ilent. The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood
as if it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was
to become of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie
sat on her father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of
his having been starved and grieved to death.

"Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading
the letter, as if he were near us. Didn't you? The room was so
light and still, and the wind sighed so."

"Netty, dear, I've felt that all day, I believe," he replied. "Hark!
there is the door-bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes
the actual. Confound it! Some one to see me, I'll warrant, and
I'm not in the mood."

He got into a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour
ago, or she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice
it now in her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell,
and seated herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple
on the end of it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak,
piping voice said, reckless of the proper tense, "There was a woman
wanted to see you, sir."

"Who is it, James?--no matter, show her in."

He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room.
In a minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid,
frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being
considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.

"O, Mrs. Miller! Good evening, ma'am. Sit down," he said, with a
cold, constrained civility.

The little woman faintly said, "Good evening, Dr. Renton," and
sat down stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair
nearest the wall. This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no
rent for three months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.

"Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.

"Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward answer.

"Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am?" said Netty, gently; "you look
cold."

"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was
cold, though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and
open bonnet, in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there
was a rigid, sharp, suffering look in her pinched features that
betokened she might have been hungry, too. "Poor people don't mind
the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak smile, her voice
getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and they get
used to it."

She h