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108 Countess. Eveline had been a dear good girl to sacrifice her own inclinations as she had done, and if she had suffered a little, her troubles were now at an end, and a life of freedom and independence begun at twenty-three was a compensation for her filial obedience.

And so all appeared to go very smoothly for a few months afar Eveline's widowhood. She grew fonder of her children and took some pains with them; and her husband's relations, who thought John had been but poorly treated by his aristocratic wife, could now find no fault with her exemplary conduct. She lived in a quiet and retired way; she occupied herself as she ought to do, and did not pine after gaiety and excitement, the love for which had driven poor John from his home. The old gentleman had felt the premature death of his only son a heavy blow, but he fixed his hopes all the more intensely on his two grand-children, Anthony and Edith.

Miss Hope had left the Derrick family some years before. Indeed she was in town making arrangements for going into another situation, with the highest recommendations from her former employers, at the time when Gerald Staunton was going to Sierra Leone. Mr. John Derrick, who always liked her society, had asked her to make his house her home for a week or two, all the