Thus, also, with pearls, although by many they are preferred when they have lost their original whiteness. The rage for these has no limit. False pearls were invented in Paris towards the close of Henry IV.'s reign, by an ingenious fellow named Jaquin. Thence the manufacture spread into Italy, where it was extensively practised, though the French specimens retained their superiority. To begin with, were employed the scales of the blay, a small flat fish, with a green back and a white belly, common in numerous rivers of Europe. The scales are carefully scraped off, and repeatedly washed in pure water until they glisten like silver. They are then again washed in a sieve, inclosed in a net, and whipped into a pulp, though still retaining those rectangular particles which, to some extent distinguishable to the eye, constitute a high merit in genuine pearls. The mass thus formed was at one time known as 'essence of the East.' To it was added some gelatine, from the same fish. Glass of the most delicate texture, and powdered white wax, with a dash of mother-of-pearl, completed the operation, and the necklace of the demoiselle was ready for wearing. It needs only a slight additional chemistry to convert these pearls into opals-a kind of jelly made from parchment is added.

to partially dry in the sun. When nearly dry, they are pounded again in rose-water, then dried again, and so on until the paste is exceedingly fine, when it is rounded into shape, polished with rosewater, for the sake of lustre and scent, and thus becomes the pretty imposture celebrated as the rose-pearl. They are of various colours-black, for the white throats of Circassia; red, for beauty of a darker depth; blue, also for fairness; and a splendid amber, fit for all complexions, though chiefly for the brunette. Mock-pearls, it should be remarked, by the way, have been made from fruit, perfumed with storax and musk. The commerce in these fictitious decorations is principally French and Austrian, though something is known about it in our own honourable country.. There is Japanese cement, there is rice-paste, and there are Roman pearls, made up of silver-sand, fish-scales, spirits of wine, and white wax. The Venetian pearls are generally vitreous, and little likely to deceive, yet they are sold by thousands of boxes throughout Europe, Asia, and the New World. The art employed is simply that of producing white glass in tubes, tinted, however, by a process which the Italians still claim as a secret, though the existence of any such mystery in our days may be doubted. These tubes, so to speak, are melted again, whirled into a globular shape, or sometimes manipulated in a softened condition into the spherical form, which, however, is occasionally produced by simply stirring the fragments of glass round and round in a vessel filled with warm sand and hot wood-ashes. Nothing now remains beyond collecting the pearls, blowing off the dust, stringing them on thick strings of silk, packing them in barrels, and exporting them far and wide throughout the world, only stopping short of the uninhabited islands. Enamel would come into our scope, with gilding, silvering, damascening, besides the alloy of coinage, but that the subject, however attractive, would attain to unmanageable proportions. These are among the most tender and delicate arts existing, and their culture has always accompanied the higher progress of civilisation. Enamelling is, in fact, the creation, rather than the imitation of a jewel, and calls upon the artist's taste and skill scarcely less than did the production of Ascanio's famous lily. The clouding and watering of metals, again, are artificial glosses upon nature, representing a subtle science; but it is in the fabrication of decorative insignia illustrating the various orders of chivalry in Europe, that the limits of ingenuity have been reached, with their mixture of false gems, their crucibles of colour, amaranthine enamels, bits of polished shell, and rays of burnished metal.

wearing one fortune on their heads, another round their necks, and a third upon their arms! It is not

the savage only who delights in baubles. Besides, do we not thus enjoy that which Marie Antoinette called the luxury' of wearing diamonds, without her 'torturing fear' of losing them ?

LADY LIVINGSTON'S LEGACY.

CHAPTER XXVI.-HEIR-AT-LAW.

THERE is in all countries a brief and anxious interregnum between the death of one sovereign and the recognition of another. When the herald breaks his wand, and the biggest bells in minster towers shake the air with solemn tolling, the new monarch, in very much the plight of a freshly hatched birdling not quite extricated from the shell, passes some hours of discomfort. It is all very well for a few great officers of state to hurry panting into their prince's presence, and to vie with one another in their eager bestowal of the title of Majesty. But for awhile these fire-new honours are but awkwardly worn. Lord Chamberlains, Palace Marshals, and Bishops, high dignitaries as they are, do not constitute a people. The huzzas of the streets, the salvoes of cannon, the sea of bared heads, the waving handkerchiefs in casement and balcony, the deep roar of the populace, the more decorous salutations of the notables of the realm, all these are needed before the new ruler feels at home in his royal saddle. As with a kingdom, so with an estate, and especially when the right to its fee-simple is liable at any instant to be disputed or

denied.

John Fleming, Lady Livingston's heir-at-law, had been duly notified of the singular accident by which he found himself the successor of a relative between whom and himself there had been scanty sympathy, and had lost no time in hastening from Lincolnshire to London to attend to his own interests. He had indeed, as people averred, been engrossed in that occupation through life, and was one of those men whom nobody loves, and who probably fare worse in the general estimation than hundreds who are worse than they. He had steered his course, ever and always, by the beacon-light of strict legality, taking little heed of that immense unwritten jurisprudence of custom and tradition that with us in England so often override the dry letter of the law. We have heard Mrs Hart the housekeeper describe him as 'a covetous, creeping creature, and although servants are apt to exaggerate our salient points, the verbal caricatures which they draw are often speaking portraits. A parsimonious gentleman was John Fleming, one who never, if he could help it, gave away a shilling, and who strove very hard to beat out every sixpence of his expenditure into a ninepenny power of purchasing. His income, mainly derived from land, was but a moderate one, yet he saved each year a satisfactory margin in ready cash. Perhaps no landowner in the county was more cordially detested by his tenantry. Those who tilled his small farms, rackrented, and let at yearly tenure, and the more dependent class that dwelt in the rows of cottages which he had built beside the fenroad, abhorred their prudent landlord more than they would have done some reckless spendthrift who drew all he could out of the shire for metro

politan consumption. 'Sentimental considerations,' such was his favourite phrase, 'ought not to interfere with what was really a purely commercial transaction; and accordingly it fared ill with those who were behindhand with the world, worse with the fever-stricken wretches who asked "Squire Fleming' to banish ague and typhus from their damp and malarious abodes. It was but a Liliputian property in that province of many-acred magnates, but its proprietor squeezed the sponge hard, and made the most of it.

It might, at first sight, have appeared as if John Fleming, being a bachelor who saved for the sake would scarcely have appreciated the windfall which of saving, and who was self-denying in his habits, had come in his way. Assuredly, the notion that he might succeed to Heavitree had very rarely crossed his mind. To whomsoever old Lady Livingston might bequeath her Warwickshire lands, it was certain that her cousin John, of Pinchbeck Priory, co. Lincoln, would not be the lucky legatee. He had arrived at a time of life when the character is formed, and was not likely because eight or nine thousand a year had suddenly to prove more indulgent to himself or others, dropped into his lap. He'll make no difference, I'll go bail,' had been the comment of his old cook, when the purport of 'Master's' journey to London had become the talk of the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, no young heir of many wants and wishes could, in the heyday of hot-blooded youth, be more hungry for an inheritance than was this cold, frugal, elderly expectant, whose meagre face and trim gray whiskers were soon familiar sights at Richmond.

He-John Fleming, lord of Pinchbeck-was very busy. He haunted Bedford Row, sending in his card perpetually to Mr Glegg, and waiting with meek determination, among the clerks, until the eminent family solicitor was at liberty to see him. He had his own lawyers, of a very different stamp to that of Goodeve and Glegg, Messrs Ferret and Pounce, of Thavies Inn, but though they were active in the matter, their activity was subdued by the caution of their principal. Hard men are not always hard with the useful attorneys who attend to their foreclosures and draw their covenants. Mr Fleming was so. Never a six-and-eightpence went into the bill of costs without his full knowledge and consent. He kept his legal hounds lean and fit to run, and never forgot to impress on them the advantage of having in him, despite his rigid economy, at least one respectable client, good to brag of among smaller fry. The one thing which John Fleming dreaded was, that Beatrice should go to law with him in defence of her rights under Lady Livingston's missing will. He should win-yes, of course he should win-but then the glorious uncertainty and delays of the law, and the fearful costs of court and costs in the cause, and Ferret and Pounce with their swingeing bill, scared him. The newspapers would get hold of him too, and he was averse to have the lurid glare of the Lime-light leading articles turned on him and his quiet, prim, blood-sucking ways. Something sensational would be made out of the well-born usurer from the Eastern Counties, coming up to assert his extreme claims against a girl who would have on her side the sympathies of the very judges who ruled against her; and as for costs as against poor Beatrice, why, Ferret and Pounce could hardly find the

wearer of a wig brazen-faced enough to ask for them.

Mr John Fleming, then, was very urbane to Beatrice his cousin, when he came down to Richmond. He took out his handkerchief, and snivelled, when he spoke to the tearful girl of her good friend departed. Lady Livingston, he said, had never quite understood him; he regretted it, but so it was, not but that he had always strongly desired that concord and amity should reign between his unworthy self and one so noble and excellent as was the dowager. Her property had now devolved on himself, her natural and nearest heir. But he begged, he did earnestly beg, that Miss Beatrice Fleming would consider herself, for the present, as much at home at the Fountains as during the lifetime of her benefactress. Pray, let her take her own time, and consult her own convenience, as to her plans and her future place of residence! His only wish was to lighten, so far as he could, the affliction under which she, very naturally, suffered. Perhaps she would think the matter over. Till she had come to a decision, by all means let her consider the house as hers.

The heir-at-law was more peremptory, although scarcely less soft-spoken, in his intercourse with the dowager's old servants. He had not, as yet, taken out letters of administration, and could not exercise full power in the mansion. But he was a thorn in the domestics' flesh, and a vexation to their spirits. The butler had a bad time of it over the cellar-book, finding himself, for the first time since he drew corks, confronted by an authority who boggled over every gap in the bins, who was incredulous as to the drafts on the contents of the sherry-crypt, and who instituted cold-blooded calculations as to the time in which ale-casks should be emptied, and as to the number of bottles laid down from a pipe of claret. Mr John' pored over the accounts, disallowing, by anticipation, many an item. He gave provisional warning to every one; docked the fat horses of their oats; put the servants on board wages; and gave it clearly to be understood that all would be paid up to the day of legal notice, but that pensions and gratuities were wholly beside the mark.

Sadly changed was the hospitable mansion in those days. The ghost of the nabob, flitting about the house that he had planned to build for years and years, among the sweltering heats on the yellow Indian plains, must have been doubly discontented to behold the alteration. It was as if the life-blood of the place was congealed by the chill touch of frost. The Fountains, from which the house took its name, no longer spouted into the air their glancing columns and clouds of sparkling spray. John Fleming had 'spoken' to the water company. No more did the gas-lamps in the lodge-gates and carriage-drive burn brightly at eve. Almost every ounce of the massive silver-plate had been locked up in cupboards, under the seal of Ferret and Pounce. The cellar was locked too. No gardeners worked in the grounds. The old carriagehorses vainly pricked up their ears, and whinnied deprecatingly when some one approached the empty corn-chest. Men in rusty black went from room to room, cataloguing, with noisy pencils, in metallic note-books, every saleable scrap of portable property. Never a basin of soup, never a scuttle of coals, never a weekly half-crown, nor a bunch of grapes, went to even the poorest, or the

most ailing, or the most aged of kind Lady Livingston's army of pensioners. The footmen had brushed the powder out of their ambrosial hair, and merely wore their livery to save wear-and-tear to their private suits of mufti.

Very sad was the life which Beatrice now led, and the continued residence at the Fountains would have been irksome to her, even had Mr Fleming's polite anxiety to get rid of her been less transparent. But then there arose before the bereaved girl the ugly problem-whither should she go? Poor as she was now, with some pitiful seventy pounds a year of her own, what could she do? Her reliance upon her late dear friend had been absolute; and now she found herself almost literally without shelter. Beatrice had not been accustomed to pass the whole of her time, certainly, beneath the dowager's roof; but she was now to learn the bitter lessons of actual misfortune, and to find for how much she had been indebted to the goodwill of her who was gone. No invitations reached her now. Of old they had been plenty. Not, let me hasten to say, that Miss Fleming's acquaintances, like some ruined gamester's friends in an eighteenth-century comedy, turned their backs on her in her adversity. The wearers of purple and fine linen are not devoid of hearts, only a little thoughtless, by reason of their being lapped warmly from rough blasts of evil fortune. Had it not been the season,' Beatrice might have had the eight months' run of a dozen country-houses. But nobody wants visitors in London. Wherefore, Her Grace of Snowdon, and twenty other ladies belonging to that social pyramid of which Snowdon's duchess was the apex, penned very kind notes to Miss Fleming, but did not ask her to come to them in Belgravia. The Hon. and Rev. Augustus Fleming and his wife, struggling people, who could ill afford the rent of their house and the jobmaster's charge for their horses, had been used to receive Beatrice for a few weeks during the summer carnival of London, and to take her with them into 'society,' at the dowager's request. But the dowager's request had always been backed by the dowager's cheque-book; and now that Lady Livingston's purse could no longer be made available, the Hon. and Rev. Augustus, and his painstaking spouse, and his two rawboned girls, made no sign as of giving houseroom to their orphan cousin.

Yet, she must go forth from her old home; but whither? She almost envied Violet Maybrook, who was of course to go too, but whose strong and self-reliant nature fitted her by far the best of those two for taking an active share in life's battle. Violet was accomplished and well instructed, and with the recommendation of Mrs General Buckram and the other lady-fossils of Hampton Court, could not long be without an engagement as governess or companion. With Beatrice the case was widely different. There are young women, as there are young men, of whom we feel assured that, in case of pecuniary mishap, they will fall, somehow, on their feet. There are others for whom we predicate the worst ills of poverty, shorn lambs all too tender for the bleak hillside.

'I don't think, if I tried to be a governess, that any one would have me,' Beatrice had said, more than once, since she had realised what her prospects really were. And indeed she was but a luckless outsider in that race in which highly certificated teachers, elaborately trained for the profession,

demure Minervas reared at colleges, and steeped in ologies to the very rims of their blue spectacles, enter for the hundred guinea Nursery Stakes.

Towards Beatrice, the respect and the affection of the angry servants remained unwavering. Mutineers as they were in their demeanour towards the hateful heir-at-law, and chronic as was their grumbling at the stinted housekeeping, they waited on the adopted daughter of their generous old mistress with a zeal that was to the credit of human nature. Sorely disappointed as they were that the dowager's presumed intestacy cut them off from their legitimate hopes of pay and pension, they were reverent and tender in their mention of the dead. And it is a fact that they were more perturbed at Miss Fleming's being 'kep' out' of what they firmly believed to be her rights, than at the loss of that annual gift on which some of them, grown frail in service, looked as to a crutch for decrepit age. Mr Glegg, who now 'acted,' as he called it, for Beatrice, came down once and again to see her; and it may have been due to the bold front which he presented to the common enemy, that John Fleming's hints regarding the propriety of his kinswoman's departure were not more pressing. He was sorry for her, and said so. Mr Glegg even offered, at his own costs and charges, to commence proceedings in a court of law, the result of which would be to postpone for months Mr Fleming's assumption of an owner's claims over the heritage.

'Of course, my dear young lady, it's only a question of time,' the lawyer had said; he must beat us in the long-run; but we can traverse every plea, and with counter-affidavits, and a demurrer to the main issue, can throw the thing into a future term; ay, and cost the mean hound a trifle of his darling money too.'

But of this, though grateful to Mr Glegg for his championship, Beatrice would not hear. There was no will forthcoming, nor would she avail herself of any legal chicanery to hamper the wheels of Mr John Fleming's triumphal chariot.

Yet her mind must be made up, and that speedily. The old ladies at Hampton Court, Mrs General Buckram and the rest, would have shared their crust with her, say for a fortnight apiece; and Mr Glegg did induce his buxom red-faced wife to write to Miss Fleming, asking her to spend a month at the 'Lodge;' but she was in no mood for a peripatetic existence of this sort, and all these well-meant offers were thankfully declined. Dashwood's sullen silence remained unbroken. Even Oswald Charlton, who had once visited the Fountains since the memorable occasion of the funeral, now seemed, so Beatrice thought, to have forgotten her. Well, well! It was better, perhaps, that it should be so. No happiness could accrue from any renewal of their former intimacy. She was still bound by her promise to Dashwood, and even were that barrier no longer in existence, she could not expect her former lover to sacrifice his ease and his prospects for the sake of taking to his home a penniless bride. Yet it was with joy that she at length received a letter from Oswald, announcing that he should be at Richmond on the morrow, and expressing a strong desire for some conversation with her. She wrote her answer, and despatched it. Worldly prudence, self-depreciation, were forgotten. She should see him, at any rate, once again.

CHAPTER XXVII.-TWO FAIR OFFERS.

'A lady, miss, wishing to see you, please!' said a voice, the owner of which wore a cap, trimmed for the nonce with black ribbons, and a spotless apron over a frock of that peculiar-like print which seems to be manufactured expressly for the wear of the English female servant.

'A lady? What lady?' asked Violet wearily. She was growing very weary, in these latter days, of the world, not, indeed, with the thorough weariness that weighs down the old and the worn-out, but to as great an extent as was compatible with her youth.

'I think, miss, it is her as came down, formerly, to give the music-lessons,' answered the girl, who was a raw, new under-housemaid, one of the recruits who from time to time were sent up from the Heavitree estate to be drilled and taught by Mrs Hart the housekeeper.

'Miss Larpent? Certainly, I will see her,' said Violet, after a moment's hesitation: 'in the library, Susan, if you will say so.'

But the girl shook her beribboned head. 'Those lawyer gentlemen are a-writing there, miss,' she said: 'he as they call Ferret, and acts up to it, poking about with his ugly face all over the house; and a clerk of his; and Brickman the auctioneer. And Mr John-though he be no master o' mine, for all he orders and nags-is writing in the blue drawing-room along with t'other torney. But there's no one in the dining-room just now.'

Wherefore, Violet Maybrook gave audience to the companion of her infancy, Aphy Larpent, in the great room where the nabob's feasts had been spread in the old days of hard drinking and heavy feeding, and where of late the mourners at Lady Livingston's funeral had assembled. To witness the meeting, it might have been thought that the two had exchanged characters; for Violet's rare beauty and stately presence were clouded by the lassitude which had of late crept over her, whereas the elf's eyes sparkled as with the hidden fires that glow beneath the surface of the opal, and her gliding movements were quicker and more assured than was usual with her.

'Your hand burns, Vi, like fire: you are not ill?' asked the young music-mistress as she touched the palm which Miss Maybrook mechanically laid within her grasp.

Ill! No; I am well enough,' answered Violet, with indifference.

Was she one to complain, and to such a one as the false creature before her, of the long, long watches of the night, spent in sleepless, feverish unrest, of the haunting past, the brooding future, the intolerable present, the weight of care, of rage, and of regret, which are for those who do wrong on earth what were the fabled Eumenides of old Greece! Nor, in very truth, was she ill. These rich natures, full of life, fraught with a potency of enjoyment or of suffering, can bear a very great strain before the chain snaps.

'You did not come here, old friend, to inquire as to my health, did you? I must wait until it pleases you to explain what you would have of me,' she added coldly, as she signed to her visitor to be seated.

Upon my word, your reception is not a very encouraging one, and some people would take huff,

and go as they came,' returned the elf, with her hard mocking little laugh; 'but we have known one another a very long time, and are privileged. I merely ran down to-day, my dear, to say how glad I should be, as, of course, you cannot stay in these diggings can you?-if you would come to me. I'm lonely, since Bruce went, as you may guess; so it is half-selfish, after all, is my errand.'

"Half-selfish!' Violet repeated those words, unconscious that she did so, and tried, with some success, to shake off the languor that dulled her usually clear brain. When had she known, since the early days of dolls and sweetmeats, Aphrodite Larpent to be actuated by any motive that could not be directly traced to some mean impulse! But what, in this instance, could be her object? That was not so plain. You know, I suppose, Aphy, that I have but my small savings, and shall be very poor,' said Violet at length.

'Poor; and so am I,' answered the other promptly; but then two women can live on what a man would fling away on cabs and cigars. There is Bruce's old room at your service. You and I will live as frugally as a couple of country mice that have strayed into this great splendid capital of London, to make money if we can, not to waste it. I shall teach music to any one who will be good enough to patronise me; and you will give morning lessons to pupils, I daresay, until you can hear of something better. If I were to say how pleased I should be to set up housekeeping with a very old friend like yourself, you wouldn't believe me. And yet, Vi, dear, it is true.'

This was very well said, well and naturally, and it would probably have obtained credence from nine men out of ten. But one woman does not see another through the illusory haze of sentimental preference which dims the perception of either sex where the other is concerned. Violet Maybrook was not one fraction nearer to putting trust in the disinterested affection of her early playmate than she had been before Aphrodite's pretty speech was so prettily spoken. But, after a moment's thought, she decided within herself what her answer should be. What possible harm, after all, could such neighbourhood do to her? The hold which Aphy had upon her would be as efficacious for harm, perhaps more so, at a distance than when they two should be together. And the instinct that had formerly made her shrink from Bruce's sister had gradually become very much weakened.

'Come-it's a fair offer,' said Aphrodite, who watched her narrowly.

'And I accept it, Aphy,' returned Violet slowly; 'accept it, I am sure, in the spirit in which it is made. As she spoke, a figure passed the window towards which her face was turned. She started. 'Mr Charlton again!' she said; I thought he would come no more. People, except birds of ill omen, like those busy instruments of the new owner who now pervade the house, seem to keep very much aloof from the Fountains now. Yet it was Lord Livingston's nephew, I am certain.'

Oswald Charlton it was whose figure had in passing the window attracted the notice of Miss Maybrook, and we may as well follow him to the small yellow drawing-room, which had been the dowager's favourite apartment during the winter months. The rest of the house was delivered over to an incursion of Goths from Thavies Inn, and

of Vandals from the auction-mart, cataloguing, appraising, inspecting, whatsoever might appear likely to bring a good price by public competition. But the yellow drawing-room had been one of the earliest rooms to be subjected to this invasion of 'Mr John's' satellites, and there Beatrice Fleming was able to receive Oswald without much prospect of their conversation being interrupted by the rush of greasy Hebrews with patent pencils and bulging pocket-books.

'I am very glad that you could see me to-day,' said Oswald, making up his mind to break the somewhat awkward silence that prevailed after the first commonplace words of greeting had been said; and the more so because, as I suppose, you will not remain here, now, very long.'

'It was very kind of you-to-to think of me,' returned Beatrice shyly, and, in spite of herself, her lip trembled a very little, and there were tears in her eyes. Up to that moment, there had been between these two young persons an embarrassing consciousness of the restraint of their present position. True-lovers, forbidden any longer to speak on the topic of love, are wretched conversationists, each knowing that from his or her lips mere platitudes sound doubly trite. But now, as he noted the suppressed signs of the emotion which Beatrice could not quite hide, he found his tongue at last, and spoke out boldly enough.

To think of you!' he exclaimed. When do I not think of the prize I hoped to win, and lost, of what I loved so dearly, but that was beyond my reach! Do not be alarmed, I beg of you,' he added, more gently, as he saw that Beatrice was startled by his vehemence; 'I did not come to disturb your grief by dwelling on my own selfish sorrows. But remember that I never promised not to love you, dearest-that would have been beyond my power. What I really did engage to do was, to keep aloof, and that I have done. I should not have been here to-day, were it not for the great and sudden loss which you have had to bear, and to which ought not to be added that lesser loss, the deprivation of what is justly yours.'

'Nothing is mine,' said Beatrice, with an unsuccessful attempt to smile, 'nothing, now. I never knew how rich I was until I found myself alone in the world. But indeed it is not the money that I regret.'

'No; it is natural,' answered Oswald, 'that while the smart of your recent grief is still fresh, your thoughts should dwell solely on the memory of her whom you have lost. Young as you are, and free, hitherto, from sordid thoughts and cares, mere poverty seems dwarfed by the anguish that has gone before. And yet, believe me, many as are the temptations that enervate the rich, it is not always well to be poor. There are natures that grow sour and hard in adversity, and others, of a more gentle stamp, that fade and wither in an uncongenial atmosphere of anxiety and want. It is no light thing for you, young, well nurtured, and delicate, to be flung thus unprotected among strangers; for, so far as I know, your own resources must be indeed small.'

'How can I help that?' said Beatrice, this time smiling through her tears. I mean to be very brave, and to make myself useful, if I can. I have something of my own, a little, and perhaps, if I not thought clever enough to teach, I might still

am