t I am not anxious
on that score."

"Poor dear old auntie!" Melville exclaimed, when, after listening to
his wife's rapid chatter, he succeeded in getting in a word.

"She'll soon find cause to be anxious when Maythorne comes to her for a
bit of thin paper with a good round sum in the corner."

Joyce could not speak so lightly of this as Gratian did. She almost
reproached herself for not being more honest with Charlotte in days long
past, rousing her from dreams of fancied bliss to the great "realities"
of life.

As she clasped her Baby Joy in her arms that night, she murmured over
her tender words, and prayed that she might lead her three little
daughters in the right way, and teach them that the woman who fears the
Lord is to be praised, and that anchored to those words, they might
escape the rocks and quicksands in which so many like poor Charlotte had
foundered.

For the present, indeed, Charlotte was satisfied. Lord Maythorne bought
her, or rather procured for her, many of the fine things she had often
longed for. He felt a certain pride in her graceful manners, and
perhaps, a little grateful affection for her intense admiration of
himself--that romantic admiration which had not yet had time to grow
faint!

He bought her the last complete edition of Lord Byron's poetry, and
Charlotte bathed in that not very wholesome stream, and produced some
imitative stanzas, which were printed in the _Bath Chronicle_, with a
little paragraph by the editor, that they were from the pen of "a
charming lady of title."

A copy of the paper, delivered in the Close at Wells, went the round of
the little community, and, fluttered with delight, Miss Falconer told
admiring friends that dear Charlotte's husband was a man of cultivated
taste and encouraged her muse.

The days of dearth and barrenness will come, _must_ come, to those who
sow their seed upon the stony ground. The bright sky must cloud over,
the winds and waves roar and swell, and the house that is builded on the
sand must fall, and great shall be the ruin of it. Secure in the present
calm, poor little frail barks skim the surface and are content. Thus we
leave Charlotte, and will not look at her again, lest we see that
saddest of all sad sights, the falling of the prop on which she leaned
in her blindness and foolishness, the breaking of the staff which shall
surely pierce her hand with a wound which no earthly power can avail to
heal.

PART III.

CONCLUS