art and letters, a dabbler in politics, and the most popular man in the county), but when he was with them he was charming, and petted them far more than was the fashion in those days.

Meg's predilection for him became quite inconvenient when he tried to leave her; and she clung to him more desperately than ever, partly from terror at her new surroundings and at being left to sleep alone in a strange room.

"I'll show you something beautiful if you'll only stop crying," he said, as he put her down on the nursery-maid's lap and knelt in front of them, Meg still clutching at the lace frills of his cuff to prevent his departure.

"You'll never, never come back no more if I let you go," said the child between her sobs; but, like a true little daughter of Eve, she allowed herself to be overcome by curiosity and her hold loosened.

He drew out a small diamond-circled miniature that hung concealed round his neck.

"Who is it?" he asked in a whisper.

"Mother!" cried Meg; and he was delighted at the recognition.

"There! You shall keep it for me if you'll let me go," he said, and put it in her pink baby fingers, closing them gently over it.

Meg smiled at the shimmer of the stones. "I'll look in and see you asleep," he told her, and kissed her very tenderly as he left; but he did not look in again. Another scene was more than he could stand, and his sister advised him not to.

Meg fell asleep at last with the miniature in her hand, but woke in the middle of the night with a terrified consciousness that some one was bending over her, and feeling stealthily under her pillow.

"It's Lazarus! Father, father!" she screamed, but the figure fled incontinently—and in the morning Meg's diamonds were gone. She never spoke of her loss: like many a nervous child she could not bear to talk of nightly terrors; but for years she was haunted with the idea of that gaunt hungry figure "just outside," who might creep again into her room and stand by her with freezing hands and frost-bitten feet,—a sort of embodied and revengeful poverty.

Nursery days ended under the new régime, and the pretty spoilt baby developed into a shy little schoolroom girl, who curtsied demurely, and spoke in a whisper when she appeared with her sisters in 

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