little dinner-party went off very pleasantly; and I felt quite relieved to find that when we were helped, the servants left the room; and Ada then told us that she had suffered so much as a girl from the stony presence behind her mother's chair, that she had always determined, if she were at the head of a house of her own, never to have a servant in the room one moment longer than necessary.

After dessert was over, Ada and we went up to the nursery, leaving the gentlemen over their wine, and I believe they would have sat and talked there all night if Ada had not at last sent them message after message to say that tea was ready upstairs. Soon after they came up our fly arrived, and we went home very much pleased with our evening.

After that Harry never raised any objection to going to dine at Wilton Crescent, which we afterwards did every month or so when Ada was in town. Polly and I used to lunch with her once a fortnight, and the coronetted carriage was very often down at Daisy Villa, where it never ceased to be an object of wonder and admiration to the small children of the neighbourhood, and I have no doubt gave us great standing and dignity in the eyes of the inhabitants of the other five villas. I really believe we never ceased to be subjects for wonder and speculation to the countess's powdered footman, who knowing that Lord Holmeskirk had married the daughter of the fashionable Lady Desborough, could never form any hypothesis perfectly satisfactory to himself as to how she could possibly come to be familiar with people living in such a small, and exceedingly unfashionable domicile as No. 1, Daisy Villas, Charlemagne Road, Putney.

CHAPTER III.

A STRANGE PROFESSION.

A very touching picture Sophy Gregory presented as she sat in the little parlour at work, a week after Dr. Ashleigh's visit; in her mourning dress, and with the tiny fatherless child in her lap. She was very pale, and looked years older than she was. Sophy had gone through a heavy trial. She had loved her husband very truly; not indeed with the same admiring affection she had felt for him when they met in the plantations of Harmer Place—that dream had been dispelled rudely enough long ago,—but she had loved him as a true woman, knowing his faults, and bearing with them, taking them indeed as a special and deserved punishment upon herself for her fault in marrying him as she had done; but yet loving him the more, in that she saw how hard he tried, in spite of his faults, to make her happy. For this she had thanked God, and had prayed very 

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