that I am always and for ever grateful. My very gratitude, indeed, makes me at this moment only the more utterly miserable."

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Forget it, then, by all means! My dear niece, we must one day understand each other better!" answered Sir Richard, passing his hand caressingly over Theresa's drooping head, while he felt touched and astonished at her look of helpless, hopeless misery. "I like to see your very pretty smile, and wish there were not a sob always treading on its heels. I am ready to forgive you for anything except for being afraid of me! Your old uncle-middle-aged at leastloves young people with all his heart. I indulge them all to excess; and how much more than any others my own darling young niece! Youth and happiness should go together, and are both my delight. Let me see them united in you, Theresa, for the short time we remain together, and I shall enjoy my brief glimpse of home all the more. As we say abroad, 'Be merry, and strike a light to find yourself!'”

Again Theresa coloured scarlet, not with the ingenuous blush of innocent girlhood, but with the crimson blush of shame; her eyes filled with tears, and her voice changed to a tone of the deepest humiliation, when she answered, saying, "If, then, I endeavour to seem happy, Sir Richard, it shall be for your sake; and in the belief that even, if you knew the very worst of me, still your generous nature would wish well to one so young, so utterly helpless, and so deeply tried."

Theresa, unable to control a burst of strong emotion, hurried out of the room, while Sir Richard good-humouredly, but most seriously, lamented to himself that his poor niece seemed to have been brought up under some strong delusion fatal to her peace. What could it be? The Baronet determined that her whole affairs and feelings should be probed, before his departure, to the very bottom, trusting that Theresa's burdened heart might be soon relieved. Truly Sir Richard, when benefit could be conferred on any one, had enterprise and perseverance to a ten-Howard pitch of philanthropy. The worthy Baronet's was a nature to redeem people's estimate of all mankind.

Active preparations were now in progress for the expected arrival at Torchester Abbey of all "Anne's admirers," while Theresa felt as if beset on every side by the already too-wellremembered name of Lord Brentford. It seemed recurring

now constantly, and had become "death to her ear," connected as it was with happy Irish life, with the only happy days, the only blameless hours, she seemed ever likely to know upon earth, and which brought to her mind the thought of one whose assiduities, during the very short period of their meeting, were not easily to be forgotten. Could they be otherwise than acceptable to a sensitive, almost solitary girl, unaccustomed to such flattering homage from an admirer so devoted, so animated, so lavish in his expressions of admiration, and apparently so sincere? How should she meet Lord Brentford now? Theresa's heart sunk at the very thought. "It appears," sighed she heavily, when alone, nothing in life were to go right with me now. But I deserve the very worst."

as if

CHAPTER XXII.

"To soothe thy sickness, watch thy health,
Partake but never waste thy wealth,

Or stand with smiles, unmurmuring by,
And lighten half thy poverty,

Do all but close thy dying eye,

For that I could not live to try,

To these alone my thoughts aspire;

More can I do-or thou require?"-BYRON.

No mortal need ever endure the utmost sufferings of ennui while he can take an active interest in the welfare of all his fellow-creatures. From the period of Sir Richard's early departure abroad, Emily Plantagenet resolved in all earnestness of heart, that though, in consequence of her father's arbitrary interference having apparently for ever banished the only man she could love, her life could not be happy, it should at least be useful; that during each succeeding day and hour she should count only her opportunities of benefiting others-not to lose one; and that thus she would dig in a mine of duties never to be exhausted. Emily had thus an important object for ever before her mind's eye, and felt amply rewarded in the mere effort to do good.

Miss Plantagenet observed in Fanny's conduct and feelings, during her tedious recovery, a beautiful illustration of Christianity in one so young; she was so invariably gentle,

prayerful, full of intense gratitude to all around, and of anxious desire to please. Emily felt that Fanny's whole disposition was deeply interesting, and she had the same tasteful appreciation of beauty in character that connoisseurs have of beauty in painting.

A happier trio could scarcely be found than Emily Plantagenet and her two grateful guests, during the first afternoon that Fanny could be allowed to leave the bed she had so long inhabited, and to enjoy a short excursion into the favourite sitting-room of her very kind benefactress, who joyfully arranged the feeble invalid on a sofa near the window, where many fragrant flowers clustered deliciously around, and where the sun shone cheerfully on a face, the pale beauty of which seemed to have become like that of a seraph.

Deeply had Emily felt, during many long years, a weary blank in possessing no near relatives-the penalty, as she always remarked, of being an heiress; and she sometimes even jestingly expressed a wish that Providence had kindly endowed her with any blind old aunt or cousin, that she might have some one on whom to lavish all the kind impulses of her affectionate nature.

It happened even to Miss Plantagenet that most of her early friends had scattered themselves of late over the Continent. Some were wintering at Naples, others at Rome; two or three were miscellaneously wandering over the habitable globe; many were nobly fighting their country's battles in the Crimea; and four or five had emigrated finally and for ever to Australia or to Canada.

During a long and very tedious illness, from which she had but lately recovered, Emily for the first time discovered how totally alone people may be amidst a crowd of acquaintances. Then innumerable visitors, with a thundering rap at the door of her town house, pushed in their cards of polite inquiry; but among these there were no kind cousins or old friends to claim as a duty and a pleasure the privilege of being admitted to her sick-room. It was, therefore, an inexpressible joy now to Emily that she had found in Fanny a permanent and very suitable companion.

Emily, in her former hours of solitary convalescence, had sent for Mr. Mortimer, the exemplary curate of that parish in London where she resided. He was a man of no particular income, struggling through oceans of trouble and of

almost heroic exertions to maintain his numerous family, and to do good in his populous district, but poverty checked him coldly in on every side. By means of this exemplary clergyman, the very cream of human excellence, Emily attained that fervent desire of her soul, to achieve something for the happiness of others, and to see how much one energetic individual can accomplish for the good of all, while living in her own home, and spreading her influence like sunshine around it.

When Fanny one morning, soon after her recovery, lay quiet and undisturbed on the sofa, in a perfect trance of felicity, with Miss Plantagenet by her side, and the good kind Susan holding her hand, Mr. Mortimer entered the drawing-room to give Emily his weekly statement of all that he had recently done on her account for the London poor. Seldom had she and Mrs. O'Hara been more enjoyably interested than in the simple narrative of Mr. Mortimer's home-mission to the Metropolitan poor, among whom they had themselves been so lately classed.

After having given some very heart-rending descriptions of patient suffering in the lanes and hovels of his district, Mr. Mortimer proceeded to say that he had been surprised in the morning by a message, requesting him to call at Lord Tipperary's on special business, "and," added the good curate, gravely, "he actually wished me to aid the ends of justice by becoming a thief-taker! Knowing that I shun no haunts of misery or vice, his Lordship asked me to assist him in detecting a criminal of atrocious character, who has hitherto most marvellously eluded every effort to capture him. It is a painful duty, but still it is a duty, for all men, without exception, to assist in preserving the laws of property and life. If a murderer as well as a thief-and this criminal seems to be both-escape with impunity, that becomes a public misfortune. By Lord Tipperary's account, there never existed a more drunken reprobate. Swindling, lying, thieving, and even murder are among the counts in that wretched man's indictment.. I forgot to ask his name, but of course he has a dozen, and a clue has been at last discovered by which Mr. O'Grady undertakes that if I lend my aid, he may be captured to-morrow."

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But," asked Emily, little conscious of the death-like interest with which her two auditors were listening, while

their hearts almost ceased to beat as she spoke, "are you really bound by duty and conscience to give assistance in capturing this man?"

"Undoubtedly, for it is dangerous to society that such a villain should go loose. His crimes appear, from Lord Tipperary's account, to be atrocious; while, at the same time, he is so immensely cunning and so very powerful in strength, that already he has twice broken loose after being taken. I have merely been asked to persuade an old woman, one of my pensioners, that she must allow O'Grady, with a file of policemen, to be concealed in her own garret, standing close beside the room in which that miserable rascal burrows at night. He reels home every evening after dark, therefore the police are to be in readiness. The criminal must be seized as soon as he sleeps, that being the only chance to prevent a desperate and even murderous resistance."

Susan, by an almost miraculous effort, steadied her voice sufficiently to say, though almost stifled with agitation, Might you tell us where that lodging is?"

"In the worst locality I know," replied Mr. Mortimer, surprised at the tremulous accents with which that question had been asked. "The wretched man's refuge is in a miserable hole, the wonder and horror of all who enter. The street is most inappropriately named 'Paradise-row!' Lord Tipperary tells me the criminal once had a wife, but he says she forsook him as soon as he got into trouble. There were also two girls in the family, who made, as Lord Tipperary said, a most disgraceful attempt to inveigle some of his nearest relatives, when in Ireland, into marrying them. Altogether the annals of that family are, according to Mr. O'Grady's account, about as odious a tissue of cunning and crime as the wickedness of human nature ever put together. I feel no scruple about bringing them to punishment, in the hope that it may bring them to repentance."

Every drop of blood was drained from the livid face of Susan O'Hara when she now looked up, during one short moment, at the unconscious speaker, and she would have seemed like a corpse but for those eyes, vivid with a thousand emotions of grief and dismay which became sadly and most mournfully fixed on the placid countenance of Miss Plantagenet. Gradually big tears gathered in Susan's eyes, she bent her head down to the very pillow on which Fanny