"Let us make a fresh start," she said gently, for she really felt sorry. "I'll come every day while Miss Tallentire is absent and tell you the news." "That's a good girl. Goodnight. Enjoy yourself, my dear"; and the two parted better friends than they had been for months. On her way to Mrs. Saracen, who lived in the wilds of Kensington, Leah saw herself in the new character of dry-nurse to a spiteful old harridan, and wondered at her good-nature. Why should she bore herself with a spent octogenarian, whose sole attraction was the possession of money, with which she declined to part? Yet Lady Jim had promised daily visits to this ruin, and what is more, for no reason discoverable to herself, intended to keep her promise, even though there was nothing to be gained by such self-denial. The idea that she, of all people, should do something for nothing, tickled her greatly, and the street-lamps swinging past the brougham flashed on an amused face. She was so pleased with discovering virtue in such an unexpected quarter that she quite forgot to look mournful when her hostess inquired after Jim's health. The waist upon which the Honourable Mrs. Saracen had prided herself somewhere about the middle of the nineteenth century was now a matter of guess-work. Her stoutness impressed even the unobservant with the conviction that she had eaten her way through life, and was at present engaged in digging a not-far-off grave with her teeth. And, for her age, she had an astonishingly good set, obtrusively genuine. Her general appearance was in keeping, for she wore her own white hair in smooth bands, under a Waterloo turban, fearfully and wonderfully made, and presented a natural face of winter-apple rosiness, scored with good-humoured wrinkles. As Nature had made her, and Time had aged her, so she was, growing old healthily, if not gracefully. In an alarming dress, many-coloured as Joseph's coat, she wheezed like a plethoric poodle, and rolled in a nautical manner by reason of her bulk. Who would have guessed at a brain hidden in this ponderous mass of adipose? Yet she was a self-made woman, who had acquired a large fortune by the sale of "Saracen's Sauce." Therefore did current gossip accuse her of beginning life as a cook. A perfect invention, this, as she was a gentlewoman who had, intellectually, married beneath her--that is, she had bought with the sauce money a scampish aristocrat of the Jim Kaimes type, only less manly. He had long since drank himself into the family vault, and had left his wife with one son, who was now in the army. Every one liked Mrs. Saracen, in spite of her eccentricities, and love of glaring colours, and many a society pauper had reason to thank her for timely help. And to cap her good qualities, she professed open pride in the sauce, which appeared on every middle-class dinner-table throughout the three kingdoms.