The forlorn spinster, friendless and forsaken, the overworked matron,—the shabby genteel sufferers too secure to starve, too poor to enjoy, too proud to complain, and, occasionally, what seemed to be an example of unmerciful disaster,—among these were the rich maiden’s unobtrusive but unremittingly performed good works, of which none heard, none knew, but the recipients, and perhaps the discreetest of co-workers. * * * * * And thus, with the day just dawned, had the maiden life of Antonia Frankston come to an end. From this day forth her being was to merge in that of one who, falling with the suddenness of a shipwrecked mariner into their society, had been, as would have been such a waif, treated with every friendly office, with the ample up-springing kindness of a princely heart, by her fond father. That father, no mean judge of his fellow-man, had seen in his early career but the noble errors of a lofty nature and an elevated ideal. Such disproportions between judgment and experience but prove the natural dignity of the mind as fully as the precocious wisdom of the gutter-bred urchin waif, his base descent and companionship. Paul Frankston had long foreseen that, when the lessons of life should have cleared the encrustation from the character of his _protégé_, it would shine forth bright and burnished as Toledo steel—all-sufficient for defence, nay, equal to spirited attack, should such need arise. He saw that the future possessor and guardian of his soul’s treasure was a ‘man’ as well as a ‘gentleman.’ On both of these essentials he laid great weight. For the rest, his principles were high and unfaltering, his habits unimpeachable. Whatever trifling defects there might be in his character were merely such as were incident to mortality. They must be left to the influence of time, experience, and of Antonia. ‘If she doesn’t turn him out a perfect article,’ said Paul, unconsciously quitting the mental for the actual soliloquy, ‘why, nothing and no one can. If I had been any one else, and she had commenced early enough at me, I really believe that she’d have changed old Paul Frankston into a bishop, or, at any rate, a rural dean at least; even Charley Carryall——’ But whether Captain Carryall’s utterances and anecdotes were scarcely of a nature calculated to harmonise with bishops and deans, or whether Mr. Frankston’s many engagements at this important crisis suddenly engaged his attention, can never be known with that precision which this chronicler is always anxious to supply. One thing only is certain, that he looked at his watch, and hastily arising from his arm-chair, departed into the city.