was to address Mrs. Gray.

"La, Mrs. Gray! can't you find it?" she said. "Why, I told you, third column, second page, 'The Church in a Mess.' You can't miss. I have put a pin in it."

Spite of this kind attention, Mrs. Gray had not found "The Church in a
Mess."

"Lawk, Mrs. Brown!" she said, impatiently, "where's the use of always raking up them sort of things! The badness of others don't make us good— does it? It's the taxes I think of, Mrs. Brown; it's the taxes! Now, Rachel, where are you going?"

"I am going to take home this work, mother."

Unable to find fault with this, Mrs. Gray muttered to herself. She was not ill-natured, but fault-finding was with her an inveterate habit.

"La! what a muff that girl of yours is, Mrs. Gray!" charitably observed Mrs. Brown, as Rachel left the room. For Mrs. Brown being Mrs. Gray's cousin, landlady, and neighbour, took the right to say everything she pleased.

"She ain't particlerly bright," confessed Mrs. Gray, poking the fire, "but you see, Mrs. Brown—"

Rachel closed the door, and heard no more. Whilst Mrs. Brown was talking, she had been tying up her parcel. She now put on her bonnet and cloak, and went out.

It is sweet, after the toil of a day, to breathe fresh air, London air even though it should be. It is sweet, after the long closeness of the work-room, to walk out and feel the sense of life and liberty. A new being seemed poured into Rachel as she went on.

"I wonder people do not like this street," she thought, pausing at the corner to look back on the grey, quiet line she was leaving behind. "They call it dull, and to me it is so calm and sweet." And she sighed to enter the noisy and populous world before her. She hastily crossed it, and only slackened her pace when she reached the wide streets, the mansions with gardens to them, the broad and silent squares of the west end. She stopped before a handsome house, the abode of a rich lady who occasionally employed her, because she worked cheaper than a fashionable dress-maker, and as well.

Mrs. Moxton was engaged—visitors were with her—Rachel had to wait— she sat in the hall. A stylish footman, who quickly detected that she was shy and nervous, entertained himself and his companions, by making her ten times more so. His speech was rude—his jests were insolent. Rachel was meek and humble; but she could feel insult; and that pride, from which few of God's creatures are free, rose within her, and flushed her pale cheek with involuntary displeasure.

At length, the infliction ceased. Mrs. Moxton's visitors left; Rachel was called in. Her first impulse had been to complain of the footman to his mistress; but mercy checked the temptation; it might make him lose his place. Poor Rachel! she little knew that this footman could have been insolent to his mistress herself, had he so chosen. He was six foot three, and, in his livery of brown and gold, looked splendid. In short, he was invaluable, and not to be parted with on any account.

Mrs. Moxton was habitually a well-bred, good-natured woman; but every rule has its exceptions. Rachel found her very much out of temper. To say the truth, one of her recent visitors was in the Mrs. Brown style; Mrs. Moxton had been provoked and irritated; and Rachel paid for it.

"Now, Miss Gray," she said, with solemn indignation, "what do you mean by bringing back work in this style? That flounce is at least an inch too high! I thought you an intelligent young person—but really, really!"

"It's very easily altered, ma'am," said Rachel, submissively.

"You need, not trouble," gravely replied Mrs. Moxton. "I owe you something; you may call with your bill to-morrow."

"I shall not be able to call to-morrow, ma'am; and if it were convenient now—"

"It is not convenient now!" said Mrs. Morton, rather haughtily. She thought Rachel the most impertinent creature she had ever met with—that is to say, next to that irritating Mrs. Maberly, who had repeated that provoking thing about Mr. So-and-So. Rachel sighed and left the house like all shy persons, she was easily depressed. It was night when she stood once more in the street. Above the pale outline of the houses spread a sky of dark azure. A star shone in it, a little star; but it burned with as brilliant a light as any great planet. Rachel gazed at it earnestly, and the shadow passed away. "What matter!" she thought, "even though a man in livery made a jest of me—even though a lady in silk was scornful. What matter! God made that star for me as well as for her! Besides," she added, checking a thought which might, she feared, be too proud, "besides, who, and what am I, that I should repine?"

CHAPTER II.

Rachel went on; but she did not turn homewards. She left the broad and airy strait, where Mrs. Moxton lived. She entered a narrow one, long and gloomy. It led her into a large and gas-lit square. She crossed it without looking right or left: a thought led her on like a spell. Through streets and alleys, by lanes and courts—on she went, until at length she stood in the heart of a populous neighbourhood. Cars were dashing along the pavement; night vendors were screaming at their stalls, where tallow lights flared in the night wind. Drunken men were shouting in gin palaces, wretched looking women were coming out of pawnbroker's shops, and precocious London children were pouring into a theatre, where their morals were to be improved, and their understandings were to be enlightened, at the moderate rate of a penny a head.

Rachel sighed at all she saw, and divined. "Poor things!" she thought, "if they only knew better." But this compassionate feeling did not exclude a sort of fear. Rachel kept as much as she could in the gloomy part of the streets; she shrank back nervously from every rude group, and thus she at length succeeded in attracting the very thing she most wished to shun—observation. Three or four women, rushing out of a public-house, caught sight of her timid figure. At once, one of them—she was more than half-intoxicated—burst out into a loud shouting laugh, and, seizing Rachel's arm, swung her round on the pavement.

"Let me go!" said Rachel "I am in a hurry." She trembled from head to foot, and vainly tried to put on the appearance of a courage she felt not.

"Give me something for drink then," insolently said the woman.

Rachel's momentary fear was already over; she had said to herself, "and what can happen to me without God's will?" and the thought had nerved her. She looked very quietly at the woman's flushed and bloated face, and as quietly she said:

"You have drunk too much already; let me go."

"No I won't," hoarsely replied her tormentor, and she used language which, though it could not stain the pure heart of her who heard it, brought the blush of anger and shame to her cheek.

"Let me go!" she said, trembling this time with indignation.

"Yes—yes, let the young woman go, Molly," observed one of the woman's companions who had hitherto looked on apathetically. She officiously disengaged Rachel's arm, whispering as she did so: "You'd better cut now—I'll hold her. Molly's awful when she's got them fits on."

Rachel hastened away, followed by the derisive shout of the whole group. She turned down the first street she found; it was dark and silent, yet Rachel did not stop until she reached the very end of it; then she paused to breathe a while, but when she put her hand in her pocket for her handkerchief it was gone; with it had disappeared her purse, and two or three shillings. Rachel saw and