not.

It met not acceptance, for it deserved it

The affecting and powerful appeal which Emily worded to her father, was crossed on the road by a letter from Mr. Scribewell's office, informing her of his sudden death. Mr. Dalton had retired to rest in perfect health, apparently, but had been found, in the morning, dead in his bed.

Mr. Scribewell's deputy, for he himself was absent, with much feeling and kindness, communicated tidings the bitterness of which, however, nothing could soften. He broke to Emily, too, the fact of her own disinheritance; but in the agony caused by the first part of the letter, the concluding paragraph was hardly noticed by her.

When Mr. Meredith came home to dinner, after rambling about for hours as had been his wont, without aim or object, but merely because he could not sit at home in utter idleness, a witness to his dearly-loved wife's hourly deprivation-when he came

home, instead of finding her content, if not happy, placid if not gay, and always ready to meet him with welcoming affectioninstead of this, he found her in bed, overwhelmed with sorrow and prostrated by pain. Her landlady, Mrs. Batesman, had been most attentive and kind, and medical aid had been at once obtained. Contrition -too late contrition and mental agony had direful effects on the bodily frame of the repentant daughter, and she lost her hope of becoming a mother.

And her husband, as he sate that night, that long, long, weary night by her bedside, watching her every look, anticipating her every wish, yet hardly daring to attempt to soothe her, as she continually burst into paroxysms of anguish, and saturated her pillow with bitter tears for her irreparable loss-did he not rue, in dust and ashes, the selfishness of his conductfor now he saw it in its true light, selfish in the extreme-in tempting the poor sufferer before him to outrage her filial duties, to

quit furtively her father's house, and to resign all the delicacies, amenities and luxuries of her accustomed home, to encounter life's chances with him. Oh, and to what had those chances reduced her!

At that moment, had it been in his power to restore her to what she had lost, by the sacrifice of his own life, he would have resigned it without a murmur.

Mr. Josiah Brooke, to whom Mr. Dalton had bequeathed his property, was dead; but the heir of that gentleman was found in a Mrs. de Snobyn, who resided in a fashionable quarter of Islington.

CHAPTER VI.

"AND I do trust, Mr. de Snobyn," said Mrs. de Snobyn, as soon as they had exhausted their mutual felicitations on this unexpected accession of property, "that you will at once drop your connexion with the establishment in Budge-row."

Well, Mrs. S., perhaps I shall. I had thought of keeping a loophole in the concern for one o' the younger lads—Otty, or Guss-but-"

"For one of my boys! OctaviusAugustus!-one of my sons!"

"I beg pardon, Mrs. S.," said the man of tallow, aiming at a little poor jocularity; "I thought they were mine also!"

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Nonsense," said Mrs. de Snobyn, too much in earnest now to scold her husband for his vulgarity; which on a more trifling occasion, she certainly would have done. "I should never, under any circumstances, have tolerated the idea of my boys being connected with the establishment in Budge Row; but their present improved prospects can render it not a question even with you. Budge Row must be cut at once, and for ever!"

"Very well, Mrs. S., very well-be it so. 'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good; it'll make all the better for poor Jack-a good, honest, industrious, hardworking lad, Jack has been-aye, all his days and stuck as close as wax to the melting-pot. A good lad Jack has been―aye, a lad after my own heart—a reg'lar trump."

"I am far from wishing to depreciate