Who was she, and where did she come from? that no one positively knew. When The Den at Ealing (she so christened it; it was called Myrtle Farm before) was to let, the neighbours thought the landlord would stand out of his rent for many years. The house was a little, long, one-storied building, cut up into small rooms; old, dilapidated, and damp. The stables were rotting with decay; the barns untiled and tumbling down; the twenty or thirty acres of land attached were swampy and unproductive. The place stood untenanted for half a year. Then, one morning, an old gentleman arrived in a four-wheeled cab, went all over the premises, had an interview with the proprietor, announced himself as Mr. Powker, of the firm of Powker and Beak, of Lincoln's Inn, and within a fortnight the lease was assigned to Miss Kate Mellon, spinster. The house was papered and painted, and put in order; the stables were entirely altered and renovated, and fitted with enamel mangers, and tesselated pavements, and bronze devices for holding the pillar-reins, and all the newest equine upholstery; some of the barns were converted into carriage-houses, and one of the largest into a tan-strewn riding-school; the land was thoroughly drained and laid out in paddocks, where there were tan-rides and all kinds of jumps, and an artificial brook, and every thing for a horse's proper tuition. Miss Mellon did not receive visits from the neighbouring gentry, principally lawyers and merchants, who went regularly to business, and always stared hard at her when their wives were not with them; nor did she attend the parish-church; but she gave largely to all the parochial charities, and in the winter had a private soup-kitchen of her own. I believe that occasionally gin was dispensed in small glasses to the soup-recipients; but all was done under the superintendence of Freeman, the staid stud-groom, who had followed her from Yorkshire, where she said "her people" lived. But she never said any thing more about them; and you would as soon have got a comic song out of an oyster as a word from Freeman. And she prospered wonderfully. She had to make large additions to the stables, and to build rooms for an increased force of grooms; and even then there were always half a score of horses waiting on her list for admission, either for training or cure. She made money rapidly, and kept it: no better woman of business ever breathed; in a big ledger she scrawled her own accounts, and, as she boasted, could always tell to a farthing "how she stood." With all this she was generous and hospitable; paid her grooms good wages, and gave frequent dinner-parties to her friends,--dinner-parties which scandalised her solemnly pompous neighbours, who would look aghast at the flashing lamps of the carriages dashing up the little carriage-drive to fetch away the company at the small hours, or would listen from beneath their virtuous bedclothes to the shouts of mirth and snatches of