Esther Helps was certainly neither a prudent nor a careful young woman. She meant no harm, she would have shuddered at the thought of actual sin, but she was reckless, a little defiant of all authority, even her father's most gentle and loving control, and very discontented with her position in life.

Morning, noon, and night, Esther's dream of dreams, longing of longings, was to be a lady. She had some little foundation for this desire. The mother who had died at her birth had been a poor half-educated little governess, whose mother before her had been a clergyman's daughter. Esther quickly discovered that she was beautiful, and her dream of dreams was to marry a gentleman, and so go back to that station in life where her mother had moved.

Esther had no real instincts of ladyhood. She spoke loudly, her education had been of a very flashy and superficial order. From the time she left the fourth-rate boarding-school where her father alone had the means to place her, she had stayed at home and idled. Idling was very bad for a character like hers; she was naturally active and energetic—she had plenty of ability, and would have made a capital shopwoman or dressmaker. But Esther thought it quite beneath her to work, and her father, who could support her at home, was only too delighted to have her there. He was inordinately proud of her—she was the one sunbeam in his dull, clouded timorous life. He adored her beauty, he found no fault with her Cockney twang, and he gave her in double measure the love which had lain buried for many years with his young wife.

Esther, therefore, when she left school, sat at home, and made her own dresses, and chatted with her cousin Cherry, who was an orphan, and belonged to Helps' side of the house. Cherry was a very capable, matter-of-fact hearty little girl, and Esther thought it an excellent arrangement that she should live with them, and take the drudgery and the cooking, and in short all the household work off her hands. Esther was very fond of Cherry, and Cherry, in her turn, thought there was never anyone quite so grand and magnificent as her tall, stately cousin.

"Well, Cherry," said Esther, as the two were going to bed on the night after Wyndham's visit, "what do you think of him? Oh, I needn't ask, there's but one thing to be thought of him."

"Elegant, I say," interrupted Cherry. She was looking particularly round and dumpy herself, and her broad face with her light grey eyes was all one smile. "An elegant young man, Essie—a sort of chevalier, now, wouldn't you say so?"

"It's just like you, Cherry, you take up all your odd moments with those poetry books. Mr. Wyndham ain't a chevalier—he's just a gentleman, neither more nor less—a real gentleman, oh dear. I call it a cruel disappointment. Cherry," and she heaved a profound sigh.

"What's a disappointment?" asked unsuspicious Cherry, as she tumbled into bed.

"Why, that he's married, my dear. He'd have suited me fine. Well, there's an end of that."

Cherry thought there was sufficiently an end to allow her to drop off to sleep, and Esther, after lying awake for a little, presently followed her example.

The next day she was more restless than ever, once or twice even openly complaining to Cherry of the dullness of her lot, and loudly proclaiming her determination to become a lady in spite of everybody.

"You can't, Essie," said her father, in his meek, though somewhat high-pitched voice, when he overheard some of her words that evening. "It ain't your lot, child—you warn't born in the genteel line; there's all lines and all grooves, and yours is the narrowing one of the poverty-struck clerk's child."

"I think it's mean of you to talk like that, father," said Esther, her eyes flashing. "It's mean of you, and unkind to my poor mother, who was a lady born."

"I don't know much about that," replied Helps, looking more despondent than ever. "She was the best of little wives, and if she was born a lady, which I ain't going to deny, for I don't know she warn't a lady bred, I mind me she thought it a fine bit of a rise to leave off teaching the baker's children, and come home to me. Poor little Essie—poor, dear little Essie. You don't take much after her, Esther, my girl."

"If she was spiritless, and had no mind for her duties, which were in my opinion to uphold her station in life, I don't want to take after her," answered Esther, and she flounced out of the room.

Helps looked round in an appealing way at Cherry.

"I don't want to part with her," he said, "but it will be a good thing for us all when Essie is wed. I must try and find some decent young fellow who will be likely to take a fancy to her. Her words fret me on account of their ambition. Cherry, child."

"I wouldn't be put out if I was you, uncle," responded Cherry in her even, matter-of-fact voice. "Esther is took up with a whim, and it will pass. It's all on account of the chevalier."

"The what, child?"

"The chevalier. Oh, my sakes alive, there's the milk boiling all over the place, and my hearth done up so beautiful. Here, catch hold of this saucepan, uncle, while I fetch a cloth to wipe up. My word, ain't this provoking. I thought to get time to learn a verse or two out of the poetry book to-night; but no such luck—I'll be brushing and blacking till bed-time."

In the confusion which ensued, Helps forgot to ask Cherry whom she meant by the chevalier.

A few days after this, as Helps was coming home late, he was rather dismayed to find his daughter returning also, accompanied by a young man who was no better dressed than half the young men with whom she walked, but who had a certain air and a certain manner which smote upon the father's heart with a dull sense of apprehension.

"Essie, my girl," he said, when she had bidden her swain good-bye, and had come into the house, with her eyes sparkling and her whole face looking so bright and beautiful, that even Cherry dropped her poetry book to gaze in admiration. "Essie," said Helps, all the tenderness of the love he bore her trembling in his voice, "come here. Kiss your old father. You love him, don't you?"

"Why, dad, what a question. I should rather think I did."

"You wouldn't hurt him now, Essie? You wouldn't break his heart, for instance?"

"I break your heart, dad? Is it likely? Now, what can the old man be driving at?" she said, looking across at Cherry.

"It's this," responded Helps, "I want to know the name of the fellow—yes, the—the fellow, who saw you home just now?"

"Now, father, mightn't he be Mr. Gray, or Mr. Jones, or Mr. Abbott; some of those nice young men you bring up now and then from the city? Why mightn't he be one of them, father?"

"But he wasn't, my dear. The young men you speak of are honest lads, every one of them. I wouldn't have no sort of objection to your walking with them, Esther. It wasn't none of my friends from the city I saw you with to-night. Essie."

"And why shouldn't this be an honest fellow, too?" answered Esther, her eyes sparkling dangerously.

"I don't know, my dear. I didn't like the looks of him. What's his name, Essie, my love?"

"Captain Herriot, of the —— Hussars."

"There! Esther, you're not to walk with Captain Herriot any more. You're not to know him. I won't have it—so now."

"Highty-tighty!" said Esther. "There are two to say a word to that bargain, father. And pray, why may I walk with Mr. Jones and not with Captain Herriot? Captain Herriot's a real gentleman, and Mr. Jones ain't."

"And that's the reason, my child. If Jones walked with you, he'd maybe—yes, I'm sure of it—he'd want all his heart and soul to make you his honest wife some day. Do you suppose Captain Herriot wants to make you his wife. Essie?"

"I don't say. I won't be questioned like that." Her whole pale face was in a flame. "Maybe we never thought of such a thing, but just to be friends, and to have a pleasant time. It's cruel of you to talk like that, father."

"Well, then, I won't, my darling, I won't. Just promise you'll have nothing more to say to the fellow. I'd believe your word against the world, Essie."

"Against the world? Would you really, dad? I wouldn't, though, if I were you. No, I ain't going to make a promise I might break." She went out of the room, she was crying.

A short time after this, indeed the very day after Lilias Wyndham's visit to London, Gerald noticed that Helps followed his every movement as he came rather languidly in and out of the office, with dull imploring eyes. The old clerk was particularly busy that morning, he was kept going here, there, and everywhere. Work of all kinds, work of the most unexpected and unlooked for nature seemed to descend to-day with the force of a sledge hammer on his devoted head.

Gerald saw that he was dying to speak to him, and at the first opportunity he took him aside, and asked him if there was anything he could do for him.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Wyndham, you can, you can. Oh, thank the good Lord for bringing you over to speak to me when no one was looking. You can save Esther for me—that's what you can do, Mr. Wyndham. No one can save her but you. So you will, sir; oh, you will. She's my only child, Mr. Wyndham."