private thrust at her chosen companion," she left school a long while before I did; Helen Maurice is quite an experienced person now."

"Don't be ill-natured, Charlotte,” said Mrs Disbrowe; "she is a very good girl, and your friend, and has helped you a great deal with your things, you know. I wish she was married, for my part, as she speaks so much about it, for there are a great many of them at home."

"There are more of us!" cried Minnie. "I will be Miss Disbrowe on Tuesday-I wonder if mamma will wish me married,-Rosie, and Lettie, and Sissy-all younger than I am, and there are only three of the Maurices. Papa, do you think they will wish me away?"

"Ask your mother, my dear," said papa placidly. Papa, to tell the truth, was half asleep.

"Minnie, be quiet," said the authoritative Charlotte. "Poor Miss Francis, I do pity her among you all."

"She is not my governess-mamma said so at least," said Minnie; "you need not pity her for me."

"Where is Miss Francis?" said Leo. "What do you do with her, mother?is she never to be here?"

"She is with Nurse up-stairs-she asked mamma to let her stay," said little Sissy." She does not like you, you are so rude and noisy; she only cares for Tommy and me."

"What a funny girl that is !-I wonder has she run away from anywhere," said Leo," she looked so frightened when you had her here."

"Yes, Charlotte, I wish you would write for me, and inquire who her aunt is. We ought to know," said Mrs Disbrowe, "though I daresay, poor thing, it was not for any fault she ran away; an aunt is not like a mother. I think they were not kind to her, poor child."

Charlotte shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "I have a hundred things to do, and no time," said the bride: "never mind her aunt, mamma, if she will suit you. Will some of you children ring the bell-more cake for Tommy? Is he to have it, papa?"

The invariable "ask your mother, my dear," was on Mr Disbrowe's lips; but recollecting that the applicant was Tommy, papa for once exerted himself, and with his own hand served the little favourite boy. Then the circle dispersed-the bride and bridegroom to the back drawing-room for a confidential talk; mamma to her worktable, and all its heap of labours; the cadets of the family to the nursery, after a round of kisses and good-nights. Papa stretched himself still more comfortably in his easy-chair; Leo yawned, and took a book; Minnie pored over her hieroglyphics: the pleasant hour of family intercourse was over for to-night.

The fire in the nursery, small but bright, is sedulously guarded by its high green fender; the light which burns on Nurse's round table is one sorry candle, and no more, in the full illumination of which stands her tea equipage-her white cups and saucers, and black teapot. In ordinary cases, it is a very solitary meal to Nurse, and she is not greatly the better in respect to sociability with the companion she has now.

Far different from yon ruddy happy kindly drawing-room in the Grange, with all its flush of home comfort and family associations, is this dim apartment in the highest storey of Mrs Disbrowe's house in Bedford Place; far different from the Lady of Briarford,

the fairy godmother of Zaidee Vivian's fancy, is homely Irish Nurse, in her bright printed gown and woollen shawl; but to Zaidee Vivian, at this moment, external circumstances weigh little, keenly conscious though she is of the stranger voices sounding from below, and of the unfamiliar walls that surround her. Everything is strange, cold, unknown. An unseen spiritual existence, walking this world among men whose mortal faculties were unconscious of its presence, could not be sensible of a more forlorn and utter solitude than is in Zaidee's heart. They speculate about her, all the inmates of this house; they wonder who she can be, and whence she comes, and by what strange chance it is that she has

become established here. One and all of them find some mystery in Miss Francis; but poor, young, desolate Miss Francis, who trembles like guilt every time she hears her assumed name, dwells apart and abstracted in this stranger household, scarcely roused yet to any wonder about them. Trembling at her own self-responsibility, sadly feeling in her inmost heart the want of some one whom she can ask what she is to do, and much confused and bewildered by the necessity of directing her own actions, Zaidee as yet lives in a maze, observing everything with her vivid senses, but taking no note of what belongs to herself. In other circumstances, had she been thrown by the natural pressure of poverty or helplessness into such a position, the chances are that, keenly alive to how they treated her, and on the look-out for slights and unkindness, Zaidee would have been as unhappy as it is an orthodox necessity for the reduced gentlewoman and home-sick girl to be. But the poor child's thoughts were otherwise directed: a painful sense of doing wrong; a strong necessity for consulting Elizabeth, or Margaret, or Aunt Vivian; a dreadful weight of guiltiness towards them all, oppressed her spirit. The same apprehension, simple and childish as it was, of some mysterious unknown consequence, which kept her from the bold deed of burning at once the will which was the cause of all her sorrow, made the simplest action of her life here a burden to her conscience. Wilful and wayward enough at home in her free days, Zaidee had an unspeakable horror now of transgressing, by the slightest hair's-breadth, her aunt's code of manners and proprieties. An invisible censor-her own wakeful and anxious conscience-stood by her night and day, and she had never been so solicitous to please her dearest friends as now, when she made up her mind that none of them should ever see her again. This superstitious obedience possessed this sincere and downright young heart so completely, that it even abridged the natural rapidity and impulse of her thoughts. She had to pause perpetually, she who had given up home for ever, to think what they would say at home-and rejoiced sadly that they could never find any

trace of her, at the same moment in which she laboured assiduously to control her very thoughts into pleasing them. As she sits here, dark and silent, looking at Nurse with her shining eyes, it is not Nurse, or the depopulated nursery, which is most clearly apparent to the perceptions of Zaidee, far less is it Mrs Disbrowe or the family circle down stairs. The voices of home ring in her ears, the faces of home haunt her vision: poor child, she makes so great an effort to overcome all her own desultory habits, to keep the little garret they have given her in good order, and to take care of her scanty wardrobe-to do all the things which Aunt Vivian, in despair, had long since protested nothing could ever make Zaidee do. Something has come to make her weep over these long-neglected precepts in an agony of eagerness to fulfil them, and that something is the same impulse which has driven Zaidee into this utter solitude-this dim and dreary world.

Yes, you would scarcely think it, looking round in the feeble light upon this low apartment, with all its odds and ends of furniture-its chairs and tables, transferred here when they were no longer good enough for any room down stairs-its arsenal of toys and playthings-its scattering of childish occupation and childish pleasure-that Mrs Disbrowe's nursery could represent the world to any one. It did to this young exile and pilgrim: she did not analyse itself, or find out why it was so strange and cold to her; she did not think of herself as injured or unfortunate, or treated with unkindness; she only knew she was far away -a stranger-an orphan, and desolate. There was no complaint in her heart, but an infinite depth of sadness, a void and oppression hard to endure.

Zaidee could scarcely tell herself, if you asked her, how it was that she came to think of taking another name than her own. Some chance glimpse of the name of Vivian, in the bewildering streets through which she passed on her way to Bedford Place-a strong impression on her own part that only one of her own immediate family, or, at farthest, of Sir Francis Vivian's, could bear the name, and a sudden horror of being discovered by

means of it, seized upon Zaidee. Zaidee Vivian! She knew nothing about the Times' advertisements, or any other way except downright finding out, for laying hands upon a fugitive; but she knew enough to perceive that probably there was not another person in the country bearing her name. As she threaded her way wearily through these glittering streets, in which she did not lose herself, thanks to the quick and ready perceptions which no abstraction was sufficient to obscure, Zaidee, who left home without weeping, had very nearly sat down upon a step to cry over this unlookedfor tribulation; but she comforted her heart by falling at last upon her father's Christian name, and adopting that to serve her purpose. And Frank Vivian, when he christened his child in her Eastern birthplace, had given her the favourite female name of his family, in conjunction with the Zaidee, the name of his Greek wife; so that when, with a deep pang, and a strong sense of shame and guiltiness, Zaidee Vivian, her dark cheeks burning crimson, put away her own name and identity from her, and answered to Mrs Disbrowe's inquiry that she was called Elizabeth Francis, there was still a small consolation in remembering that this was not entirely fiction, but that she had in reality a certain claim to both the names. But Zaidee's terror of herself, in her new circumstances-her horror of being quite worthy of the unqualified condemnation of Aunt Vivian, were increased tenfold by that act. She could not restrain her blush of guilt and self-humiliation when her new associates addressed her as Miss Francis; the remembrance came home to her poignant and bitter, a reflection scarcely endurable. She had not abjured her friends, her home, her family only, but she had abjured her very name!

"Eat a morsel, child; sure you'll die if you keep like this," said Nurse, starting from a long contemplation of Zaidee's self-occupied face. Nurse, from being a little jealous at first, had come to be very compassionate of the poor little governess.

"Do you think so, Nurse?" said

Zaidee, with a little eagerness; "for I think myself it will be a long, long time before I die."

"And so it will, please God," was the response. "You wouldn't be but thankful to live long, and you so young? But how you're to keep the life in you, it's not for me to say. And sure I wish, Miss, dear, you wouldn't give such heavy sighs."

"Are they all very kind people in Ireland, Nurse?" said Zaidee.

Nurse's national pride was flattered. "Bless you, honey, and it's you has discrimination! Was it kind you said? Oh, then, in my country, if they'd but know you were friendless, they'd clean eat you up with kindness. Ah, Miss, darlin,' you're young, but you've come through trouble-I see it in your face; and them that's solitary, and orphans, it's them that knows what kindness is."

To this effusion of sympathy Zaidee made no response. Perfectly spontaneous and natural as it was, Nurse unquestionably would have been pleased had her young companion become confidential; but confidence was not possible to the solitary child who carried her heart deep in her bosom, and could not expose its throbbings to a chance passenger. In her own simple soul, Zaidee had no perception of Nurse's curiosity, and her poor sad aching heart returned to its world of musings with a deep unconscious sigh.

Solitary and an orphan-so far Nurse was right enough; but no one save herself knew what a wealth of love and kindness she had cast away for ever. Few tears ever came to dim the wistful shining of those dark eyes, and nothing was farther from Zaidee's thought than any self-pity or lamentation over the lot she had chosen. Her mind was absorbed in quite another direction-in a visionary earnestness of endeavour to follow the rules of her old home, in an eager devotion to all the pursuits that had been followed there, and in a strange want of guidance and control, and dread of acting for herself. She had acted for herself in the one great crisis of her young life; that was possible, but oh! the dreary necessity of being her own director now.

have all those children to mind. Did you go to school at home?"

Zaidee could by no means keep up this conversation-once more she answered "No."

"You couldn't afford to have a governess at home, could you?" cried Minnie, opening her eyes. "You must have learned something, or you could not teach the little ones. What lessons did you learn?”

"I only can read," said Zaidee, simply; and I never learned that, I think. I can write, too, but not very well; and I wrote my copies by my self before I came here."

"And you never learned to play?" said Miss Minnie, "nor to sing, nor to draw, nor to speak French, nor anything? Upon my word! and you think you can be a governess?"

"Yes; I only can read, and write a little," said Zaidee with simplicity. She was not at all wounded nor angry; this was the truth-she had no accomplishments; and though she might sigh for the fact, a fact it was, and she never dreamt of disputing it.

"I never cared to learn anything," said Zaidee after a pause, a little wistful craving of sympathy impelling her to this volunteered confession. "I never thought of anything when I was a girl. A lady told me I ought to learn, and I intended to try; but then I found immediately that I must come away."

"And why had you to come away?" Minnie Disbrowe's curiosity was extreme.

"Nurse is an Irishwoman, too," said Zaidee. "I think they must have kind hearts."

"Who must have kind hearts?" This sort of observation, striking away at a tangent from the main subject of conversation, puzzled the shrewd Minnie more and more.

They were seated in Charlotte's room, which was a back room, and the second best in the house, but, notwithstanding, a somewhat dingy apartment, with hangings not quite so snowy white as they might have been, and a sad confusion of "things" spread about on the bed, the table, and chairs. One or two drawers half open, and a heap of work upon the table, showed at once haste and carelessness; for Charlotte was one of the numerous

class who, as she herself said, have always a hurry at the end. The end approached so very closely now that several last necessities had to be finished at railway speed; and woe was on the poor dressmaker, whom Miss Disbrowe pinned to that vacant chair, before which flowed the halfmade breadths of her muslin dressinggown. This unfortunate person had happily been compelled to go out for some indispensable piece of trimming which nobody else could match, and Minnie Disbrowe and her unemployed young governess were seated now as Rosie and Lettie were seated in the nursery yesterday, hemming, to the great disgust of the former, the frills of this gown. When their conversation reached to this point, Charlotte herself entered hastily. "The great wind of her going" fluttered these heaps of muslin like a gale. Her long full sweeping dress and careless movements made the greatest commotion in the quietness of this apartment. Charlotte was in a hurry, and her amiable young sister looked on with great satisfaction while first one piece of finery and then another, swept down by her hasty motions, fell upon the floor.

"I'll tell mamma of you, Minnie. Do you hear, Miss Francis?" cried the exasperated bride; "I won't have you two gossiping and looking on while I am in such a hurry. I want that piece of white ribbon, and I want my glove-box. How am I to look through all these drawers, do you think, and Edward waiting for me down stairs? Miunie, do come and help me; and for goodness' sake, Miss Francis, don't stare at one, but get up and look for my ribbon! Where can these gloves be? I am sure all these things lying about is enough to put any one out of patience-people are so untidy-can you not clear them away?"

"It is not my business, and I am sure it is not Miss Francis's," said Minnie, making common cause with her companion. "Miss Francis came to teach the children, and not to work at your marriage things."

"The children have holiday till after Tuesday," said Charlotte, finding it better policy to be good-humoured. "Do help me there's a