its infancy. This child was a daughter, more delicate to all appearance than the others; but when illness fell upon her it was comparatively light, and with years health and strength seemed to increase. The fair, fragile form developed itself with a thousand graces; the bloom came upon the cheek, the soft, languid eyes grew bright and gay, and hour by hour hope and confidence returned. There was still a terrible shock in store, however. One day Sir Edward Monkton returned from a ride, very wet, was detained by a person he found waiting for him on business, was seized with shivering during the night, and inflammation of the lungs succeeded. Five days of watching and terror left her a widow, with a heart, the very firmness of which rendered its affections the more enduring. Mr. Scriven's character had not fully displayed itself to the eyes of Sir Edward Monkton. He knew him to be a good man of business, and believed him to be an honourable and upright man. Even Lady Monkton did not know her brother thoroughly; and she was glad to have him joined with herself as the executor of her husband's will and the guardian of her daughter. She soon found cause for some regret that it was so; for his arrangements did not altogether please her; but still there was not much to complain of; and at the end of the ten years which followed her father's death, she was living peacefully at her house in Hertfordshire, about fifteen miles from London, occupied with the education of her daughter Maria, seeing very little society, dwelling calmly, though gravely, upon the past, and looking forward with hope and consolation to the future.

One of the greatest anxieties which Lady Monkton felt at this time--and they were anxieties which amounted to grief--proceeded from the circumstances of her sister Margaret. Sir John Fleetwood had turned out all that Mr. Scriven had anticipated--reckless, extravagant, licentious. His whole thought and occupation seemed to be, how he might soon run through his own property and that part of his wife's fortune over which he had control. He was very successful in his endeavours. What bad associates, male and female, did not contrive to dissipate soon enough, cards, dice, and horses succeeded in losing; and at length he endeavoured to get rid of his wife's settlement. She would willingly have given it up to please him; for though he had been a negligent and offending husband, yet so long as money lasted he had always been gay and good-humoured with her, treating her more as an innocent and unsuspecting child than as a companion. But Mr. Scriven had taken care of his sister's income. It could not be touched even with her own consent. No creditor had power over it; her own receipt was necessary for every penny of the income, and being settled upon her children, though she had none, it was inviolable.

Sir John had not clearly perceived these stringent conditions when he signed the deed; and some sharp discussions took place between him and his brother-in-law. He became gloomy, morose, fretful; and still he would appear at Ascot or at the gambling-table, though he could no longer maintain the appearance which he had once displayed. It was at the former of these places that a dispute took place between himself and another gentleman of the turf. It matters not much to this work which was wrong or which was right, and indeed I do not know. Hard epithets were exchanged, and Sir John employed a horsewhip, not for its most legitimate purpose. Two mornings after he was brought home in a dying state, with a pistol-shot through his lungs, and never uttered a word during the half-hour he continued to exist. It must have been an awful half-hour, for it was clear that his senses and his memory were all still perfect; and what a picture memory must have shown him! Poor Lady Fleetwood was in despair. Her love had never failed, nor even diminished. She had never admitted his faults even to herself; or, at all events, had found excuses for them in her kind and affectionate heart. Now that he was gone she was still less likely to discover them; for bitter sorrow drew a veil between her eyes and all that might have shocked her in the conduct of the dead. It is true, there was one thing could not be concealed from her: that he had wasted every penny of his own property, and of hers, too, as far as it was in his power to do so. But then she fancied that he had been only unfortunate, and doubted not that, had he lived, all would have been set right. Her brother, Mr. Scriven, tried hard in his cold, dry way to open her eyes, but he only wrung her heart without convincing her; and though she both feared and respected him, he could never induce her to admit that her husband had acted ill.

Lady Monkton, with tenderer feelings, never attempted to undeceive her, but brought her at once to Bolton Park, and there tried to soothe and comfort her. Nor was she unsuccessful. Her own calm and quiet demeanour, somewhat touched with grief, but yet not melancholy, the gay and cheerful company of her little girl Maria, and the occasional society of her next neighbours, Lord Mellent and his wife, a somewhat indolent but amiable and lively woman, gradually restored Lady Fleetwood to composure and resignation. Her greatest solace, indeed, was her niece Maria; for, though enthusiastically fond of children, she had had none herself; and now, the gay, happy girl, about ten years old, addressed herself, with more thought and feeling than might have been expected of a child, to amuse her widowed aunt and win her mind from sad thoughts and memories. Maria's young companion, too, Anne Mellent, the daughter of their neighbours, though of a different character from Maria--quick, decided, independent in her ways--was always exceedingly tender and gentle to Lady Fleetwood, and from time to time another was added to their society, whom they all knew and all loved, though he was at this time not above thirteen years of age. But of him and his family I must speak apart, as, although it was intimately connected by circumstances with that of Mr. Scriven, it was not allied to it either by blood or marriage.

CHAPTER III.

In mentioning the circumstances which attended the death of the great merchant, I have spoken of a young gentleman of the name of Hayley, who, when his family fell into adverse circumstances, had been placed in Mr. Scriven's house as a clerk, and had risen by good conduct and attention to be the chief clerk in the counting-house. He was still under thirty when his friend and patron died, and, as I have said, received, as a recompense for his services, an eighth share in the house. Perhaps enough has been displayed of his character to enable the reader to estimate it justly; and I will only add, that he was of a gentle, yielding, almost timid disposition, although it might perhaps have been somewhat fiery and eager--as indeed it had seemed at school--had not early misfortunes and long drudgery broken his spirit and cowed the stronger passions within him. It is not an uncommon case.

During the time that he remained a clerk, and for a year after he became a partner in the house, Mr. Hayley lived as a single man with an unmarried sister, somewhat older than himself, in a small house in one of those suburban quarters of the town where people fancy they get country air. But at the end of that time he one day brought home with him a fine little boy of two years old, very much indeed to the surprise of his sister. Some explanation was of course necessary, as well as many new arrangements; but, for the first time in his life, a strange degree of reserve seemed to have fallen over Mr. Hayley. He would tell his sister part, but not the whole, he said, in answer to her anxious inquiries. He did not affect to deny that the child was his son; but he desired that he might not be questioned at all about the boy's mother, and seemed annoyed at the least allusion to the circumstance of birth.