whose silent sobbing was only hushed when the aunt whom
she had but just found took her in her arms and pressed the little pale
face to her bosom.

Nobody knew what name was on the locket, for it was replaced where it so
long had rested, and was buried when the heart beneath it had ceased to
beat; but the name afterwards carved on the tombstone was not De
Montfort.

------------------------------

"I don't think I shall be able to collect my wits enough to _tell_ a
story this evening," said our governess as we sat at tea on the Thursday
evening, "for I've had a long letter to answer and to think over; but I
fancied you liked my story about the Baby's Hand, and so if you please
I'll read you another from a little black-covered manuscript book which
my old friend gave me. He said it was a story about a very near friend
and schoolfellow of his, and was one of the most pathetic and affecting
histories that he had ever known. I don't suppose you'll think so. Still
it is rather affecting, though it is only a tale of disappointment in
love; but then it was a love that lasted for a lifetime and survived
death."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V.

THE STORY OF A BOOKWORM.

YES, she is dead, and on her snow-strewn grave I left a bunch of winter
flowers but yesterday. Ah, me! I never go and wander in that dingy
churchyard, where the sound of the great roaring city is hushed to a
sleepy murmur, but I seem to leave half my poor life there; would that I
could leave it all, I sometimes think, and that when the sexton comes to
bring the keys of the church on a Sunday morning he should find the mere
body of me lying there, my head leaning on the stone that bears her
name--not _his_ name--_her_ name, her one dear name by which I called
her last of all.

But these are ill thoughts, and as the poet says "this way madness
lies." Let me get to my books, there is comfort and companionship in
them; and yet I have held my finger in this page till the light is gone
and it's too dark to read.

I suppose I was meant for a bookworm, and yet I didn't like school. At
all events I didn't like the Free Grammar School of St. Bothwyn
By-Church, to which I had the privilege of being elected when my poor
father was clerk of the Company, and lived in the old hall till he
bought this little house in Hoxton. Ah me! how I seem to see the old
black oaken wainscot of the court room, and the little parlour where the
firelight danc