te, and in less than a year he
married again, this time to a beautiful young heiress, subsequently
mother to Aubrey, who was thus rather more than two years Kate's junior.

The younger George Clare, a spendthrift like his father, speedily
squandered his wife's fortune, and died, leaving her with barely
sufficient to keep herself and little son from want. Yet such was Mrs.
Clare's undying love for the husband who had treated her so badly, that
in their greatest straits she refused to part with a locket containing
his likeness and hers which was valuable by reason of the diamonds and
sapphires with which it was encrusted. This locket was the only thing
she had to leave her little Aubrey when she died, and he, a lovely boy
of nine summers, went with his half-sister (who had a small sum of money
settled on her by her maternal grandfather) to reside with their
great-aunt, Miss Clare.

Presently the quietness at the tea-table was disturbed by a loud single
knock at the front door, and Aubrey bounced out of the room.

"A note from Mr. Green," he said, returning. "I wonder what's up now? No
good, I'm afraid."

This foreboding was only too fully realised. The agent for Miss Clare's
little property at Smokeytown wrote to tell her that during a recent
gale one of her best houses had been so much injured by the falling of a
factory chimney, that the repairs would cost quite L30 before it could
again be habitable. This was a dire misfortune. So closely was their
income cut, and so carefully apportioned to meet the household expenses,
that, after fullest consideration, Miss Clare could only see her way
clear for getting together about L15 towards meeting this unexpected
demand, and three very anxious faces bent around the table in
discussion.

Presently Aubrey slipped away and ran upstairs to his own room. He then
lit a candle, and pulling a box from under an old horse-hair chair,
unlocked it, taking out a small morocco case, which, when opened,
revealed something that sparkled and scintillated even in the feeble
rays of the cheap "composite." It was the precious locket, placed in his
hands by his dying mother four years before. Inside were two exquisite
miniatures on ivory--the one a handsome, careless-looking man, the
other, on which the boy's tender gaze was now fixed, was the portrait of
a lady, with just such pure, bright features, and sweet, dark-grey eyes
as Aubrey himself.

"Mother, my own darling," he murmured, pressi