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Rh her work in the most slovenly manner, and then precious minutes and half hours that she had been taught to cherish as "the stuff that life is made of" were wasted in lounging about with the children, or gazing out of the window with them, listening to their comments on the fine clothes that were worn by those people whose only part in life seems to be to play walking advertisers for dressmakers. Dress was the constant theme at Mrs. Hartell's. Lucy had scarcely ever heard her mistress talk of anything else. Upon this topic Adéle was almost eloquent, and the little girls naturally adopted and repeated what they heard, so that life, in the aspect it now offered to Lucy, afforded ground for the fanciful theory of a certain writer, who supposes man, "that paragon of animals and quintessence of dust," to be made up of clothes. Lucy had been well fortified by her mother to resist this ruling passion of the house, but she was not exempt from the infirmity of her age and sex; and there is no knowing how long she might have resisted the deteriorating influences that make half the world creatures of mere sense and frivolity, had they not been suddenly interrupted.

Eugene had arrived at the teething period, trying to the soul of mothers and nurses. Lucy's days and evenings were devoted to soothing him. At night he was left to Adéle's tender mercies. Her virtue could not be expected to stand the test of his wakefulness and fretting, and repeatedly Lucy was startled from her deep sleep by the shrieks of the child; and when involuntarily she sprang to his bedside, the poor little fellow most beseechingly