Chapter One.

The Perils of Orphanhood.

The house in which the Vanes lived stood in a large and beautiful garden, and both were enclosed by a high brick wall, over which only the waving tops of the trees could be seen from the street. There were a good many such houses in M. at the time my story opens. They were originally built in the country, amid green fields and orchards, where, on summer days, one might sit and look at country sights and listen to country sounds, and quite forget that the hum and bustle of a great town sounded close at hand.

As time went on, and commerce prospered, the town extended itself in all directions. Houses, some large and some small, were built near those pleasant country homes, and in a few years stretched far beyond them. Sometimes the gardens were encroached upon, and streets were opened, and building lots laid out and occupied close to the house itself, till only a narrow strip of dusty lawn was left. But in some streets the high brick garden-walls made a blank between great blocks of stores and terraces of dwellings for a good many years, and in some streets there are high brick garden-walls still.

The house in which the Vanes lived was a long time before it yielded up a foot of its large garden which the wall shut in. This wall was broken on two sides by gates. In a narrow street which led down towards the river were two heavy wooden doors, one large enough to admit a carriage, the other smaller, for the convenience of those who entered on foot. On another side, from one of the great thoroughfares of the city, the grounds were entered by handsome iron gates. A clump of evergreens and ornamental shrubs in part hid the house, even when the gates, were open, and a low cedar hedge and a fence of iron network separated the lawn and the carriage-drive from the more extensive grounds behind the house.

The house itself had no particular claim to be called handsome, except that it was large and well built of grey hewn stone. It was high and square, and on one side a wing had been thrown out, which rather spoiled the appearance of the original building; but, standing back from the bustle and dust of the street, behind the green, lawn and pebbly carriage-drive, and partly hidden by the trees and shrubs, it looked a very pleasant and pretty place for a home.

This house was built and occupied many years by Mr St. Hubert, an immigrant from France, and at his death it was left to his only child, Mrs Vane, with a condition that neither it nor a foot of the land about it should be sold during her life-time. A great many tales might be told of what happened in that house from first to last—most of them sorrowful tales enough—but it is only the story of poor Mrs Vane and her children that is to be told here.

Almost every one spoke of this lady as “poor Mrs Vane.” Her friends had all said, “Poor Theresa,” when it was first known that she was to be married to Mr Vane; for he was a poor man, and a widower with three children, who, they all said, wished to marry her because she was the daughter of a man who was supposed to be rich. Her father would have given half of what he possessed, rather than that she should have married Mr Vane; but he had never crossed a wish of hers during all the eighteen years of her life, and it was too late to begin then. So, though he did not like him, he gave his consent to the marriage, on condition that he should leave the army, and accept a situation in a public office, which he, being a man of wealth and influence, was able to obtain for him. It did not cost Mr Vane much self-denial to do this—though he used afterwards to declare that it did—for he was a man who first of all considered what was for his own ease and pleasure. Nor did it trouble him much to send his children from him. His eldest daughter was adopted by his first wife’s mother, who resided in the town of M.; and his other children—a boy and girl—were sent home to be cared for and educated by their father’s friends in England; and he took up his residence in the luxurious home of his father-in-law with very good will.

It did not prove a happy marriage. It might have done so, perhaps, if after a few years Mrs Vane’s health had not failed. If she could have continued the gay life to which she had been introduced, and could have shone a belle among her husband’s friends, as she had done in her own smaller circle while a girl, she might have had a sort of happiness, while it lasted, and so might he. But after awhile her health failed, and at the time of her father’s death, which happened when her eldest child was thirteen years of age, she was a confirmed invalid.

She was “poor Mrs Vane” indeed then. A suffering, solitary, forsaken woman she felt herself to be the day her dead father was carried away from the house he had built. Not that her husband had ever been unkind to her, or even openly neglectful. But he had never cared for her as she had cared for him; and it was not in his nature to understand the wants or cravings of a sick unsatisfied heart like hers, much less to minister to them. He was sorry that she could no longer go into the society she had always adorned, and he often told her so; but he never gave up a pleasure which society could offer to him for her sake. He grieved for her sufferings, and did what might be done during a brief visit or two each day to relieve them; but long before her father’s death she had come to feel that his grief was of a kind that could very well be left in her chamber when he went away. After a time the vain craving for his sympathy, which made the first years of her illness so miserable, wore away, and a kind of dull content, growing gradually out of an interest in other things, took its place; but she was “poor Mrs Vane” still to the few friends who had not forgotten her already in her enforced retirement.

And her husband was “poor Mr Vane” to himself and everybody else when Mr St. Hubert died. The old man had treated him shamefully, he thought and declared, for his name was not mentioned in his will. The house and a certain income was insured to his wife while she lived, and at her death all the property was to be divided between the children, and given up to them as each came of age. But he had nothing; and even his wife’s income was not allowed to pass through his hands.

It was not a very large income. It would not have sufficed for her and her children, had they been living in the gay world, entertaining and being entertained. But living quietly, as her health obliged them to live, it might be considered ample for them all. At any rate, she knew it would have to suffice; for Mr Vane, having always spent his own income on his own pleasures, was ill prepared to give up any part of it.

They did not grow happier together after this. Some time before Mr St. Hubert’s death the care of household affairs had been committed by him into the hands of a relative of his own—a widow of the name of Ascot; and during his life-time nothing transpired to occasion any doubt as to her entire fitness for the position he had given her. She was a French woman by birth, and spoke English very imperfectly, though her deceased husband had been an Englishman. She was a very quiet, firm person, faithful in the performance of all her duties, and careful and exact in the management of the household expenses. She never presumed on her relationship in any way that was disagreeable to Mr St. Hubert, and, by her attention to