uccessful persons of my acquaintance. It is just because I feel so
small beside him that I can't stand his company."

"I must repeat, Jim, that if you talk like that to Lettice----"

"Oh, Lettice doesn't adore her precious brother," said Graham,
irreverently. "She knows as well as you and I do that he's a selfish
sort of brute, in spite of his good looks and his gift of the gab. I
say, Clara, when are these folks coming? I'm confoundedly hungry."

"Who's the selfish brute now?" asked Clara, with triumph. "But you won't
be kept waiting long: the cab's stopping at the door, and Sydney hasn't
come."

She flew to the door, to be the first to meet and greet her visitors.
There was not much to be got from Mrs. Campion that evening except
tears--this was evident as soon as she entered the house, leaning on
Lettice's arm; and the best thing was to put her at once to bed, and
delay the evening meal until Lettice was able to leave her. Graham was
quite too good-natured to grumble at a delay for which there was so
valid a reason; for, as he informed his wife, he preferred Miss
Campion's conversation without an accompaniment of groans. He talked
lightly, but his grasp of the hand was so warm, his manner so
sympathetic, when Lettice at last came down, that Clara felt herself
rebuked at having for one moment doubted the real kindliness of his
feeling.

Lettice in her deep mourning looked painfully white and slender in
Clara's eyes; but she spoke cheerfully of her prospects for the future,
as they sat at their evening meal. Sad topics were not broached, and Mr.
Graham set himself to give her all the encouragement in his power.

"And as to where you are to set up your tent," he said, "Clara and I
have seen a cottage on Brook Green that we think would suit you
admirably."

"Where is Brook Green?" asked Lettice, who was almost ignorant of any
save the main thoroughfares of London.

"In the wilds of Hammersmith----"

"West Kensington," put in Clara, rather indignantly.

"Well, West Kensington is only Hammersmith writ fine. It is about ten
minutes' walk from us----"

"Oh, I am glad of that," said Lettice.

"--And it is not, I think, too large or too dear. You must go and look
at it to-morrow, if you can."

"Is there any garden?"

"There is a garden, with trees under which your mother can sit when it
is warm. Clara told me you would like that; and there is a grass-plot--I
won't call it a lawn--where you can let your dog an