the impropriety of any line of conduct in the presence of a great advantage, is given to so very few people.'

'You speak in riddles,' answered Nelly: her tones were ice; her face was stone.

6

Ah, there again you are so judicious; you are quite right to keep dear Herbert's secret as though it were your own: only, as it happens, he has told me everything.'

'Everything!' repeated Nelly slowly. He surely, surely, could never have told this woman that sacred secret which she had hidden from every eye but his, and only revealed to him in merciful kindness.

'Oh, yes; how you refused him, though he actually offered to make you mistress of the old Hall. It was a most imprudent impulse, but, there! you had the good sense to see it in its right light. Most fortunately-as I told him--you were a girl of independent spirit, and who understood the fitness of things. He will understand it himself if he has time for thought, and is let alone. Then, what a comfort it will be to you to reflect that you acted as you have done. My dear Miss Conway, it may seem a liberty, but you knew how gratified I feel for your conduct to dear Herbert -might I kiss you?'

if

I really don't see any reason why you should,' said Nelly, drawing herself back from the threatened embrace.

'Well, at all events you may count upon me to be your friend for life.'

'You are very good, but I am afraid there will be few opportunities of our meeting in future. Our ways will lie far apart. It will be my lot to earn my own living-if, indeed, I am able to succeed in that-while you'

'One moment!' interrupted Miss Milburn sprightlily: 'never mind about me, for I'm nobody in this matter: I am only thinking of dear Herbert. You have often talked, you know, about earning your own living, but in the mean time you continue to remain here with Mr. and Mrs. Wardlaw.'

"Well?'

"What I was about to say is a little embarrassing, my dear Miss Conway,' continued the other, and it must be confessed by no means in her usual style, which was florid and flowing. Indeed, if I was not certain that your good sense would insure its being taken as it is intended, as a friend's advice, I could hardly mention it: but the fact is, so long as you remain at Sandybeach, there will be still danger.'

"To whom?'

'Well, really you are quite abrupt: I mean, of course, to dear

Herbert. You have behaved admirably, and, as it were, saved him from himself: but he is not yet-ahem-well-she looked towards the coppice and found a metaphor-out of the wood. It is possible he may himself fly from temptation: I recommended that course to him very strongly, but then men are so weak. What I wish to ask you -and I know it is a great favour-would you mind going away?'

As it happens, Miss Milburn,' said Nelly quietly, I am going away to-morrow or the next day at latest. I am bound to say, however, that, if it had not been so, your request would not have moved me. I think it officious, I think it impertinent, and to the last degree unbecoming in-I will not say a lady-but any woman.'

Nelly's blood was fairly up; she mounted the stile with a vigour that rather alarmed her late companion, who made room for her with great alacrity, and hurried home.

It was very well that she was going; that she had thoroughly made up her mind to leave Sandy beach, and informed others of it, or she felt as though she must have stayed, in defiance of that insolent request.

However, there was one good thing about it; it had reminded her, in a manner not easily to be forgotten, of her own position in the world, of the humility of which, at times, she had perhaps been in danger of losing sight. It was high time that she should begin life upon a genuine basis.

On the day after the morrow she would receive a definite answer from the lodging-house keeper; indeed, such had been her haste to escape from Sandy beach, that she had begged her to telegraph in case of the house being full, so that she might lose no time in applying elsewhere. How much better it would have been could she have fled at once, that very morning, and so escaped the unmannerly and insulting advice of Catherine Milburn!

As it happened, that lady might, after all, have spared herself the trouble-and perhaps even the pain-of making herself so disagreeable, for when she got home to the hotel she found her brother had in her absence quitted it for London. He had confided to her the fact of his rejection, simply to account for his departure, which he had intended to take in her company, but the manner in which she had received his news was so offensive to him (though she was quite unconscious of it) that he had felt her society to be for the present insupportable. He left word that she should join him in town, whither business had suddenly summoned him, so soon as she heard from him again.

'How very, very weak he is!' was his sister's reflection. He evidently dare not trust himself near the girl, for fear he should make a fool of himself a second time, and not so easily escape,

I wonder what induced her to reject him! It is plain, from her late impertinent behaviour to me, that it was from no proper sense of the superiority of his position. Is it possible, I wonder, that she is married already? Well, at all events, he has made himself safe, and for that one cannot be too thankful.'

A telegram did come on the morrow to Nelly from Gower Street, but it was to say that the rooms she had fixed on-one of which was adapted for a studio—were not let, but at her disposal; and she resolved to migrate thither the next day.

It was this determination of hers that caused Mr. Wardlaw to write the letter to Ralph Pennicuick with the contents of which we are acquainted, her host and hostess having attempted in vain to persuade her to accept from them any pecuniary aid. On the morning of her departure she got a communication from the proprietor of the 'Fine Arts' depository at Richmond, which interested and excited her much. Its reception had the great and immediate good of diverting her mind from the pain of parting with her loving friends, which had wrung her very heart-strings, and seemed at the last moment to be greater than she could bear. The letter from Richmond was as follows:

In reply to your inquiry, I have the honour to tell you that I think I know of a teacher who will suit your purpose. He is not perhaps a first-rate artist, but he draws and paints very well, and indeed the best things I have now in my establishment are the work of his pencil. He came to reside here-I suppose for the river scenery-about three weeks ago, but has since gone to town; he left his London address with me for the very purpose of my recommending to him a pupil or two-and I enclose it with much pleasure. His terms, as you see, are very moderate, and I believe him to be thoroughly competent. After all, it is quite possible you may know him yourself, for I seem to fancy he spoke of you, or at all events of Mr. and Mrs. Wardlaw (to whom I offer my respectful compliments), when he first called on me.

The card enclosed bore the name of Mr. William Pearson, Teacher of Drawing, &c., Bedford Place, and also his terms for attending at pupils' private houses.

It was a common name enough, but still the probability was that this Mr. Pearson was identical with the very man who had saved Nelly's life but three days ago, and who had certainly made a very favourable impression on her and Mrs. Wardlaw. If this was so, the initial difficulty of procuring a teacher was not only got. over, but that teacher was just the one the girl would have chosen for herself had the choice been offered her.

On the other hand, Mrs. Wardlaw had fished' for that Mr. Pearson, with the very view of employing him as Nelly's master, and he had answered, Alas, I am not even my own master;' but perhaps that had only meant that he could not teach out of London.

6

At all events, this communication gave her matter for thought throughout the journey, prevented her from dwelling (not without sharp stings of conscience) upon those she had left behind her, and gave her hope that not quite everything in the hard life that lay before her would be new and strange.

CHAPTER XLIII.

TUTOR AND PUPIL.

As honour cannot heal a wound, though it may help us to get one, so determination cannot make soft the bed which it has compelled us to lie on. It can only enable us to endure hardness. Very bare and melancholy looked the old lodging-house in Gower Street to poor Nelly's eyes, when she re-entered it as her own mistress; lonely and full of bitter memories, though the rooms she had taken were not those which her mother and herself had tenanted of yore. Her bedroom looked now to the front, and the parlour, which was to be her studio, to the back, where a long strip of desolate garden ground ran out, and was terminated by a dead wall. Mrs. Hansel, the landlady, was indeed profuse in her welcome, and even didactic also it was a credit both to landlady and lady, she said, when ‘a party' came back to their old quarters as in this case-but Nelly missed Mrs. Wardlaw's loving looks, and the kind and cheerful aspect of her honest spouse. Upon the whole, she had not felt so miserable since her father's death; for at her mother's there were hopes for her still, though she had tried to persuade herself otherwise. But now there was no hope that a young girl could call such. The knowledge that she had given sorrow to two noble natures, as she believed those of Raymond and Mr. Milburn to be, was no slight addition to her sense of woe, which was indeed almost overwhelming.

There had been young and delicately nurtured women before her, doubtless, who in lonely London lodgings, friendless and almost moneyless, had been sustained by strong ambition and had lived to justify their aspirations. But she felt that hers was not one of those exceptional characters; she had no conviction of success, no consciousness of genius to support her. If these even fell short of their ideal, they attained to something; their art, their talent, at least procured them a due subsistence: but in Nelly's case to procure this had become her chief if not her highest aim, and if she fell short of it, she would fail miserably indeed. Her practice with her brush at Sandy beach had much disheartened her; she had observed the sketches of others, who themselves had made no particular mark in the world, to be much superior to her

own; she could not do much better than even Mr. Milburn, who was but a desultory amateur, while that little sketch, slight as it was, from her father's hand, which she had become possessed of, was infinitely beyond her powers. Yet she had never heard him spoken of as having any especial skill as an artist. It was plain that her only chance was application and incessant work, and that very evening she despatched a line to Mr. Pearson to ask him to call upon her. If you are the same gentleman that I met at Sandybeach,' she wrote, it will be a happy chance for me indeed should you have a little time for teaching at your disposal.'

6

She received no reply the next day, nor the next, and almost in despair she took counsel of Mrs. Hansel as to what should be done.

'Well, Janet shall step round with you and call upon the gentleman, if you please, Miss; for you see you couldn't well go alone.'

Nelly had not seen this, having been deterred from that course by shyness rather than by any sense of impropriety, but she at once acknowledged to herself that the good woman was right. Suppose this Mr. Pearson should turn out to be a stranger, or indeed in any case, it would not have been becoming.

for

'But is your daughter well enough to walk so far?' said Nelly, poor Janet was an invalid and somewhat lame.

'Oh yes, it will do her good to walk a little way, the doctors say and the poor dear is so pleased when she can make herself useful. It is mostly but sitting work as she can do, and she can keep company with you, Miss, if you please-and do her needlework all the same-when your tutor comes.' Here was a difficulty (which had never occurred to Nelly) at once suggested and got over. At the same time it impressed her unpleasantly with a sense of her own ignorance of the world and her general incompetence. What mistakes might she not commit, what precautions might she not overlook! How difficult was the whole course of life before her, and how unskilled she was to navigate it!

That very afternoon Mr. Pearson called, and delighted indeed was she to find in him her Sandy beach preserver. Her pleasure, however, was damped at seeing him look so ill and worn.

'I have only just got your letter, my dear young lady,' said he kindly, or you may be sure you would have seen me earlier. have been out of town on business.'

I

'I fear you have been working too hard, Mr. Pearson; it seems quite selfish in me to wish to add to your labours.'

Nay, drawing and painting never hurt me; I have had other work on hand of a more harassing nature: but that is over now,