gilded clouds of rose-coloured gauze,-every thing except the fairies, in short, at Marchmont Towers. Well, the dream was over, and she was quite a woman now; a woman, very grateful to Providence when she remembered that her father had no longer need to toil for his daily bread, and that he was luxuriously lodged, and could have the first physicians in the land at his beck and call.

"Oh, papa, it is so nice to be rich!" the young lady would exclaim now and then, in a fleeting transport of enthusiasm. "How good we ought to be to the poor people, when we remember how poor we once were !"

And the little girl did not forget to be good to the poor about Kemberling and Marchmont Towers. There were plenty of poor, of course; free and easy pensioners, who came to the Towers for brandy, and wine, and milk, and woollen stuffs, and grocery, precisely as they would have gone to a shop, except that there was to be no bill. The housekeeper doled out her bounties with many short homilies upon the depravity and ingratitude of the recipients, and gave tracts of an awful and denunciatory nature to the pitiful petitioners. Tracts interrogatory, and tracts fiercely imperative; tracts that asked, Where are you going? Why are you wicked? Will you repent? What will become of you? and other tracts, which cried, Stop, and think! Pause, while there is time! Sinner, consider! Evil-doer, beware! Perhaps it may not be the wisest possible plan to begin the work of reformation by frightening, threatening, and otherwise disheartening the wretched sinner to be reformed. There is a certain sermon in the New Testament containing sacred and comforting words, which were spoken upon a mountain near at hand to Jerusalem, and spoken to an auditory amongst which there must have been many sinful creatures; but there is more of blessing than cursing in that sublime discourse, and it might be rather a tender father pleading gently with his wayward children than an offended Deity dealing out denunciation upon a stubborn and refractory race. But the authors of the tracts may have never read this sermon, perhaps; and they may take their ideas of composition from that comforting service which we read on Ash Wednesday, cowering in fear and trembling in our pews, and calling down curses upon ourselves and our neighbours. Be it as it might, the tracts were not popular amongst the pensioners of Marchmont Towers. They infinitely preferred to hear Mary read a chapter in the New Testament, or some pretty patriarchal story of primitive obedience and faith. The little girl would discourse upon the Scripture histories in her simple, old-fashioned manner; and many a stout Lincolnshire farm-labourer was content to sit over his hearth, with a pipe of shag-tobacco and a mug of fettled beer, while Miss Marchmont read and expounded the history of Abraham and Isaac, or Joseph and his brethren.

"It's joost loike a story-book to hear her," the man would say to his wife; "and yet she brings it all hoame, too, loike. If she reads about Abraham, she'll say, may be, 'That's joost how you gave your only son to be a soldier, you know, Muster Mooggins;'-she allus says Muster

Mooggins; you gave un into God's hands, and you troosted God would take care of un; and whatever cam' to un would be the best, even if it was death.' That's what she'll say, bless her little heart! so gentle and tender loike. The worst o' chaps couldn't but listen to her."

Mary Marchmont's morbidly sensitive nature adapted her to all charitable offices. No chance word in her simple talk ever inflicted a wound upon the listener. She had a subtle and intuitive comprehension of other people's feelings, derived from the extreme susceptibility of her own. She had never been vulgarised by the associations of poverty; for her self-contained nature took no colour from the things that surrounded her, and she was only at Marchmont Towers that which she had been from the age of six-a little lady, grave and gentle, dignified, discreet, and wise.

There was one bright figure missing out of the picture which she had been wont of late years to make of the Lincolnshire mansion, and that was the figure of the yellow-haired boy who had breakfasted upon haddocks and hot rolls in Oakley Street. She had imagined Edward Arundel an inhabitant of that fair Utopia. He would live with them; or, if he could not live with them, he would be with them as a visitor,-often-almost always. He would leave off being a soldier, for of course her papa could give him more money than he could get by being a soldier-(you see that Mary's experience of poverty had taught her to take a mercantile and sordid view of military life)—and he would come to Marchmont Towers, and ride, and drive, and play tennis,-what was tennis? she wondered, and read three-volume novels all day long. But that part of the dream was at least broken. Marchmont Towers was Mary's home, but the young soldier was far away; in the Pass of Bolan, perhaps,—Mary had à picture of that cruel rocky pass almost always in her mind,-or cutting his way through a black jungle, with the yellow eyes of hungry tigers glaring out at him through the loathsome tropical foliage; or dying of thirst and fever under a scorching sun, with no better pillow than the neck of a dead camel, with no more tender watcher than the impatient vulture flapping her wings above his head, and waiting till he, too, should be carrion. What was the good of wealth, if it could not bring this young soldier home to a safe shelter in his native land? John Marchmont smiled when his daughter asked this question, and implored her father to write to Edward Arundel, recalling him to England.

"God knows how glad I should be to have the boy here, Polly," John said, as he drew his little girl closer to his breast, she sat on his knee still, though she was thirteen years of age;-"but Edward has a career before him, my dear, and could not give it up for an inglorious life in this rambling old house. It isn't as if I could hold out any inducement to him, you know, Polly. I can't; for I mustn't leave any money away from my little girl."

"But he might have half my money, papa, or all of it," Mary added piteously. "What could I do with money if "

She didn't finish the sentence; she never could complete any such sentence as this; but her father knew what she meant.

So six months had passed since a dreary January day upon which John Marchmont had read in the second column of the Times that he could hear of something greatly to his advantage by applying to a certain solicitor, whose offices were next door but one to those of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson's. His heart began to beat very violently when he read that advertisement in the supplement which it was one of his duties to air before the fire in the clerks' office; but he showed no other sign of emotion. He waited until he took the papers to his employer; and as he laid them at Mr. Mathewson's elbow, murmured a respectful request to be allowed to go out for half an hour, upon his own business.

"Good gracious me, Marchmont !" cried the lawyer; "what can you want to go out for at this time in the morning? You've only just come; and there's that agreement between Higgs and Sandyman must be copied before-"

"Yes, I know, sir; I'll be back in time to attend to it; but I—I think I've come into a fortune, sir; and I should like to go and see about it.”

The solicitor turned in his revolving library-chair, and looked aghast at his clerk. Had this Marchmont-always rather unnaturally reserved and eccentric-gone suddenly mad? No; the copying-clerk stood by his side, grave, self-possessed as ever, with his forefinger upon the advertisement.

"Marchmont-John-call-Messrs. Tindal and Trollam-" gasped 66 Do you mean to tell me it's you?"

Mr. Mathewson.

"Yes, sir."

Egad, I'll go with you," cried the solicitor, hooking his arm through that of his clerk, snatching his hat from an adjacent stand, and dashing through the outer office, down the great staircase, and into the next door but one, before John Marchmont knew where he was.

John had not deceived his employer. Marchmont Towers was his, with all its appurtenances. Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson took him in hand, much to the chagrin of Messrs. Tindal and Trollam, and proved his identity in less than a week. On a shelf above the high wooden desk at which John had sat, copying law-papers, with a weary hand, and an aching spine, appeared two bran-new deed-boxes, inscribed, in white letters, with the name and address of JOHN MARCHMONT, ESQ., MARCHMONT TOWERS. The copying-clerk's sudden accession to fortune was the talk of all the employés in "the Fields." Marchmont Towers was exaggerated into all Lincolnshire, and a tidy slice of Yorkshire. Eleven thousand a year was expanded into an annual million. Every body expected largesse from the legatee. How fond people had been of the quiet clerk, and how magnanimously they had concealed their sentiments during his poverty, lest they should wound him, as they urged, "which" they knew he was sensitive; and how expansively they now dilated on

their long-suppressed emotions! Of course, under these circumstances, it is hardly likely that every body could be satisfied; so it is a small thing to say that the dinner which John gave-by his late employers' suggestion (he was about the last man to think of giving a dinner)—at the "Albion Tavern," to the legal staff of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson, and such acquaintance of the legal profession as they should choose to invite, was a failure; and that gentlemen who were pretty well used to dine upon liver and bacon, or beefsteak and onions, or the joint, vegetables, bread, cheese, and celery for a shilling, turned up their noses at the turbot, murmured at the paucity of green fat in the soup, made light of red mullet and ortolans, objected to the flavour of the truffles, and were contemptuous about the wines.

John knew nothing of this. He had lived a separate and secluded existence; and his only thought now was of getting away to Marchmont Towers, which had been familiar to him in his boyhood, when he had been wont to go there on occasional visits to his grandfather. He wanted to get away from the turmoil and confusion of the big, heartless city, in which he had endured so much; he wanted to carry away his little girl to a quiet country home, and live and die there in peace. He liberally rewarded all the good people about Oakley Street who had been kind to little Mary; and there was weeping and regret in the regions of the Ladies' Wardrobe when Mr. Marchmont and his daughter went away one bitter winter's morning, in a cab which was to carry them to the hostelry whence the coach started for Lincoln.

It is strange to think how far those Oakley-Street days of privation and endurance seem to have receded in the memories of both father and daughter. The impalpable past fades away, and it is difficult for John and his little girl to believe that they were once so poor and desolate. It is Oakley Street now that is visionary and unreal. The stately county families bear down upon Marchmont Towers in great, lumbering chariots, with brazen crests upon the hammer-cloths, and sulky coachmen in Crown-George wigs. The county mammas patronise and caress Miss Marchmont-what a match she will be for one of the county sons by and by!-the county daughters discourse with Mary about her poor, and her fancy-work, and her piano. She is getting on slowly enough with her piano, poor little girl, under the tuition of the organist of Swampington, who gives lessons to that part of the county. And there are solemn dinners now and then at Marchmont Towers; dinners at which Miss Mary appears when the cloth has been removed, and reflects in silent wonder upon the change that has come to her father and herself. Can it be true that she has ever lived in Oakley Street? whither came no more aristocratic visitors than her Aunt Sophia, who was the wife of a Berkshire farmer, and always brought hogs-puddings, and butter, and home-made bread, and other rustic delicacies to her brother-in-law; or Mrs. Brigsome, the washerwoman, who made a morning call every Monday with John Marchmont's shabby shirts. The shirts

were not shabby now; and it was no longer Mary's duty to watch them day by day, and manipulate them tenderly when the linen grew frayed at the sharp edges of the folds, or the button-holes gave signs of weakness. Corson, Mr. Marchmont's own man, had care of the shirts now; and John wore diamond-studs and a black-satin waistcoat, when he gave a dinner-party. They were not very lively, those Lincolnshire dinnerparties; though the dessert was a sight to look upon, in Mary's eyes. The long, shining table, the red and gold and purple and green Indian china, the fluffy woollen d'oyleys, the sparkling cut-glass, the sticky preserved ginger and guava-jelly, and dried orange rings and chips, and all the stereotyped sweetmeats, were very grand and beautiful, no doubt; but Mary had seen livelier desserts in Oakley Street, though there had been nothing better than a brown-paper bag of oranges from the Westminster Road, and a bottle of two-and-twopenny Marsala from a licensed victualler's in the Borough, to promote conviviality.

CHAPTER VI.

THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.

THE rain beats down upon the battlemented roof of Marchmont Towers this July day, as if it had a mind to flood the old mansion. The flat waste of grass, and the lonely clumps of trees, are almost blotted out by the falling rain. The low gray sky shuts out the distance. This part of Lincolnshire-fenny, misty, and flat always-seems flatter and mistier than usual to-day. The rain beats hopelessly upon the leaves in the wood behind Marchmont Towers, and splashes into great pools beneath the trees, until the ground is almost hidden by the fallen water, and the trees seem to be growing out of a black lake. The land is lower behind Marchmont Towers, and slopes down gradually to the bank of a dismal river, which straggles through the Marchmont property at a snail's pace, to gain an impetus farther on, until it hurries into the sea somewhere northward of Grimsby. The wood is not held in any great favour by the household at the Towers; and it has been a pet project of several Marchmonts to level and drain it, but a project not very easily to be carried out. Marchmont Towers is said to be unhealthy, as a dwellinghouse, by reason of this wood, from which miasmas rise in certain states of the weather; and it is on this account that the back of the house-the eastern front, at least, as it is called, looking to the wood-is very little used.

Mary Marchmont sits at a window in the western drawing-room, watching the ceaseless falling of the rain upon this dreary summer afternoon. She is little changed since the day upon which Edward Arundel saw her in Oakley Street. She is taller, of course; but her figure is as slender and childish as ever; it is only her face in which the earnestness of premature womanhood reveals itself, in a grave and sweet serenity very beautiful to contemplate. Her soft brown eyes have a pensive shadow in their gentle light; her mouth is even more pensive. It has been said