ing the greater part of the day, and Sophy
was too busy with her own affairs to pay much attention to her
heart-broken parent.

But deep as was the mother's grief for the loss of her dutiful child,
the sorrow of the poor hunchback (for this her beloved sister, who had
been the idolized pet of her joyless childhood) was greater still. Worn
down with an incurable disease, Mrs. Grimshawe looked forward to a
speedy reunion with the departed, but years of toil and suffering might
yet be reserved for the patient creature who never was heard to murmur
over her painful lot.

The death of the young Charlotte, the peacemaker, the comforter and
monitor to the rest of the household, was as if her good angel had
departed, and the sunshine of heaven had been dimmed by her absence.

"Oh, my sister!" she murmured in the depths of her soul, "thou wert
justly dear to all; but oh! how dear to me! No one on earth loved the
poor hunchback, or could read the language of her heart like you. To
others dumb and uncouth, to you my voice was natural; for it spoke to
you of feelings and hopes which you alone could understand."

Mrs. Mason scolded and grumbled, that, for weeks after Charlotte's
death, Mary Grimshawe performed her daily tasks with less alacrity, and
wandered to and fro like one in a dream. Sometimes, the pent-up anguish
of her heart found a vent in sad and unintelligible sounds--"A
gibberish," her mistress said, "that was enough to frighten all the
customers from the house."

Mary had other causes of annoyance to grieve and perplex her,
independent of the death of her sister. For some weeks past, the coarse,
dissolute Robert Mason had shown a decided preference for her sister
Sophy, whom he proclaimed in her hearing, to his bad associates, "to be
the prettiest gal in the neighbourhood--the only gal that he cared a bit
for, or deemed worth a fellow's thoughts. But then," added he
carelessly, and with an air of superiority which galled Mary not a
little, "the wench was poor--too poor for him. He wanted some fun with
lots of tin, that would enable him to open a good public-house in town."

Mary, as she listened, secretly blessed God that they were poor, while
the ruffian continued:

"His mother, the old jade! would never consent to his marrying one so
much beneath him. If she only suspected him of casting a sheep's eye at
Sophy Grimshawe, she would set marks on the gal's face that would spoil
her beauty. But if the gal had not