suffer no persuasion or invective to influence you in questions involving conscientious scruples. You are young and peculiarly isolated, therefore I have given you a letter to my valued old friend Mrs. Mason, who will always advise you judiciously, if you will only consult her. I hope you will devote as much time as possible to music, for to one gifted with your rare talent it will serve as a sieve straining out every ignoble discordant suggestion, and will help to keep your thoughts pure and holy." "I suppose there are wicked ways and wicked people everywhere, and it is not the fashion or the sinfulness that I am afraid of in New York, but the loneliness I anticipate. I dread being shut up between brick walls: no flowers, no grass, no cows, no birds, no chickens, none of the things I care for most." "But, my dear child, you forget that you have entered your fifteenth year, and as you grow older you will gradually lose your inordinate fondness for pets. Your childish tastes will change as you approach womanhood." "I hope not. Why should they? When I am an old woman with white hair, spectacles, wrinkled cheeks, and a ruffled muslin cap like poor Hannah's, I expect to love pigeons and rabbits, and all pretty white things, just as dearly as I do now. Speaking of Hannah, how I shall miss her? Since she went away, I shun the kitchen as much as possible,--everything is so changed, so sad. Oh! the dear, dear old-dead-and-gone-days will never, never come back to me." For some time neither spoke. Mrs. Lindsay wept, the girl only groaned in spirit; and at length she said suddenly, like one nerved for some painful task: "When we separate at the depot, you to take one train and I another, we may never meet again in this world, and I must say something to you, which I could mention to no one else. There is a cloud hanging over me. I have always lived in its cold shadow, even here where there is, or was, so much to make me happy, and this mystery renders me unwilling to go into the world of curious, harsh people, who will wonder and question. I know that Orme is not my real name, but am forbidden to ask for information until I am grown. I have full faith in my mother: I must believe that all she has done is right, no matter how strange things seem; but on one point I must be satisfied. Is my mother's name Minnie?" "I cannot tell you, for it was the only secret dear Peyton ever kept from me. In speaking of her, he always called her Mrs. Orme." "Do you know anything about the loss of a valuable paper, once in Mr. Hargrove's possession?" "A great many years ago, before you came to live with us, some one entered this room, opened the secret drawer of Peyton's writing desk, and carried off a tin box containing some important papers." "And suspicion rested on my mother?" "My darling girl, who could have been so cruel as to distress you with such matters? No one----" Regina interrupted her, with an imperative motion of her hand: