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4, 1863.] all the ordinary barriers of wealth and station, pride and reserve. Letty Brown would have gone away again immediately, seeing her visit had been paid at an unpropitious moment, but it went sorely against the grain with the girl to quit a scene of suffering: something might be needed from her—there might be something for her to do.

Letty lingered, full of stillness and sympathy, and something was needed from her ere long. An excitable maid-servant employed to convey hot water to the patient’s room, and compelled to witness his agony, fell down in a swoon on the kitchen floor, and while her fellow-servants crowded round her to recover her, Letty carried up the next supply of water in the general confusion. A medical man was endeavouring to restrain the convulsions of the young man, and while he did so he caught Letty’s eye—that rational, full, deep, well-set eye—as she stood on the threshold, and, with an imperative sign, he summoned her to his assistance. He kept Letty hours by the bed, until even her strength was deserting her. Just before he dismissed her he inquired curiously,

“Have you ever seen a case of this kind before?”

“No, sir, never,” answered Letty, thankfully.

“Invaluable young woman that,” he observed, energetically, the moment she had left the room; “firm nerves, quick observation, a kind heart, takes a hint, develops a resource. Probably lost where she is,” he continued, grudgingly. “Should like to tempt her to take service in my ward.”

The words pierced the ears dulled and afflicted by poor Fred’s frightful attack. “Who is she? How did a stranger come here at such a time? A protégée of Peaston’s? Very indiscreet of Peaston. Providential, did you say? Peaston could not know that,” spoke the woman’s sentiment brokenly first; and the man’s reason replied resolutely, “Never mind, my dear, you heard what the doctor remarked; engage her as a nurse for poor Fred if he is spared. Offer her any wages.”

And Letty remained at the post which had presented itself to her. She would have done so without fee, had none been forthcoming. She could please herself, and she was pleased and proud, with a womanly breadth of satisfaction and benevolence, that she could relieve the unhappy young man, though he was only a poor, stupid, vicious, wrecked sot of a gentleman, under the ghastly thunder-cloud of delirium tremens.

In a month from that date Letty Brown went abroad with the Bridgewaters, who, in ordinary, accommodating phrase, had taken a fancy to the superior mill girl, not as nurse to Mr. Fred, who was again partially restored to sense and action, and on his own hands, to the great loss to himself and the smaller injury to society, and who was left behind the travelling party, judiciously, as far as the comfort of the other members was concerned. Letty went as aide to Mrs. Peaston, to Mrs. Bridgewater’s maid, to the head nurse of the young Bridgewater’sBridgewaters [sic]. She got higher wages as an amphibious domestic than she could win working in the factory. She would see the world and improve herself, as the quiet young woman had an ardent desire to do, and her George was reconciled to the separation because he could trust her, and he was as proud that she should command these advantages as he was mortified that they should be got without his instrumentality and not in his company.

next time that we see Letty Brown is with other surroundings, and under a different aspect. The Bridgewaters’ tour had been protracted from months to years, and Letty had tasted a little of the bitterness of hope deferred; but that honourable purse of hers was always growing heavier, and that mind and heart of hers better instructed, and though George Ashe was too true not to want her back to him, he was compelled to submit to circumstances. If you were a light observer, you would scarcely know Letty Brown again—Miss Brown now—in her plain, tasteful, lady-like dress, acknowledged maid to the young ladies, and factotum to the housekeeper. In learning to dress her young mistresses’ hair, Letty had learnt to dress her own—that pale brown hair without any of the red of the chestnut, a little too fair and cold, but which formed, for all you might know no better, so fitting a setting to the large, finely featured, tranquil, sweet face—Juno, without Juno’s jealousies; Minerva, without the divine maid’s pretensions; Deborah, who lived with her husband and judged Israel under the fig-tree; Lydia, who heard Paul lovingly and entertained him nobly. In continual association with harmony and elegance, the former intelligent, reverent factory girl had inevitably imbibed and appropriated a portion of these qualities, until, to her own surprise and annoyance, she began to be mistaken for one of the daughters of the family she served. In daily and hourly conversation with educated people, and even in acquiring those soft Italian words, Letty had got rid of the worst part of her provincial dialect, her illiterate sentences and obsolete expressions. In the thin woollen or cambric gown, with the little collar, the light jacket, the shady hat—a necessity of equipment in the sunny south; able to give a wonderfully artistic opinion of the amateurs’ sketches, until she was persuaded to try sketching herself, and was fascinated by her own share of success; betraying naïvely considerable natural talents for music and painting, until her masters and mistresses discovered a fresh charm in carrying her with them to churches and galleries,—what would George Ashe think of his sweetheart when she was restored to him “finished” by the only possible effectual education for a poor girl? It was likely he would be as much abashed as captivated; foolishly over-valuing her acquired information and polish; foolishly under-valuing his own original rough, uncut gifts. But it was certain what Letty would do in the relation that bound them, one of those wonderful, winning relations between the sexes, where George Ashe was half Letty Brown’s sovereign, half her darling, half her husband, half her son; in the hour of reunion Letty would clasp George’s hand and look into his face, and if there were nobody by to see, put her arm round his neck and kiss him, to show him that, though she had crossed the Channel and wandered over hills and plains, she had seen