Lily thought Mr. Kafooze's fellow watchers
were most delightful company, and told him,
almost enthusiastically, that she loved to sit up
and look at the stars.

"Ah! that isn't it, exactly," rejoined Mr.
Kafooze, shaking his head, and with a half
sigh. "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, and all
that sort of thing. I read the stars, my dear,
and have come to know them. Deary me!
but there's a deal more to be learnt about
them," he added, with another sigh.

"And what do they tell you, Mr. Kafooze?"
asked Lily.

"A deal that's good, and a deal that's bad,
my dear," the star-gazer replied. "They tell
me little that's worth knowing about myself,
however. If the stars would be good enough
to inform me how it is that I can't earn more
than two pound a week, I'd be obliged to them,
that's all. The stars, my dear, I can tell you
in confidence, have been my stumbling-blocks all
through life. My father turned me out of
doors, and cut me off—not with a shilling, but
without one—all owing to the stars. I attribute
my failure in the haberdashery line in the year
'twenty-three, entirely to the stars. I published
a 'Voice from the Stars' in the shape of an
almanack, for three years running, and lost a
very pretty penny by it. And now I've
come down to what you see. But I trust in
the stars as firmly as ever; and indeed my
motive in looking in upon you to-night, was to
ask you whether you could tell me what star your
mamma was born under. I shouldn't like to
ask her myself, for you see she has rather a quick
temper."

"I am sure I don't know, Mr. Kafooze,"
replied Lily, "but I will ask her, if you like."

"For goodness' sake, don't, my dear young
lady," Mr. Kafooze interposed, hastily. "She's a
remarkable woman, is your mamma, and she
might do something dreadful if you were
inquisitive about her affairs. I thought that
perhaps she might have mentioned something to
you incidentally about the stars."

"I do not know, Mr. Kafooze," said Lily,
very sadly, who felt somehow impelled to
place confidence in the little bald-headed school-
master, "whether she is my mamma or not.
One day she tells me she is; but the next she
denies it, and forbids me to call her anything
but Madame. I know that she treats me very
unkindly, and that I am very unhappy, Mr.
Kafooze."

She buried her face in her hands. She could
not help the confession. It was the first wail—
the first outcry under cruel agony.

"Hush, hush!" piped the schoolmaster;
"you mustn't cry, you mustn't fret, my dear.
That would never do. You'll wake the lodger
up—as worthy a young man as ever lived, and
plays the trombone at Ranelagh for five-and-
twenty shillings a week."

He sat down by her side on the little horsehair
sofa, and fell to chafing one of her little
hands between his own parchment palms.

"Don't mind me," he quavered; "I'm old
enough to be your great-grandfather. I'm
seventy-two, but I don't fret now; I leave it
all to the stars."

Lily dried her eyes, and admitted that she
had been very foolish, and besought the school-
master not to tell madame of what had passed.

"It is not that she strikes me," she explained.
"She is always threatening, but she
has seldom gone beyond a push, and has never
gone so far as she did to-night when she
menaced me with her horsewhip. But oh, Mr.
Kafooze, she strikes me with her tongue—with
her cruel, cruel tongue. Night and day she
browbeats and insults me. What am I to do?
You have seen me here. How am I to conciliate
her? How have I offended her? Do I look,
do I act, like a bad, wicked girl?"

"You are a little angel, my dear," quoth old
Mr. Kafooze; "a dear, persecuted angel; but
you must not fret. You must leave it to time
and to the stars. They will make it all right.
I won't say that they will avenge you; because
vengeance does not belong to the stars."

Lily could only repeat that she was very
unhappy—that she did everything she could to
please her hard task-mistress, and that it was
not her fault.

"It's nobody's fault, my dear," urged the
little schoolmaster. "Nobody but Destiny's.
I've been fighting against Destiny for three-
score years and ten, and she's had her heel
upon me, and trampled me under foot many and
many a time. But I'll get the best of her, and
have her under my foot, the jade!" he concluded,
clenching his bony hand, and in a most
valorous pipe.

The sound of a key was heard turning in the
door.

"That's your mamma," quoth he, hastily.
"I wouldn't have her see me here for twenty
pound. Good-night, my dear. Your mamma's
got a destiny too; only I want to know more
about her star before I can tell you what it is.
I'm afraid it's a bad one." And Mr. Kafooze
vanished.

Two persons came into the little parlour: one
was the countess, flushed and radiant, the other
was Thomas Tuttleshell, Esquire. That gentleman
Lily had never before seen; but the countess
had often spoken of him as a fellow who had
been useful to her. She had, decidedly, but
few surplus funds in the way of gratitude, our
countess, and dispensed them very grudgingly.

She had torn off her mantle, had flung herself
on to the sofa, and sat in her gay dress, fanning
herself. Lily had seen her as hot and as excited
after her performance in the French booth
as the Wild Woman; but she seemed scarcely
the same being now. She was different in mien,
in voice, in gesture. She was transformed.

Thomas Tuttleshell had escorted her from
supper, but whither afterwards, Lily knew not.
It was certain that madame and her friends were
not in the gardens when the girl left. Perhaps
Sir William Long had still chambers where he
could conjure up the image of his old parties.
Perhaps Thomas knew ot some quiet hotel in