at intervals from one or other of the family;
but she was not allowed to answer them. Her
mother now and then sent a brief note to the
effect that Mabel was well: which brief note was
always submitted to Mr. Saxelby's inspection
before being despatched. At last came a
letter to Mrs. Saxelby, signed Mary Walton
Earnshaw, saying that she and her husband
had felt for some time that Mr. and Mrs.
Saxelby desired to put an end to communication
between the two families, and that,
though they should never cease to love their
dear brother Philip's daughter, they would send
her no more unwelcome letters.

Prom that time forward, no mention was ever
made to Mabel of her father's relatives, and
they dropped completely out of her life. But
she cherished a loving memory of them in her
faithful heart.

CHAPTER II. A JULIET UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

SOME six weeks after Mabel had left Hazlehurst
her mother received from her the following
letter:

                  "Eastfield, December 30, 18—.
"Dearest Mamma. My last letter told you so
much of my life here that I have little more to
say on that score. The work is irksome and
incessant ; but, for the present, I am well,
though when I saw my pale face in the glass
last night, I thought I looked quite old. What
I am chiefly writing about now, is a discovery I
made yesterday. You know that I lent Corda
Trescott my Robinson Crusoe. Well, her
father, it seems, brought it back himself; but
it was in the first moments of our great sorrow,
and I did not think of mentioning the circumstance
to you, nor did I open the book. I
don't know why I put it in my trunk to bring
away, but there I found it when I unpacked my
clothes. Last night I came upon the book,
which had been lying beside my little desk ever
since my arrival at this place, and I opened it
mechanically. Between the fly-leaf and the
title-page I found the enclosed little note
from Corda. Now, dear mamma, I mean to
write to the Trescotts to ask for Aunt Mary's
address, and then I shall send her a letter,
which I will first forward for your perusal. I
hope, dear mamma, that you will not oppose my
doing so. My life here is wretched; that is the
truth. I would keep it from you if there were
any hope of an improvement in the state of
things, out there is none. As to my profiting
by the masters' lessons, that is a farce. I am
wasting my life; and for your sake and
Dooley's, as well as my own, I feel that I must
make an effort in another direction. I promised
you to give this school-plan a six months' trial,
and I will keep my promise; but I am convinced
that it will never afford a decent livelihood for
myself. How, then, can I hope to do anything for
Dooley or for you? Let me have your consent
to attempt the career that has been my dream
for so long. I think—I believe—I could achieve
success; at all events, take my most solemn
assurance that I cannot be more miserable in
mind than I am here. I grieve—oh how I
grieve!—to distress you, darling mother, but I
know it is right. Love me, and forgive me,
dearest mamma, and kiss my own sweet Dooley's
soft cheeks for your ever loving
                                                    "MABEL."

The following was Corda's little note enclosed
in the letter, and written in a large round
childish hand:

"Dear Miss Mabel. I am very obliged to you
for lending me this book, and I am very glad to
find that Missis Walton is your aunt, for she is
a very kind lady, like you, and she gave me
the fairy stories and she was very kind to
me, and papa knew her in Yorkshur, and
please accept my best love from your grateful
little friend,
       "CORDELIA ALICE MARY TRESCOTT."

Mabel had indeed passed a weary time at
Eastfield. The school was by no means a first-class
one. A kind of odour of poverty exhaled from
the house. Every necessary comfort was pinched
and pared down to the narrowest possible
dimensions. Mrs. Hatchett, the schoolmistress,
passed her life in that most depressing of human
occupations, a struggle to keep up appearances.
Gentility was her Moloch, to whom she offered up
such little children as came within her clutches.
Perhaps, however, the parents who sent their
children to Mrs. Hatchett's school were more
to blame than that lady herself. Second-
rate tradespeople in a small way of business
chiefly composed her clientèle; and these people
expected that their daughters should receive a
"genteel" education, at a yearly rate of
payment which would scarcely have sufficed to board
and lodge them in a thoroughly good and
wholesome manner. So the little girls were crammed
four into one small sleeping room; and had
their stomachs filled with heavy suet-pudding
instead of eating nourishing food, and breathing
pure air. But they learned to torture a
pianoforte, and they had a foreign governess
who taught them lady's-maid's French with a
Swiss accent (though this was of less
consequence, as none of the girls were ever able to
speak a syllable of the language thus imparted),
and their parents flattered themselves that they
were doing their duty by them, and giving them
a "genteel" education.

The contemplation of this state of things
was painful to Mabel's clear sense and
upright conscience. But she had little leisure to
consider the abstract evils of the case, for the
pains and penalties inseparable from a system
of hollowness and falsehood pressed very closely
upon her.

As she had told her mother, the promise that
she should have opportunities of profiting by
the lessons of the masters was a mere farce.
The literal words of her engagement were that
she should be allowed to devote her "leisure
hours" to her own studies. She had no
leisure hours. Her days were occupied in