hat of natural
joyousness, tempered, but not wholly suppressed, by thoughtfulness
beyond her years.

Leonard Beaufort had once been, as was implied by his daughter, in a
different station to that he how occupied. He was by birth and
education a gentleman; but partly owing to his own mismanagement and
extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether unavoidable
(though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter
cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter
destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but
now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of
supporting his family, which at that time consisted of a wife and two
children. He was not without some share of talent; but unhappily for
those who depended on his exertions, he was too indolent to make much
progress in an art which requires the exercise of perseverance, no
less than the possession of genius; and after struggling for more
than three years with the bitterest poverty, his wife and youngest
child fell victims to their change of circumstances. Little Amy was
thus left motherless, and would have been friendless, but for the
care of a neighbour, who, pitying her forlorn condition, watched over
her with almost maternal regard. Mrs Lyddiard was the widow of a
merchant's clerk, who had no other provision than that which was
afforded her by her own labours in a little school; but from these
humble means she was enabled, by prudent management, to give her only
child Herbert--a boy about three years the senior of Amy--a tolerable
education, which would fit him to undertake a similar situation to
that which his father had filled.

Towards this amiable woman and her son, the warm affections which had
been pent up in the young heart of our little heroine, since the
death of her mother and infant brother, now gushed forth in copious
streams; for, though she loved her father with a tenderness scarcely
to be expected, and certainly unmerited by one who manifested such
indifference in return, she dared not express her feelings in words
or caresses. Beaufort would usually devote a few of the morning hours
to his profession, and then, growing weary, throw aside his pencil in
disgust, and either wander about the neighbourhood in moody silence,
or spend the rest of the day in the society of a few dissolute
persons of education, with whom he had become acquainted since his
residence in Manchester. The