Think not I love him, though I ask for him;

’Tis but a peevish boy;—yet he talks well:—

But what care I for words? yet words do well,

When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

It is a pretty youth;—not very pretty:—

But, sure, he’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him.

Shakspere.

When Helen Grahame opened her eyes, after a somewhat protracted sleep, she looked around her for a minute in unutterable surprise. The morning previously, she had awakened in an agony of sorrow, it is true, but to look upon all the luxurious refinements and comforts which are to be met with in the sleeping chambers of the wealthy alone. Now she beheld herself in a small sitting-room; the bed appointments being evidently supplemental, and not fitly pertaining to the room. Clean they were, but vastly inferior in material and pattern to what she had been accustomed.

A fire was burning clearly in the small grate, and a kettle, steaming and singing cheerfully, stood upon the hob. Upon a table, at the foot of the bed, was spread the breakfast appurtenances; and at the window sat a young girl plying her needle with a rapidity and skill something magical in its character.

A moment more, and Helen Grahame realised her position.

She remembered her terrible conversation with Mrs. Truebody, her nurse, the latter’s charge, and her own fearful conviction of its truth. She remembered the sleepless horrors of that dreadful night; the simulated sleep at dawn, the absence of the nurse, the hasty dressing, the scribbled note, the slinking glide down the servants’ staircase, the swift dash into the garden, and the rapid exit—as it happened, unseen—by the private entrance.

She had a confused recollection of streets crowded with throngs of people, of the roar of carriages, the bewildering turmoil of active daily business life, and then faint and weak, of a long, long, dreamy rest upon a seat in an open park, of wild schemes for the future floating through her brain, without the power to reduce them to practicability, of a sinking foreboding sense of helplessness, a startling perception that she must starve and die.

And she shivered, and her teeth chattered as she remembered the grim water—remembered how, like a magnet, it drew her towards it; how it wooed her with a low dirge, the burden of which was that Hugh was there; how it offered her eternal repose, and stilled its surface so that calmness and peace seemed alone to be found within its placid bosom.

Then she remembered the small voice that rose up and made a claim on life; the agonized struggle that followed; the sudden interposition of a stranger; the deep voice of Lester Vane, being saved from his loathly arms; and on, on, incident by incident, until her eyes and thoughts rested upon the face of the young fair girl who sat at the window, her eyes bent fixedly upon her work, and her hand swiftly and unceasingly moving to and fro.

Then she remembered that she had made her her confidante; that she was now the only friend she had in the wide, wide world; and that, but for her, she would have been at this moment face to face with an offended Creator; that, but for her, she must now even become a wretched outcast.

She began to see that pride was a hollow phantom, powerless to serve at need; that selfishness slaughtered sympathy, and repelled friendship; that true worth and pure human philanthropy were to be found in the humble; that human creatures were human clay alike; and the distinctions of the world proved their shadowy nature by melting away at the first touch of adversity.

She saw that the young girl who had saved her was what the world calls humble; she involuntarily placed her hands before her eyes, and felt how humble she herself was by comparison in the eyes of God.

Presently she felt soft fingers gently drawing her hands from her eyes, and she heard a sweet, low voice.

It said—

“Do not weep, pray, do not, It will make you ill, and me so wretched. Tears are foes when they deter us from doing our duty to ourselves. Will you not rise and dress. We will talk of the future over breakfast. Do you know, miss, I have secured you the dearest little room, next to this, where nobody can intrude upon you, and where I will strive to make you as cheerful and as happy as I can, if you should feel depressed and lonely, as at times I daresay you will—but you know that you have had too much indulgence in grief just now, and so you must dry your eyes and exert yourself. Come, come, you will try to oblige me—will you not?”

Helen caught her hands in her own with a sudden clutch, and pressed them to her burning lips. Then she flung back her dark tresses from her face of marble hue, over which, escaped from their bands, they had straggled.

“I will exert myself,” she said; “I will face my trial; I will be firm, and meet the worst, as becomes a——No—no—no!—not that name; I must breathe that name no more.”

Once again she pressed her hands convulsively over her eyes, but she removed them quickly.

“Bear with me,” she said; “I will not distress you again by giving way to my sorrow; but, with patience and fortitude, I will look back on the past, and await the future.”

Lotte replied in hopeful language, and assisted her to dress. She saw, with an astonishment she could scarcely conceal, how much help her guest required, and how natural it seemed for her to expect it to be afforded her. Helen, on the other hand, could not avoid noticing how unused Lotte was to her task, and said, with a faint smile—

“I must learn to dress myself. It will serve to pave the way for the many changes I shall have to encounter. I shall, no doubt, be troublesome to you at first; but I trust, by persevering efforts, to acquire that selfreliance I now understand to be so essential to my new condition in life.”

And she kept her word, At first she looked upon every feature of her altered position with wonder; the novelty of the circumstances by which she was surrounded helped in some degree to alleviate her anguish, and served to teach her a lesson of life she could scarcely have obtained through any other medium. Everything about her was different to what she had been accustomed. Life itself seemed to be squeezed into such narrow limits. The rooms, the sparse furniture, the appointments at meals, even the meals themselves, with no one to wait at table to hand anything, all seemed small and poverty-stricken, and she kept wondering why the apartments should be so cramped, and why the comforts and the luxuries she had possessed at home were not here.

She even hinted so much to Lotte, who explained to her that the distinction was occasioned by the difference of income. Poor Lotte! she had flattered herself that her little room was a small terrestrial paradise. However, she did not spare herself, but went so much into her own circumstances as to show that, by incessant labour, she realised an income which, when fairly, justly, and economically apportioned, enabled her to accomplish—no more than Helen saw around her.

Helen heard the amount of her weekly earnings with an air of incredulity.

“Can it be possible, that you toil so long and so wearily for a sum so small?” she asked.

“Ah, but I am rather fortunate,” said Lotte, with a cheerful smile, and added with a grave and thoughtful face—“Oh, Miss Grahame, many, many hundred girls and women, some with families, work harder and longer hours than I do, for less than half that sum.”

“And I have, in a moment, squandered thrice that amount on the veriest trifles, upon which I have not looked a second time,” said Helen, with a deep sigh.

Lotte changed the conversation, and perceiving as well as conceiving how much Helen would feel the change from her splendid home to these humble apartments, did all in her power, by cheerfulness of manner and by paying her every attention, to lighten her care and to make her moments pass at least peacefully.

She had to work later at night and to submit to some small privations, of which Helen knew nothing, to accomplish her generous kindness; but she felt rewarded in seeing that Helen was softened by her considerate and thoughtful conduct, in noting too that the dull, settled cloud upon her brow was gradually passing away.

Helen’s nature was of that mixed kind found mostly in women of her class, because its faults are mainly those created by position and false teachers. She was gifted with all the tenderness pertaining to a gentle, loving creature, but she possessed also an indomitable haughtiness which had been fostered and cultivated by her proud mother. Her self-will had been permitted to have its course until it grew into a tyranny, because her weak, proud parent believed it to be a symbol of high breeding. She ruled all beneath her with a lofty domination, taught by those who alone claimed control over her actions that such a line of conduct became the eldest daughter of an ancient house. All the soft and endearing qualities which she possessed were pressed back and allowed few opportunities of appearing; they did now and then peep forth, like a gleam of sunshine from a sky overspread with a cold austere pall, but it was only when nature rebelled, and would make a sign to show that they had not been slain outright by harsh conventional forms.

Helen was at once high-minded, impassioned, and ambitious, but having given her self-will entire control she suffered impulses to govern her. Hence the whole of the circumstances which had transpired between her and Hugh Riversdale. She saw him and was struck with his handsome face and noble bearing, as he was by her beauty. He became the ardent wooer, but in secret. His burning looks, his fervid language, his tender adoration, created a new feeling in her breast. Love and passion sprang up in her soul together, and she suffered them to proceed in their course impetuously, without an attempt to arrest or check their career.

Her mother and her instructors taking their cue from her father, had been more careful to instil into her mind the doctrines and practices of pride, than the precepts of religion or the practice of morality.

She loved Hugh with all the fierceness of an ungovernable passion, and she let it have its way. They had met in secret, and the notion of having a secret pleased her—she kept it as such. It is just to her to say that she had no sense of having committed wrong, or any act of shame or sin. She had been from infancy taught and permitted to exercise her self-will, and she did it in this—with what result we have seen.

A veil had now fallen from before her eyes; she saw whither her faults had hurried her, and she prepared to undergo the penance imposed upon her without shrinking from its rigour, or attempting to evade its obligations. In the hurry of her flight, she had not thought of the means of providing for the future, and save a few pounds which happened to be in her purse, she had brought no money with her. It suggested itself to her now that she would need more when the trifle she possessed was gone, but where was it to come from?

She felt that Lotte would solve that problem for her. Apply to those whom she had quitted, she would not; but she had some skill with her needle, and she hoped to be able to assist her young benefactor at first, in order that ultimately she might be able to produce the means requisite for her own support.

Some two or three days had elapsed ere she had come to comprehend her position in its true light, but when she did, she applied herself to the work before her bravely.

Charles Clinton had called to see his sister, as he promised, upon the following day, and after a few inquiries respecting her companion of the previous evening, which Lotte answered evasively, he gave her a narrative of his rapid voyage to the United States and back, and prolonged it, hoping that her friend who, he understood, resided in the next room, would appear. He guessed that there was some mystery connected with her, and the surmise set him longing to know what it could be; but as Lotte did not volunteer a word about her, and he knew her firmness on certain points, he felt it would be useless to question her. The mysterious lady did not, notwithstanding that he spun his narrative out, present herself to his eyes; and as Lotte told him that he could not stay there all night, and that it was quite time he was at home, he rose laughingly, kissed her affectionately, took his departure, determining to return shortly and abruptly, that he might pop upon the strange lady in his sister’s apartment.

The day succeeding this, a smart ring at the bell conducted Lotte down to the street door, and there she saw Mr. Bantom standing glowing in his best clothes, and smiling over the edges of a tall white shirt-collar.

But he had a most unfavourable looking black eye, and strips of plaster were placed upon his nose, his cheekbone, and his forehead.

Lotte uttered an exclamation of surprise, but immediately welcomed him, and invited him up to her little room, asking, in rather a loud tone, as she ascended the stairs, how Mrs. Bantom and all the little Bantoms were—a signal which was responded to by her finding her room untenanted when she reached it.

She bade Mr. Bantom sit down, and begged him to excuse her working while he talked, for she could listen and stitch too. She had a presentiment that this was not a mere visit of ceremony, but it had reference to the disordered aspect of his visage—perhaps, her help was needed—and if it were so, so far as it was possible, she was ready and anxious to afford it.

But no; it turned out not to be the object of Mr. Bantom’s visit.

He explained that he had called upon her the night before the one preceding, and that, without giving him an opportunity to say who he was, and why he was in this locality, the police had seized upon him in the most tyranical manner, and bore him to the station-house.

“It took five on ’em to do it, miss,” he said, with a cunning and a satisfied smile; “and when I came to ’splain matters to the inspector, he said I ’ad been werry hardly used. He dismissed me at once, and suspended the policeman as first collared me, and I’m going to bring a action agin him, and the lawyer says I shall get swishing damages. But lor, miss, that ain’t no interest to you, that ain’t. Wot I’ve come about is becos it’s a matter consarning your good—a bit of good fortin for you, miss.”

“Good fortune!” echoed Lotte, in surprise. Then she added, with a smile, “Let me hear it Mr. Bantom. It will be very acceptable to me, you know.”

“An’ you deserves it—Lord bless your pretty face, you does. Hem!—I begs your parding, miss, but you knows I allus speaks my mind, p’raps when I shouldn’t.”

“But my good fortune, Mr. Bantom—tell me that, and never find my face,” returned Lotte, laughing, “I have heard you say that ‘handsome is that handsome does.’ You remember that, don’t you?”

“And I sticks to it!” cried Mr. Bantom, slapping his thigh. “You’ve done the thing that’s handsome to me, and to everybody, I’m sure; and you’re, as handsome a young beauty as ever walked, to my thinking; ah! and to others, too, as you’ll see.”

Lotte raised her finger, and, turning her soft, sweet, laughing eyes upon him, she said—

“Oh! Mr. Bantom, if you continue in this praiseful strain, I shall think you have come here only to court me; and what will Mrs. Bantom say to that, when I tell her?”

Mr. Bantom indulged in a short hyena-like howl. For him to court her would have been in his eyes an attempt to be palliated only on the ground of the wildest lunacy.

“I thinks, then,” said he, smoothing the long nap of his new beaver-hat carefully with his coat-sleeve, “that I’d better ’old ’ard on that pint, and at once let you know why I’ve come. You remember that orful night when you went out in the evening, and didn’t come back agin, miss.”

The tears sprang into Lotte’s eyes.

“I do, indeed,” she replied, in a low tone.

“Well,” he continued, “early the next morning a flunkey comes to me, dressed in pupple livery, and brings a fippun note in a letter from you. The Lord bless your thoughtful natur!”

“Pray go on. What of that circumstance?” said Lotte, with an aspect of wonder.

“Well,” said Mr. Bantom, “a few days ago that same pupple flunkey comes to me, and axes me a lot of questions about you.”

“About me!” ejaculated Lotte, astonished. “What could he wish to know about me? Miss Wilton, his mistress, is acquainted with my address, and would write here to me if she wished to see and speak with me.”

“Ah! it ain’t his young missus as wants to know, but his young master, I suxpexs,” observed Mr. Bantom, with a knowing nod.

“His young master,” said Lotte, turning a crimson. “Miss Wilton’s brother!”

“I only suxpexs, mind, jest as much as that. He said a gentleman—”

“What day did he come to you, did you say?”

Mr. Bantom counted on his fingers.

“Four days ago,” he replied; “Monday it vus.”

“It could not have been he,” said Lotte to herself, a sigh unconsciously escaping her lips.

Mr. Bantom proceeded.

“I wouldn’t answer nothin’ until I know’d what he wanted with you,” he observed.

“That was right and kind of you, Mr. Bantom!” responded Lotte, thoughtfully.

“No,” said the simple fellow, “but he told me that a gen’leman as he knew had taken a great interest in your welfare, and he didn’t like to think that such a pretty girl as you—I beg pardon, miss, them was his very words—should be working your eyes out o’ your ’ed when you orter be ridin’ in a carriage of your own, and therefore he wants to see you, and come to a arrangement with you, whereby he will give you a fortun’ and a carriage, and to make a lady on you, so that you should never ’ave to work no more.”

Lotte listened to him in breathless astonishment. Gradually, as he proceeded, she felt her neck, face, and brow burn as if a hectic fever raged there.

In the intensity of her scorn at this proposal, the purpose of which, with a woman’s quickness and penetration, she at once comprehended, her power of speech almost failed her, but, by an effort, she cleared her throat and said—

“Pray did the servant mention the gentleman’s name?”

“Well, no,” replied Mr. Bantom, not perceiving her emotion; “he wouldn’t do that; I axed him; but he said the gentleman ’ud do that hisself when he saw you.”

Lotte drew a long breath, and, fixing her eyes upon Bantom’s face with a steadfast gaze to read all that was passing within his mind, she said, gravely—

“When you heard this extraordinary offer made, Mr. Bantom, what did you think of it? What said you in reply?”

Mr. Bantom’s face brightened up.

“I said,” he answered, earnestly, “that you deserved all the good fortun’ the Lord could shower upon you in this life, and I told him it would be a ‘appy day for me when I know’d that you ’ad a fortun, and was a ridin’ in your own carridge.”

Lotte saw that Bantom, in his simplicity of heart, did not detect the intention disguised in this liberal offer, but that he believed it to be a genuine sample of philanthropy on the part of some wealthy, romantic individual.

“Did you mention my address?” she inquired anxiously.

“Mr. Pupple wanted that badly, he did,” returned Mr. Bantom, smoothing his rough though new beaver hat, “but my wife said no. It ’ud be best to leave all in your ’ands, ’cos she was quite sure you’d act the right down true thing.”

“Oh! Mr. Bantom,” said Lotte, laying her hand gently upon his arm, and looking him sadly in the face, “your wife was right in her suggestion, and you, too, in following it. I know not who the person is who has thus singled me out for cruel insult; but it is right that you should know the nature of the errand upon which you have been sent to me. You have seen at night, in the street, a poor frail creature wearing a hollow smile upon her painted face, daunting in a gaudy dress, shunned by the respectable of her own sex, and frequently harshly repelled of treated as a shameless object by numbers of yours. A being whose position is at once horrifying to the virtuously disposed, and a misery and a curse to herself. But the position of this poor abandoned outcast is less degraded than that of the ‘lady’ which the gentleman of whom you have spoken would make me; because into her sin and shame the first may have been driven by dreadful destitution, while the other voluntarily purchases her pollution by empty phantoms of luxury, but remains still an object of scorn and contumely.”

The truth struck Mr. Bantom now.

His face darkened until it became almost purple, the veins in his throat and forehead swelled like cords; he ground his teeth as if he would reduce them to powder, and he clenched his hands, burying his nails in the palms.

At length a groan burst from his heaving chest. He sprang to his feet, and cried hoarsely and rapidly—“Oh, that I should ha’ been picked out to come with such a object to you. I didn’t know it, miss. Oh! I didn’t know it—by the living Lord, I didn’t. You’ll never forgive me—you can’t—you oughtn’t—I don’t deserve it! But miss, I shall see Mr. Pupplesuit agen. I’ll nip him, I will; I’ll make him tell me who sent him to me about you; and when I’ve squeezed out of him the party’s name, I’ll drag the hound here, and force him on his bended knees to beg parding on you. I will—I will.”

Mr. Bantom, as he concluded, darted out of the room, without a word of farewell, he rushed down stairs into the street, and closed the door behind him with a loud bang, ere she could overtake him.

She followed him to the street, opened the door to look after him, and found herself face to face with Mark Wilton. They recognized each other instantly, and Lotte unconsciously for the moment forgot Mr. Bantom, for Mark smiled agreeably upon her, and she could not, somehow, help smiling pleasantly upon him in return. Mark put out his hand, and she placed hers in it—a commonplace salutation enough, but it did not convey to either in the present instance that impression.

Mark evidently wished to be invited to enter the house and Lotte, blushing like a rose, passed the compliment upon him, not feeling altogether sure that she was acting in accordance with the strict rules of rigid propriety.

However, Mark found himself seated in the little room, admiring its tasteful neatness, and chirruping to the little song bird, who hopped about his perch, laid his head knowingly on one side, and cried “sweet” to him almost as familiarly as it did to Lotte.

“I shall make no stranger of you, Mr. Wilton,” said Lotte, renewing her work. “I am very busy, and my work has to be finished at a stated time.”

“Don’t make a stranger of me, I beg,” responded Mark, somewhat earnestly, for after every inspection of Lotte’s figure and face, he grew more anxious for friendly relations with her. “I will talk, and you can work and listen.”

“And talk, too,” said Lotte, with a laugh. “My sex are not very good listeners, unless they have the power to interpolate frequently, you know; but I will try to be a model of attention and goodness. So commence, if you please, sir.”

“I am acquainted with your merits and your virtues,” returned Mark. “Your brother enlarged upon them as we came across the Atlantic together. I knew a great deal about you before I saw you, but I was not quite prepared, I confess, on meeting you, to find——”

“Him stand convicted of such gross exaggeration, as a result of his blind partiality,” interposed Lotte, quickly.

“There you err, Miss Clinton; what I intended to say——”

“Had reference to your sister and your father. You told me so, you know, Mr. Wilton, when you came in,” again interrupted Lotte; this time her cheek heightened its colour, and her smile gave place to rather a grave look.

Mark Wilton bowed.

“I feel your reproof, Miss Clinton,” he said, hastily; “pray acquit me of having any intention to offend you, and, believe me, I will not again give you cause to complain of the tone of my conversation.”

She turned upon him an expression of such beaming gratefulness, that he was amply repaid for the momentary pang her observation—recalling him to the object of his visit, and the grave look with which it was accompanied—occasioned him.

He saw at once that in her humble, isolated position, she demanded his respect; she perceived by the instant alteration in his manner, that he was ready sincerely to accord it, not but that he had at first involuntarily paid it, and was now only straying from it because he had been led away by the turn of the conversation, and his sense of the prettiness of her face.

As he saw the rising blush upon her clear, transparent cheek, he felt himself become red, too, and he thought it was very ridiculous. It was at this moment their eyes met, and he received her grateful glance with a glow of deep gratification, and she read a language in his gaze, which no words could have framed.

There was an embarrassing silence for a minute, and then Mark dashed abruptly at the subject of his visit.

It appeared from what he stated that, although he had been to his father’s late abode in the Regent’s Park, he had not made himself known there, because his father and sister had quitted for the country, but had contented himself by making a few inquiries, and in ascertaining their present address.

He said, too, that he had endeavoured to see his old friend and companion, Harry Vivian, but had not succeeded, as he, too, was away from home.

Some business he had to transact in London, he added, was likely to detain him about a week, and therefore, he told her that it had struck him that it would be as well if he could obtain some little account of the changes that had occurred during his absence from England to his relatives, that he might be somewhat prepared for the new condition in which he had been assured he should find them, and he looked to Lotte as the person most capable of affording him that information.

Now, ordinarily, there would be nothing of interest or importance likely to grow out of such an interview, and Mark might have put his questions, and Lotte replied to them, without anything arising to move them out of the even tenour of their way; but it happened that Lotte possessed charms of feature and person of a peculiarly attractive kind, and Mark was possessed of discrimination and taste. In addition to this, he was gifted with an extremely handsome face, being a sun-browned likeness of his sister Flora; and, as Lotte had taste and discernment, too, it is not difficult to imagine that during the questioning and the replies, that each should gradually confirm the favourable opinion of the other which they had in the first instance formed.

We are loth to confess it, but at least two hours flew by before Mark or Lotte had a notion of the length to which the interview had extended, and then Mark rose, quite aware that it was time to leave. He was very reluctant to do so, but he obtained permission to come again, if once—if only once, to say good bye to her.

And to convey a message to Flora. Ha! Lotte had forgotten that. He remembered it—that is to say, he conceived the suggestion, because it pointed to an opportunity of calling upon Lotte at some future time with her reply. Lotte was glad he had remembered it, she said she was, and in truth she was, for, without acknowledging so much to herself, she was pleased to think that there would be an opportunity of seeing him again soon.

At last he was gone, and Lotte sat down to her work to think of him, to ply her needle swiftly and mechanically, to have the material upon which she worked every now and then blotted out from her sight, and nothing left in its place but a rich brown face, and deep blue eyes.

Yet she was not so absorbed by her own pleasant thoughts that she wholly forgot one who needed her attention, and who she knew was making a brave effort to struggle with her trial of deep humiliation, to endure it with patience, and to frame herself to meet whatever further mortifications and privations she might have to undergo.

Lotte knew that to keep her in conversation, to look hopefully and in a sanguine spirit to the future, while a dead silence was preserved respecting the past, was the best mode of lifting her out of a killing despondency, and, therefore, much as she was harrassed by the incessant application her work demanded of her, she still, in her pure unselfishness, made the time and opportunity to keep the mind of Helen from dwelling upon the misery of her situation.

Thus, when sitting thinking of Mark Wilton, she remembered that Helen was alone, and though she really, justly, had not an instant to spare from her task, she ran lightly and briskly into her apartment, to tell her that she was again free from visitors, and to persuade her to come and sit with her, and tell her all about the beautiful places she had visited abroad.

She found Helen kneeling by her bedside, her face buried in the coverlet, and her hands clasped in anguish above her head.

She heard her sobs, and, bending over her, she raised her tenderly, and supported her in her arms—

“Come with me,” she said, softly; “come and sit with me. You must not remain alone, dear young lady. It makes you too sad. Come! come!”

She conducted Helen gently to her sitting-room, placed her upon the sofa, and sat by her side. She pillowed her head upon her own soft bosom, and she whispered in her ear—

“Your affliction is sore, indeed, but yet be comforted; for, if all that you have told me be true, and from my heart’s depths I believe you, there is a limit to your selfreproach. Bitter regret and wild despair should be the last emotions of a dying heart. He yet lives, be sure, and living, you are saved. Oh, did he but know that you called to him now with appealing arms, how he would fly to you! Look up, then, dear young lady, in strong conviction that God is merciful, and beneficent. His hand has been laid heavily upon you, but if It has pressed you down, believe that It will raise you up and sustain you in the time to come.”

By unremitting kindness and such generous sentiments, did Lotte seek to win her from the indulgence of her deep sorrow, and at other times, by simple questions about famous cities and spots, of which she had only heard and Helen had visited, she contrived to restore her to something like calmness.

It was while speaking—almost in a state of abstraction—that Helen’s eyes involuntarily fell upon a glass which reflected the door of the apartment; she uttered an exclamation of affrighted surprise, pressed her hands over her face to conceal it, and cowering, as if she should shrink into the place beneath at every step, tottered, rather than ran, out of the room.

At the same moment, Lotte was startled by hearing a voice, whose tones were quite unknown to her, exclaim—

“Beg pardon. Don’t let me disturb anybody. I want to see Miss Clinton.”

She turned round in her seat with the rapidity of lightning, and beheld, standing in the doorway, a young gentleman, who was to her an utter stranger.