other before,--in which the little household of
independent existences in Leicester Place was fused into an
almost family relation all at once, after years of mere
juxtaposition,--before the end of that week, Aunt Blin died.

It was as though the fiery thrust that had transpierced the heart of
"her Boston," had smitten the centre of her own vitality in the
self-same hour.

All her clothes hung in the closet; the very bend of her arm was in
the sleeve of the well worn alpaca dress, the work-basket, with a
cloth jacket-front upon it, in which was a half-made button-hole,
left just at the stitch where all her labor ended, was on the round
table; Cheeps was singing in the window; Bartholomew was winking on
the hearth-rug; and little Bel, among these belongings that she knew
not what to do with any more, was all alone.

CHAPTER XXIV.

TEMPTATION.

The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry.

Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came
there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight
from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money,
with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life
the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of
class and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the
moment, both ways.

"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent
movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the
hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help
themselves and each other. They would stand by their own class, and
cry "hands off!" to the rich women.

What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation,
between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements?

In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought
neither yet.

Bel Bree was one.

The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with
her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps
and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was
shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one
broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day
she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her
brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by
disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly,
conscious.

"I give all I leave in the world to my n