obscured, the effervescence and
bubble of the child destroyed, feeling like a flower sodden with
showers, if she had been capable of finding herself at all, she would
have found herself a woman.

Among Mr. Erne's disorderly papers, full of incipient schemes, sketches,
and schedules of gold-mining, steam-companies, and railways to the
nebulae in Orion, was discovered after his death a scrap witnessed by two
signatures. The owner of one of these signatures was already dead, and
there were no means to prove its genuineness. The other was that of a
young man who had just enough of that remote taint in his descent which
incapacitates one, in certain regions, from bearing witness. It was
supposed that Mr. Erne had some day hurriedly executed this paper in the
absence of his lawyer, as being, possibly, better than no paper at all,
and he had certainly intended to have the whole matter arranged
legitimately; but these are among the things which, with a superstitious
loitering, some men linger long before doing, lest they prove to be,
themselves, a death-warrant.

By this paper, in so many words, Disbrowe Erne left to Eloise
Changarnier all the property of which he died possessed. An old friend
of her father's in the neighborhood assured her that the only relatives
were both distant, distinguished, and wealthy, unlikely to present any
claims, and that she would be justified in fulfilling her father's
desire. And so, without other forms, Eloise administered the affairs of
The Rim,--waiting until the autumn to consult the usual lawyer, who was
at present in England.

There had reigned over the domestic department of The Rim, for many
years, a person who was the widow of a maternal cousin of Mr. Erne's,
and who, when left destitute by the death of this young cousin, had
found shelter, support, and generous courtesy beneath the roof of her
late husband's kinsman. It was on the accession of this person, who was
not a saint, that Eloise had become so ungovernable as to require the
constraint of a nunnery. Mrs. Arles was a dark and quiet little lady,
with some of the elements of beauty which her name suggested, and with a
perfectly Andalusian foot and ankle. These being her sole wealth, it
was, perhaps, from economy of her charms that she hid the ankle in such
flowing sables, that she bound the black locks straightly under a little
widow's-cap, seldom parted the fine lips above the treasured pearls
beneath, disdained to distort the