pique her into submission by devoting himself to Lady Helen, but he carried out this laudable intention with indifferent success. He was so silent and preoccupied that the young lady accused her brother of having unduly magnified his friend's talents for society: she found him very stiff and disagreeable. Kathleen played her part better: no shade passed over her face of proud beauty: she had a word or a smile for all who approached, and she looked happy and at ease.

CHAPTER X.

Yet better thus, and known to be contemned,
Than still contemned and flattered.

To be worst,
The lowest, and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear:
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter.

KING LEAR.

THE reaction soon came. When they left behind them the lights and music, and the pageant of seeming gaiety, to drive through the deserted streets in early dawn, Kathleen leaned forward to breathe the cool fresh air, not yet laden with the smoke of thousands of fires, unable to answer Lady Harriet's remark.

"I must congratulate you, Kathleen, on the sensation you have made."

For if she had spoken at all, it would have been to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit: she shivered, and not from cold, though Lady Harriet drew up the window.

Too weary for thought, she went to bed, and very soon to sleep, but it was a sleep haunted by dreams in which the past and future were strangely mingled together: she became teacher at a school where Lady Helen Enmore was the most promising pupil, and went with Adelaide to attend Lord De Cressy's wedding at

San Marco, waking in the vain endeavour to distinguish the features of his bride through her lace veil.

Still tired and unrefreshed, Kathleen awoke with a start, and it was a relief to find that she had not passed the hour for her proposed visit to A. B., at Farrance's Hotel. As she knelt down to her morning prayers, and strove to collect her scattered thoughts, her first conversation with Agnes recurred to her mind, and she repeated with clasped hands and quivering lips the prayer for guidance, whose spirit of absolute submission she had then been unable to grasp. "Lead Thou me on, O Lord: the night is dark, and I am far from home. One step enough for me."

When the time for setting out arrived, she put on the close bonnet and sad coloured dress and mantle, which had provoked Mr. De Cressy's criticism on the day they met in the Mall. And few, certainly, would have recognised the beauty of the preceding evening. Her step was languid, her cheek wan and pallid, and the long fringed lids drooped heavily over her eyes, veiling their transparent brilliancy.

The clock was striking nine as she reached the hotel, and another lady came up at the same moment, whom she concluded at once to have come on the same errand as herself. The dress and air were so distinctive that Kathleen could not forbear to wonder if her aspect would be the same after as many years' drudgery. The worn expression, the thin angular figure, on which the barège shawl of many colours hung in such uncompliant folds, the bony fingers over which the thread gloves were in like manner loosely wrinkled, all betrayed the wasting effects of an irksome, poverty stricken life, on mind and body.

Either the perception of her companion was less acute, or Kathleen's appearance did not tell her errand so plainly, for when she presented the advertisement to the porter, with a timid inquiry whether the lady could see her, there was a peevish shake of the head, and a half-uttered soliloquy.

"Dear me, how annoying!"

Kathleen turned to look again at the speaker, and more struck than before by the indications of excessive poverty, she drew back, and said, with gentle courtesy, "If it would make any difference if it is more convenient, I can wait very well."

So

"You are very kind," was the grateful answer. Kathleen was ushered into a little back room, close, and full of flies, to await the result of the first interview. It did not detain her long: in a few minutes she was informed, that Mrs. Irvine wished her to walk upstairs, and she came into the passage in time to see the last of the barège shawl, hanging more hopelessly than ever over the slouching shoulders. Another glance at the sharpened features was scarcely needed to read the tale of depression and disappointment written there.

There was nothing alarming in Mrs. Irvine's appearance, and Kathleen's heart ceased to pant so restlessly. Though no longer young, she was a pretty, fair woman, with a pleasing voice, and an accent so decidedly Scottish, that Kathleen had no difficulty in guessing what was the country to which she must not object.

"Pray sit down, Miss A -," said the lady, half rising.

"Miss Mortimer," said Kathleen, supplying the blank.

"Ah! Miss Mortimer.

You come, I presume, in

reply to my advertisement. May I inquire if you have ever been out before?"

"No, never."

"You have been teacher at a school, perhaps."
Kathleen again replied in the negative.

"Ah! I thought not. There is a something, I can hardly define it, which inclines me to believe that you were not intended to go out in this way. Some family misfortunes, perhaps?"

"Not exactly," said Kathleen; "at least, they are of old standing." Simply and quietly she went on to detail as much of her previous history as seemed necessary: she said that she was an orphan, in dependent circumstances, whom Lady Harriet Wilmot had taken into her family four years before; that they had just returned. from Italy, and that she was now of an age to look for a situation.

"You have been on the Continent for four years," said Mrs. Irvine, with increasing interest; "that is undoubtedly a great recommendation. You must be well versed in modern languages."

Kathleen replied that she could speak French, German, and Italian with equal fluency.

"And music and dancing all accomplishments, in short?" said Mrs. Irvine, scarcely waiting for an affirmative reply. "But, indeed, I need not ask: all these things are acquired abroad as a matter of course. If it was not for the boys, I should try and persuade Mr. Irvine to go to Germany for a year or two, to see what it would do for my girls. They are so dreadfully