poor child, had never known what it was to have any cross influences in her life before. She had never been pulled two ways, never divided in her affections or her allegiance. Few people appreciate the difference this makes in a girl’s life. She is taken suddenly in the midst of an existence which is all tender, filial duty, or that sweet counterfeit of filial duty which animates the child’s mind who has a large part in deciding the will of the parent who guides her, and is unconsciously the inspiration of the very laws she obeys. This had been Nelly’s case. She and her mother had been as one soul--the one ruling, the other obeying, but neither able to discriminate from which came the original impulse; and now she felt herself suddenly placed in a position, if not of antagonism to her mother, yet at least of tenderest sympathy and union with one who declared himself so far her mother’s antagonist. This curious turn and twist of circumstances made the girl giddy,--it gave an uncertainty to all things, it confused her old ideas, the ideas which she had held as unchangeable till the day before yesterday, when they were suddenly undermined, and all her old gods made to totter in their shrines. “Your mother does not like me,” Molyneux said to her one day, when Mrs. Eastwood, disturbed and worried by a communication from his father, had been cold and distant to him. “It is always the way. She was nice enough as long as I was only a young fellow dangling about the house; but as soon as everything is settled, and you are ready to have me, Nelly, she turns off at a tangent. Clearly, your mother does not like me----” “How can you say so?” cried Nelly. “Oh, Ernest, as if it were possible----” “Quite possible,--indeed, quite common,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t know the world, darling, and I don’t wish you to; but when people have to make sacrifices to establish their children, they don’t like it. Nobody likes to have a sacrifice to make. I suppose I thought your mother different, because she was your mother; but human nature is the same everywhere,--though you, Nelly, Heaven be praised, have no knowledge of the world----” “Is it mamma you mean by the world?” said Nelly, disengaging herself almost unconsciously from her lover’s arm. “Don’t be vexed dear. Mothers are just like other people. When our interests come to be in opposition to those of our nearest and dearest----” “How can mamma’s interests be in opposition to ours?” said Nelly, with open eyes. “Well, I suppose our parents have got to provide for us,” said Molyneux. “They have got to part with so much, on one side and the other, to set us up--and they don’t like it--naturally. When it comes to be our turn we shall not like it either. There is always a struggle going on, though your dear, innocent eyes don’t see it; we trying to get as much as we can, they to give us as little as they can;--that is what makes your mother look so glum at me.”