HELEN CAMERON.

BOOK I.

THE GRUB.

CHAPTER I.

A FAULTY HEROINE.

"I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife

With wealth enough, and young, and beauteous;
Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman:

Her only fault (and that is faults enough)

Is that she is intolerable curst.

SHAKSPERE: Taming of the Shrew. HOUSES have characters as well as men. There are houses pure and houses foul; houses hospitable and houses inhospitable; houses which one loves, and houses which one can't but hate; houses where we should like to be when sickness comes or sorrow falls, and houses which, even in the sunshine of health. and joy, we shun like the plague; houses (say some) where evil spirits, and houses, doubtless, where all good angels, love to dwell. I, for my part, have become so much

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attached to some houses, that to leave them has been like parting from an old friend. Moreover, as with men, the character of a house is sometimes written on its face. There are houses which smile on you, and houses which frown on you; houses which wink at you playfully, and houses which grin at you wickedly; houses which invite you to enter, and houses which scare you away; houses which you fall in love with at first sight, and houses which you instinctively wish never to see again.

It was a house in Pea Street; not the best street in St. Petersburg, but undoubtedly the best house in the street: a house that had a character of its own, and showed it in its face; a roomy, comfortable, hospitable house; a house that one would like to live in, if one had the means, for it needed no end of money to keep up such an establishment. The out-houses alone had room enough for a large English family of middle rank. Everywhere a look of comfort and of wealth. The rooms all large and lofty, and handsomely furnished. Many signs all around that it did not belong to a Russian family. Many things, which, if they had tongues, would

have said, and did say to all who had eyes. to see: "We belong to an Englishman,"I beg the pardon of the Scot,-" to a Briton." But there is one room, the breakfast-room, which you are specially invited to enter: large as it is, one of the cosiest rooms you ever saw; furnished in the English style, always reminding the family of "home: " in truth, the favourite room; many other rooms larger and grander, but this one always chosen when the family were alone.

But what to make of that family? You see them at breakfast now: look at them and guess; taking them in the order of their age, beginning with the oldest. An elderly lady, about sixty, very plain, but beautiful in spite of it: a look of refinement about her; the soul shining out of her bright black eyes; an air of command in her large nose, but a nervous and fidgety manner at loggerheads with it. An undersized gentleman, not far from forty face, not quite so plain as the lady's, and figure thin and wiry; both face and figure betokening a quick, keen, agile nature-a nature that could easily outstrip difficulties even when it could not face them. A young lady of surpassing beauty, whose

soft, round, creamy, pouting, almost babyish face was evermore giving the lie to her tall, large, well-developed, womanly figure; the former pointing to fifteen, and the latter to twenty-five, leaving it to the onlooker to settle the balance of probabilities between the two, and to fix on some intermediate stage on the border-land as her real age.

What now of the relation between the three ? Mother and children? The reverence with which the gentleman treats the elder lady might seem to support that hypothesis. But the nervous, fidgety manner of the lady herself, and the masses of thick, heavy curls which lie flat on her brow and cheeks, point to (ancient) maidenhood rather than to motherhood. Moreover, the gentleman seems to treat the younger lady with the same reverence; and would he demean himself thus to a sister so much younger than himself? A lover? But listen to their talk, and judge for yourself.

The gentleman, who had been reading his letters (his habit at breakfast), looked up, and, turning to the younger lady, said, in a deferential, almost humble tone, as though deprecating her wrath: