in exhortation; all affectionately ready to
exercise their gifts at a word from me. Alas!
the result was far from encouraging. Poor
Lady Verinder looked puzzled and frightened,
and met everything I could say to her with the
purely worldly objection that she was not strong
enough to face strangers. I yielded—for the
moment only, of course. My large experience
(as Reader and Visitor, under not less, first
and last, than fourteen beloved clerical friends)
informed me that this was another case for
preparation by books. I possessed a little
library of works, all suitable to the present
emergency, all calculated to arouse, convince,
prepare, enlighten, and fortify my aunt. " You
will read, dear, won't you?" I said, in my
most winning way. " You will read, if I bring
you my own precious books? Turned down at
all the right places, aunt. And marked in
pencil where you are to stop and ask yourself,
'Does this apply to me'?" Even that simple
appeal—so absolutely heathenising is the
influence of the world—appeared to startle my
aunt. She said, " I will do what I can,
Drusilla, to please you," with a look of surprise,
which was at once instructive and terrible to
see. Not a moment was to be lost. The clock
on the mantel-piece informed me that I had just
time to hurry home, to provide myself with a
first series of selected readings (say a dozen
only), and to return in time to meet the lawyer,
and witness Lady Verinder's Will. Promising
faithfully to be back by five o'clock, I left the
house on my errand of mercy.

When no interests but my own are involved,
I am humbly content to get from place to place
by the omnibus. Permit me to give an idea of
my devotion to my aunt's interests by recording
that, on this occasion, I committed the
prodigality of taking a cab.

I drove home, selected and marked my first
series of readings, and drove back to Montagu
Square with a dozen works in a carpet-bag, the
like of which, I firmly believe, are not to be
found in the literature of any other country in
Europe. I paid the cabman exactly his fare.
He received it with an oath; upon which I
instantly gave him a tract. If I had presented a
pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could
hardly have exhibited greater consternation. He
jumped up on his box, and, with profane
exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite
useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good
seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second
tract in at the window of the cab.

The servant who answered the door—not the
person with the cap-ribbons, to my great relief,
but the footman—informed me that the doctor
had called, and was still shut up with Lady
Verinder. Mr. Bruff, the lawyer, had arrived
a minute since, and was waiting in the library.
I was shown into the library to wait too.

Mr. Bruff looked surprised to see me. He
is the family solicitor, and we had met more
than once, on previous occasions, under Lady
Verinder's roof. A man, I grieve to say,
grown old and grizzled in the service of the
world. A man who, in his hours of business,
was the chosen prophet of Law and Mammon;
and who, in his hours of leisure, was equally
capable of reading a novel and of tearing up a
tract.

"Have you come to stay here, Miss Clack?"
he asked, with a look at my carpet-bag.

To reveal the contents of my precious bag to
such a person as this would have been simply
to invite an outburst of profanity. I lowered
myself to his own level, and mentioned my business
in the house.

"My aunt has informed me that she is about
to sign her Will," I answered. " She has
been so good as to ask me to be one of the
witnesses."

"Aye? aye? Well, Miss Clack, you will do.
You are over twenty-one, and you have not the
slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder's
Will."

Not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady
Verinder's Will. Oh, how thankful I felt when
I heard that! If my aunt, possessed of
thousands, had remembered poor Me, to whom five
pounds is an object—if my name had appeared
in the Will, with a little comforting legacy
attached to it—my enemies might have doubted
the motive which had loaded me with the
choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn
upon my failing resources for the prodigal
expenses of a cab. Not the cruellest scoffer of
them all could doubt now. Much better as it
was! Oh, surely, surely, much better as it
was!

I was aroused from these consoling reflections
by the voice of Mr. Bruff. My meditative
silence appeared to weigh upon the spirits of
this worldling, and to force him, as it were, into
talking to me against his own will.

"Well, Miss Clack, what's the last news in
the charitable circles? How is your friend
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, after the mauling he
got from the rogues in Northumberland-street?
Egad! they're telling a pretty story about that
charitable gentleman at my club!"

I had passed over the manner in which this
person had remarked that I was more than
twenty-one, and that I had no pecuniary interest
in my aunt's Will. But the tone in which he
alluded to dear Mr. Godfrey was too much for
my forbearance. Feeling bound, after what had
passed in my presence that afternoon, to assert
the innocence of my admirable friend, whenever
I found it called in question—I own to having
also felt bound to include in the accomplishment
of this righteous purpose, a stinging castigation
in the case of Mr. Bruff.

"I live very much out of the world," I said;
"and I don't possess the advantage, sir, of
belonging to a club. But I happen to know the
story to which you allude; and I also know
that a viler falsehood than that story never was
told."

"Yes, yes, Miss Clack—you believe in your
friend. Natural enough. Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite won't find the world in general quite so