DERWENT had lost sight of Patricia altogether; she and her mother left the neighbourhood without acquainting him with their movements. They did not care, indeed, for any one to know of their future locale. Lady Hester's insults, which had wounded Patricia too deeply for her to forget them, had yet nerved her in the accomplishment of a purpose; and her pride rose and carried all before it. A certain cold undercurrent of disdain of every one, and of all things, was aroused; and, as she surveyed their rooms in Hindley-street, there was less pain in the thought of all she had lost than triumph in her own strength of will and courage. A more morbid nature must have sunk under the strain. To be sure, Hindley-street was very different from sweet Rose-Lea; and Patricia knew that on this bright April day the hedgerows had put on their spring dress, and were green and fresh from April showers; that blackbirds and throstles were rivalling each other in song; that primroses and anemones were to be gathered in the woods; and banks covered with lilies and violets were now in bloom. She saw them in baskets at street-corners

VOL. XXXI.

near the Portland-road, and spent many halfpence in their purchase. She must not think of leafy trees and bursting blossoms, of the broom and laburnum laughing in the sun, or of the glories of the coming May. The almond-tree, under her bedroom window at Rose-Lea, was replaced here by wooden-props in a back yard. She looked at ropes instead of lilacs ; she missed the scents of the roses and jasmine that used to clamber round the porch; for the trill of the nightingale was heard the shrill cry of the cat's-meat man or the sweep; and for the voice of the sea, the heavy roll of vehicles. thundering down the Portland-road.

They had taken unfurnished apartments in Hindley-street, and arranged their own furniture, nicknacks, china, and books; and Patricia filled boxes with mignonette, and placed them outside along the window-sills, so that it all looked like home. like home. The tawdry finery, commonness, or display of the ordinary furnished apartments of the semi-genteel kind must have made it more difficult than ever for them to grow resigned to the change. They draped the mantelpieces with lace Patricia had made

Q

herself, and tiny little glasses, filled with fresh flowers, added to the general effect. They brought the dogs and birds with them to London, Patricia taking the former fine runs early in the morning in the parks; and after the landlady was quite certain Mr. Jack' would not bite the children, devour the family mutton, or run off with the milkcan, she allowed him, at intervals, to visit the kitchen, where he and a liver-coloured spaniel fraternised.

'The best of London is, that nobody knows or cares who we are, or where we come from, Mr. Jack,' said Patricia, as she was going out marketing, calling to the retriever, which had been Derwent's gift. The smoke and blacks may choke us, and turn our lungs in time to a fine ebony colour, and spoil our complexions; but we're free. You mustn't rush after cats, you silly fellow;' for the feline tribe were plentiful in Hindley-street, and Mr. Jack, who pursued them with more goodnatured indolence than spite, was occasionally scratched and maimed by the attacks of his natural and inevitable foes.

Several artists in Hindley-street had grown accustomed to the sight of the fair-haired girl in her neat ulster and simple hat, and of her smooth-coated companion, who sometimes carried her sunshade or a parcel in his mouth. Over late breakfasts of devilled kidneys or grilled bones, in rooms heavily charged with tobacco, these young gentlemen discussed the habits of their neighbour, never dreaming of an acquaintance. No one in London does that.

'Fancy they've known better times,' said Dick to Harry. Dog worth twenty guineas girl thoroughbred, every inch of her.'

'Awfully respectable elderly party, the mother,' sighed Harry; 'evidently much superior to her

surroundings. Ah, there's a good deal of romance in people's lives in London if we only knew it. I like to watch them go by; it reminds one of an oasis in a desert.'

Hindley-street certainly suggested thoughts of suicide in the winter. It grew dark a little after three; its houses were discoloured by the smoke of centuries. The muffin-man coughed desperately in the fogs; and a dilapidated hatless old person, with a violin and white locks like King Lear, tried to play 'The Carnival of Venice' and variations on Zampa. Sometimes a woman sang 'Strangers yet' and 'Some Day,' in the twilight. And no one could easily forget Sonnambula every organ repeated its beauties. The landlady was partial to street-music; much to the disgust of Mr. Jack and the blackand tan, dogs with cultivated tastes, who sat at the window and howled at discord.

Foggy November and December afternoons tried the nerves and spirits of the bravest ; and Patricia's nerves, which had been a good deal shattered, were scarcely so strong as of old, ere had come that desolate void in her heart. Mrs. Blackmore rather liked the gray ghost-like streets in winter, their loneliness and gloom, the sky, sky, that was an emblem of her life, and the total absence of everything reminding her of the past. No one knew them; they spoke to none. There was no anxiety not to be recognised, no shrinking from insult as from a blow. The husband and father's sin was, indeed, visited on their heads; and he who had sown the wind made them reap, not a whirlwind, but extinction.

For trials such as these no earthly compensation is possible. What had ever happened during her intercourse with the world to make her view people otherwise

than with feelings of indifference, if not repulsion? And the loveless years, that had passed in loneliness and isolation, had turned any hope she might have cherished of the chasm being one day bridged by a return of joy, into bitterness. Cut off from happiness in her youth, her faith and love bruised unto death, she hated all reminding her of the past, almost fearing to cling to Patricia, lest that dear tie should be also snapped, plunging her into deeper darkness still. She was no lonelier in London than in Rose-Lea. She heard of no events affecting herself, and expected no change; any more than a traveller in a desert dares to dream of fresh pastures and rippling

streams.

Still, Patricia tried to be lively, to sing over her work, and do good to others more miserable than herself. She painted little pictures in an unused top attic, and sold them to a Jew in Garrickstreet, who gave her a sovereign for what he sold for four. Painting amused her more than her artneedlework now. She made her pretty dresses, collars, and cuffs with the same tastefulness and care as when she went to lawntennis and archery-parties, or played billiards at Hillingford Towers with the girls and Derwent.

That dear mother must never see her mope or look sad. Patricia had a solid substratum of energy, principle, and strength of character that always made her elect to do her duty. As a soldier or sailor going into battle must of necessity risk his life, so in all moral conflicts a painful endurance of what is hard and difficult must be followed conscientiously, and without a murmur.

And they had much, after all, to be thankful for. The distant relative had not closed his purse

strings; they had no experience of want or starvation; no dinnerless days because the rent had to be paid, and sleepless nights in consequence. Only resignation instead of hope; repression in lieu of enjoyment, and such contrasts as are marked by the same difference that lies between success and failure.

She had her piano, her painting, her poor. With the aid of a little medicine-chest and beef-tea, unexpected presents, a few flowers, toys, encouragement, tenderness, she brightened wretched homes with her presence, and lifted a cloud from children's lives.

With no hope in the present, and no ambition or pleasure to expect in the future, she still refused to sink within the black gulf of despair. For a mind nourished on light fiction, and an ear delighting in Chopin, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, Patricia was more heroic than might be supposed under the circumstances.

'What do you think I've had given me to day, dear?' she was saying after dinner, picking up her black-and-tan, as she stood at the window watching a Punch-andJudy show, towards which all the poor juveniles of Hindley-street had gathered; ' tickets for the Princess's, given me by Mr. Soloman. I don't mean to be shut up here and lead a perfectly colourless life, and never enjoy anything. Theatres, like parks and churches, are open to all alike-saints and sinners, the wise and the foolish. And you will promise me to come, will you not?'

Mrs. Blackmore shook her head; but she could not refuse to comply with Patricia's request.

'Mr. Soloman sells my pictures, and Mrs. S. wishes to make our acquaintance. A strong odour of fried fish pervaded the mansion

when I was last there; being hungry, and liking plaice well cooked, I entered the inner parlour, and partook of the feast. It reminded me of a fish dinner we once had at Greenwich.'

'And then ?'

'And then I found it nice to talk to them. They are educated too; they were very kind to me; and they have a son.'

A son? You don't mean that he admires you, Pat?'

'O, doesn't he! He is devoted; he waylays me wherever I go. It's something to have accomplished the adoration of an infant Samuel, six feet high, with nice black curls, and a face like a plaster of Paris cast; but he finds fault with my paintings,' ended Patricia, with a sigh.

'In what way?'

'Why, he declares that I must be in love; for I paint the same man in all of them. The same smiling, unæsthetic, genial, débonnaire young man, with his hat tilted sideways, and his fair moustache. And so I do. Can't help it.'

It is Derwent, of course,' said Mrs. Blackmore gravely.

'Yes, mother, always Derwent. Derwent by the sea-shore throwing his stick after Lion, or Derwent fishing, dredging, driving, poetising down green lanes in the moonlight, or talking to a girl-that's me-in a large hat. Am I not foolish, weak? and yet,' went on Patricia dreamily, I couldn't paint at all if he didn't inspire me.'

'Is this the way to forget him?' 'No; but then I don't want to forget him, and I never shall. One can get happiness out of sorrow as well as misery. If all the men I paint are the same, it shows that poor Samuel has a small chance, doesn't it? and you've no idea what a wonderful likeness I'm getting quite striking.'

She sat down and drew her

lover's profile on the edge of an old paper. Those past confessions, those fond caresses, returned; they had been like the first flush of a new dawn; and this was winter.

'If he cared very much he'd try and find us out,' she said, throwing down her pencil, and watching her mother's face between her halfclosed eyelids. 'Fancy all these months, and never once catching a glimpse of him! I know Gwendoline would like to see us again. Poor Gwen! they nearly killed her between them, and she was married last summer.'

In absence, Patricia had developed an idealising fancy; she hoped to meet Derwent unexpectedly at the corner of a street, or coming out of a shop or hansom cab; and performed to herself various little comedies, founded on how, when, and where they might be thrown together again. She never entered an omnibus or firstclass railway carriage without wondering Is he here ?' As for Derwent, he could glean no intelligence whatever as to their whereabouts. He had left Cambridge, and, through his grandfather's influence, obtained a lucrative post as private secretary to a duke. The question of his abandonment of Patricia had been a burning one at home, and had at last ended in a quarrel, since he refused to give her up.

'I will advertise in every paper, and spare no money till I have found her,' he had said to Lady Hester as they parted. 'You and others have driven her away; you have worked on her nobility and her pride. But we shall not be separated for ever, for when I do find her she shall be my wife.'

Mr. Heath thought it better to leave his son alone, and not seek to thwart or influence him in the matter.

The fact is, Hester, we spoilt him years ago, and it's too late to attempt to drive him into any course of action,' he said; 'the Earl now seems to take his part.'

'He would do anything to spite me,' she answered angrily, and almost in tears, 'because I will not receive the creature he has married, and who has redeemed the family diamonds, and wears them as if to add insult to injury.'

'And, for a lady who began her career by singing "The Brokers are in," she has done remarkably well for herself.'

'She may, one day, have to experience it,' said Lady Hester, remembering various episodes of her youth. Ah, we seem to have nothing but trouble.'

'Not with our girls,' he said soothingly; they have married well; and if Clivedale comes to Derwent, it is better for him to please the old man. Besides, from all I hear, Reginald was more to blame in that affair than his victim and dupe. This is Derwent's view of it, and, I must confess, he seems right.'

Lady Hester was almost more indignant that her will should be thwarted, and her advice disregarded, than that Derwent should marry badly. She could not bear the thought that Patricia should conquer in the end; she had trusted that Derwent's vagrant fancy must soon cool; but the banishment and absence of the Blackmores only seemed to rekindle his affection. He mused over his loss with all the sentimental fatalism and forlornness of one whose peace is troubled and nearly destroyed.

That apparently piquant contempt and indifference of Patricia worked on him like a goad; it is the girl who flies from and evades him whom a man cares for and

ever longs to meet. So, was it mere chance that took Derwent, one fine April day, down Garrickstreet, Covent Garden, and made him view a small oil-painting in Mr. Soloman's shop-window that reminded him painfully of the old beach at home? A young man in a light summer suit, the image of himself, in a low-crowned hat, and a meerschaum pipe flung on some seaweed, was sitting on a sea-shore with two girls and a dog by his side, reading Browning aloud.

'Gad, and it's my stick too!' said Derwent, startled by the vivid likeness to himself. I should know that handle among a thousand; and that is old Lion's head; and I did once read Browning to Pat and Gwen, the day the waves drenched us by the rocks.

"Where be all those Dear dead women? and with such hair, too! What's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old,"

muttered Derwent, again gazing intently at the picture. 'Ah, where is my one dear woman ? I'd give something to know.'

The picture interested him so much he resolved to buy it, and at once entered the shop.

'How much may you want for this?' he said, pointing to the window.

Mr. Soloman named five guineas, and then said he feared it was sold.

Derwent held it in his hand, more than ever surprised at the resemblance to himself. He turned it over, and read Patricia's name in full at the back.

He was so startled for the moment he could scarcely speak.

'I will give you what you like for it,' he stammered.

'My good sir, I find, referring to my invoices, it is sold; but I have