hard had a very pretty sister; but as Emily
Smallwood was pretty, so was she also vain, and the strict atmosphere of
her home life did not recommend itself to her taste. After many quarrels
with her stern old father (her mother having died when she was a baby),
Emily left home, and took a situation in London as governess, in the
house of some wealthy people with no pretensions to religion. For this
her father never forgave her; he called it "consorting with children of
Belial." In time she wrote to tell Richard that she was going to be
married, and that she wished to cut off entirely all communication with
her old home. After that, Richard lost sight of her for many years; but
some time after his father's death he received a letter from Emily,
begging him to come to her at once, as she was dying. He complied with
her request, and found his once beautiful sister in great poverty in a
London lodging-house. She told him that she had endured great sorrow,
having lost her husband and her five eldest children. Her husband had
never been unkind to her, she said, but he was one of the men who lack
the power either to make or to keep money; and when he found he was
foredoomed to failure in everything to which he turned his hand, he had
not the spirit to continue the fight against Fate, but turned his face
to the wall and died. She had still one child left, a fair-haired boy of
about two years old, called Christopher; to her brother's care she
confided this boy, and then she also turned her face to the wall and
died.

This happened a year or so before the Miss Farringdons adopted
Elisabeth; so that when that young lady appeared upon the scene, and
subsequently grew up sufficiently to require a playfellow, she found
Christopher Thornley ready to hand. He lived with his bachelor uncle in
a square red house on the east side of Sedgehill High Street, exactly
opposite to the Farringdons' lodge. It was one of those big, bald houses
with unblinking windows, that stare at you as if they had not any
eyebrows or eyelashes; and there was not even a strip of greenery
between it and the High Street. So to prevent the passers-by from
looking in and the occupants from looking out, the lower parts of the
front windows were covered with a sort of black crape mask, which put
even the sunbeams into half-mourning.

Unlike Elisabeth, Christopher had a passion for righteousness and for
honour, but no power of artistic perception. His standard was whe