And Hester--what was her share in this strict and loving alliance? Decidedly she liked Ellen Streightley very much, and she prized highly, without comprehending it altogether, the enthusiastic affection of which she was the object, the unreserved confidence of which she was the recipient. She liked the Saturdays and Sundays which she passed at Mrs. Streightley's house at Brixton, when Ellen's schooldays had come to a conclusion, and her friend coaxed Miss Lavinia Gould to spare Hester to her; a request that lady did not hesitate to grant, as she had very little need of her niece's society; her "Sabbaths," as she punctiliously called them, being passed in hot untiring chase of popular preachers, according to her notions of popularity and estimate of preachers. She declined to join the family party on Sundays, firstly on Sabbatarian principles, secondly because the Streightleys were "Church of England," and she hated that persuasion only a little less than the Roman Communion, and the opposition chapel which set itself against the ministrations of her own particular pastor and saint, the Rev. Malachy Farrell, a powerful controversialist, and a convert from the Romish heresy and abomination of desolation. Ellen had enjoined her mother to exert herself to "make a connection" for Hester, when her days of pupil-teachership came to a conclusion; that lady had obediently exerted herself; Miss Nickson had done as much for the girl, with whom she had never had occasion to find a fault, but who, she rather remorsefully admitted to herself, had never "gained on her" in all the years of their association; and Hester, at twenty years old, when we meet her first, was established as a teacher of music, with a respectable connection, and occupied with her aunt a pretty small house near the Brixton Villa, which, in elegance and habitableness was a considerable improvement on that in which her father had lived and died.