and narrowly, with a sarcastic smile curling one side of her lips. Mr. Quentin would rather face a score of insolent creditors than that little smile of his daughter's. For Ellice was a natural aristocrat far more than an hereditary one--she was born for a life of luxury and fastidious refinement, and her father could not help recollecting, at these moments, that he had thrown away eighty thousand pounds of money which should have been hers upon the turf; nor had he the consolation of reflecting that Ellice was ignorant of this fact. Ignorant of it! He sometimes shuddered to think how many facts discreditable to him that cold, silent girl probably knew. She was not always silent either; she could utter agonising remarks in a semi-jocose way. But let us do the young lady justice. It was within Mr. Quentin's memory that once, when he had returned home late at night, after a miserably unsuccessful interview with his lawyers, and had let himself into the house noiselessly with his latch-key, dreading to encounter Ellice's unsympathetic look, he had suddenly felt two slender arms drawn tightly about his neck in the darkness, and a hot and wet cheek pressed against his own. At that the unfortunate man had broken into sobs; Ellice had tried to soothe him, and sitting on his knee, with her head against his shoulder, had spoken to him such words as he had not heard since he and his dead wife were young. But after awhile she had fallen silent, and in the midst of an incoherent monologue of his on the subject of his wrongs and misadventures, she had risen abruptly and left him, with only a curt good-night. She was a strange girl.