the business-the best practice in Carlingford, and entire command of Grange Lane.

"But what does that matter?" said Lucilla; "if poor papa had retired indeed, as I used to beg him to do, and parted with it- But everybody has begun to send for Dr Rider already," she said, in an aggrieved voice; and then for the first time John Brown remembered, to his confusion, that there was once said to be "something between" Miss Marjoribanks and Dr Rider; which complicated the affair in the most uncomfortable way.

"Yes," he said, "and of course that would make it much more difficult to bring in another man; but Rider is a very honourable young fellow, Miss Marjoribanks--"

SO.

"He is not so very young," said Lucilla. He is quite as old as I am, though no one ever would think I am sure he is honourable, but what has that to do with it? And I do think Mrs Chiley might have done without anybody else: for a day or two, considering when it was-"

And here she stopped to cry, unreasonably, but yet very naturally; for it did feel hard that in the house to which Dr Marjoribanks's last visit had been paid, another doctor should have been called in next day.

What I meant to say," said John Brown, " was, that Dr Rider, though he is not rich, and could not.

to make some arrangement.

pay a large sum of money down, would be very glad He is very anxious about it, and he seemed himself to think that if you knew his circumstances you would not be disinclined toBut as I did not at all know——”

Lucilla caught, as it were, and met, and forced to face her, her informant's embarrassed, hesitating look. "You say this," said Miss Marjoribanks, "because people used to say there was something between us, and you think I may have some feeling about it. But there never was anything between us. Anybody with a quarter of an eye could have seen that he was going out of his senses about that little Australian girl. And I am rather fond of men that are in love-it shows they have some good in them. But it is dreadful to talk of such things now," said Lucilla, with a sigh of self-reproach. "If Dr Rider has any arrangement to propose, I should like to give him the preference, please. You see they have begun to send for him already in Grange Lane."

"I will do whatever you think proper," said John Brown, who was rather scared, and very much impressed by Miss Marjoribanks's candour. Dr Rider had been the first love of Mr Brown's own wife, and the lawyer had a curious kind of satisfaction in thinking that this silly young fellow had thus lost two admirable women, and that probably the little

Australian was equally inferior to Miss Marjoribanks and Mrs Brown. He ought to have been grateful that Dr Rider had left the latter lady to his own superior discrimination-and so he was; and yet it gave him a certain odd satisfaction to think that the Doctor was not so happy as he might have been. He went away fully warranted to receive Dr Rider's proposition, and even, to a certain extent, to decide upon it-and Lucilla threw herself back in her chair in the silent drawing-room, from which aunt Jemima had discreetly withdrawn, and began to think over the reality of her position as she now saw it for the first time.

The sense of bewildering revolution and change was over; for, strangely enough, the greater a change is the more easily the mind, after the first shock, accepts and gets accustomed to it. It was over, and the world felt steady once more under Lucilla's feet, and she sat down, not precisely amid the ruins of her happiness, but still in the presence of many an imagination overthrown, to look at her real position. It was not, after all, utter poverty, misery, and destitution, as at the first glance she had believed. According to what John Brown had said, and a rapid calculation which Lucilla had herself made in passing, something approaching two hundred a-year would be left to her— just a small single woman's revenue, as she thought to

herself. Two hundred a-year! All at once there came into Miss Marjoribanks's mind a sudden vision of the two Miss Ravenswoods, who had lived in that pretty set of rooms over Elsworthy's shop, facing into Grange Lane, and who had kept a lady's maid, and asked the best people in the place to tea, upon a very similar income, and how their achievements had been held up to everybody as a model of what genteel economy could do. She thought of them, and her heart sank within her; for it was not in Lucilla's nature to live without a sphere, nor to disjoin herself from her fellow-creatures, nor to give up entirely the sovereign position she had held for so many years. Whatever she might ultimately do, it was clear that, in the mean time, she could not make up her mind to any such giving up of the battle as that. And then there was the house. She might let it to the Riders, and add probably another hundred a-year to her income; for though it was an excellent house, and worth more than a hundred a-year, still there was no competition for houses in Grange Lane, and the new Doctor was the only probable tenant. And, to tell the truth, though Lucilla was very reasonable, it went to her heart at the present moment to think of letting the house to the new Doctor, and having the patients come as usual, and the lamp lighted as of old, and nothing changed except the central figure of all. She ought to

VOL. III.

K

have been above such sentimental ideas when a whole hundred pounds a-year was in question; but she was not, which of itself was a strange phenomenon. If she could have made up her mind to that, there were a great many things that she might have done. She might still have gone abroad, and to some extent taken a limited share in what was going on in some section of English society on the Continent. Or she might have gone to one of the mild centres of a similar kind of life in England. But such a prospect did not offer many attractions to Miss Marjoribanks. If she had been rich, it would have been different. Thus there gradually dawned upon her the germ of the plan she ultimately adopted, and which was the only one that commended itself to her feelings. Going away was expensive and troublesome at the best; and even at Elsworthy's, if she could have made up her mind to such an expedient, she would have been charged a pound a-week for the rooms alone, not to speak of all kinds of extras, and never having the satisfaction of feeling yourself in your own place. Under all the circumstances, it was impressed upon Lucilla's mind that her natural course was to stay still where she was, and make no change. Why should she make any change? The house was her own, and did not cost anything, and if Nancy would but stand by her and one good maid- It was a venture; but