to be as good to Miss Etta as
though she were your own sister.'

I saw the shadow of some sorrowful recollection cross his face as she
said this. I had heard from Max how dearly he had loved his aunt
Margaret: though her daughter had wrought such evil in his life, he would
still seek to shield her. Leah knew this too, and took advantage of her
knowledge in her crafty manner.

'It would be best to tell you all, for Mr. Eric's sake. I know Miss Etta
will be safe with you. She has done a deal of mischief since she has been
under your roof. Somehow crooked ways come natural to her: the old
mistress knew that, for she once said to me towards the last, "Leah, I am
afraid my poor child has got some twist or warp in her nature; but I hope
my nephew will never find out her want of straightforwardness." And she
begged me, with tears in her eyes, to watch over her and try to influence
her, although I was only a servant; and for a little while I tried, only
the devil tempted me, for the sake of poor Bob.'

'Bob is the name of your brother who is at Millbank?' asked Mr. Hamilton,
in the same hard voice.

'Yes, sir; he got into a bit of trouble through mixing with bad
companions. But there,'--with a sudden fierce light in her eyes that
reminded me of a tigress protecting her young,--'I am not going to
talk of Bob: lads will get into trouble sometimes. If Mr. Eric had
not been so interfering at that time, ordering Bob off the premises
whenever he caught sight of him, and calling him a good-for-nothing
loafer and all sorts of hard names,--why, he gave Bob a black eye one
day when he was doing nothing but shying stones at the birds in the
kitchen-garden,--if it had not been for Mr. Eric's treatment of Bob
I might have acted better by him.'

'Will you keep to the subject, Leah?' observed her master, in a warning
voice. 'I wish to hear how that cheque was taken from my study that
night.'

'Well, sir, if you must know,' returned Leah reluctantly, 'Miss Etta was
in a bit of a worry about money just then: she had got the accounts wrong
somehow, and there was a heavy butcher's bill to be paid. She had let it
run on too long, and all the time you believed it was settled every week:
it was partly your fault, because you so seldom looked at the accounts,
and was always trusting her with large sums of money. Miss Etta did not
mean to be dishonest, but she was extravagant, and sometimes her
dressmaker refused to wait for the money, and some