and these children Mr. Walbrooke had,
apparently, adopted. The Grange had
been their home ever since their father's
death; and though Mr. Walbrooke had
other nephews and nieces, there seemed to
be no doubt that he meant to make Harry
his heir. He was fond and proud of the
lad; proud of his riding so well to
hounds; proud of the bag he brought
home to his own gun when he went out
rabbit shooting; and very proud of his
manly address and handsome face. No-
thing was too good for Master Harry; he
brought back to school more pocket-money,
and received more hampers every "half,"
than any other boy at Westminster. But
no one ever grudged him these; for a
more generous fellow never lived. He
was for sharing everything with those he
liked. As to me, knowing I had nothing
to give in return, I used to feel ashamed
to take all the good things he thrust upon
me. The utmost I could do was to help
him in his Latin verses, and to tender
such wholesome counsel at times as saved
him, I believe, from more than one
ging.

a fine stately place; and the manner of life there realised all that I had pictured of the grand old English style. There was hospitality without stint and without ostentation; a sense of abundance without extravagance, which, I have since observed, is not as common in the dwellings of the rich as one might expect. This was Mr. Walbrooke's chief virtue. He had no vices; but his excellence, and the world considered him excellent, was of a negative kind. He went to church; he was a Tory; he never quarrelled openly with any of his neighbours, nor exercised any harsh tyranny at home. But then everybody gave way to him, and had given way all his life. He was the most obstinate man I ever knew. When he took up an idea-and one often failed to see what possible object he proposed to himself-he would sacrifice everything to carrying it out. He never lost his temper, but he had a persistent way which bore down all opposition. Mrs. Walbrooke was her husband's chief slave. There is little further to be said of her. In flog-person she resembled one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's most affected portraits, but like them she represented a gentlewoman. She played on the harp indifferently, and worked in floss silks. She sat at the head of her table gracefully; and had a very pleasant cordial manner, which attracted, until one came to perceive that it meant nothing. She had taken to Harry and Lena, as if they had been her own children, and the girl was fond of her aunt. But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Walbrooke had qualities which obtain a lasting influence over children. Harry's way and his uncle's had not hitherto clashed. In all ordinary matters, the boy had a great ascendancy over his uncle, but the time would come when that obedience which is begotten of admiration and respect for character would not be forthcoming and I foresaw that the strain upon affection and gratitute would be more than it could stand. For Harry knew his uncle's foibles, and talked of them more openly than I liked, though he loved him, and was fully sensible that all he had he owed to Mr. Walbrooke.

I have said the contrast between our social positions was great; but it is not my intention to say more about myself than is absolutely necessary. In undertaking to write this narrative I had other objects in view than to record my own career. This much must be told, however: my father was very poor, I was his only child, and his hope was to have seen me in one of the learned professions. But my taste for art was so pronounced, that, with his usual kindness, he allowed me to follow the bent of my inclinations. I became a student of the Royal Academy, on leaving Westminster; my friendship with Harry Walbrooke, however, was not snapped asunder, as such intimacies generally are in like cases. On Saturday afternoons I often paid him a visit; and once or twice my father obtained leave to take him to the pit of Drury Lane, where he witnessed Miss O'Neill's acting in Venice Preserved, as I well remember. Harry wept plentifully, while I appeared to be unmoved. My father could not understand what seemed to him a contradiction in our characters. But it was not so. Harry's feelings were always demonstrative and uncontrolled; mine, by a tacit understanding with myself, had been used to restraint from a very early age.

The year after I left Westminster, I went for the first time, on Mr. Walbrooke's invitation, to stay at the Grange. It was

:

Shortly before my first visit to the Grange a new inmate had come there. She was but a very young girl, yet she had a history. It was this. A curate named Fleming, living near London, had found at his gate one September evening, sixteen years before this, a bundle, which, upon examination, proved to contain a female infant, some few weeks old. Upon her

manent one. All hearts, more or less, were laid at the feet of the slight, dark-eyed girl, whose voice and whose smile had a subtle charm, which no other voice and smile I have ever known possessed. What was it about her which was so unlike any other woman? I ask myself now. She always reminded me of one of Francia's or Gian Bellini's Madonnas, in her sweet gravity and girlish dignity; but the mystery of those deep eyes was, at moments, lighted up by passionate flashes, which belonged not to that type of divine calm, the "peace which passeth understanding." With her passionate nature, she had a tendency to melancholy, which, reading her character by the light of subsequent events, I have no doubt was entirely beyond her control, and sprang from causes dating from her birth itself. She could be joyous enough at times, however, and her intense power of sympathy made her a delightful companion for Lena, who soon grew as docile as a lamb in her hands.

was pinned a paper, with the name "As-apparent that her "visit" would be a persunta," written in what was apparently a foreign hand. The child's eyes and complexion seemed to indicate that she came of Italian parents; but no clue to them could be obtained. The presumption was (taking the infant's age into consideration) that she had been born on the Festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, in honour of which she had been named; and that, driven by some dire necessity, the parents now sought a home for their poor baby at the door of a benevolent man, whose character was well known. It may be well to state here, lest the lovers of sensation should expect a romance upon this head, that nothing was ever known of Assunta's parentage. She may have been the offspring of an organ-grinder. But she had that noble inheritance which is not of this earth, which nothing can give, or take away. Mr. Fleming had been married some few years, but had no children at this time. He was a young man of æsthetic tastes, who indulged far more than his means justified in rare editions, old engravings, and the like. He had made an imprudent marriage in every sense of the word, having taken unto himself, at the age of twenty, a girl possessed of nothing but a pretty face. She had grieved and fretted at having no children of her own, and jumped at the idea of adopting this little Italian baby. Her kind husband weakly yielded to her importunity. She told him it was "Christian-like," which it might be, but it was not politic, Christianity and policy not being identical; and the young couple took upon themselves a burden which, as time went on, weighed heavily upon them. In course of years it came to pass that four children were born, and then, what to do with Assunta became a serious question. She was remarkably clever; Mr. Fleming taught her himself, and, being a good modern linguist, as well as a classical scholar, her education was far more thorough than most women's. How Mr. Walbrooke heard of Mr. Fleming, and of Assunta, I forget now; but the idea occurred to him that Lena might learn more with a teacher who was at the same time a companion, than she had done with two governesses of mature experience, who had found the task of instructing her beyond them. It was an experiment, taking such a mere child as Assunta was in years to control a somewhat unruly little lady like Lena; but Miss Fleming came, ostensibly on a visit to the Grange, and once there it became very soon

I had not been two days at the Grange before I saw how it would be. She and Harry were nearly of an age (I believe she was a few months older), how could they do otherwise than fall in love with each other? God knows, I suffered enough after that first visit, for many a long year, on her account; yet I was thankful to have had my eyes open to the truth at once. I never had any delusion, never was buoyed up by false hope. I knew she was beyond my reach, and I was loyal to my friend. He possessed everything in the world to make a girl love him; I possessed nothing. It would have been useless to try and enter into rivalry with him, had I been so minded. Though Assunta was more reserved in her manner with

Harry than with me, numberless little indications told me that already the girl thought of him with a deep and particular interest; and being given to observe closely, even at that age, I felt certain that if she really gave her heart, it would be until death.

It was summer time, and while Harry was fishing, I used to wander into a beech wood, at the back of the house, ostensibly to sketch. The stream wound its way through this wood, now brawling over pebbles, with the loud voice of shallowness, now stealing over pools in the quiet strength of depth. Gravelly banks, hollowed out by the action of the stream when swollen, and crowned with feathery grasses, overhung the water, leaving scarce soil enough in places to sustain the roots of

some slanting beech, whose silvery arms little fishes," said her brother, as he stooped stretched far across the stream. It was of and made a cup of his two hands. "They such a spot as this that I was making a are as cheeky as anything one minute, study which required much care and more whisk their tails in one's very face, and skill than I could then master. I returned the next, they come up and ask to be to my work several days, and was generally hooked quite demurely." alone; but on one occasion, about mid- But, whether in retaliation for this speech day, Harry joined me. He was wading or not, Lena, after a noisy effort to imbibe slowly up the stream, his trousers tucked something from the impromptu goblet, deabove his knees, his bare brown legs gleam-clared it to be a miserable failure-she ing like a Triton's through the silvery could not get a drop. Then she stood at water, which he flogged with a pertinacity the edge of the stream, and tried herself, which had been but ill-repaid, judging by and the water ran through her fingers, and the empty basket slung upon his back. all down the front of her frock. While he stood grumbling at his ill-luck, inveighing against the sun that would shine, and the fish that wouldn't bite, a merry shout, which we both recognised as Lena's, broke from a pathway in the wood hard by. A moment later she came in sight, dragging Miss Fleming along by a scarf she had wound round her waist.

After

which nothing would serve her but that Assunta should make the experiment. The girl's small brown hands hollowed themselves like two close-fitting shells, and reaching down she filled and lifted them to the child's mouth, who clapped her hands with delight, shouting:

"Assunta's done it! Assunta's done it! She didn't spill a drop. And oh! you don't know how good it is! You can't do it, you great clumsy Harry-ask Assunta to give you some.

Then Harry, after sundry efforts, in which I believe he purposely failed, humbly begged Miss Fleming to give him some water in her hands. I think, for one mo- | ment, she hesitated; but to decline was to attach too much importance to an act of child's play. With a faint blush she stooped, and once more filled the cup made by her fingers in the stream. As they stood there, she on the strip of shore, her arms lifted towards him, he in the water, a little below her, his fine profile buried in the girl's hands, it was a group ready made for any sculptor. And I seemed to foreread the history of those two lives in the momentary action. She will always be a little above him; but he may drink, an' he list, the pure water of a noble life at her hands.

She dropped them ere he had quite done, and some of the water was spilt. The blood flushed up to her very brow as she turned away. And I knew that he had kissed her hands.

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"I am thirsty. I want to drink some of that clear cold water, Harry. I wish I was a fish, I'd come up and look at you, and say, 'Don't you wish you may catch me?' and then dart away, and lie in the shadow of that bank there all day long. Oh, Harry! ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

do give me some water in your hands."
"That's just the way with all impudent

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