expressed, in the great midland music meeting;
—and to point out wherefore there is good
hope that this country too, may, during a
similar period to come, add to the general
store of works of art; something created of its
own, which shall belong to the Past, by the
reverence to known truths displayed; to the
Present, by its national fitness and employment
of our peculiar resources; and thus have a good
hope of living into that Future which awaits
all real individual effort, whatever be the world
of imagination in which it is exercised.

QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE SECOND: WOMANHOOD.
CHAPTER LVIII. A DISCOVERY.

POMEROY'S in Great Grand-street was an hotel
much patronised by persons from the Eastern
Indies—officers home on sick leave, dark-skinned
princes, who wore earrings and jewelled caps,
and who, standing at the windows in a blaze of
diamonds and brocade, seemed to be
perpetually waiting for cabs to take them to a
masquerade; by maharajahs, begums, governors-
general, judges of the supreme courts, and
millionnaire merchants returned to their native
land, with the fond design of enjoying the fruits
of their long labours without livers to help the
process of digestion.

Pomeroy's "laid itself out" for this particular
class of patronage. Its apartments were
furnished with great magnificence, displaying much
gilding, embroidery, and yellow silk; it had
suites of private rooms adapted for every variety
of social habit, and for the practice of every
form of Eastern religious observance; it
provided separate rooms for various castes, nicely
discriminating as to the requirements for
different manners of eating, smoking, praying, and
taking the bath; it had kitchens for all sorts of
cookery, Christian and Mahomedan, Brahmin
and Hindoo; clean and unclean.

Pomeroy's was a very expensive establishment
to stop at; and this was one of its chief
recommendations to the Indian magnificos who
patronised it. By taking up their residence at
Pomeroy's, they proclaimed to all their friends
and to the public at large, through the medium
of the Morning Post, that they were very rich,
and consequently very important, personages.
The frequenters of Pomeroy's would not have
been content to accept the same accommodation
elsewhere for less money. What they chiefly
took a pride in was the fact that they paid an
exorbitant price for everything they had. If any
visitor after a week's residence at Pomeroy's had
received a bill for such a modest sum as ten, or
a dozen pounds, he would have resented it as an
insult to his dignity. He would have suspected
at once that he had been badly served; that
they had given him inferior curry to eat, inferior
wine to drink, inferior chairs to sit upon, and
an inferior bed to sleep in. What was the
object in going to Pomeroy's? Was it not to
be able to eat five-pound notes and drink
sovereigns!

Such was Pomeroy's Hotel, of which Jean
Baptiste Constant was the manager and nominal
proprietor.

Constant, sitting in the mourning coach with
Lily, on the way to Great Grand-street, opened
a conversation with the view of preparing her
for her new life and her new prospects. He
began with some hesitation, for he had to tell
her first of all about her father. Lily had
remained, up to that moment, ignorant even of her
father's name. She had continued to call
herself, and to be called, Lily Floris. She was to
know now that her name was Blunt.

"And, my father?" she said, inquiringly;
"all that I have heard of him is, that he ill-
treated my mother, that he was a bad man, and
very poor—a beggar. Was he a beggar?"

"Your father, Lily," said Constant, evading
a direct reply to the question in this form, "was
a gentleman."

Francis Blunt was all that the countess called
him, a cheat,, a scoundrel, and a beggar; but
from the valet's point of view he was still a
gentleman.

"More than that," Constant continued, "your
father was a member of a noble family of high
descent and great wealth; and you, as his child,
Lily Blunt, are a lady."

Lily felt a strange fluttering at her heart. It
was not pride; it was scarcely joy. She was
thinking of Edgar. Did he know that she was
the daughter of an English gentleman?

"It is possible," said Constant, "that you
may shortly meet some of your English relatives,
and be elevated to the position to which your
birth entitles you. I have been searching for
you for a long time, with the view of making
you acquainted with your position, and, if
possible, rescuing you from the misery which
you have so long endured; but until chance took
me to the circus at Ranelagh I failed in every
endeavour to discover you."

Lily thanked him from the bottom of her
heart. In the midst of her misery and desolation,
she had never dreamt that any one in the
wide world was thinking of her. If she could
only have known it, her heart would not have
been so dead to all hope.

Constant continued:

"It is my inclination, no less than my sacred
duty, Lily, for I love you as if you were my own
child—it is my dearest wish and desire to see
you restored to your family; and I will do everything
it is possible to do, with that object; but
if I should fail—if the hope which I entertain
should be disappointed—will you let me be your
guardian, your protector, your father?"

He implored her eagerly, as if he were afraid
of being met by the proud and scornful spirit
of her mother.

Lily, whose heart was overflowing with
gratitude, put all his doubts to flight at once.
She seized his hands, and kissed them fervently.

"Heaven bless you!" she said. "I desire
nothing better than to be your daughter, to tell