"I want you to like Mr. Hawkehurst a little, Di," she repeated, "for my sake."

"Very well, I will try to like him a little—for your sake," answered Miss Paget, in a very unsympathetic tone.

"O, Di! tell me how it was he offended you."

"Who told you that he offended me?"

"Your own manner, dear. You could never have been so cold and distant with him—having known him so long, and endured so many troubles in his company—if you had not been deeply offended by him."

"That is your idea, Charlotte; but, you see, I am very unlike you. I am fitful and capricious. I used to like Mr. Hawkehurst, and now I dislike him. As to offence, his whole life has offended me, just as my father's life has offended me, from first to last. I am not good and amiable and loving, like you; but I hate deceptions and lies; above all, the lies that some men traffic in day after day."

"Was Valentine's—was your father's life a very bad one?" Charlotte asked, trembling palpably, and looking up at Miss Paget's face with anxious eyes.

"Yes, it was a mean false life,—a life of trick and artifice. I do not know the details of the schemes by which my father and Valentine earned their daily bread—and my daily bread; but I know they inflicted loss upon other people. Whether the wrong done was always done deliberately and consciously upon Valentine's part, I cannot say. He may have been only a tool of my father's. I hope he was, for the most part an unconscious tool."

She said all this in a dreamy way, as if uttering her own thoughts, rather than seeking to enlighten Charlotte.

"I am sure he was an unconscious tool," cried that young lady, with an air of conviction; "it is not in his nature to do anything false or dishonourable."

"Indeed! you know him very well, it seems," said Diana.

Ah, what a tempest was raging in that proud passionate heart! what a strife between the powers of good and evil! Pitying love for Charlotte; tender compassion for her rival's childlike helplessness; and unutterable sense of her own loss.

She had loved him so dearly, and he was taken from her. There had been a time when he almost loved her—almost! Yes, it was the remembrance of that which made the trial so bitter. The cup had approached her lips, only to be dashed away for ever.

"What did I ask in life except his love?" she said to herself. "Of all the pleasures and triumphs which girls of my age enjoy, is there one that I ever envied? No, I only sighed for his love. To live in a lodging-house parlour with him, to sit by and watch him at his work, to drudge for him, to bear with him—this was my brightest dream of earthly bliss; and she has broken it!"