I were prepared to be the best wife in the world;
but I should like better to marry some one I
could love. I have learned that it is easier for
a woman to live without riches than without a
heart. Ah, if you knew how I have starved
for a little love! I have done hard penance for
my mistake. Poor old Lady Durden! I was
very submissive to her whims. She made a
white slave of me at the beginning. Could not
take her breakfast of a morning without first
putting her foot upon my neck; but that was
before she knew how necessary I should become
to her. She did not guess that I had promised
myself she should prize me, sue me, miss me,
before I had done with her. In nine months
she had had three companions before I went to
her; and I remained with her nearly four years.
She raised my wages and gave me pretty dresses.
She cried when I was leaving her, and begged
me to come back."

Sylvia sat on the floor, with her cheek
luxuriously dipped in her hand, and her face bathed in
a smile of delicious complaisance, while all this
ran trippingly from her tongue.

"But you will not go back, Sylvia, you will
never starve any more for love," said I, thinking
I had guessed her secret very shrewdly; and
at this moment the doctor was announced, who
blushed as he shook hands with her. After him
quickly came Miss Pollard, more blooming and
lively than usual, with whom Sylvia
immediately began a mischievous skirmishing of
words, for there was a perpetual war going on
between these two. We had tea in my room
all together, and Miss Pollard put off her bonnet
and filled the cups, producing a dish of sponge-
cakes which she had made with her own hands
for my use, though the fairest and largest she
placed on a plate by the doctor.

Dr. Strong was a stout little elderly man—
clever, kind, and a trifle pompous. He had a
pleasant rosy face, and the baldness of his head
was quite made up for by his handsome whiskers,
which were still untoucned by grey. He had a
simple fondness for fine English, a tender heart,
which often supplied the place of a fee in his
dealings with the poor, a good income, and a
handsome house, a little way out of the village.
He might not be all a pretty maiden's fancy,
but a woman might choose for herself a worse
staff to lean upon through life. I had not been
used to think much upon his virtues or himself,
but of late he had inspired me with new
interest. I had trained myself to be very prosaic
on the subject of matrimony, and I thought it
would be better for Sylvia to grace a good man's
home in the quiet sunshine of Streamstown
than to fade into lonely dependent old maidenhood
in some dreary London mansion. I did
wonder at her excessive happiness and her little
rhapsody about love, which I thought rather
out of place. But her character had sunk in
my esteem since I heard her declare that she
had never loved my brother. The imaginary
link that had bound my sympathy to hers had
disappeared before the truth from her lips. I
no longer looked upon her as a sister. An
admiring friendship for her I must still preserve,
but the romance that had hung about her was
gone.

Somehow our little tea-party went wrong
that night, though Sylvia had adorned the room
prettily with flowers, and the sponge-cakes
were good, and the sunshine came pleasantly
through the open window. Luke refused to
come up to join us, though specially invited.
The doctor blushed too often for his comfort,
and got bewildered by Sylvia's mocking merriment,
and Miss Pollard alarmed us all by
pouring the tea into the sugar-basin. Our two
friends went away together.

"Just like man and wife!" Sylvia said,
laughingly, afterwards; "the little spinster on
tiptoe with delight. It is unreasonable for
anything so antiquated to have a heart."

"Why, you are surely not jealous of Miss
Pollard," I said, smiling in her face.

"Jealous!" she echoed, with an astonished
stare; then laughed heartily to herself, as if at
some secret fun.

"I only mean to say," she said, "that when
the tea poured into the sugar-basin it was the
overflow of the tide of Miss Pollard's feelings,
which sets in the direction of Dr. Strong."

"Nonsense," I said; but by-and-by began to
think that Sylvia was more shrewd than I. She
had walked with them that evening as far as
the gates across the burn. I limped to the
window and saw her coming back alone,
sauntering along the gravel by the garden
wall, her head on a level with the wallflowers
that grew above it. She had on a light-blue
dress and a pink rose in her hair, her hat in her
hand, and walked in the mellow harvest light
of the setting sun.

A group of haymakers going home gazed at
her in shy admiration. Dreamy and pleasant
came the plash of the wheels from beyond the
river. How sweet the hay smelt, and over in
the direction of Eldergowan the woods were
wrapped in purple and gold. I looked at a
bunch of flowers which Mark Hatteraick had
left at the door for me that morning. All the
beauty of the summer evening could not make
me glad, and it struck me sharply at the
moment that I was very young to have given
all the joy out of my life.

I saw Luke emerge from somewhere and
join Sylvia, and the two came slowly together
towards the house, then turned and got lost to
sight among the lilac-trees along the. burn. I
was surprised and pleased to see them such
good friends. I wondered that Sylvia had not
told me about it.

MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S READINGS.

MR. CHARLES DICKENS will read at Preston on Thursday
the 25th; at Blackburn on Friday the 26th; at St.
James's Hall, London, on Monday the 29th; at Stoke on
Tuesday the 30th; at Hanley on Wednesday the 1st of
May; and at Warrington on Thursday the 2nd.