bsorbing a nature as to
leave little leisure for concern about other people's business. He
asked no questions about his stepdaughter's companion; but he was not
the less surprised to see this beautiful high-bred woman content to sit
at his board as an unsalaried dependent.

"Your friend Miss Paget looks like a countess," he said one day to
Charlotte. "I thought girls generally pitched upon some plain homely
young woman for their pet companion, but you seem to have chosen the
handsomest girl in the school."

"Yes, she is very handsome, is she not? I wish some of your rich City
men would marry her, papa."

Miss Halliday consented to call her mother's husband "papa," though the
caressing name seemed in a manner to stick in her throat. She had loved
that blustrous good-tempered Tom Halliday so very dearly, and it was
only to please poor Georgy that she brought herself to address any
other man by the name that had been his.

"My City men have something better to do than to marry a young woman
without a sixpence," answered Mr. Sheldon. "Why don't you try to catch
one of them for yourself?"

"I don't like City men," said Charlotte quickly; and then she blushed,
and added apologetically, "at least not the generality of City men,
papa."

Diana had waited until her destiny was settled before answering
Valentine Hawkehurst's letter; but she wrote to him directly she was
established at the Lawn, and told him the change in her plans.

"I think papa had better let me come to see him at his lodgings," she
said, "wherever they may be; for I should scarcely care about Mr.
Sheldon seeing him. No one here knows anything definite about my
history; and as it is just possible Mr. Sheldon may have encountered my
father somehow or other, it would be as well for him to keep clear of
this house. I could not venture to say this to papa myself, but perhaps
you could suggest it without offending him. You see I have grown very
worldly-wise, and am learning to protect my own interests in the spirit
which you have so instilled into me. I don't know whether that sort of
spirit is likely to secure one's happiness, but I have no doubt it is
the wisest and best for this world."

Miss Paget could not refrain from an occasional sneer when she wrote to
her old companion. He never returned her sneers, or noticed them. His
letters were always frank, friendly, and brotherly in tone.

"Neither my good opinion nor my bad opinion is of any consequence t