nd at
a great cost,--to which Mr. Goffe was averse,--the sum needed could
hardly be provided at once. Mr. Goffe recommended that no day earlier
than the 20th December should be fixed for their departure.

It was now the end of November; and it became a question how the
intermediate time should be passed. The Countess was resolved that
she would hold no pleasant intercourse at all with her daughter. She
would not even tell the girl of her purpose of going abroad. From
hour to hour she assured herself with still increasing obduracy that
nothing but severity could avail anything. The girl must be cowed
and frightened into absolute submission,--even though at the expense
of her health. Even though it was to be effected by the absolute
crushing of her spirits,--this must be done. Though at the cost of
her life, it must be done. This woman had lived for the last twenty
years with but one object before her eyes,--an object sometimes
seeming to be near, more often distant, and not unfrequently
altogether beyond her reach, but which had so grown upon her
imagination as to become the heaven to which her very soul aspired.
To be and to be known to be among the highly born, the so-called
noble, the titled from old dates,--to be of those who were purely
aristocratic, had been all the world to her. As a child,--the
child of well-born but poor parents, she had received the idea. In
following it out she had thrown all thoughts of love to the wind and
had married a reprobate earl. Then had come her punishment,--or, as
she had conceived it, her most unmerited misfortunes. For many years
of her life her high courage and persistent demeanour had almost
atoned for the vice of her youth. The love of rank was strong in her
bosom as ever, but it was fostered for her child rather than for
herself. Through long, tedious, friendless, poverty-stricken years
she had endured all, still assuring herself that the day would come
when the world should call the sweet plant that grew by her side
by its proper name. The little children hooted after her daughter,
calling her girl in derision The Lady Anna,--when Lady Anna had been
more poorly clad and blessed with less of the comforts of home than
any of them. Years would roll by, and they should live to know that
the Lady Anna,--the sport of their infantine cruelty,--was Lady
Anna indeed. And as the girl became a woman the dream was becoming
a reality. The rank, the title, the general acknowledgment and