and who damages our religious character for
ever, shall never darken my threshold. I
refuse to act as guardian or trustee. Entreaty
is useless, Jessie! I am a Christian woman
and a mother, and I understand my duties."

So Betty Thorne was written to, and "all
recognition of that unhappy girl" distinctly
declined; coupled with a severe warning which
sounded very like a threat, to "sell the
Hall when she came of age, and never dare
to intrude herself among the members of
a family which disowned her as a disgrace."
After Mrs. Hibbert had written this letter,
she read, as was her daily wont, the lesson of
the day. It chanced to be the history of the
Magdalene, her sins, and her pardon. But
she made no comment, though Paul and
Jessie looked at each other —the girl's pale
eyes full of tears, and the youth's cheek
crimson.

Months and years rolled by; and Jacob's
name was never mentioned, neither was his sin,
neither was his good works. The beautiful
old Hall was still shut up, until Estella should
be of age, and the donations and subscriptions
were punctually remitted; Betty Thorne
writing all the letters in the name of Master's
Heiress.

There was a certain yearly allowance made
by Jacob to a certain widow with five
children —a Mrs. Malahide, relict of Captain
Malahide of the Fourth Engineers. She was
an Everett —Miss Grace Everett —who had
eloped one day with a scampish young
officer with nothing but his pay, and who
had consequently been disinherited by her
father. She was the youngest, and had
been the darling; but she had lost herself
now, they said; and so, though not wholly
dead to, she was partially excommunicate
by, the family. Jacob, as head of the house
since his father's death, had always given
Mrs. Malahide an allowance, with the
consent of Mrs. Hibbert and the archdeacon;
to whom it was a matter of pride rather
than of love that an Everett should not
starve. But for themselves —Grace had
married a poor man and an unconverted
one, and what claim had she, therefore, on
them? So, the archdeacon drove his prancing
bays, and Mrs. Hibbert bought her Lyons
velvets, and they both said that Mrs. Malahide
was only too fortunate in having such a
devoted brother as Jacob, and that her sins
had merited her sufferings. This was the
allowance which Jacob had desired in his
will should be continued until Estella was of
age, but which then she was free to discontinue
or keep up as she liked.

Mrs. Hibbert had not remembered this
clause when she refused to accept the trust
confided to her. Perhaps if she had, she
would have acted differently, from family
interests. For the Everctts dare not, for the
sake of the world's opinion, wholly desert a
sister of their house; and if Jacob's five
hundred a-year were withdrawn, they must
either support Grace themselves, or suffer an
additional family degradation in her poverty.
Neither of which alternatives pleased them.
However, the matter as yet was in abeyance;
but soon to be settled; for the year wanted
only six or seven months of completion which
would see Estella of age, mistress of the
Hall, and of her father's wealth. And Mrs.
Hibbert groaned, and the archdeacon shook
his stick, and something very like an
anathema flew across the seas to rest on the
bright head of the young girl sitting in
the balcony overlooking the Grand Canal at
Venice, thinking of the mother she had loved,
and of the father she had lost.

This young girl leading the secluded life
of a foreign damsel; seeing no one but her
faithful English nurse and the various
mistresses of such accomplishments as her father
had desired her to learn, and her own artistic
taste had directed her to; living in a world
of poetry of her own creation, her full heart
yearning for love and sympathy, and
companionship; her imagination filled with
great visions of her mother's home, of that
large strong England whose voice sounded
through the whole world, and whose sons
held sway in every quarter of the globe; this
young girl stored up large treasures of poetry
and affection, all the purer because of their
depth, all the more enduring because of their
unuse.

Mrs. Malahide lived at Brighton in a
pretty little house on the sea-shore, occupying
herself with the education of her four
daughters —her only son was at Cambridge—
in quite a natural and un-Everett fashion.
Not that she was wholly natural either; for
inherited reserve and early education were
too strong to be set aside, even by the freer
life she had led since her marriage. There
were still traces of Green Grove in the
precise slow manner in which she spoke, and
in the stiff hand held out like a cleft bar of
iron, which formed the chief characteristic of
the Everett world. But she was a good
creature at heart, and had been softened, first by
love and then by sorrow, into more real
amiability than her rigid manners would give
one to believe.

It was to Mrs. Malahide that all Estella's
feelings turned. She knew the secret of her
birth, poor child; and though too ignorant of
the world to understand it in all its social
bearing, yet she was aware that a stain of some
kind rested on her, which made her grateful
for any love as for an act of condescension.
She knew that her father's family had
disowned her, and that the very woman who
had lived on her father's bounty, and who
now expected to live on hers, had written in a
letter to her lawyers, thus: —"No one can feel
more strongly than I the sin and the shame
which the existence of Miss Fay's daughter
entails on our family; still, for the sake of
my children, I trust that she may continue
the allowance made to me by my brother in