The morning dawned between breaking clouds, that soon left the sky clear and bright. All through the day Sarah watched for her visitor of the preceding day--watched with nervousness she could not wholly conceal, from morn to night, for two, three days--for a week. Then she looked no longer while at home; her question, at entering the house, after a drive or walk, ceased to be, "Has any thing been left for me?" So palpable was her disappointment that her father forbore to make any allusion to her loss, and Lucy, albeit she was somewhat obtuse to the finer points of her sister's character, good-naturedly interposed to change the subject when her mother sought to improve the incident to her daughter's edification and future profit. Mr. Hunt was right in supposing that the "unsophisticated girl" had learned something. Whether she were happier or better for the lesson thus acquired was another thing. Once again Sarah had an opportunity for speech with her delinquent protege. Two months later she was passing through a by-street in a mean neighborhood, very far up town, in her morning ramble, when her progress was arrested, for an instant, by two boys, who ran out of an alley across the walk. One overtook the other just in front of the lady, and catching him by his ragged collar, threw him down. "That's right! beat him well! I'll help!" screeched a girl, rushing out of the court whence they had come. Grinning with delight, she flung herself upon the prostrate form and commenced a vigorous assault, accompanied by language alike foul and profane. Sarah recognized her instantly, and while she paused in mingled amazement and anger, the child looked up and saw her. In a twinkling she relinquished her grip of the boy's hair--jumped up and sped back into the dirty alley, with the blind haste of guilty fear. Yes! Mr. Hunt was a wise man, who knew the world, and trebly sage in her generation was his spouse. If their daughter had never acknowledged this before, she did now, in her disgust and dismay at this utter overthrow of her dreams of the virtuous simplicity to be found in lowly homes, where riches and fashions were things unknown. CHAPTER III.