rite's decease; as she did so, half-forgotten fares,
scenes, memories flitted across her mind. Foremost amongst these was
her father's face--dignified, loving, kind. Whenever she thought of
him, as now, she best remembered him as he looked when he told her how
she should try to restrain her grief at the loss of her pet, as her
distress gave him pain. She had then been a person of consequence in
her little world, she being her father's only child; she had been made
much of by friends and acquaintances, amongst whom, so far as she could
recollect, no member of the Devitt family was numbered. Perhaps, she
thought, they have lately come to Melkbridge. Then aspects of the old
home passed through her mind. The room in which she used to sleep; the
oak-panelled dining-room; the garden, which was all her very own,
passed in rapid review; then, the faces of playmates and sweethearts,
for she had had admirers at that early age. There was Charlie Perigal,
the boy with the steely blue eyes and the pretty curls, with whom she
had quarrelled on the ground that he was in the habit of catching birds
in nasty little brick traps; also, because, when taxed with this
offence, he had defended his conduct and, a few moments later, had
attempted to stone a frog in her highly indignant presence.

Then there was Archie Windebank, whose father had the next place to
theirs; he was a fair, solemn boy, who treated her with an immense
deference; he used to blush when she asked him to join her in play. The
day before she had left for school, he had confessed his devotion in
broken accents; she had thought of him for quite a week after she had
left home. How absurd and trivial it all seemed, now that she was to
face the stern realities of life!

The next thing she recalled was the news of her father's ruin. This
calamity was more conveyed to her by the changed look in his face, when
she next saw him, than by anything else.

She had been, at once, taken away from the expensive school at which
she was being educated and had been sent to Brandenburg College, then
languishing in Hammersmith Terrace, while her father went to live at
Dinan, in Brittany, where he might save money in order to make some
sort of a start, which might ultimately mean a provision for his
daughter.

Next, she remembered--this she would never forget--the terrible day on
which Miss Helen Mee had called her into the study to tell her that she
would never again see her dear father i