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 and forgotten in change, spring up again with all the fervour of a new impulse.

Lucy Aylmer was the only child of a favourite attendant of Lady Evelyn's, and left an orphan when but three years' old. Lady Evelyn had always wished for a daughter, and she adopted as her own the beautiful little girl, whose docility and affection more than repaid the debt of gratitude for what, alas! was not kindness. Poor Lucy was only accustomed, not elevated to another sphere. Refinement of feeling belongs equally to every station, but refinement of taste must be matter of education. Every year, when she went to pay her annual visit to her father and grandmother, she found more and more how wide was the gulf between them. They had not a habit or an idea in common; their pleasures were not her pleasures, and their hopes were not her hopes.

But it was not till Francis Evelyn came home that she felt the full wretchedness of her position. Robert, brought up under the same roof, was, as a brother, associated in her mind only with the pains and pleasures of childhood. Not so the young and handsome cavalier, who had for two years entirely resided with the distant relative, who died, bequeathing to him the wreck of a once princely fortune. Sir Robert bitterly reproached himself