"He told you so!" echoed the honest widow with unmitigated scorn; "hasn't he told me times and often that I should have my rent regular after this week, and regular after that week, and have I ever had it regular? And ain't I keeping him out of charity now?—a poor widow-woman like me—which I may be wanting charity myself before long: and if it wasn't for your whimpering and going on he'd have been out of the house three weeks ago, when the doctor said he was well enough to be moved; for I ast him."

"And you'd have turned him out to die in the streets, mother!" cried Mary; "I didn't think you was so 'artless."

From this time there was ill-feeling between Mrs. Kepp and her daughter, who had been hitherto one of the most patient and obedient of children. The fanatic can never forgive the wretch who disbelieves in the divinity of his god; and women who love as blindly and foolishly as Mary Anne Kepp are the most bigoted of worshippers. The girl could not forgive her mother's disparagement of her idol,—the mother had no mercy upon her daughter's folly; and after much wearisome contention and domestic misery—carefully hidden from the penniless sybarite in the parlour—after many tears and heart-burnings, and wakeful nights and prayerful watches, Mary Anne Kepp consented to leave the house quietly one morning with the gentleman lodger while the widow had gone to market. Miss Kepp left a piteous little note for her mother, rather ungrammatical, but very womanly and tender, imploring pardon for her want of duty; and, "O, mother, if you knew how good and nobel he is, you coudent be angery with me for luving him has I do, and we shall come back to you after oure marige, wich you will be pade up honourabel to the last farthin'."

After writing this epistle in the kitchen, with more deliberation and more smudging than Captain Paget would have cared to behold in the bride of his choice, Mary Anne attired herself in her Sabbath-day raiment, and left Tulliver's-terrace with the Captain in a cab. She would fain have taken a little lavender paper-covered box that contained the remainder of her wardrobe, but after surveying it with a shudder, Captain Paget told her that such a box would condemn them anywhere.

"You may get on sometimes without luggage, my dear," he said sententiously; "but with such luggage as that, never!"