with a full renewal of all the compassion for her
which had formerly filled his untaught but not
untender heart. He guessed rightly that he
had brought her something that would pain her.
She looked afraid of the note during the moment
she held it unopened in her hand ; but she did
not think only of herself, she did not forget to
be kind to him.

"Go down to the kitchen, and cook will give
you some dinner, Jim," she said, as she went
into the dining-room and shut the door; and the
boy obeyed her with an additional sense of
hatred and suspicion against Routh at his
heart.

"I'm beginning to make it all out now," he
thought, as he disposed of his dinner in most
unusual silence. " The other one put Routh
up to it all, out of spite of some kind. It was
a plant of hers, it was; and this here good 'un—
for she is good — is a-sufferin' for it all, while he's
a carryin' on." Shortly after, Jim Swain took
a rueful leave of the friendly cook, and departed
by the area gate. Having reached Piccadilly,
he stood still for a moment, pondering, and
then took a resolution, in pursuance of which
he approached the house at which he had
made a similar inquiry the day before, and
again asked if there was any news of Mr.
Felton. " Yes," the servant replied; " a telegram
had been received from Paris. The rooms
were to be ready on the following day. Mr.
Felton and Mr. Dallas were coming by the tidal
train."

"I've a mind to go back and tell her," said
Jim to himself. " She must want to know for
some particular reason, or she wouldn't have
sent me to ask yesterday, and she wouldn't have
let me catch her out in tellin' a crammer if there
warn't somethin' in it. But no," said Jim,
sagely, " I won't. I'll wait for Mr. Dallas;
there ain't long to wait now."

Jim Swain's resolution had an important
consequence, which came about in a very ordinary
and trifling way. If the boy had gone back to
Routh's house, and had been admitted into the
hall, he would have seen a piece of paper lying
on the door-mat, on which his quick eyes would
instantly have recognised the caligraphic feat
of his accomplished friend, Teddy Smith; and
he would have regained possession of it. But
Jim did not return, and the paper lay there
undisturbed for some hours — lay there, indeed,
until it was seen by the irreproachable Harris
when he went to light the gas, picked up,
perused by him, and taken to his mistress, who
was sitting in the drawing-room quite
unoccupied. She looked up as the servant entered;
and when the room was lighted, he saw that
she was deadly pale, but took no notice of
the paper which he placed on the table beside
her. Some time after he had left the room
her glance fell upon it, and she stretched out
her hand wearily, and took it up, with a
vague notion that it was a tax-gatherer's
notice. But Harriet Routh, whose nerves
had once been proof against horror, dread,
suffering, danger, or surprise, started as if
she had been shot when she saw, written upon
the paper :

"Mrs. Bembridge, 4, Hollington-square,
Brompton."

WHAT IS SENSATIONAL?

THE Right Honourable Mr. Gathorne Hardy,
the President of the Poor Law Board, has a grievance.
The newspapers have, he says, written
"sensationally" upon workhouse mismanagement,
and an interest " wholly disproportionate
to the circumstances " has been roused in the
public mind. Further, lest any public writer
should misunderstand his meaning, he is kind
enough to particularise the cases to which
sensation writing has been applied. These were the
condition of the Strand Union workhouse, and
the deaths of the paupers Daly and Gibson. It is
a noble and instructive sight to look down upon
from our snug perch in the House of Commons
while this genial remark is made. Opposition
and government benches both full; legislators
smugly quiet, attentive, and approving; while
our orator, who is tediously fluent, well dressed,
and self-complacent, pours forth his shameless
aspersions against those who have borne
disinterested testimony to the truth. Paid by the
public to protect the Poor, the official
representative of a costly system under which paupers
starve and die, can find nothing more germane to
the subject of poor law reform than abuse of
those who have performed the real work of his
department, and but for whom, it and its
salaried servants, parasites, and admirers, would
have continued with folded hands and brazen
front to murmur " all is well."

During the celebrated Chelsea inquiry into
Crimean mismanagement, a true humorist and
draughtsman, now no more, gave us a sketch
of " the witness who ought to have been
examined," in the shape of the skeleton of one of
the hundreds of horses dead of starvation.
But that the heartless perversity which can
sneer at human suffering as sensational would
not be convinced though one rose from the
dead, we might well wish that the two
murdered paupers, DALY and GIBSON, could
be brought from their graves to bear testimony
against their accuser and his accomplices. Mr.
Hardy proclaims himself an accessory after the
fact by his audacious attack on witnesses not
to be suborned, and he is himself criminal in
his miserable palliation of crime. " Wholly
disproportionate to the circumstances," smiles
this Christian statesman, with a propitiatory
wave of the hand; while well clad, well fed,
clean, comfortable, prosperous legislators smile
back assent, and no man says them nay.
Yet professional philanthropists, platform
orators, great religious lights, men well known
at Exeter Hall, and without whose names
no charitable subscription-list is complete, can
be seen from our point of observation here,
placidly beating time to Mr. Hardy's verbose
cadences, and murmuring to each other