had received her child in that favourite little dressing room; but Ernest she could scarcely forgive so readily; and though she sent him a message of conciliation, it was not for some days that she allowed him to see her.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

RACHEL; AN EPISODE.

PART II.

SOME of the characters in our story have been accustomed to go into very strange places, such as indeed few but authors ever venture to look into, and they only through a telescopic medium of sympathy and imagination. To one such singular haunt we must introduce our readers, and into it we should, personally, have been rather more afraid of venturing than into the miserable ground-floor in St. Giles's we last saw; there we beheld the outcasts of civilized society, the victims of its thoughtlessness and of its vices; here are the deliberately depraved systematic villains. But we have but little to do with them, and shall only be detained a few minutes.

Seated in a long but narrow room, meanly furnished with deal chairs, round a table extending its whole length, were a party of men and women who seemed to be on the strangest of all possible terms with each other. The firmly closed shutters refused to admit

a ray of the twilight which had scarcely begun in the dusky streets without, and the apartment was only illuminated by lights placed in tall iron candlesticks at unequal distances upon the long table.

It would have puzzled a chance observer greatly, to determine to what class these persons belonged, or in what occupation the generality of them were engaged, as with pens ink and paper before them, they bent over the table. Dress could be no criterion; there was the perfectly fitting black coat and the spotless cravat of the "quiet respectable gentleman,” the rough bearskin of the complete traveller, and several of those eccentric costumes which make gentlemen look so remarkably like mouse-colored Skye terriers; there too was the fashionable college coat, with its wide silk-lined sleeves, casting a pink blush over the snowy wristband; but beside its wearer sat, on very familiar terms, an old woman with a red and yellow handkerchief on her head, and a tobacco pipe in her mouth. And vis-a-vis to a gentlemanly looking man whose high forehead and fine grey hair might have belonged to some elderly patrician, was the unmistakeable dealer in "Marine Stores."

It seemed as if the aristocratic company by which he was surrounded had given all their watches and pocket handkerchiefs in charge of this worthy, so busy was he in sorting and arranging a large number of these articles. A stranger too might have noticed that the small white right hand common to most of the party had one striking peculiarity, namely, that

the first and second fingers were of precisely the same length, and ornamented profusely with glittering rings.

The faces too which bent over the table were a complete study for the physiognomist, the prevailing expression being of watchfulness, mingled with cunning, and an earnestness of purpose worthy to be exerted in a better cause. The pens moved slowly and cautiously over the papers, producing documents of a strange character like antique MSS., Bank Post bills, and signatures of private letters. It is the school of systematic fraudulence; and many of the exquisite gentlemen here rejoice in the title of FORGER.

We have, as we have said, but little to do with this assemblage; our business is with one too well known here, who in this school had learned too great a facility in copying handwriting. A girl with long dishevelled hair, and with a vacant glare in her dark bloodshot eyes, sits crouching down in the corner by the fire, stretching her skeleton hands over it and moaning to herself—mad, mad. She was muttering something about the sea and a ship; and she took a dirty Times Supplement from her bosom, and read a paragraph in the first column and laughed, and thrusting it in again, began a low wild song. The company looked at her and shuddered; and a woman evidently in high repute among them, left her seat at the head of the table, and going to her and laying her hand on her shoulder,

whispered "Rachel Rachel Johnstone, don't you know me? what is it you want me to do for you?" It was a light touch, and gentle as that of a mother were the accents in which the abandoned one whispered to the outcast. It was like a soft and healing dew-like the soft notes of the lute-it was the notes of human kindness and sympathy but it was all unheeded by the unhappy girl to whom it was addressed.

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You," she answered with a hysteric shriek, "you, Elise Delaurcourt, or Betty Dudson, or whatever it pleases you to be called-what do I want you to do? I want to write a letter but, you need not know where it's to go-some where and to some one you know "Down among the dead men," she sang suddenly, with a loud harsh voice, and one or two of the company took up the chorus.

"Silence," cried Madame Delaurcourt, "silence; the creature is as mad as a March hare."

"Why did you let her come here, Madame ?" asked an evangelical minister; "she will betray us all when she gets to Bedlam."

"Not she; who will pay attention then to what she says? But I can see that she will be wild in half-an-hour; get a great coat on one of ye, and take her to the Police, we can't have her here; they would be on us directly; the first shriek would bring them, they have been waiting long enough round the house."