veritable descendant of Moses and Sons. There was no end to the quips and jeers; even our set had a notion it would not do, and I sold it to a dealer at a sum that would hardly cover a month's rent,' finished the old man, with a mixture of pathos and dignity.

'After all, public taste is a sort of lottery,' observed Dr. Heriot; 'true genius is not always requited in this world, if it offends the tender prejudices of preconceived ideas.'

'The worship of the golden image fills up too large a space in the market-place,' replied Mr. Fabian, solemnly, 'while the blare of instruments covers the fetish-adoration of its votaries. The world is an eating and drinking and money-getting world, and art, cramped and stifled, goes to the wall.'

'Nay, nay; I have not so bad an opinion of my generation as all that,' interposed Dr. Heriot, smiling. 'I have great faith in the underlying goodness of mankind. One has to break through a very stiff outer-crust, I grant you; but there are soft places to be found in most natures.' And, as the other shook his head—'Want of success has made you a little down-hearted on the subject of our human charities, Mr. Fabian; but there is plenty of reverence and art-worship in the world still. I predict a turn of the wheel in your case yet. Cain may still glower down on us from the walls of the Royal Academy.'

'I hope so, before the hand has lost its cunning. But I am too egotistical. And so you are going to take Polly from me—from Dad Fabian, ay?'—looking at the young girl fondly.

'Indeed, Mr. Fabian, I must thank you for your goodness to my ward. Poor child! she would have fared badly without it. Polly, you must ask Miss Lambert to bring you to see this kind friend again.'

'Nay, nay; this is a poor place for ladies to visit,' replied the other, hastily, as he brushed away the fragment of a piece of snuff with a trembling hand; but he looked gratified, notwithstanding. 'Polly has been a good girl—a very good girl—and weathered gallantly through a very ticklish illness, though some of us thought she would never reach England alive.'

'Were you so ill, Polly?' inquired her guardian anxiously.

'Dad Fabian says so; and he ought to know, for he and Mrs. Rogers nursed me. Oh, he was so good to me,' continued Polly, clinging to him. 'He used to sit up with me part of the night and tell me stories when I got better, and go without his dinner sometimes to buy me fruit. Mrs. Rogers was good-natured, too; but she was noisy. I like Dad Fabian's nursing best.'

'You see she fretted for her father,' interposed the artist. 'Polly's one of the right sort—never gives way while there is work to be done; and so the strain broke her down. She has lost most of her pretty hair. Ellison used to be so proud of her curls; but it suits her, somehow. But you must not keep your new friends waiting, my child. There, God bless you! We shall be seeing you back again here one of these days, I dare say.'

Mildred felt as though her new life had begun from the moment the young stranger crossed her threshold. Polly bade her guardian good-bye the next day with unfeigned regret. 'I shall always feel I belong to him, though he cannot have me to live with him,' she said, as she followed Mildred into the house. 'Papa told me to love him, and I will. He is different, somehow, from what I expected,' she continued. 'I thought he would be gray-haired, like papa. He looks younger, and is not tall. Papa was such a grand-looking man, and so handsome; but he has kind eyes—has he not, Aunt Milly?—and speaks so gently.'

Mildred was quite ready to pronounce an eulogium on Dr. Heriot. She had already formed a high estimate of her brother's friend; his ready courtesy and highly-bred manners had given her a pleasing impression, while his gentleness to his ward, and a certain lofty tone of mind in his conversation, proved him a man of good heart and of undoubted ability. There was a latent humour at times discernible, and a certain caustic wit, which, tinged as it was with melancholy, was highly attractive. She felt that a man who had contrived to satisfy Betha's somewhat fastidious taste could not fail to be above the ordinary standard, and, though she did not quite echo Polly's enthusiasm, she was able to respond sympathetically to the girl's louder praise.

Before many days were over Polly had transferred a large portion of loving allegiance to Mildred herself. Women—that is, ladies—had not been very plentiful in her small circle. One or two of the artists' wives had been kind to her; but Polly, who was an aristocrat by nature, had rather rebelled against their want of refinement, and discovered flaws which showed that, young as she was, she had plenty of discernment.

'Mrs. Rogers was noisy, and showed all her teeth when she laughed, and tramped as she walked—in this way;' and Polly brought a very slender foot to prove the argument. And Mrs. Hornby? Oh, she did not care for Mrs. Hornby much—'she thought of nothing but smart dresses, and dining at the restaurant, and she used such funny words—that men use, you know. Papa never cared for me to be with her much; but he liked Mrs. Rogers, though she fidgeted him dreadfully.'

Mildred listened, amused and interested, to the girl's prattle. The young creature on the stool at her feet was conversant with a life of which she knew nothing, except from books. Polly would chatter for hours together of picture-galleries and museums, and little feasts set out in illuminated gardens, and of great lonely churches with swinging lamps, and little tawdry shrines. Monks and nuns came familiarly into her reminiscences. She had had gateau and cherries in a convent-garden once, and had swung among apple-blossoms in an orchard belonging to one.

'I used to think I should like to be a nun once,' prattled Polly, 'and wear a great white flapping cap, as they did in Belgium. Sœur Marie used to be so kind. I shall never forget that long, straight lime-walk, where the girls used to take their recreation, or sit under the cherry-trees with their lace-work, while Sœur Marie read the lives of the saints. Do you like reading the lives of the saints, Aunt Milly? I don't. They are glorious, of course; but it pains me to know how uncomfortable they made themselves.'

'I do not think I have ever read any, Polly.'

'Have you not?'—with a surprised arching of the brows. 'Sœur Marie thought them the finest books in the world. She used to tell me stories of many of them; and her face would flush and her eyes grow so bright, I used to think she was a saint herself.'

Mildred rarely interrupted the girl's narratives; but little bits haunted her now and then, and lingered in her memory with tender persistence. What sober prose her life seemed in contrast to that of this fourteen-years' old girl! How bare and empty seemed her niche compared to Polly's series of pictures! How clearly Mildred could see it all! The wandering artist-life, in search of the beautiful, poverty oppressing the mind less sadly when refreshed by novel scenes of interest; the grave, taciturn Philip Ellison, banishing himself and his pride in a self-chosen exile, and training his motherless child to the same exclusiveness.

The few humble friends, grouped under the same roof, and sharing the same obscurity; stretching out the right hand of fellowship, which was grasped, not cordially, but with a certain protest, the little room which Polly described so graphically being a less favourite resort than the one where Dad Fabian was painting his Tobit.

'It was only after papa got so ill that Mrs. Rogers would bring up her work and sit with us. Papa did not like it much; but he was so heavy that I could not lift him alone, and, noisy as she was, she knew how to cheer him up. Dad suited papa best: they used to talk so beautifully together. You have no idea how Dad can talk, and how clever he is. Papa used to say he was one of nature's gentlemen. His father was only a working man, you know;' and Polly drew herself up with a gesture Mildred