e parlour-maid was a cross old woman. Her aunt
always sat in the dining-room through the greater part of the day,
and of all rooms the dining-room in Kingsbury Crescent was the
dingiest. Lucy understood very well to what she was going. Her father
and mother were gone. Her sister was divided from her. Her life
offered for the future nothing to her. But with it all she carried a
good courage. There was present to her an idea of great misfortune;
but present to her at the same time an idea also that she would do
her duty.

CHAPTER II.

LUCY WITH HER AUNT DOSETT.

For some days Lucy found herself to be absolutely crushed,--in the
first place, by a strong resolution to do some disagreeable duty,
and then by a feeling that there was no duty the doing of which was
within her reach. It seemed to her that her whole life was a blank.
Her father's house had been a small affair and considered to be poor
when compared with the Tringle mansion, but she now became aware that
everything there had in truth abounded. In one little room there
had been two or three hundred beautifully bound books. That Mudie's
unnumbered volumes should come into the house as they were wanted
had almost been as much a provision of nature as water, gas, and hot
rolls for breakfast. A piano of the best kind, and always in order,
had been a first necessary of life, and, like other necessaries, of
course, forthcoming. There had been the little room in which the
girls painted, joining their father's studio and sharing its light,
surrounded by every pretty female appliance. Then there had always
been visitors. The artists from Kensington had been wont to gather
there, and the artists' daughters, and perhaps the artists' sons.
Every day had had its round of delights,--its round of occupations,
as the girls would call them. There had been some reading, some
painting, some music,--perhaps a little needlework and a great deal
of talking.

How little do we know how other people live in the houses close to
us! We see the houses looking like our own, and we see the people
come out of them looking like ourselves. But a Chinaman is not more
different from the English John Bull than is No. 10 from No. 11.
Here there are books, paintings, music, wine, a little dilettanti
getting-up of subjects of the day, a little dilettanti thinking on
great affairs, perhaps a little dilettanti religion; few domestic
laws, and those easily broken; few domestic duties, and tho