ond the narrow range of his father's sympathies. In the first
place, his refusal to qualify himself for a mercantile career had made
it necessary to dispose of the business to strangers. In the second
place, young Robert Graywell proved--without any hereditary influence,
and in the face of the strongest discouragement--to be a born painter!
One of the greatest artists of that day saw the boy's first efforts, and
pronounced judgment in these plain words: "What a pity he has not got
his bread to earn by his brush!"

On the death of old Robert, his daughters found themselves (to use their
own expression) reduced to a trumpery legacy of ten thousand pounds
each. Their brother inherited the estate, and the bulk of the
property--not because his father cared about founding a family, but
because the boy had always been his mother's favourite.

The first of the three children to marry was the eldest sister.

Maria considered herself fortunate in captivating Mr. Vere--a man of
old family, with a high sense of what he owed to his name. He had a
sufficient income, and he wanted no more. His wife's dowry was settled
on herself. When he died, he left her a life-interest in his property
amounting to six hundred a year. This, added to the annual proceeds
of her own little fortune, made an income of one thousand pounds. The
remainder of Mr. Vere's property was left to his only surviving child,
Ovid.

With a thousand a year for herself, and with two thousand a year for her
son, on his coming of age, the widowed Maria might possibly have been
satisfied--but for the extraordinary presumption of her younger sister.

Susan, ranking second in age, ranked second also in beauty; and yet, in
the race for a husband, Susan won the prize!

Soon after her sister's marriage, she made a conquest of a Scotch
nobleman, possessed of a palace in London, and a palace in Scotland, and
a rent-roll of forty thousand pounds. Maria, to use her own expression,
never recovered it. From the horrid day when Susan became Lady
Northlake, Maria became a serious woman. All her earthly interests
centred now in the cultivation of her intellect. She started on that
glorious career, which associated her with the march of science. In only
a year afterwards--as an example of the progress which a resolute woman
can make--she was familiar with zoophyte fossils, and had succeeded in
dissecting the nervous system of a bee.

Was there no counter-attraction in her married l