She rose, and, in rising, looked for the first
time towards the little room in which my
martyrdom was going on.

"Who has drawn those curtains?" she
exclaimed. "The room is close enough, as it
is, without keeping the air out of it in that
way."

She advanced to the curtains. At the
moment when she laid her hand on them—at the
moment when the discovery of me appeared to
be quite inevitable—the voice of the
fresh-coloured young footman, on the stairs, suddenly
suspended any further proceedings on her side
or on mine. It was unmistakably the voice of
a man m great alarm.

"Miss Rachel!" he called out, "where are
you, Miss Rachel?"

She sprang back from the curtains, and ran
to the door.

The footman came just inside the room. His
ruddy colour was all gone. He said, "Please
to come down-stairs, miss! My lady has
fainted, and we can't bring her to again."

In a moment more I was alone, and free to
go down-stairs in my turn, quite unobserved.

Mr. Godfrey passed me in the hall, hurrying
out, to fetch the doctor. "Go in, and help
them!" he said, pointing to the room. I found
Rachel on her knees by the sofa, with her
mother's head on her bosom. One look at my
aunt's face (knowing what I knew) was enough
to warn me of the dreadful truth. I kept my
thoughts to myself till the doctor came in. It
was not long before he arrived. He began by
sending Rachel out of the room—and then he
told the rest of us that Lady Verinder was no
more. Serious persons, in search of proofs of
hardened scepticism, may be interested in hearing
that he showed no signs of remorse when
he looked at Me.

At a later hour I peeped into the breakfast-room,
and the library. My aunt had died
without opening one of the letters which I had
addressed to her. I was so shocked at this,
that it never occurred to me, until some days
afterwards, that she had also died without
giving me my little legacy.

       WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

AMAZEMENT is too mild a word for my
frame of mind, when the vergers of Westminster
Abbey single us out during divine service,
and after marked personal attentions deposit
us in the stalls next the dean. It seems
such a palpable mistake. Pride and shame
contend for mastery while we are being paraded
down the aisle, and a confused feeling that I
must be somebody else without knowing it is
strong within me as we run the gauntlet of
choristers and congregation until our exalted
place is reached. But mingling with and
overpowering this internal conflict, is a
conviction that I have met the cloaked figure now
acting as guide, in. some previous and less
solemn stage of existence. His gait, his hair, his
gestures, and his face are all familiar; and when,
wand in hand, he left his reading-desk and
approached our standing place, I was cogitating
half unconsciously as to where I could
have seen him before. Cogitation became
perplexity when I found myself selected from the
crowd; and not the least puzzling part of the
business was that the faces of many of the black-gowned
officials seemed equally familiar. Here
was I, publicly recognised by one verger and with
a conviction that I was on speaking terms with
the rest, and yet with a certain knowledge that
I had not been within the Abbey walls for
years. But that my companion was equally
favoured, and yet maintained his calm, my
presence of mind would have forsaken me.
"Employ them at my house to wait, and you saw
them at my last dinner-party!" is his whispered
explanation when I ask whether he often attends
the Abbey services, and if not whether he was
known to the vergers elsewhere? This told
me all. " Champagne, 'ock, or sherry?" were
the words I had previously heard from the
highly respectable lips at the desk before me;
and the anxiety with which my little difficulties
in finding the anthem and the psalms of the
day were watched, had in it some of the polite
deference which distinguishes the administration
of a pleasant and well ordered house.
The Abbey vergers wait at parties! My
companion employs them regularly, they recognise
in him a liberal and frequent patron,
and here you have the entire secret of my
surprise. But it lasted through the service
and while we were being shown round. The
contrast between the day and evening
employment of the men in cloaks gave quite a
wine-y flavour to some of the dark chapels,
and lent temporary association to ideas utterly
dissimilar in themselves. It made the Abbey
cloisters secular, and gave a monastic rendering
to the past festivities of my friend. Not
that the vergers were anything but competent,
respectful, and in every way fit for their work.
They formed a striking example to the servants
of another great cathedral, and did their spiriting
without rudeness or attempt at imposition.
But the evening and dinner-party smile and
bow were to my morbid vision omnipresent;
and "Henry the Seventh," "Edward the
Confessor," and "Geoffrey, Abbot of Westminster,"
rolled trippingly off the tongue exactly
as if they were being announced in a drawing-room
before dinner.

An announcement in this morning's Times
has told me that the Abbey is open for inspection
from ten to four in winter, and from ten
to six in summer; that the dean and chapter
gave every facility to visitors, and that the
attendants are guiltless of the extortion and
rudeness recently laid to their charge. We
proceed to test the accuracy of these statements,
and arrive at the Abbey at a quarter past three
to find divine service in progress and that we
shall not be able to put the dean and chapter to
the proof for three quarters of an hour. The old
story of a Londoner's ignorance of the Sights