at the foot of Westminster Bridge, a man looked at her, and
seized her arm. She raised her head with a chilly, melancholy scorn, as
if she had received an insult--as if she feared that the man knew the
stain upon her name, and dreamed, in his folly, that the dread of death
might cause her to sin again.

"Do you not know me?" said the man; "more strange that I should
recognise you! Dear, dear, and what a dress!--how you are altered! Poor
thing!"

At the words "poor thing" Arabella burst into tears; and in those tears
the heavy cloud on her brain seemed to melt away.

"I have been inquiring, seeking for you everywhere, Miss," resumed
the man. "Surely, you know me now! Your poor aunt's lawyer! She is no
more--died last week. She has left you all she had in the world; and a
very pretty income it is, too, for a single lady."

Thus it was that we find Arabella installed in the dreary comforts
of Podden Place. "She exchanged," she said, "in honour to her aunt's
memory, her own name for that of Crane, which her aunt had borne--her
own mother's maiden name." She assumed, though still so young, that
title of "Mrs." which spinsters, grown venerable, moodily adopt when
they desire all mankind to know that henceforth they relinquish the
vanities of tender misses--that, become mistress of themselves, they
defy and spit upon our worthless sex, which, whatever its repentance,
is warned that it repents in vain. Most of her aunt's property was in
houses, in various districts of Bloombury. Arabella moved from one to
the other of these tenements, till she settled for good into the dullest
of all. To make it duller yet, by contrast with the past, the Golgotha
for once gave up its buried treasures--broken lute, birdless cage!

Somewhere about two years after Matilda's death, Arabella happened to
be in the office of the agent who collected her house-rents, when a
well-dressed man entered, and, leaning over the counter, said: "There
is an advertisement in to-day's Times about a lady who offers a home,
education, and so forth, to any little motherless girl; terms moderate,
as said lady loves children for their own sake. Advertiser refers to
your office for particulars--give them!"

The agent turned to his books; and Arabella turned towards the inquirer.
"For whose child do you want a home, Jasper Losely?"

Jasper started. "Arabella! Best of creatures! And can you deign to speak
to such a vil---"

"Hush--let us walk. Never mind the adve