mplete and genuine a woman as Lady Westwick
herself. It was impossible to reform the "Queen of Hearts," and equally
impossible not to love her. Such, in few words, was my fellow-guardian's
report of his experience of our handsome young ward.

So the time passed till the year came of which I am now writing--the
ever-memorable year, to England, of the Russian war. It happened that
I had heard less than usual at this period, and indeed for many months
before it, of Jessie and her proceedings. My son had been ordered out
with his regiment to the Crimea in 1854, and had other work in hand
now than recording the sayings and doings of a young lady. Mr. Richard
Yelverton, who had been hitherto used to write to me with tolerable
regularity, seemed now, for some reason that I could not conjecture, to
have forgotten my existence. Ultimately I was reminded of my ward by one
of George's own letters, in which he asked for news of her; and I wrote
at once to Mr. Yelverton. The answer that reached me was written by his
wife: he was dangerously ill. The next letter that came informed me of
his death. This happened early in the spring of the year 1855.

I am ashamed to confess it, but the change in my own position was the
first idea that crossed my mind when I read the news of Mr. Yelverton's
death. I was now left sole guardian, and Jessie Yelverton wanted a year
still of coming of age.

By the next day's post I wrote to her about the altered state of the
relations between us. She was then on the Continent with her aunt,
having gone abroad at the very beginning of the year. Consequently,
so far as eighteen hundred and fifty-five was concerned, the condition
exacted by the will yet remained to be performed. She had still six
weeks to pass--her last six weeks, seeing that she was now twenty years
old--under the roof of one of her guardians, and I was now the only
guardian left.

In due course of time I received my answer, written on rose-colored
paper, and expressed throughout in a tone of light, easy, feminine
banter, which amused me in spite of myself. Miss Jessie, according to
her own account, was hesitating, on receipt of my letter, between two
alternatives--the one, of allowing herself to be buried six weeks in The
Glen Tower; the other, of breaking the condition, giving up the money,
and remaining magnanimously contented with nothing but a life-interest
in her father's property. At present she inclined decidedly toward
giving up