ose garments were getting threadbare, and his dinners
hypothetical, and whose day-dreams of fame and fortune had faded into
the dull-gray of penury and disappointment. I was broken-hearted, ill,
hungry; so I accepted an invitation from a friend, a rich manufacturer
in Birmingham, to go down to his house for the Christmas holidays. He
had a pleasant place in the midst of some ironworks, the blazing
chimneys of which, he assured me, would afford me some exquisite
studies of 'light' effects.

By mistake, I went by the Express train, and so was thrown into the
society of a lady whose position would have rendered any acquaintance
with her impossible, excepting under such chance-conditions as the
present; and whose history, as I learned it afterwards, led me to
reflect much on the difference between the reality and the seeming of
life.

She moved my envy. Yes--base, mean, low, unartistic, degrading as is
this passion, I felt it rise up like a snake in my breast when I saw
that feeble woman. She was splendidly dressed--wrapped in furs of the
most costly kind, trailing behind; her velvets and lace worth a
countess's dowry. She was attended by obsequious menials; surrounded
by luxuries; her compartment of the carriage was a perfect palace in
all the accessories which it was possible to collect in so small a
space; and it seemed as though 'Cleopatra's cup' would have been no
impracticable draught for her. She gave me more fully the impression
of luxury, than any person I had ever met with before; and I thought I
had reason when I envied her.

She was lifted into the carriage carefully; carefully swathed in her
splendid furs and lustrous velvets; and placed gently, like a wounded
bird, in her warm nest of down. But she moved languidly, and fretfully
thrust aside her servants' busy hands, indifferent to her comforts,
and annoyed by her very blessings. I looked into her face: it was a
strange face, which had once been beautiful; but ill-health, and care,
and grief, had marked it now with deep lines, and coloured it with
unnatural tints. Tears had washed out the roses from her cheeks, and
set large purple rings about her eyes; the mouth was hard and pinched,
but the eyelids swollen; while the crossed wrinkles on her brow told
the same tale of grief grown petulant, and of pain grown soured, as
the thin lip, quivering and querulous, and the nervous hand, never
still and never strong.

The train-bell rang, the whistle sounded, the