ct of her charity
needed it no more. In the night, suddenly, it was thought, the spirit
had departed. There was no friend to arrange anything; so Miss Vanbrugh
undertook it all. Her own unobtrusive benevolence prevented a pauper
funeral. But in examining the few relics of the deceased, she was
surprised to find papers which clearly explained the fact, that some
years before there had been placed in a London bank, to the credit of
Celia Manners, a sum sufficient to produce a moderate annuity. The woman
had rejected it, and starved.

But she had not died without leaving a written injunction, that it
should be claimed by the child Christal, since it was "her right." This
was accomplished, to the great satisfaction of Miss Vanbrugh and of
the honest banker, who knew that the man--what sort of man he had quite
forgotten--who deposited the money, had enjoined that it should be paid
whenever claimed by Celia or by Christal Manners.

Christal Manners was then the child's name. Miss Vanbrugh might have
thought that this discovery implied the heritage of shame, but for the
little girl's obstinate persistence in the tale respecting her unknown
father and mother, who were "a noble gentleman and grand lady," and had
both been drowned at sea. The circumstance was by no means improbable,
and it had evidently been strongly impressed on Christal by the woman
she called _ma mie_. Whatever relationship there was between them, it
could not be the maternal one. Miss Vanbrugh could not believe in the
possibility of a mother thus voluntarily renouncing her own child.

Miss Meliora put Christal to board with an old servant of hers for a
few weeks. But there came such reports of the child's daring and unruly
temper, that, quaking under her responsibility, she decided to send
her _protegee_ away to school The only place she could think of was an
old-fashioned _pension_ in Paris, where, during her brother's studies
there, her own slender education had been acquired. Thither the little
stranger was despatched, by means of a succession of contrivances which
almost drove the simple Meliora crazy. For--lest her little adventure of
benevolence should come to Michael's ears--she dared to take no one into
her confidence, not even the Rothesays. Madame Blandin, the mistress
of the _pension_, was furnished with no explanations; indeed there
were none to give. The orphan appeared there under the character she so
steadily sustained, as Miss Christal Manne