naturally, the sensation was a pleasant one, especially coming so close upon her former fears.

"Do stop sewing for a while, till I talk to you," said Janet, seating herself comically on a little low stool, and looking up at Hester. "I want to tell you about myself. You see I am so selfish that I can hardly take an interest in anything but myself. I have been brought up to it. I think about myself, pamper myself, pity myself, hate myself; and this takes up my time pretty much from morning until night. I never was taught anything better that I could do. But somehow I never felt inclined to talk much about myself before. Now that the impulse has come, perhaps I may talk something off, and feel the better for it. I don't know."

"I can listen and sew," said Hester.

"No, you can't. Or you ought not to be able to do it," said Janet. "One thing is tiring enough at a time, at least I find it so. Perhaps, however, nothing tires you. I should not wonder. Well, I have got everything in the world that can be thought of. I have a beautiful slice of England all my Every mile of it is a very garden of English order and beauty. I have a house-it has not the grand, wild, tamedsavage look about it that this old place has got, neither has it that air that you feel in these old rooms, which makes you want to keep dropping on your knees every moment, as if you were in a church. But it is a lightsome, brightsome, handsome, modern hall, with every new luxury and appliance under the sun; and too large, I believe, for any number of people, that could be counted, to live in. Well, I have plenty of money in banks and places. And I have carriages, and horses, and servants, and jewels; and I can put my foot on anybody's neck when I like it. You needn't smile; I am not going to try yours.

"It all did very well for a time. I liked to be made a fuss about at school. I liked to be able to make rich presents to people, and see them looking astonished and overwhelmed. I liked coming home and being cheered by my tenantry, having bouquets presented to me by the village children, and being talked about as the youthful heiress. I enjoyed my two seasons in London, and then, at the end of the second, I began to get tired of being so stuffed up with pleasure. I was like Johnny or Harry when he has eaten too much plum pudding. And yet I went on eating and eating. Everything sickened me. I had done everything, seen everything, felt everything, and there was nothing more beyond, as far as I could discern, nothing for the latter half of my life, which I supposed I should have to go through like the rest of the human kind.

"The people were all the same till I could have knocked their heads together, in hopes of making a variety. Cut two men out of pasteboard, one after one pattern, another after another, two women the same, paint them and varnish them, and look at them through a multiplying glass; and there you will have society. And neither of the patterns suited me. The men were either too silly, or too clever for me. The women were like myself, sick of everything, choked up with flattery and amusement, looking desperately about to see if this were really all the world had got to offer them; or else they were worse, that is, contented at heart with the worthlessness of what they had got, yet pretending to be sick of it like the rest.

Then I went back to my great house in the country, but I was no bigger in its vastness than a maggot in a cheese. And the place did not want me. Everything was going on too well. The people were all happy, my agent was wise and careful. I was quite a superfluous article in my own establishment. I was too small for my big possessions. They wanted somebody with a great mind and a great heart to make use of them. I had neither. I could only waste money on my petty frivolous desires. Dresses, and jewels

Miss Janet paused. Hester looked down on the luxurious creature who was complaining so bitterly, and laid her hands together involuntarily as she thought with a sudden joy of the Mother Augustine.

"What are you smiling at?" Miss Janet said. "Well, there was a time came after that-I think the country after all did me good-when I got happy for a while, when I could have actually sat a whole day at a window like you, doing sewing, and smiling in a plain, plain gown. Could you believe it? But I am not going to tell you about that time. Bah! what was I talking about a moment ago? Dresses and jewels. You shall see my jewels."

And she ran away, and came back with a great brass-bound box in her arms.

"I am going to dazzle you, and make a picture of you," she said, and began loading Hester with bracelets and necklets, glittering chains, and blazing crosses, green gems, and purple gems, yellow gems, and diamonds.

Hester submitted to the operation with a smiling wonder at the novelty and absurdity of the scene.

"Now," she said, "I am like an Egyptian idol. I am a monster of magnificence. You are a Scheherazade-a beautiful Persian '-a fairy queen."

"A fairy queen would have dewdrops and bits of rainbow

for her ornaments," said Hester. She would be ashamed of your hard glaring stones and your clanking metals."

"So you despise them!" said Janet. "Well, I would rather have your golden hair."

After this Miss Janet's affection for Hester seemed to grow and strengthen every day. Hester was an interest for her in this old-fashioned, dull castle, where she had only been pretending to have an interest in things before. "You shall not do any sewing for me," she said; "you will have enough on your hands between Miss Madge and Lady Helen. You shall teach me to sew, and I will sew for myself." And she did actually pull a new gown to pieces, and set to work to put it together again with a needle and thread. Whether she ever wore the said gown after this performance it is happily not necessary to recollect. But the responsibility of a great labour on her hands often brought her to take a seat at Hester's side. And she was not fond of silence, having met with a companion to her taste. Having, unasked, made a confession of her own feelings and circumstances, she claimed the right to expect that the seamstress would give her a like history of her (Hester's) experiences. But Hester was not eloquent according to her desire. Yes, she had been for some years at a good school. Yes, she had learned her art from a first-rate modiste. It would have been rude so to question her, had Janet met her in a drawing-room; but in a tower-room, with a needle in her hand, it was only sympathising and kind.

But Hester was not communicative, was sometimes a little distressed. Yes, she had had a friend who had taken an interest in, and protected her. The name of that friend? Oh, there was the pink gauze floating into the fire! What a narrow escape for Miss Madge's new scarf!

Then, very often, Lady Helen came fluttering in, like an elderly butterfly, perched upon a chair for a little time, viewing with exquisite satisfaction the delicate operations which were progressing; but soon fluttered out again to her couches, her novels, and her dogs. And if any awful whispers should be going rustling about the passages, be sure the whisperers took care that Lady Helen's door was shut.

But, more often a great deal, there came Miss Madge to visit Hester. The Honourable Madge had also her rooms in the tower, just a flight of winding stairs below Hester. And the Honourable Madge held it a Christian thing to be neighbourly; and, though come of a noble lineage, as she was careful never to forget, yet the Honourable Madge was so far a model Christian as to feel warranted in being neighbourly in excess

with a nice young lady seamstress, who sat stitching at Miss Madge's elegant raiment, in the chamber above her head.

She grew so very neighbourly, indeed, that of a wintry evening, when Lady Helen and Miss Janet stepped, shivering in lace and gossamer, into their coach to drive half a dozen miles in search of their dinner, she, Madge, would come tapping to Hester's door with overtures for a mutual cup of tea. It was Hester's hour of ease, the hour when she wrote her letters. Her sewing of the day was laid aside, her fire was burning brightly, her desk open on the table.

'You do look so comfortable, my dear. Ah, you sly thing, hiding away your letters! My dear, I have a soft corner for young hearts. This is a lover, I have no doubts."

"Not at all," said Hester, flushing indignantly, but keeping her hand upon the superscription of her letter.

"Well, well, child, I did not mean to offend you. But you look so very secret about it. Put it away now for the present. I have ordered up some tea."

Miss Madge had just finished her evening excursion round the passages and byways of the castle. She had been “ up-stairs, and down-stairs, and into my lady's chamber." With a dark shawl covering her usual gaudy dress, with her ringlets pushed out of her eyes, with the likeness of her lover a little awry upon her forehead, and with her finger laid on her lip, Miss Madge was in the habit of going prying about the servants' quarters, listening at the doors, taking cold in her eyes with looking through the keyhole of Sir Archie's study door. But it must

not be thought that Miss Madge had any sinister motive in these excursions. She did not want to know if Mike were making love to pretty Bridget, nor to be able to report that Polly was wearing her ladyship's new velvet spencer of an evening. It was only that poor Madge was possessed by the fearful uneasy spirit of the times. She went prying about in hopes of picking up the smallest scrap of news, like a famished bird seeking for crumbs. She had not always lived in a remote castle like this; she had been used to more liberty, which she liked in her wild way. The servants were not offended at her spying. They pitied her for having to live in times like these in a drawing-room, where tongues had less freedom than they allowed themselves in the kitchen or pantry.

"I ax your pardon, ma'am, for the blundherin' big brute that I am! But the divil a bit of informashun is to be had these couple o' days!" Pat would say, indulgently, when he met her in some shady corner, and nearly ran her down with his tray.

Perhaps it was the workings of this uneasy spirit, the desire to talk upon forbidden subjects, that drew her so near to Hester, who had evidently a kindred hunger for the secrets of the times. Ah, my dear," she said, parenthetically sipping her tea, in the pauses between her stories of her political experiences, "I was not always shut up in a stifling place like this, where nothing changes from year's end to year's end but the weathercock. Not but what it is comfortable, and respectable, and— ancestral, and all that. And some people must live walled up in an old castle, or family tradition, the poetry of an ancient lineage, and that sort of thing, would be scattered over the world and quite lost. But I lived in Dublin, my dear; this time last year I was in Dublin, and I warrant you I knew then which way the wind was blowing!'

By this time the Honourable Madge had finished her tea, and possessed herself of the poker, her favourite plaything. And she fell to raking out the two lower bars of the grate, till a long red gulf was laid bare, with rough heads and promontories; or it might be a wide fiery dungeon, with jutting buttresses of walls here and there, a rugged stooping roof, blocks, benches, and chains. This last idea was the one which Miss Madge laid strong hold of.

"Christmas in the dungeon, my dear," she said, with a little wave of the poker, explaining the vision which she had unveiled behind the bars. "Scene, Kilmainham Jail; time, the blessed Christmas in the year of disaster, seventeen hundred and ninety-six. 'When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing,' my dear. See how they all crowd round the table, looking into the dish!"

Miss Madge's voice was triumphant, the poker was balanced on her fingers, her eyes were rivetted on the burning cinders. Hester, all excited, a little frightened, but very curious, sat gazing from Miss Madge to the fire, and from the fire to Miss Madge.

"Russell breaks the crust," Madge went on, "and sinks back in his chair. See him, the brave, gentle Russell! Neilson starts up, and dives his hand into the dish. Young Teelingpoor boy-claps his hands and shouts, Hurrah! Three cheers for our Christmas dish! Three cheers for the prisoners' pasty!' Ah, my dear, it was an excellent pasty, though I say it, who should not say it; for I helped at the making of it. I was staying with my friend M. I will not mention her name, my dear, for fear of accidents," said Miss Madge, looking over her shoulder. "My good friend M., as notable a housekeeper and as sound a politician as could be found in or out of the three kingdoms. She