"Think of my talking of myself, | one of the quiet gowns you used to wear at Trevelyan; it will suit Bloomfield Place best."

and this poor girl is so ill! I will order the carriage and go at once. Where did you say she lived-Bloomfield Place? I never even heard of it. At the back of our houses? Oh, then I am afraid! Colonel Trevelyan said I was never to go and see the poor people, even in the country, for fear of bringing back infection to the children."

"You need have no fear, I assure you, in this case. Colonel Trevelyan could not object. The girl is as respectable as possible, very superior to her station; and the aunt, too, must have known better days. The locality is where only the well-conducted and hard-working poor live. May I ring?" And he turned as if to find his hat, and having rung the bell, to go.

"Are you not coming with me?" Geraldine said impulsively. "How shall I find the house ?-how introduce myself to the people? It will frighten me to death !"

The man's heart gave another great painful throb. What would he not have given to go with her, to stay with her, to be with her forever! and even the short half-hour the drive would have given them together would have seemed like a glimpse of Paradise to him. But he knew it could not be; and having heard Geraldine order her carriage, he turned again to her, and with the great sweetness and unselfishness which characterized him, he said playfully:

"While the carriage is getting ready, do me one more favor: go and take off some of this finery, and put on

He

Geraldine glanced up into his face with the same bewitchingly lovely smile which had first made his pulses beat, his brain reel, in the years which seemed so far off, when she had sat in his studio and he had painted the picture which, save at fleeting moments, had no likeness to her face now. wished at that moment he had not come; nothing seemed worth itphilanthropy, kindness, humanity even, were better left alone. It was too dear a price to pay. His senses reeled; the room seemed going round with him. Where was the hard-earned composure of years ?-where the strong and steadfast resolutions?-where the prayers which martyrs might have envied?— Where? All gone, defeated in a moment.

He never knew how he got out of the room till he found himself in the street, with the frosty March air blowing freshly upon his face.

As for Geraldine, she heard him say, "Good-by, Mrs. Trevelyan;" she felt his fingers tighten upon hers till the pain almost made her scream. She looked up into the face which had always worn so kind and pitiful an expression to her; she saw the unmistakable agony in it; and for the first time realized that the old love was not dead in Arthur l'Estrange's heart, and that what she had in her innocent girlishness taken for kindness and compassion was really the strong, undying love of the strong man's strong nature.

"Straight on, up those stairs, my lady; and a great many steps, I fear, ye'll find it."

The consciousness brought a flush to | tidy-looking woman coming, and timher cheek—a joy she could hardly dis- idly asked her way. semble to the unloved wife. She had not, then, given her affection to one who despised her and it; she was not abhorrent to him, as she had sometimes thought? Poor child! She proceeded almost gayly to dress herself for her visit, and her face wore some of its old thrilling beauty, as she changed her light silken attire for a sober woollen suit. It was with much of her former elastic girlish tread that she walked down-stairs and got into the carriage. The solemn footman looked surprised when he heard where he was to go; but Geraldine's servants all liked her, and all gladly did her bidding. A quirk of Mrs. Trevelyan's would have been more respected by them than the most orthodox proceeding Colonel Trevelyan could have indulged in.

It was getting late when Geraldine neared her destination; and some of her old shyness returned upon her; but it was perhaps fortunate that it was so, for her carriage and its appointments would be less an object of curiosity to the inhabitants of Bloomfield Place, little used to such sights.

"What number did you say, madam? for Cobbett says he sha'n't be able to turn if he gets in much farther."

"Then let me out here," Mrs. Trevelyan answered; "and, Thomas, you had better follow."

She threaded her dainty way through the narrow-paved court into a still narrower street, until she came to a wide-open flagged place. She saw a

Geraldine dismissed the footman, and began the ascent. She did find it very weary work - she was out of health, and had in her great depression given up the habit of exercise. Still she plodded on, stopping every now and then to take breath. She did not meet many people on the way: a few dirty children, with weird white faces, and that precocious look which seems to belong to London children, stopped their game of ninepins to stare after the pretty lady; and one woman, old and decrepit, with dishevelled hair, and a hardly human expression in her haunting face, held out a shrivelled hand. Geraldine, as silently, put a shilling into it, and shuddering, passed on. As she got up higher, the place seemed to assume a more respectable appearance. She stopped at one door to inquire her way, and looked in; a very good-looking, neat young woman sat by the fire nursing a baby, and two lovely, rosy children were beseeching mammy to give them "sweeties." It was a pretty picture, and Geraldine halted gladly.

"Can you tell me Mrs. Friars's number, and whether I am near her rooms now?"

"One more flight, miss, and you come to them. She has three rooms on that flat, and the higher you go in Bloomfield Place, the airier it is; but won't you step in, ma'am, and rest a moment?"

"Does Miriam Lisle live here?" dine to enter, carefully closing the Geraldine answered.

MIRIAM LISLE.

for her guest, she sat down opposite to her, with a weary look on her weatherbeaten face.

"You will excuse me, I am sure, ma'am, but I have been up five nights running, and I have to work all day besides."

75

Geraldine eagerly assented, and they entered the tiny but scrupulously clean bedroom. She could hardly repress an exclamation of amazement, the girl's beauty was so dazzling; the picture, well remembered, seemed to have left it far behind. Fever had flushed the lovely cheeks, had given a new lustre to the marvellous eyes. They were closed when Geraldine first approached the bed, but presently the heavy-curtained lids were raised, and though the light of reason had fled for the time, who that saw could ever forget their wondrous depths, their dilating size, their touching expression?

Geraldine was attracted by the great air of comfort and neatness which pervaded this small dwelling. She had enough experience of the poor to feel sure that the mistress of so well-kept an abode did not sit with her hands before her. Even the clothes which she had been ironing were put neatly in their places, and the room had many evidences of taste in its adornments; violets, spring violets, were in a little mug on the dresser, and some pots of primroses in full-seeing Miriam, by the beauty and growing condition flourished in the window-sill. The woman followed

Geraldine's glances sadly:
"Ah! you
wonder to see the prim-
roses ? Poor Miriam, she is fond of
flowers-she brought in those plants
and put them into pots the day she
was taken ill. My firm belief is, she
walked too far, or sat in wet shoes."

A low moan now came from the in

ner room.

"You will excuse me, I am sure, a moment, ma'am, but I can't ever leave her long."

She returned after a few minutes, and, looking scrutinizingly at our heroine, she said:

"You would like, perhaps, as you have come so far, to get a sight of her; you will not see any thing like her in life again; and she takes so little notice, it can't do her any harm."

Geraldine laid her cool hand upon the burning one of the girl, and was struck then, as every one was on first

shapeliness of her hands-by the utter incongruity between her and her surroundings. You do see such cases sometimes-you see beauty not only so uncommon but so high-bred-you see it in a cottage or the back-slums of London, and you say to yourself, "If that girl had been born in our rank of life, people would have raved about her."

Miriam Lisle was eminently one of these cases, her beauty was so greatas faultless as any thing on earth can be. Not only was her coloring exquisite, but the features were all good; her bearing was that of an empress, her walk and every movement were poetry to look at; her swan-like throat most perfectly set on her falling shoulders, her beautiful hands and arms, all were in keeping; and having begun as a little child to sit as a model to artists, and having made a great deal by it,

she had never been obliged to do a day's work in her life; indeed, she had added so much to her aunt's honest earnings, that but for the great anxiety which her extraordinary beauty caused the good woman, and her pious horror of painters, Mrs. Friars had found her kindness to her orphan niece by no means ill-rewarded.

"Good-looking, ain't she?" the woman said, with a grim smile, as she saw Geraldine's rapt admiration. "I have seen many handsome girls in my day, but none equal to our Miriam. Nevertheless it's a snare, ma'am, and | has been even a grief to her, poor thing. There was Jem Stoker, the most respectablest lad we've had in our place, put an end to himself because she would have nothing to say to him. She made a great trouble of it at first, did Miriam; she has a tender conscience, not that she was in the smallest to blame, she never would even give him a civil word, but he just seemed to worship the ground she trod on."

don't! don't curse me, for God's sake! I never even knew he cared like this! Away, away! I must get to the green fields! I must find the violets and primroses in the sweet spring-hedges! Mr. l'Estrange always had them in his studio-he liked them better than all the garden-flowers put together, he told me so. I will take him some tomorrow."

So she went on, beautiful always, with a beauty which would remain if she lived till she was an old woman, from which time could take nothing but the freshness, and to which illness had added instead of detracting.

Geraldine sat down by the bedside, and thoughtfully stroked the smooth and shapely hands. Something in the action, or in the sweet gentle face, arrested and soothed the sufferer, for she ceased moaning and muttering, and lay back on her pillow utterly exhausted. The bright color faded out of the lovely face, the radiant, restless eyes closed, their long lashes sweeping the soft cheeks.

The two women were about the same age, and a greater contrast could not be imagined, though in both beauty was remarkable. Miriam was incontestably handsomer, and had almost as much refinement of feature, and infinitely more brilliancy of coloring. Mrs. Friars was gradually becoming

The girl was moaning and muttering now, and Geraldine bent down to listen. "If he had told me where he was going! Five years and not one word, and now I shall never live to see his kind face and thank him! I am coming, mother! Aunt did you speak? I really could not help it! Billy's told me! Let me stay and talk to the child-reconciled to her visitor; and seeing ren! I can never go down those steps the effect she had upon her niece, she again! To think of his blood; it's at length left the room, softly closing sticking everywhere; it's coming after the door after her. me; my shoes are full of it; it's on my dress, and his mother staring at me! She's speaking-she's pointing! Oh,

The sick girl seemed to doze for some time, and Geraldine sat on, interested in spite of herself, and fasci