now that all your generous kindness cannot make it a true one. He must not find the remembrance of me between him and his home; and I must not live where everything and every person must be associated with him. Dearest and best of friends,' she pleaded, as if she were the woman of mature judgment, and Anne the girl, 'let us be in earnest. There is only one way of keeping myself from a useless, pining life: it is by going back to my own sphere, and to my appointed work. Let me go-let me go at once, without the delay of a day, and let him stay here, in his proper place. Send me to Miss Thorpe, until I can begin my destined life; and never let him know where I am. He is as angry as he is sorry even now; and if you will do what I ask you, he will be more angry still.' 'I wonder whether he has said anything to Sir David?' muttered Anne with unconscious irrele

vance.

'If he has,' Mary answered her unintentional | utterance, Sir David Mervyn will have told him that such a thing could never be. What would he think of a friend of his marrying beneath him? What would he think of me, if I could have so far forgotten myself as to believe for a moment that it could be?'

'Do you think so very highly of Sir David, Mary? Do you prize his good opinion very much?' 'Indeed, I do. I have no knowledge from which to draw comparisons, but Sir David seems to me to be the truest and noblest gentleman in the world.' "Then you would be satisfied to act by his advice, if, as I feel sure is the case, he is acquainted with what has occurred. You would let me consult him, before we decide on anything?'

'Yes, I would,' answered Mary, but with evident surprise.

'My dear,' said Anne, 'you have observed that I have said nothing about my own view of the matter. And now I am going to tell you why: it is because I am much to blame for what has happened; it is because I have not been quite true to my trust. I ought to have seen, perhaps I ought to have foreseen this, but I did not either see or foresee it. Now that I know it, and that you have acted as you have done, you have cut me to the heart, my child, with the conviction that where I hoped to secure your happiness, I have perhaps brought a great misfortune on you -the misfortune of a hopeless love. I suppose life has no greater.'

"O yes; I think it has,' said Mary quickly: an unreturned love must be worse; I shall remember always that he loved me.'

Anne continued, speaking low, and with a very pale face: If I could give you to Cyril as his wife, I would do so, with all my heart, and the conviction that I had given him a precious and blessed gift. Mary started, and reddened. But I am not the person to be consulted; and I am not blameless towards Cyril's mother. Take all the comfort which my assurance can give you, and do not make up your mind that you are never to be Cyril's wife.'

It is impossible, it is impossible that you''It is quite possible, and quite true. I think my cousin Cyril could make no happier marriage, and I have a right to an opinion, having known you two-thirds of your life. I don't say this can be, Mary; I don't tell you to feel confident; I only say don't despair; and remember this-if anything had

been wanting to my love and esteem for you, your conduct to-day would have supplied it.'

Mary listened to her in trembling bewilderment. Anne continued: "Now, will you be very reasonable, and very good? Will you leave me by myself, and go away-to occupy yourself, mind, not to mope? I expect to see Sir David to-day-if he knows about this, he will probably come here early and I want to put my thoughts well in order before I consult him. Will you go this very minute, Mary, and without saying a word more ?"

Mary rose; but before she could speak, a servant came into the room with a message for Anne. Sir David Mervyn was without, and wished to know whether Miss Cairnes could receive him. Anne answered in the affirmative, and said to Mary, as the footman left the room: Go through the drawing-room; you will not be seen. Stay one moment! Where is the picture you put in your trunk for me at Bromley?'

'In my room.'

'Put it in the drawing-room; I may want it.' They spoke hurriedly. Mary passed through the folding-doors; and a moment later, Sir David Mervyn was shaking hands with Anne, whose first glance at him satisfied her that he knew what had occurred.

'Where is Cyril?' inquired Anne.

'Gone to Dumfries, at my special request. I promised to come here and speak to you, provided he would keep out of the way until I had done so. This is a serious matter; and I feel that I am rather to blame in it, for I saw what was coming, some days ago, and I ought to have spoken to you; but it never occurred to me that you did not notice it.'

'I did not, however; indeed, I did not.'

'What could you have been thinking about! Cyril was infatuated from the first.-I beg your pardon.' Anne's sudden intense blush could not be passed over unnoticed, 'I did not mean that as a reproach. Now, the question is, what is to be done? Cyril declares positively that nothing shall induce him to give Mary up; not her own refusal, repeated a hundredfold, because he knows she loves him, and has refused him only on grounds which he will not admit her inferiority of birth and position. As for fortune, Cyril says there can be no question of that; he has nothing that you have not given him; she has nothing that you have not given her; they are perfectly equal in that respect. "We are both Anne's pensioners," was his way of putting it.'

'Absurd boy!' said Anne, trying to smile.

'Not so absurd either, for it's true enough. He is very desperately determined on making Mary change her mind; and--I don't think he entertains much apprehension about your behaviour in the matter-he actually sent me to see you in the first place, and to see Mary in the second.'

'You! Do I understand you? Do I interpret your tone rightly? Sir David, is it possible that you would approve of this?'

That I would approve of Cyril's marrying such a girl as Mary, so beautiful, and so noble as her conduct-for he told me all-proves her to be-a girl whom you have thought worthy of a place in your home and heart! Of course, it is possible. If Cyril be happy enough to win her, I shall think him a very fortunate man. Has she not admitted that she loves him!' He rose, and

walked about the room, and spoke with earnestness which held Anne spell-bound. Is there anything in the world against her except a humble origin? Is she to be made wretched because of that, wretched as she must be, if parted from the man she loves; and is he to have his life perverted, embittered, perhaps ruined, out of deference to a chimera? I tell you, Anne,' he continued, 'I should despise Cyril if he could be influenced by such arguments as might be used against his marrying Mary, as much as I honour the girl for those she used to explain her refusal. You know what they were?'

Anne was almost confounded by his earnestness in pleading Cyril's cause. He was pleading it with a keen remembrance of his own love, and his own marriage beneath him.' She answered: "The poor child told me. They are briefly-his mother and myself. As for me, you have judged me rightly. As for his mother, this will shew you what he has to fear, and expect from her.'

She handed him Mrs Westland's letter. He read it, and flung it down impatiently. Disgusting!' he said. Worse even than I should have expected from her. The pride, the worldliness, and the inhumanity of that old woman are intolerable; and here, ridiculous! But they offer a formidable obstacle, for, as she says, it would not do to encourage Cyril to set his mother at defiance.' Here he paused, and a short silence ensued. He crossed the room, and seated himself by the side of Anne's writing-table.

Excuse the question,' he said; but has Mrs Westland any right to be so peremptory on this matter of birth? She is your mother's sister. Your mother had no nonsense of this kind about her?'

'My mother and my father were both of obscure birth, as you know,' replied Anne,' and not in the least ashamed of it. My aunt is very proud of her husband's family; but I suppose her chief objection to Mary is her position, which she represents to herself as that of my paid companion, for she proposes to me to "dismiss " her.''

"That, and the fact, that her mother was a dependent of yours, and Mary herself brought up in your alms-houses. After all, we must not judge Mrs Westland too harshly; we must bear in mind that she does not know Mary, while she does know the circumstances of her birth and rearing.'

'Sir David,' said Anne, unlocking a drawer of the table on her right hand as she spoke, the circumstances of Mary's birth are not what they are supposed to be by herself, and by every one except me; for few people knew the truth at the time, and those who remain of that few, if any, have probably forgotten it.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean,' she answered, taking from the drawer a few sheets of paper, closely written over, and pinned together the same memoranda she had read in the green arcade at Bromley Park, that I am about to confide a story to you, and to ask your advice. It may, or may not, have some connection with the story of the likeness I mentioned to you last night. If it have any such connection, you may possibly help me to trace it; if it have not, we shall be in no deeper darkness than before. May I confide the facts to you? Will you give me your advice?'

Assuredly,' said Sir David: 'I will listen to the

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facts, and give you the best advice I can. From whom did you hear the story?'

'From Mrs Allen. She told it to me, on the last night of her life. Her mind was quite calm; her memory was perfectly clear; and I wrote the details down, when she fell asleep, in the room with her, with every one of them fresh in my mind. She told me the story in the first person; I wrote it in the third; that, I am most positively certain, is the only difference between the two narratives. After a brief statement of the circumstances which have led to my writing them, I find my memoranda proceed thus:

CHAPTER XXXIV.-ANNE'S MEMORANDA.

"In 1854, Mrs Allen and her husband were living in a small house close to the railway station at B- near Manchester. James Allen was station-master at this place, where there was a good deal of responsible duty, on account of its being the junction with a branch-line on which there was considerable goods-traffic. James Allen was in feeble health, and much older than his wife; he was a man of excellent character. They had been ten years married, but had only one child, a girl, who was a year old when they came to live at BMrs Allen was a quiet woman, who kept the house, and made few acquaintances. She was an unusually well-educated woman for her position in life, having been brought up in a gentleman's family, where her mother was housekeeper; and she was skilled in various kinds of needlework; which led to my after-acquaintance with her. In the early spring of 1854, the child died, after a few days' illness, and the shock turned the mother's brain for a while. She was for some time in a state of insane despondency, and she believes that some of her husband's friends tried to induce him to place her in a madhouse. He would not do this; but had her taken care of, during his own absence, by a person named Susan Miller, who, I have since ascertained, died seven years ago. Mrs Allen had been slowly improving during the autumn, and at the beginning of winter was well enough to be left alone. She formed the habit of going to the railway station two or three times a day, and generally was present at the arrival of the late train from London; after which her husband's daily duties were over, and he would return home with her. One night, in November 1854, an accident happened, at a short distance from the station."It is a curious coincidence,' Anne said, interrupting her reading, 'that I had a distinct recollection of this occurrence, the moment Mrs Allen referred to it. I was reading the account of this very accident, from the Times, to your father, when your mother startled us by the attack of fainting, which was the beginning of that dreadful fever she had while you were in the Crimea. So that, though it had happened so long before, my memory was clear about the circumstances to which Mrs Allen referred.

"It was a serious accident; the sufferers were numerous, but it was especially remarkable as an instance of the wonderful preservation of an infant. In a compartment of a second-class carriage, which was almost knocked to pieces, three passengers were found dead. They had evidently been killed instantly. One was a man, afterwards recognised as a commercial traveller; the other two were

women. The position in which the dead bodies were found was a point of particular interest. They faced each other, on opposite sides of the compartment; and one, that of a middle-aged woman, was upright, with an infant, apparently about eighteen months old, clasped to her bosom. The child was dead. The other was that of a young woman, decently clad, evidently of the same class as the middle-aged woman who was at first supposed to be her travelling companion. Her dead body was found, the feet downwards towards the carriage-floor, but the upper portion stretched sideways along the seat; and lying under it was a living female infant, of apparently the same age as the dead baby on the other side. The living child was but slightly injured. She had evidently been undressed, and laid on the seat by the mother, while the other woman opposite took charge of the second baby, for she had on simply a little nightgown, and a white silk handkerchief round her neck; she was also wrapped in a warm woollen shawl, which was recognised as the property of the middle-aged woman who had been killed, when her husband identified the body, on the following morning. The name of the middle-aged woman was Susan Gale, and her husband, a respectable man, for whom my father had procured employment, stated, at the inquest, that she had gone up to London two days before, on business with which he was unacquainted; that she had travelled to and from London alone; that she had no child; that he had no knowledge whatever of the young woman who had been killed at the same time as his poor wife, and that he did not believe she had any knowledge of her either."

Again Anne interrupted her reading. 'You see,' she said, that I had more than one reason for remembering the circumstances of this railway accident. Susan Gale's husband was a protégé of my dear father's, and Susan herself well known to both Marion and me. You must remember her, Sir David; she was James Thompson's sister.'

Of course I remember her perfectly my father told me about her death, and how it complicated the distress of my mother's illness. But that was a sad time for me in many ways, and I forgot all about poor Susan. Go on, pray?'

""Mrs Allen was at the station at B when the dead and the injured were carried in from the blocked-up line, and she rendered all the assistance she could to her husband and the other officials. In the confusion, they put the living infant into her arms, and her first care was to feed and warm it, and see to its hurts. They were very trifling; but one of them was a cut on the neck, which had stained the handkerchief with blood. She removed the handkerchief, and with it a piece of narrow ribbon on which a little silk bag hung over the baby's breast. She put the two objects, as she thought, into her pocket, and gave her whole attention to the child. There was a fire in the waiting-room, and she remained there all night, her husband having barely time to speak a few words to her; and a doctor having come in inspected the child, and directed her to stay there, and keep it until she should be sent for. In the morning, the child was taken from her, and handed over to a nurse from the workhouse; and her husband sent her home to rest, telling her she would be required to be present at the inquest. Fatigue, terror, excitement, and the dear old

familiar feeling of the baby in her arms, through the long hours of the night, had been too much for Mrs Allen, and when they came to fetch her, she was wholly unfit to appear. Her husband attended the inquest, and stated all he knew-that the child had been in his wife's charge all the night, and that she was 'driven off her head again,' by the occurrence; but that she had no knowledge of the mother, or of any passenger by the unlucky train. The result of the inquiry was as follows: The body of the commercial traveller was identified. The body of Susan Gale was identified. The body of the young woman, the mother of the two infants, one dead, the other living, of the same sex, and apparently the same age, therefore presumed to be twins, was not identified, and was buried, together with that of the child, after a proper delay. A minute description of the woman, the twin children, and their respective clothing, was circulated all through the United Kingdom, without any result. There was one other circumstance connected with the accident, which it is right to record. The inquiries made at the King's Cross Railway Station in London respecting the passengers by the train who had taken their tickets there, elicited these facts concerning the female occupants of the second-class through' carriage. No one had remarked their entry into the station; they might have come in separately, they might have come in together. But the guard had seen them on the platform side by side, each with an infant in her arms, had admitted them to the carriage at the same moment, and had heard them exchange a few sentences relative to their respective luggage. He could not say what those sentences were, but he could say that the older woman had with her a carpet-bag and a neat black box, for a porter brought them upon a truck, and put the bag into the carriage, at her request. The box he wheeled away to the luggage-van. The carpet-bag was found among the ruins of the railway carriage, and identified by Thomas Gale as the property of his wife; and it resulted from this recognition that the guard must have been mistaken about the black box. Gale stated that his wife had no such thing in her possession; she had no intention of making purchases in London, and no money beyond that necessary for her travelling expenses; the black box was therefore clearly the property of the woman who had been killed. On examination of the battered luggage-van, no box answering to the description was to be found, and it became evident that several robberies had been perpetrated during the confusion. All trace of the identity of the young mother was lost, and the survivor of the presumed twin-children remained in the workhouse nursery; after a certain number of advertisements had been inserted in the papers, to which no answer was received."'

Again Anne interrupted her reading. I can remember,' she said, 'to have read some of these details at the time in a newspaper, during Lady Mervyn's illness. Marion and I looked out for them, on James Thompson's account.

"Mrs Allen rallied, and finally recovered, but she never forgot the infant whom she had held in her arms throughout that winter-night; and her husband, to whom she constantly talked of the child, thought at first that she had an insane fancy that it was her own come back to her. But she was under no such delusion, as he recognised

quickly. One day, he proposed to her that they should adopt the child, then nearly, as they guessed, two years old. The idea enchanted her; she became a new creature under the influence of the hope. There was no difficulty with the workhouse people; they were too glad to get rid of a burden, and James Allen's respectability was indisputable. The child was handed over to them, with the necessary precautions for her being traced, in case of a claim being made by her parents or relatives. No such claim has ever been made."" Anne again interrupted her reading, and said: 'Mrs Allen lost her husband seven years ago. I had known her three years before, having been referred to her by some people in a shop in Manchester, on a question of Spanish embroidery, in which she was an adept, and I esteemed her highly. She brought up her adopted daughter admirably, and the child loved her dearly. I offered her one of my Homes, and I undertook the expense of Mary's education, perceiving her talents, and proposing thus to enable her to support herself by teaching. ""After James Allen's death, it happened one day that Mrs Allen gave an old gown of her own to the child, desiring her to unpick the skirt, that it might be dyed, to make a mourning-frock for Mary. When Mrs Allen came into the room to see how she was getting on, she found her looking at something like a rag covered with flue, which she said she had found at the bottom of the gown, between the stuff and the lining. Mrs Allen examined the soiled rag: it proved to be a small silk handkerchief, with faded blood-stains upon it; and there dropped from it a faded bag, a couple of inches square, attached to a piece of narrow ribbon. In a moment it flashed upon her-in a moment she understood it she had pushed the handkerchief she took off the child's neck, on that awful night in the station at B, not, as she thought, into her pocket, but into a hole in the lining of her gown; it had worked down to the bottom, and she had never remembered it again. She washed the handkerchief, and laid it by; she examined the bag, and laid it by; and the examination of both, combined with certain recollections which it suggested, led her to a conclusion different from that which had been reached on the inquest. She remembered that the night-dress which the living infant had on was of fine lawn; while the clothes of both the dead women and of the dead infant were, though decent, of the most ordinary description; she remembered that the young mother was of a swarthy complexion, with black hair, and that the dead child resembled her strikingly. The stained handkerchief was of fine India silk; the little bag was of white satin, with a tiny festoon of embroidery upon it, and it contained a thick chased gold ring, without any inscription: nothing to afford an indication of its owner. From that hour, Mrs Allen ceased to believe that Mary was the child of the young woman, and the sister of the infant who had been killed in the accident at B; and persisted in believing that she was the child of persons of condition; a notion which Mary's natural grace and distinction, the mark of 'race,' as people call it, so strongly set upon her, confirmed. The obvious consideration, that those persons of condition, whose child had been confided to a nurse or other attendant during a journey, would have identified the woman and child, did not weigh with her. They may have

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had their own reasons for keeping quiet,' was her answer to this: depend upon it, Mary is a gentleman's child.' This is the substance of the revelation which she made to me, a few hours before her death, and which I only am in possession of."' Here Anne's memoranda ended.

"A very strange story!' said Sir David.

66 no

'You can see in it, I am sure, my motive for acting as I did,' said Anne. If Mrs Allen's interpretation was correct, then fate had been doubly hard on Mary. Now, the question arises on which I have asked for your advice, and you have promised to give it to me. You and I know that Mary is not Mrs Allen's child; are we to tell her so, and to allow Cyril to put it to his mother, that Mary may be his equal, or his superior in birth?' 'Or that she may be, in the saddest sense, body," for that is the other side, the more probable side of the hypothesis? No; I think not. Your knowledge of these circumstances explains much to me; but until we can hit upon some way of clearing them up, they are useless; and it would be a great shock to Mary to tell her the truth, especially as she is suffering under one form of agitation already. No,' repeated Sir David, thoughtfully; this must all be an after-consideration: for the present, we must think only of what is to be done about Cyril.'

'Let me say one word more about this story,' said Anne, putting her hand again into the drawer, and taking out a small parcel, which she laid on the open blotting-book before her. The chances of finding out whose child Mary is are of the vaguest ; but they are not utterly desperate, and such as they are, I have thought of them pretty steadily. I see two-dimly, but there. The first is the chance of tracing out the likeness which we have both perceived. If it be associated with the same person, of which I am tolerably certain-for you were acquainted with the person whom I meanthen the chance will take form. I struck the right chord of association last night only. The face which Mary's brings to my mind is the face of a Mrs Martin, the wife of that Captain Martin who was killed, you told me, at Inkermann, shortly after he had heard of her death. I saw Mrs Martin a few times at St Leonard's that year: she was a most lovely creature, with the most exquisite voice I ever heard; the first song I heard her sing was Ben Bolt, and Mary's singing of it last night supplied the link my memory had long been seeking. She had with her at St Leonard's an infant child, a little more than a year old. Mrs Martin was certainly not older than I was myself then; indeed, I think she was younger; and I was twenty in that year.'

Anne had spoken rapidly, earnestly, without remarking the blank expression of Sir David's face. "There is some mistake,' he said. "I have no notion whom you are talking of. I never saw Martin's wife. She was much older than he was, and a confirmed invalid; she died in Devonshire. I remember his telling me about it; she had not been out of the house for a year previously; and they never had any children. The lady you allude to must have been another person, and I suppose I made some blunder when you asked me about Martin.'

'It is very strange,' said Anne, looking much disappointed, 'for you said at the time there was no other Captain Martin in a line regiment, serving