ore his death had there
been anything like a revival of their affection for each other. He had
been a man of some substance and authority in his town, had built
houses, and got together property, and he left his daughter a not
inconsiderable annuity as a charge upon his property, and placed her
under the guardianship of the elderly and respectable Nonconformist
minister, who, as luck would have it, afterward married his young widow.
Minola had seen so many marriages during her short experience, and had
disliked two at least of them so thoroughly, that she was much inclined
to say with one of her heroes that there should be no more of them. For
a long time she had made up her mind that when she came of age she would
go to London and live there. She still wanted a few months of the time
of independence, but the manner in which Mr. Augustus Sheppard was
pressed upon her by himself and others made her resolve to anticipate
the course of the seasons a little, and go away at once. In London she
made up her mind that she would lead a life of enchantment: of
delightful and semi-savage solitude, in the midst of the crowd; of wild
independence and scorn of all the ways of men, with books at her
command, with the art galleries and museums, of which she had read so
much, always within easy reach, and the streets which were alive for her
with such sweet and dear associations all around her.

Miss Grey knew London well. She had never yet set foot in it, or been
anywhere out of her native town; but she had studied London as a general
may study the map of some country which he expects one day to invade.
Many and many a night, when all in the house but she were fast asleep,
she had had the map of London spread out before her, and had puzzled her
way through the endless intricacies of its streets. Few women of her
age, or of any age, actually living in the metropolis, had anything like
the knowledge of its districts and its principal streets that she had.
She felt in anticipation the pride and delight of being able to go
whither she would about London without having to ask her way of any one.
Some particular association identified every place in her mind. The
living and the dead, the romantic and the real, history and fiction, all
combined to supply her with labels of association, which she might
mentally put upon every quarter and district, and almost upon every
street which had a name worth knowing. As we all know Venice before we
have