"Well, go away now, Janet," she said,
rather peevishly;  " and if you have any
common sense left, remember my warning. I
tell you that this marriage with Robert
Maylin will make you the most miserable
woman in existence. He is a worthless
fellow "—Janet pouted, and gave her head
the slightest possible inclination of a toss—
"and he will get tired of you before the year
is out. And when he has spent all your money,
for he is marrying you for nothing else " —
Miss Janet pursed up a very pretty pair of
lips: "something better than that," she
thought — " and when he has drunk away all
your income, he will get cross to you, and
perhaps beat you, and then leave you on the
parish. This is the history of nine-tenths of
you young fools who marry for love, as you
call it. And, who knows?—you may have
some little children; the thing is not
impossible; but if you have, what will you do
when you cannot give them bread? Think
of that!—a squalling starving family about
you! Go along, you foolish girl. I am
provoked with your obstinacy. To prefer that
good-for-nothing fellow, and all his wicked
ways to a comfortable home and an indulgent
mistress—it is really too bad! And how
I am to be suited when you leave me, I'm
sure I don't in the world know. But you
girls are so ungrateful, it is of no use to
be kind to you. As soon as you have got
into our little ways, and begin to understand
us, you leave us without gratitude or
remorse, and we have all the trouble of teaching
a new servant over again. There, go along—
do; try if you cannot spend half an hour in
the day usefully; and go and trim my blue
cap, and do it better than you did last time.
I won't have Robert Maylin's love in my
work; and I am sure since you have been
mad after that fellow you have done nothing
well, and scarcely done anything at all."

And Miss Harrington, drawing her easy-
chair closer to the fire, adjusted her spectacles,
and began on the police sheet of the Times;
feeling that she had disburdened her conscience,
and performed her duty to society.

Janet shut the drawing-room door, thoughtfully:
not because she believed implicitly in
all the forebodings of her mistress; but they
struck on her sadly somehow, and she wished
they had not been said. But Robert Maylin,
to whom she told a little—not all— that had
passed, called Miss Harrington "a stupid old
muff," and told Janet so often that she was a
fool to listen to her, that at last Janet
believed him, and said, " Yes, she was a fool,"
too.

And then he swore eternal love for the
hundredth time that week; and looked so
handsome while he did so, that Janet, gazing
at him with a kind of wondering spell-bound
admiration, thought there was more truth
in one of his smiles, and more worth in one of
his words, than in all Miss Harrington's
fancies and frets put together.

'' I am sure you will always be kind to me,
Robert," she said, suddenly, laying her hand
on his shoulder, and looking at him in her
guileless way, right into his eyes.

She was a pretty girl, our Janet, with an
open, truthful forehead, and a loving smile;
and Robert thought he had never seen her
look so pretty as now.

"Kind, Janet? Am I a man and could I
be anything else but kind to any woman in
the world—still less to one I loved? I could
not lift my hand against a woman, if you
paid me for it. I am not one of those brutes
who kick and cuff you about like dogs.—Kind!
no woman ever found me unkind yet. I love
them all too well for that—though, perhaps,
a precious sight of you have found me too
much the contrary," he added, with a slight
laugh below his breath. Janet did not hear
this last clause; which, perhaps, was quite
as well, as matters stood.

Janet was comforted, credulous, and
convinced. She knew nothing of a young girl
lying pale in her shroud in a certain churchyard,
because Robert Maylin had first loved
and then deserted her. She had never heard
either of Mary Williams, the wife of young
John Williams, the baker, who took to drinking
about a year after she had known Robert
Maylin to hide her love and remorse together,
and who had been willing to leave her three
little ones, if he would have taken her off
with him as he offered. She was ignorant of
the history of the pretty housemaid in
Berkeley Square, where Robert was footman,
who had lost her situation—and more too—
for love of that handsome villain; and who
had been afterwards taken up near Waterloo
Bridge, mad with despair and destitution.
People did say he had stolen her savings as
well, though she was so infatuated with him
she would not prosecute him; and only cried
like one distraught when he left her to the
workhouse or to the streets. She knew
nothing of the life he had led since he left
home, a bold and beautiful boy of fifteen, to
seek his fortune in the world; and treated as
slanders the faint rumours every now and
then flying about, of the curse he had been,
to every pretty woman who had taken his
fancy. She believed in his worth, because
she loved him for his good looks; and she
made, as all women do, the hero of her heart
the model of her morality also.

The wedding-day came at last. Miss
Harrington, who had been dignified and ill used,
sulky and snappish by turns, gave the dinner
—from charity she said—gave the wedding
clothes, because country girls have no notion
of propriety, and she did not choose her old
servant to disgrace her house; and she gave
two-thirds of the furniture— "only to keep
the poor wretch from, the workhouse at first;
she will be sure to go there in the end."

"It is not because I approve of the match,
or like the man," she said. " I do neither;
it is only from the merest charity that I give