so, Helen? he's only six-and-twenty yet.'

'He may,' I answered,

'He will, he WILL!' repeated she.

'Excuse the faintness of my acquiescence, Milicent, I would not
discourage your hopes for the world, but mine have been so often
disappointed, that I am become as cold and doubtful in my expectations as
the flattest of octogenarians.'

'And yet you do hope, still, even for Mr. Huntingdon?'

'I do, I confess, "even" for him; for it seems as if life and hope must
cease together. And is he so much worse, Milicent, than Mr. Hattersley?'

'Well, to give you my candid opinion, I think there is no comparison
between them. But you mustn't be offended, Helen, for you know I always
speak my mind, and you may speak yours too. I sha'n't care.'

'I am not offended, love; and my opinion is, that if there be a
comparison made between the two, the difference, for the most part, is
certainly in Hattersley's favour.'

Milicent's own heart told her how much it cost me to make this
acknowledgment; and, with a childlike impulse, she expressed her sympathy
by suddenly kissing my cheek, without a word of reply, and then turning
quickly away, caught up her baby, and hid her face in its frock. How odd
it is that we so often weep for each other's distresses, when we shed not
a tear for our own! Her heart had been full enough of her own sorrows,
but it overflowed at the idea of mine; and I, too, shed tears at the
sight of her sympathetic emotion, though I had not wept for myself for
many a week.

[Picture: Blake Hall--Side (Grassdale Manor)]

It was one rainy day last week; most of the company were killing time in
the billiard-room, but Milicent and I were with little Arthur and Helen
in the library, and between our books, our children, and each other, we
expected to make out a very agreeable morning. We had not been thus
secluded above two hours, however, when Mr. Hattersley came in,
attracted, I suppose, by the voice of his child, as he was crossing the
hall, for he is prodigiously fond of her, and she of him.

He was redolent of the stables, where he had been regaling himself with
the company of his fellow-creatures the horses ever since breakfast. But
that was no matter to my little namesake; as soon as the colossal person
of her father darkened the door, she uttered a shrill scream of delight,
and, quitting her mother's side, ran crowing towards him, balancing her
course with outstretched arms, and embracing h