so as to strengthen and stimulate them to do exactly the wrong things they were most wishing to do, only fearing the consequences, and, perhaps, secretly hating the wrong.

With this dangerous propensity of Mrs. Lorrimer's, Ella had once been well acquainted, and she had no reason now to suppose that the evil had undergone any abatement. Indeed, had she reflected on the subject, evidences were rather strong on the other side; for all the time that Mrs. Lorrimer was telling her story of distress, she was appealing to Ella's vanity, by stating that to no other human being could she have laid bare her heart in the same manner; that the remembrance of Ella's sympathising nature, was that which had given her courage to seek her out and come to her in her hour of bitterest need; that Ella might despise her, might even thrust her out from her door, but that she should still think her right, and still admire her as much as ever; for that there was something peculiar in her character-something which she had never found in any other human being, and did not know, before she knew her, that it could exist-a strange incompatibility, which few people believed in, but which, in her own case, had given her higher ideas of religion than she had ever entertained before. In short, she summed up her meaning by saying, that only in Ella's character had she ever found true loftiness and purity of soul, combined with the tenderest sympathy and compassion for those who had erred from not being gifted in the same manner.

Ella disclaimed the compliment, and felt really ashamed at its application to herself. But it sounded pleasant to her ear, nevertheless. Compliments upon her beauty, she thought comparatively nothing of. Her looking-glass paid these, every day, in a manner at once more truthful and more delicate than had ever emanated from the most eloquent tongue. But, loftiness of soul! That was a widely different affair. If there was one thing in the world to which her ambition, in its highest flights, would soar, if it dared, it would be to this loftiness of soul; not in its exercise upon others, cold, distant, and for

bidding; but soft, feminine, and graceful, and ever tempered with that tender sympathy which she knew herself to possess. Many women could be sympathising; but to be able to exhibit at once both tenderness and loftiness of soul; this was, indeed, to be a character; to fill a place in the world, and in the hearts of her fellow-beings; to stand singly there, too, sharing that place with no other person, and being like no one else. The most ingenious mind could not have devised a compliment better adapted to catch the ear of the listener, and to be laid in "flattering unction" to her soul.

Ella retired from the presence of her guest for a few minutes, upon the strength of this idea. She returned with a kind invitation on her lips, that Mrs. Lorrimer would spend the night beneath her roof. The evening was far advanced, she said, and she had a small bed-room entirely at liberty.

What a sweet and welcome sound was that to the tired homeless wanderer! In another moment, the trunk was sent for, the candle lighted, and the guest conducted up-stairs, with as much kindness and hospitality as if she had been one of the most deserving and meritorious of human beings.

CHAPTER LI.

WITH feelings of peculiar satisfaction, as regards her personal circumstances, Ella's visitor retired to rest in the prettiest and most peaceful looking little chamber which it had for a long time been her lot to occupy. She had been well acquainted with what is called a higher style of living. She had shared even the splendour of those into whose society she had crept step by step, to an elevation almost beyond her most ambitious calculations, but from which she had been liable at any moment to fall to a depth proportionally low; but quiet English comfort, of a domestic and substantial character, she had seldom made any intimate acquaintance with; and now, though she possessed not the heart to feel it, and could not, under any circumstances, have felt it deeply, because it brought with it no associations of home, or kindred, or social affection to her; she saw that it was beautiful, and beyond this, she understood that it breathed the language of a kind of enjoyment to which she had ever been a stranger. Just as a person may listen to some pleasant intelligence announced in a foreign tongue, and know that it is pleasant, without understanding a single word of what is said.

If then the solitary woman was well pleased to be thus admitted into the bosom of a beautiful home, she was not grateful beyond a mere passing emotion, for she knew not how to be so. She rather looked around her with a pang of envy, that others should have it in their power to obtain and enjoy what she had found it impossible to secure. And so strong were these feelings in their influence upon her mind, that she even dashed away a bitter tear, and sat down, and called herself fool, and worse than fool, for ever having loosened her

grasp of those means, once her own, which, she said to herself, would have produced her all this, and more.

In this pretty quiet chamber then, where she tried in vain to sleep, Mrs. Lorrimer had an excellent opportunity for reviewing her past life, and for doing so with advantage and profit to herself. It was, upon the whole, a miserable retrospect, and especially so, when viewed as she regarded it, without compunction, and without prayer. God was not in all her thoughts: Heaven was a fact which she scarcely believed in; and if she had believed in it-if she could even have been admitted into the midst of all its blessedness, it would have been no heaven to her. And yet the world, for which alone she had lived, seemed failing her-melting away, as it were, beneath her feet. Age was creeping on: the reflection of her face in the glass was becoming odious to her. All those artificial advantages which money can procure, might have thrust off the outward evidences of the approach of the evil day a little longer; and scanty means are perhaps never more galling to the weak and worldly-minded, than when they leave bare the wrinkled brow and hollow cheek, shredding the thin grey locks, and exposing those angles of the wasted form which might have been so gracefully concealed by rich velvets, and shining silks.

But beyond all this, Mrs. Lorrimer was forsaken, despised, wronged, and rejected, by the only being in the world for whom she had ever made any great sacrifice, or done any generous act. Once, and once only, in all her long career of upward striving, of hard grasping of whatever could be got-once only, had she been tempted to relax her hold of the precious money which she had laboured so many years to obtain; and this she had done for the man who first deceived her by his fulsome flatteries, and then abused her. Worse than all, she had done this for the man who finally cast her from him, penniless upon the world. It was only by degrees that this frightful truth had grown upon her. Soon after her marriage she had discovered that there were debts to be discharged of so enormous

an amount, that ruin stared her in the face; but still she was married to a young gentleman of some rank and standing in the world trumphant in this fact, she could still, as she believed, command the homage and respect of a large portion of society. But darker convictions afterwards followed in such quick succession, that she had scarcely time to recover from one overwhelming shock, before another fell upon her head, and almost stunned her sense of feeling. That she had been flattered into this marriage only for the sake of her money, was the allprevailing truth which stared her in the face. That she was ridiculed, despised, and hated, soon became equally clear. That she was totally abandoned, was another incontrovertible truth; but that she was penniless, and old, and had thus, at this great disadvantage, to begin life again, was perhaps to her the most distressing conviction of all.

Still, however, there were times when even this gave place to the bitter agony arising out of her wounded woman's vanity. And now, especially as she sat in her beautiful little chamber, and bit her thin lips with envy, and passsion, if veritable demons had come around her, and applied their instruments of torture, they could scarcely have inflicted upon her suffering more acute than she experienced from the angry and malignant writhings of her own conscious soul. No; there needs no instrument of torture beyond the conviction of a mis-spent life; beyond a guilty retrospect unbedewed by tears, and unenlightened by a ray of hope-there needs no misery, either, for this world, greater than the consequences which inevitably follow an ill assorted marriage, entered into under false pretences, and based upon the ruinous foundation of vanity, or selfish gains.

Instead, then, of cordially thanking Ella for her kindness, Mrs. Lorrimer secretly grudged her the means of being kind: she secretly hated her for her youth, her beauty, her friends, her prosperous circumstances, and, in short, for all which made her so attractive, and so much beloved. It was true, that Ella was by no means affectionately disposed towards her guest, but