turning away her eyes, "that your great regard for Mrs. Boffin is a very powerful motive with you." "You are right again; it is. I would do any thing for her, bear any thing for her. There are no words to express how I esteem that good, good woman." "As I do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr. Rokesmith ?" "Any thing more." "Of course you see that she really suffers when Mr. Boffin shows how he is changing?" "I see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her pain." "To give her pain?" said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her eyebrows raised. "I am generally the unfortunate cause of it." "Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best of men, in spite of all." "I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him, saying so to you," returned the Secretary, with the same steady look, "but I can not assert that she ever says so to me." Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was moralizing on Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a bad job, as she had previously been inclined to give up herself. But for all that they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were bare of leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky was not bare of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a delicious wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply. Perhaps the old mirror was never yet made by human hands, which, if all the images it has in its time reflected could pass across its surface again, would fail to reveal sone scene of horror or distress. But the great serene mirror of the river seemed as if it might have reproduced all it had ever reflected between those placid banks, and brought nothing to the light save what was peaceful, pastoral, and blooming. So, they walked, speaking of the newly filledup grave, and of Johnny, and of many things. So, on their return, they met brisk Mrs. Milvey coming to seek them, with the agreeable intelligence that there was no fear for the village children, there being a Christian school in the village, and no worse Judaical interference with it than to plant its garden. So, they got back to the village as Lizzie Hexam was coming from the paper-mill, and Bella detached herself to speak with her in her own home. "I am afraid it is a poor room for you," said Lizzie, with a smile of welcome, as she offered the post of honor by the fireside. "Not so poor as you think, my dear," returned Bella, "if you knew all." Indeed, though attained by some wonderful winding narrow stairs, which seemed to have been erected in a pure white chimney, and though very low in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor, and rather blinking as to the proportions of its lattice window, it was a pleasanter room than that despised chamber once at home, in which Bella had first bemoaned the miseries of taking lodgers. The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the fireside. The dusky room was lighted by the fire. The grate might have been the old brazier, and the glow might have been the old hollow down by the flare. "It's quite new to me," said Lizzie, "to be visited by a lady so nearly of my own age, and so pretty, as you. It's a pleasure to me to look at you." "I have nothing left to begin with," returned Bella, blushing, "because I was going to say that it was a pleasure to me to look at you, Lizzie. But we can begin without a beginning, can't we?" Lizzie took the pretty little hand that was held out in as pretty a little frankness. "Now, dear," said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and taking Lizzie's arm as if they were going out for a walk, “I am commissioned with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it wrong, but I won't if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is." With this exordium Bella set forth that request of Lizzie's touching secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its retractation, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any bearing, near or remote, on such request. "I feel, my dear," said Bella, quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which she was getting on, "that the subject must be a painful one to you, but I am mixed up in it also; for-I don't know whether you may know it or suspect it-I am the willedaway girl who was to have been married to the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged into it without your consent, and there is very little to choose between us." "I had no doubt," said Lizzie, "that you were the Miss Wilfer I have often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is ?" "Unknown friend, my dear?" said Bella. "Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent me the written paper." Bella had never heard of him. Had no notion who he was. "I should have been glad to thank him," returned Lizzie. "He has done a great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me thank him some day. You asked me has it any thing to do-" "It or the accusation itself," Bella put in. "Yes. Has either any thing to do with my wishing to live quite secret and retired here? No." As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her glance sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded hands, not lost on Bella's bright eyes. "Have you lived much alone ?" asked Bella. "Yes. It's nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many hours together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was alive." "You have a brother, I have been told." "I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don't complain of him." As she said it, with her eyes upon the fireglow, there was an instantaneous escape of dis tress into her face. Bella seized the moment to touch her hand. "Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of your own sex and age." "I have lived that lonely kind of life that I have never had one," was the answer. "Nor I neither," said Bella. "Not that my life has been lonely, for I could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy being spitefulthough of course I am very fond of them both. I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I know I am trust-worthy." "Kill him! Is this man so jealous, then ?" The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, | dle of her arms round Lizzie's waist, and then giddy for want of the weight of some sustaining asked quietly, in a soft voice, as they both looked purpose, and capricious because it was always at the fire: fluttering among little things, was yet a captivating one. To Lizzie it was so new, so pretty, at once so womanly and so childish, that it won her completely. And when Bella said again, "Do you think you could, Lizzie ?" with her eyebrows raised, her head inquiringly on one side, and an odd doubt about it in her own bosom, Lizzie showed beyond all question that she thought she could. "Of a gentleman," said Lizzie. "I hardly know how to tell you—of a gentleman far above me and my way of life, who broke father's death to me, and has shown an interest in me since." "Does he love you?" Lizzie shook her head. Lizzie ceased to shake her head, and pressed "Tell me, my dear," said Bella, "what is the her hand upon her living girdle. matter, and why you live like this." Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, "You must have many lovers-" when Bella "Is it through his influence that you came here?" "O no! And of all the world I wouldn't have checked her with a little scream of astonish-him know that I am here, or get the least clew ment. "My dear, I haven't one." "Not one?" "Well! Perhaps one," said Bella. "I am sure I don't know. I had one, but what he may think about it at the present time I can't say. Perhaps I have half a one (of course I don't count that Idiot, George Sampson). However, never mind me. I want to hear about you." "There is a certain man," said Lizzie, "a passionate and angry man, who says he loves me, and who I must believe does love me. He is the friend of my brother. I shrank from him within myself when my brother first brought him to me; but the last time I saw him he terrified me more than I can say." There she stopped. "Did you come here to escape from him, Lizzie?" There was silence between them. Lizzie, with a drooping head, glanced down at the glow in the fire where her first fancies had been nursed, and her first escape made from the grim life out of which she had plucked her brother, foreseeing her reward. "You know all now," she said, raising her eyes to Bella's. "There is nothing left out. This is my reason for living secret here, with the aid of a good old man who is my true friend. For a short part of my life at home with father I knew of things-don't ask me what-that I set "I came here immediately after he so alarm- my face against, and tried to better. I don't ed me." "Are you afraid of him here?" "I am not timid generally, but I am always afraid of him. I am afraid to see a newspaper, or to hear a word spoken of what is done in London, lest he should have done some violence." "Then you are not afraid of him for yourself, dear?" said Bella, after pondering on the words. "I should be even that, if I met him about here. I look round for him always, as I pass to and fro at night." think I could have done more, then, without letting my hold on father go; but they sometimes lie heavy on my mind. By doing all for the best, I hope I may wear them out." "And wear out too," said Bella, soothingly, "this weakness, Lizzie, in favor of one who is not worthy of it." "No. I don't want to wear that out," was the flushed reply, "nor do I want to believe, nor do I believe, that he is not worthy of it. What should I gain by that, and how much "Are you afraid of any thing he may do to should I lose!" himself in London, my dear?" "No. He might be fierce enough even to do some violence to himself, but I don't think of that." "Then it would almost seem, dear," said Bella, quaintly, "as if there must be somebody else?" Lizzie put her hands before her face for a moment before replying: "The words are always in my ears, and the blow he struck upon a stone-wall as he said them is always before my eyes. I have tried hard to think it not worth remembering, but I can not make so little of it. His hand was trickling down with blood as he said to me, 'Then I hope that I may never kill him!'" Rather startled, Bella made and clasped a gir- Bella's expressive little eyebrows remonstrated with the fire for some short time before she rejoined: "Don't think that I press you, Lizzie; but wouldn't you gain in peace, and hope, and even in freedom? Wouldn't it be better not to live a secret life in hiding, and not to be shut out from your natural and wholesome prospects? Forgive my asking you, would that be no gain ?" "Does a woman's heart that-that has that weakness in it which you have spoken of," returned Lizzie, "seek to gain any thing?" The question was so directly at variance with Bella's views in life, as set forth to her father, that she said, internally, "There, you little mercenary wretch! Do you hear that? Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" and unclasped the girdle with a threatening stamp of the foot, the wretched creature protested with a whine. "Pay five shillings for you indeed!" Miss Wren proceeded; "how many hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you infamous boy?-Don't cry like that, or I'll throw a doll at you. Pay five shillings fine for you indeed. Fine in more ways than one, I think! I'd give the dustman five shillings to carry you off in the dust cart." "No, no," pleaded the absurd creature. "Please!" 'He's enough to break his mother's heart, is this boy," said Miss Wren, half appealing to Eugene. "I wish I had never brought him up. He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth, if he wasn't as dull as ditch water. Look at him. There's a pretty object for a parent's eyes!" Assuredly, in his worse than swinish state (for swine at least fatten on their guzzling, and make themselves good to eat), he was a pretty object for any eyes. "Give 'em to me and get back into your corner, you naughty old thing!" said Miss Wren, as she turned and espied him. "No, no, I won't have your help. Go into your corner, this minute!" The miserable man, feebly rubbing the back of his faltering hands downward from the wrists, shuffled on to his post of disgrace; but not without a curious glance at Eugene in passing him, accompanied with what seemed as if it might have been an action of his elbow, if any action of any limb or joint he had would have answered truly to his will. Taking no more particular notice of him than instinctively falling away from the disagreeable contact, Eugene, with a lazy compliment or so to Miss Wren, begged leave to light his cigar, and departed. "Now you prodigal old son," said Jenny, shaking her head and her emphatic little forefinger at her burden, "you sit there till I come back. You dare to move out of your corner for a single instant while I'm gone, and I'll know the reason why." With this admonition she blew her work candles out, leaving him to the light of the fire, and, taking her big door-key in her pocket and her "A muddling and a swipey old child," said Miss Wren, rating him with great severity, "fit for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor that destroys him, and put in a great glass bottle as a sight for other swipey children of his own pat-crutch-stick in her hand, marched off. tern-if he has no consideration for his liver, has Eugene lounged slowly toward the Temple, he none for his mother?" smoking his cigar, but saw no more of the dolls' "Yes. Deration, oh don't!" cried the sub-dress-maker, through the accident of their taking ject of these angry remarks. "Oh don't and oh don't," pursued Miss Wren. "It's oh do and oh do. And why do you?" "Won't do so any more. Won't indeed. Pray!" "There!" said Miss Wren, covering her eyes with her hand. "I can't bear to look at you. Go up stairs and get me my bonnet and shawl. Make yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have your room instead of your company for one half minute." Obeying her, he shambled out, and Eugene Wrayburn saw the tears exude from between the little creature's fingers as she kept her hand before her eyes. He was sorry, but his sympathy did not move his carelessness to do any thing but feel sorry. "I'm going to the Italian Opera to try on," said Miss Wren, taking away her hand after a little while, and laughing satirically to hide that she had been crying; "I must see your back before I go, Mr. Wrayburn. Let me first tell you, once for all, that it's of no use your paying visits to me. You wouldn't get what you want of me, no, not if you brought pincers with you to tear it out." opposite sides of the street. He lounged along moodily, and stopped at Charing Cross to look about him, with as little interest in the crowd as any man might take, and was lounging on again, when a most unexpected object caught his eyes. No less an object than Jenny Wren's bad boy trying to make up his mind to cross the road. A more ridiculous and feeble spectacle than this tottering wretch making unsteady sallies into the roadway, and as often staggering back again, oppressed by terrors of vehicles that were a long way off or were nowhere, the streets could not have shown. Over and over again, when the course was perfectly clear, he set out, got half-way, described a loop, turned, and went back again, when he might have crossed and recrossed half a dozen times. Then he would stand shivering on the edge of the pavement, looking up the street and looking down, while scores of people jostled him, and crossed, and went on. Stimulated in course of time by the sight of so many successes, he would make another sally, make another loop, would all but have his foot on the opposite pavement, would see or imagine something coming, and would stagger back again. There, he would stand "Are you so obstinate on the subject of a making spasmodic preparations as if for a great doll's dress for my godchild?" "Ah!" returned Miss Wren, with a hitch of her chin, "I am so obstinate. And of course it's on the subject of a doll's dress-or address whichever you like. Get along and give it up!" Her degraded charge had come back, and was standing behind her with the bonnet and shawl. leap, and at last would decide on a start at precisely the wrong moment, and would be roared at by drivers, and would shrink back once more, and stand in the old spot shivering, with the whole of the proceedings to go through again. "It strikes me," remarked Eugene, coolly, after watching him for some minutes, “that my friend is likely to be rather behind time if he thought of him. I hope it may has any appointment on hand." With which | gravity, "like not knowing me. remark he strolled on, and took no further not be my worthy friend Mr. Aaron, for, to tell you the truth, Mortimer, I doubt he may have a prepossession against me. I strongly suspect him of having had a hand in spiriting away Lizzie." "Every thing," returned Lightwood, impa Lightwood was at home when he got to the Chambers, and had dined alone there. Eugene drew a chair to the fire by which he was having his wine and reading the evening paper, and brought a glass, and filled it for good fellow-tiently, "seems, by a fatality, to bring us round ship's sake. to Lizzie. 'About town' meant about Lizzie, just now, Eugene." "My dear Mortimer, you are the express picture of contented industry, reposing (on credit) after the virtuous labors of the day." "My dear Eugene, you are the express picture of discontented idleness not reposing at all. Where have you been?" "I have been," replied Wrayburn, "—about town. I have turned up at the present juncture with the intention of consulting my highly intelligent and respected solicitor on the position of my affairs." "My solicitor, do you know," observed Eugene, turning round to the furniture, “is a man of infinite discernment!" "Did it not, Eugene?" "Yes it did, Mortimer." "And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her." Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the After a prolonged pause he replied: "I don't know that. I must ask you not to say that, as if we took it for granted." "Your highly intelligent and respected solic-fire. itor is of opinion that your affairs are in a bad way, Eugene." "Though whether," said Eugene, thoughtfully, “that can be intelligently said, now, of the affairs of a client who has nothing to lose and who can not possibly be made to pay, may be open to question." "But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to herself." Having again paused as before, Eugene said: "I don't know that either. But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble about any "You have fallen into the hands of the Jews, thing as about this disappearance of hers? I Eugene." "My dear boy," returned the debtor, very composedly taking up his glass, "having previously fallen into the hands of some of the Christians, I can bear it with philosophy." "I have had an interview to-day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems determined to press us hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a Patriarch. A picturesque gray-headed and gray-bearded old Jew, in a shovel-hat and gaberdine." "Not," said Eugene, pausing in setting down his glass, "surely not my worthy friend Mr. Aaron ?" "He calls himself Mr. Riah." "By-the-by," said Eugene, "it comes into my mind that no doubt with an instinctive desire to receive him into the bosom of our Church -I gave him the name of Aaron!" "Eugene, Eugene," returned Lightwood, "you are more ridiculous than usual. Say what you mean." ask, for information." "My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!" "Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information." "I asked you for information, Eugene," said Mortimer, reproachfully. "Dear boy, I know it, but I can't give it. I thirst for information. What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does not mean that I care for her, what does it mean? If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where's the peck,' etc. ?" Though he said this gayly, he said it with a perplexed and inquisitive face, as if he actually did not know what to make of himself. "Look on to the end-" Lightwood was beginning to remonstrate, when he caught at the words: "Ah! See now! That's exactly what I am capable of doing. How very acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When "Merely, my dear fellow, that I have the we were at school together I got up my lessons honor and pleasure of a speaking acquaintance at the last moment, day by day and bit by bit; with such a Patriarch as you describe, and that now we are out in life together, I get up my I address him as Mr. Aaron, because it appears lessons in the same way. In the present task I to me Hebraic, expressive, appropriate, and com- have not got beyond this: I am bent on finding plimentary. Notwithstanding which strong rea-Lizzie, and I mean to find her, and I will take sons for its being his name, it may not be his name." "I believe you are the absurdest man on the face of the earth," said Lightwood, laughing. "Not at all, I assure you. Did he mention that he knew me ?" any means of finding her that offer themselves. Fair means or foul means are all alike to me. I ask you―for information — what does that mean? When I have found her I may ask you also for information-what do I mean now? But it would be premature in this stage, and it's "He did not. He only said of you that he not the character of my mind." expected to be paid by you." Lightwood was shaking his head over the air "Which looks," remarked Eugene, with much with which his friend held forth thus-an air so |