e to
certify that the sketches are lifelike and the portraits well
considered. You will not hear me told, at any rate, that I had
better sit at home and darn my stockings, as you said the other
day of that poor unfortunate Mrs Effington Stubbs.

I have not seen you for the last three weeks. I have a few friends
every Tuesday evening;--pray come next week or the week following.
And pray believe that no amount of editorial or critical severity
shall make me receive you otherwise than with a smile.

Most sincerely yours,

MATILDA CARBURY.

Lady Carbury, having finished her third letter, threw herself back in
her chair, and for a moment or two closed her eyes, as though about to
rest. But she soon remembered that the activity of her life did not
admit of such rest. She therefore seized her pen and began scribbling
further notes.

CHAPTER II - THE CARBURY FAMILY

Something of herself and condition Lady Carbury has told the reader in
the letters given in the former chapter, but more must be added. She
has declared she had been cruelly slandered; but she has also shown
that she was not a woman whose words about herself could be taken with
much confidence. If the reader does not understand so much from her
letters to the three editors they have been written in vain. She has
been made to say that her object in work was to provide for the need
of her children, and that with that noble purpose before her she was
struggling to make for herself a career in literature. Detestably
false as had been her letters to the editors, absolutely and
abominably foul as was the entire system by which she was endeavouring
to achieve success, far away from honour and honesty as she had been
carried by her ready subserviency to the dirty things among which she
had lately fallen, nevertheless her statements about herself were
substantially true. She had been ill-treated. She had been slandered.
She was true to her children,--especially devoted to one of them--and
was ready to work her nails off if by doing so she could advance their
interests.

She was the widow of one Sir Patrick Carbury, who many years since had
done great things as a soldier in India, and had been thereupon
created a baronet. He had married a young wife late in life and,
having found out when too late that he had made a mistake, had
occasionally spoilt his darling and occasionally ill-used her. In
doing each he had done it abundan