d to point out in what way I can best help this
poor creature, I shall be very much obliged to you, for I am quite
longing for the pleasure of doing a little among the poor. I have been
very poor myself; and, besides, I used to visit them so much in my poor
father's day."

"I have more time than money," he said, with a gentle but very
melancholy smile; "and, therefore, if you will give me leave, I _would_
take the liberty of pointing out to you how you could help this poor
woman. If--if I knew...."

"I live with General and Mrs. Melwyn--I am Mrs. Melwyn's _dame de
compagnie_," said Lettice, with simplicity.

"And I am what ought to be Mr. Thomas's curate," answered he, "but that
I am too inefficient to merit the name. General Melwyn's family never
attends the parish church, I think."

"No; we go to the chapel of ease at Furnival's Green. It is five miles
by the road to the parish church, and that road a very bad one. The
general does not like his carriage to go there.

"So I have understood; and, therefore, Mr. Thomas is nearly a stranger,
and I perfectly one, to the family, though they are Mr. Thomas's
parishioners."

"It seems so strange to me--a clergyman's daughter belonging formerly to
a small parish--that every individual in it should not be known to the
vicar. It ought not to be so, I think."

"I entirely agree with you. But I believe Mr. Thomas and the general
never exactly understood or suited each other."

"I don't know--I never heard."

"I am myself not utterly unknown to every member of the family. I was at
school with the young gentleman who married Miss Melwyn.... Yet why do I
recall it? He has probably forgotten me altogether.... And yet, perhaps,
not altogether. Possibly he might remember James St. Leger;" and he
sighed.

It was a light, suppressed sigh. It seemed to escape him without his
observing it.

Lettice felt unusually interested in this conversation, little as there
may appear in it to interest any one; but there was something in the
look and tone of the young man that exercised a great power over her
imagination. His being of the _cloth_--a clergyman--may account for what
may seem rather strange in her entering into conversation with him. She
had been brought up to feel profound respect for every one in holy
orders; and, moreover, the habits of her life at one time, when she had
sunk to such depths of poverty, had, in a considerable degree, robbed
her of the conventional reserve