step! How dear was the sound of her clear ringing laughter as I joined in her sports!—and more precious still were the moments when weary of play, she would steal to my side, and twining her tiny arms about my neck, murmur forth, in lisping accents, her sweet child-like terms of endearment. “I had reached my fifteenth year when the incident occurred that separated me from my brother. An error was laid to my charge of which I was really guiltless—and as I proudly refused to acknowledge and repair the fault—Walter Malcolm turned me from his dwelling, declaring that thenceforth and forever he disowned me! Time was merely given me to collect a few little articles that I could really call my own—I was not allowed to bid farewell to the child whom I yearned to look upon once more before I went—and so, an outcast, I passed from that stately mansion. Alice, I dare not linger over a description of my sensations in that hour of anguish—for it might perhaps arouse them again within my soul. You know the rest of my history—the circumstance of my adoption by your uncle who was then visiting Baltimore, and first beheld me in a store where I had entered in quest of employment. To him I confided the facts relating to my former life; he pitied and sympathized with me, and bore me with him to his own home in this city, and from that day was in every respect to the lonely orphan all that a kind and generous parent could be to his only son.” CHAPTER II. The morning succeeding the events last recorded, at an early hour, Mrs. Colman was on her way to the dwelling of the now destitute and infirm Walter Malcolm. She had new motives for the advancement of her charitable purposes, and her interest in the sick girl had deepened since she knew her to be the one whose infant steps her own husband had guided. Hastening up the stairs she knocked at the door, which was soon opened by Maggie, who looked weary enough with the fatigue of the past night. The young girl had been very restless, she said, and she believed that the fever was rapidly progressing. “But is she not a beautiful creature?” remarked Maggie to her mistress, as she bent over the couch and parted the rich curls from the fevered brow, “ah, ma’am, I have nursed many a one before this in sickness—but never a person whose appearance so won upon me as hers has.” Alice Colman did not wonder at the observation—but as she now glanced round the room she met the gaze of Julie’s father, and her morning salutation to him was full of gentleness and sympathy. Through the whole of that day Mrs. Colman maintained her station in the chamber of sickness and poverty. The physician came at the appointed hour, and gave it as his opinion that Julie was growing rapidly worse and that there were even doubts whether in any case her life would be spared. Oh! how the thought of her dying affected Mrs. Colman.