y--very weary likewise of
conciliatory hampers of game and barrels of oysters, and all the flimsy
devices of a debtor who is practised in the varied arts of the
gentlemanly swindler.

The day came when Miss Paget resolved to be rid of her profitless
charge; and once more Diana found herself delivered like a parcel of
unordered goods at the door of her father's lodging. Those are
precocious children who learn their first lessons in the school of
poverty; and the girl had been vaguely conscious of the degradation
involved in this process at the age of five. How much more keenly did
she feel the shame at the age of fifteen! Priscilla did her best to
lessen the pain of her pupil's departure.

"It isn't that I've any fault to find with you, Diana, though you must
remember that I have heard some complaints of your temper," she said,
with gentle gravity; "but your father is too trying. If he didn't make
me any promises, I should think better of him. If he told me frankly
that he couldn't pay me, and asked me to keep you out of
charity,"--Diana drew herself up with a little shiver at this
word,--"why, I might turn it over in my mind, and see if it could be
done. But to be deceived time after time, as I've been deceived--you
know the solemn language your father has used, Diana, for you have
heard him--and to rely on a sum of money on a certain date, as I have
relied again and again, after Horatio's assurance that I might depend
upon him--it's too bad, Diana; it's more than any one can endure. If
you were two or three years older, and further advanced in your
education, I might manage to do something for you by making you useful
with the little ones; but I can't afford to keep you and clothe you
during the next three years for nothing, and so I have no alternative
but to send you home."

The "home" to which Diana Paget was taken upon this occasion was a
lodging over a toyshop in the Westminster-road, where the Captain lived
in considerable comfort on the proceeds of a Friendly and Philanthropic
Loan Society.

But no very cordial welcome awaited Diana in the gaudily-furnished
drawing-room over the toyshop. She found her father sleeping placidly
in his easy-chair, while a young man, who was a stranger to her, sat at
a table near the window writing letters. It was a dull November day--a
very dreary day on which to find one's self thrown suddenly on a still
drearier world; and in the Westminster-bridge-road the lamps were
alrea