little Welshwoman breaking into a respectful panegyric on liberty.

"Liberty!" cried she, with enthusiasm; "Liberty is our very breath of life: take that from us and we die! What a glorious decision was that of Lord Mansfield, in which he declared that no slave could live on English ground—no slave could breathe English air!"

"Ah! my excellent Mistress Alice, spare us your pet story for once!" interposed Lady Leigh, deprecatingly; "we all know it from beginning to end. Granville Sharp and his interesting negro have our best sympathy and admiration, I assure you, and Lord Mansfield's principle meets our full approval. Let us hear the other side of the question. Madame Lefevre, according to your views, what is liberty?"

"Hélas, my lady, what for you ask me? La liberté; it is wild beast anarchy déguisé, masqué. La liberté à nous autres ce n'est pas votre freedom à vous! seen it ravage my country like a Talk to me not of liberté, it is the bad deeds! I will not hear it. nobles, assassinés; our lands

Our liberté! Have I not boar out of the forest? password of bad men to Our king, our queen, our

"Never mind the confiscations, madame; they are a thricetold tale," said Lady Leigh, between a laugh and a yawn. "I am afraid you will never come by your own again, so it is consoling to hear that you contemn liberty and take so kindly to your exile and servitude."

'My servitude-ah, non, non!" and the poor withered lady dropped her head over her embroidery, repeating the hateful word again and again in every variety of intonation expressive of disgust and weariness. Mistress Alice Johnes, who was well placed and tough of spirit, and who had risen instead of declining in the world, regarded her contemptuously, as the big tears trickled down her high thin nose and then dropped on her lean shaky hands, so busy with the rich carmines of a half-blown rose. After controlling her heat for some moments she was constrained to speak by the effervescent fervour of her emotions, and addressed the poor stranger with an air of withering rebuke:

"France is not capable of bearing freedom," said she; "liberty is like a high-mettled steed; give it air, give it exercise, give it the reason-curbed use of its magnificent powers, and behold in it a perfect work of God, obedient ever to the hand of the master rider; but confine it, gag it, stall

feed it, maltreat it, and it will surely destroy any that attempt. to mount it, when it escapes its prison."

"You are grandiloquent in metaphor, Mistress Alice," sneered Lady Leigh; "now, madame, it is your turn again." She delighted to pit the two poor ladies against each other, and to hear how they raved; but this time madame declined the challenge, except to say, with low-voiced fervour

"There is a difference, a juste milieu, between the anarchy of revolution and the anarchy of the military despotism which the Emperor has established. Ah! my Lady Leigh, all honour, courage, patriotism, are not dead in the breasts of my countrymen; France will yet be free!"

Sempronious appeared in the presence for the third time. “Missa Lilian not in garden," repeated he; "Missa Lilian run away!"

Lady Leigh turned round with an angry frown.

"How dare you say that, sir? Why should any one run away from me? Madame, give me my hood, and I will seek the child myself. Helena, lend me your arm," and, clutching her gold-headed stick, she marched away across the hall, leaning upon her sister-in-law, and went out on the sunshiny terrace, below the windows where Lilian had been playing. The two companions presently followed, with their ladies' mantillas, and themselves ready to join in the quest.

"Mistress Alice Johnes, you have almost a man's voice, call the child. She is hiding somewhere among the bushes,' said Lady Leigh.

The Welshwoman lifted up a very sonorous tone, but there was no response, though she cried out three times.

"The little rebel! I will have Hilton whip her soundly when she comes back," said Lilian's patroness, angrily.

"You will never whip her into love of you, Augusta," whispered Lady Nugent.

Those gardens on the Minster Hill were beautiful old places. The houses stood very high, and the ground descended from them in successive lawns and terraces, laid out with gay flower knots and clumps of evergreens. The afternoon sunshine was now richly pouring through the thick trees, and just as they came out the Minster bell began to ring for evening prayers.

"The little child may have run into the church; she talks for ever of her father and his grand music," suggested Madame Lefevre.

"Perhaps so, but she should not have gone alone; she is disobedient," curtly replied Lady Leigh: but she accepted the offered clue and descended the terrace steps to the street, which was excluded from view by a high wall and double row of sycamores. The street curved round the south side of the hill at the base of the old gardens; the palisaded enclosure of the great grave-yard was its other boundary, and looking straight across the wildnerness of mounds and stones to its farther side, several ancient houses showed through the dim sultriness of shadow cast upon them by the Minster church itself. In one of these curious dwellings Peter Carlton had lived ever since he was elected to the office of organist; and from its low-studded door the four ladies now saw him issue, leading naughty, truant Lilian by the hand. The little maiden's golden hair was all uncovered, her white, plump arms were glancing bare, and over her shoulder she carried the lily stem as if it were a sword. She looked so pretty and so happy, so negligent and so fearless, dancing along by her father's side, that Lady Nugent's motherly heart yearned towards her.

"It is only natural, Augusta, do not let us spoil her enjoyment," pleaded she; and Lady Leigh grimly acquiesced.

There was a flagged pathway between two high banks of graves from the old houses to a side entrance of the church, and while Peter Carlton was unlocking the door with his pass-key, Lilian espied the towering figure of her patroness advancing with the other ladies. She broke into a tricksy laugh, shook her head at them mischievously, and then vanished like a sunbeam into the interior gloom. Lady Leigh did not seem very well pleased with this baby defiance; however, she let it pass, and proposed that since they were so near they should go to prayers. Shut up in their dignified stalls, the ladies could see the lily-head nodding over the curtain of the organ loft, and occasionally a tiny hand drew the red folds aside, and a fair laughing face peeped down to where they sat. When the prayers were ended, and the concluding voluntary was being played, they went down one of the side aisles to the foot of the organ-loft stairs, and there waited until Peter Carlton and his little daughter appeared. Peter made them a low reverence as he descended, almost tripping himself up over the uneven stones in the excess of his humility. He was a long-nosed melancholy enthusiast, black-haired and lean, a ludicrous contrast to his bright bud

of a child. Lady Nugent regarded his sallow visage with pity, and secretly hoped that he would assert his right to reclaim Lilian; but he did not. When Lady Leigh extended her hand to take possession of the child, he bowed low again, and gave it up without demur. Lilian looked into his face for a moment or two with wistful, tear-bright eyes of entreaty, but as he only said

"You must go, Lily," and turned away his face, she leant her pretty head against her patroness's rich silken sleeve, and accompanied her without a word.

The struggle was not harder for Lilian than it was for Peter. Peter owed an unredeemable debt to Lady Leigh, or so his intense gratitude taught him to think. She had found him almost starving, with a sick young wife, a baby, and no work. He had Italian blood in his veins, derived from his mother, who had been a singer and actress; from her, too, he had drawn his passionate love of music, the only vocation he had ever attempted to follow; but this vocation had never found him or his in bread, until Lady Leigh, having assured herself of his personal worth and professional capability, exerted all her influence to get him appointed organist and master of the church choristers. Very soon after his young wife died, and Lady Leigh, thinking to confer upon him yet another kindness, deprived him of his child.

When the whole party were again in the street, and progressing slowly homewards under the shady garden wall, Lady Nugent, in her kindness of heart, made another effort for the little exile.

Lady Leigh was rather impatient of what she called her sister's "solicitous crotchets," but at last she said, in reply to her arguments—

"Well, Helena, if I am successful in getting possession of the boy I have set my mind on to bring up, I will let Lilian go." "Then you have a boy in view! Who is it?" asked Lady Nugent, in unfeigned surprise.

"I will tell you by-and-by, for here he comes with young George Sancton-observe him well."

The two boys would have passed the stately dowagers by had not Lady Leigh, resting on her gold-headed stick, bidden them to stop. She held them in talk several minutes, and then dismissed them with a nod of her head.

"How do you like his appearance? He is a handsome, intelligent-looking lad, is he not?" she asked, quietly.

"Who is he, Augusta? You have some mystery under this?"

"Does he remind you of any one? Madame, you may leave us for the present. My sister and I wish to be alone."

The attendant gentlewoman quickly disappeared into the house, Lilian vanished amongst the flowers, and the two ladies, slowly following into the garden, seated themselves on a rustic chair under a wide-spreading tree. Lady Nugent only replied to her sister's last question by a puzzled look. Lady Leigh repeated, "Does he remind you of any one?" 'Why do you set me riddles? It is Philip he is like," said Lady Nugent, faintly.

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"Yes, Helena, and he is Philip's son. He is a twin brother of the boy whom Tom Nugent wrote to me about." Lady Nugent flushed all over her pale, gentle face: "Who told you so, Augusta?" she asked.

"Dorothea Sancton. He is the boy whom I saw at Miss Kibblewhite's, and it seems that when I was gone he told her his history. She said that when he spoke of his mother he was almost heart-broken."

"Then is that story Dean Mauleverer had heard from his cousin Ford true-the marriage at Chinelyn?"

"I am afraid it is but too true-so the lad informed Dorothea. His mother is lately dead, and I hear that she was a niece of old Joshua Hawthorne, the varnish-maker in Maiden lane."

There was a long silence. Lady Nugent's conscience was deeply wounded for her son. She was self-convicted of having indulged him in his wilful ways, until her mother's heart and woman's hand were found far too weak to curb his masterful passions; and here were the fruits of them, suddenly springing up in the declining path of her life to renew the old grief and fret.

"I intend to claim the guardianship of this Robert Hawthorne myself," said Lady Leigh, presently. "We might have been proud to look to such a boy as heir of our house, but as that cannot be, I will make him a soldier and leave him all I have. Others like him have risen into repute, and made their bar sinister to be forgotten, have married well and founded families; why should not he?"

"But, Augusta, might not Philip resent your interference?" said Lady Nugent, timidly.

"What care I for Philip's resentment or Philip's approval.