tell us that we should all do our duties in that state of life to which it has pleased Him to call us." The excellent lady was somewhat among the clouds in her theology, and apt to mingle the different sources of religious instruction from which she was wont to draw lessons for her own and her children's guidance; but she meant to say that the proper state of life for an earl's daughter could not include an attachment to a tailor; and Lady Anna took it as it was meant. The nobly born young lady did not in heart deny the truth of the lesson;--but she had learned another lesson, and she did not know how to make the two compatible. That other lesson taught her to believe that she ought to be true to her word;--that she specially ought to be true to one who had ever been specially true to her. And latterly there had grown upon her a feeling less favourable to the Earl than that which he had inspired when she first saw him, and which he had increased when they were together at Yoxham. It is hard to say why the Earl had ceased to charm her, or by what acts or words he had lowered himself in her eyes. He was as handsome as ever, as much like a young Apollo, as gracious in his manner, and as gentle in his gait. And he had been constant to her. Perhaps it was that she had expected that one so godlike should have ceased to adore a woman who had degraded herself to the level of a tailor, and that, so conceiving, she had begun to think that his motives might be merely human, and perhaps sordid. He ought to have abstained and seen her no more after she had owned her own degradation. But she said nothing of all this to Mrs. Bluestone. She made no answer to the sermons preached to her. She certainly said no word tending to make that lady think that the sermons had been of any avail. "She looks as soft as butter," Mrs. Bluestone said that morning to her husband; "but she is obstinate as a pig all the time." "I suppose her father was the same way before her," said the Serjeant, "and God knows her mother is obstinate enough."