r family, and a grace and spirit
peculiarly her own. Rose could not find it in her heart to deprive
her cousin of the child's society, which seemed to interest and amuse
her, and the little creature performed so many acts of affection
and attention from the impulse of her own kind nature, that Helen,
unaccustomed to that sort of devotion, found her twine around
her sympathies in a novel and extraordinary manner; it was a new
sensation, and she could not account for its influence. After a
week had passed, she was able to walk out, and met by chance the
old clergyman. He kissed the child, and passed on with a bow, which,
perhaps, had more of bitterness in its civility than, strictly
speaking, befitted a Christian clergyman; but he thought of the
neglect she had evinced towards old Mrs. Myles, and if he had spoken,
it would have been to vent his displeasure, and reprove the woman
whose rank could not shield her from his scorn. She proceeded towards
the churchyard. "Look, lady!" said little Rose; "father put that stone
over that grave to please mother. The relation who is buried there
took care of my mother when she was a _littler_ girl than I am now,
and he told me to strew flowers over the grave, which we do. See, I
can read it--'Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Margaret Myles, who died
the seventeenth of June, eighteen hundred'--and something--I can
hardly read figures yet, lady. 'This stone was placed here by her
grateful relatives, E. and R.S.,' meaning Rose and Edward Lynne."

The coldness of the clergyman was forgotten in the bitterness of
self-reproach. "I was a fool," she thought, as she turned away, "to
fancy that my native air could be untainted by the destiny which has
mocked me from my cradle."

"Ah! lady dear," exclaimed a crone, rising from a grave where she
had been sitting, "don't you remember old Betty? They all said in the
village you'd be too proud to look on your grandmother's grave; but
you're not, I see. Well, that's good--that's good. We had a funeral
last week, and the vault of the old earl was broken in. The stupid
sexton stuck his pick in amongst the old bricks, and so the great
man's skull came tumbling out, and rolled beside the skull of Job
Martin, the old cobbler; and the sexton laid them both on the edge of
the grave, the earl's skull and the cobbler's skull, until he should
fetch a mason to mend the vault, and--what do you think?--when the
mason came, the sexton could not tell which was the ea