She rose early on the morning of the 30th, and sat at the dining room window, watching for the postman, as had come to be a habit with her. He came at last. Brown, the discreet, seemed to guess she was eager to hear what he had brought. For before she asked any question, he announced, “No letters for you, ma’am—all for my master.” She thought she had not expected any, but still ——. In another minute a second ring at the front bell was explained by Brown’s re-appearance, with the Times, which she took up, though hardly caring to see it, and amused herself in the listless way people often do, when perhaps their hears are well-nigh bursting with anxiety, by glancing over the advertisement sheet. “Births. No, no one that I care about I’m sure. I wonder what people do with all these hosts of children! There are some names—the wife of a somebody James., Esq., Notting Hill; and another, the better half of a Rev. Mr. Watson, in the midland counties, who, I really do believe, make their appearance here at least once a mouth! “Marriages. Yes, I may happen to see some I know of. Ah, I declare! Well I need not waste any more pity on you, my dear sir.” “ ‘At Calcutta, on the so-and-so, by the Reverend, &c., Francis Hunter Berwick, Captain 81st Bengal Native Infantry, and Acting Commissioner in Oude, to Dora Isabella, eldest daughter of R. D. Bailey, Esq., M. D.’ Poor little thing! I daresay she’ll be very happy! But how strange it seems. So soon alter. Well, never mind. I’m very glad.” So Marion soliloquised. Having gone through the marriages, she was on the point of throwing the paper aside, when it occurred to her to look if among the deaths was announced that of a very old gentleman, their next door neighbour, whose funeral had taken place the previous day. A moment, and the paper fell from her hands, to be clutched at again, and glared at by the stony, unbelieving eyes, which one would hardly have recognised as the sweet, tender Marion’s! Then a burst of wild, bitter sobbing—an abandonment of grief, very piteous to see. Poor girl, poor solitary child! This was the first time it had come so near her, the first time she had felt that agonising grief—the wild cry of revolt against the awful law of our nature, which, at such seasons, rends us with despair. God be thanked, He Himself hears that terrible cry, “and pitieth.” His poor children! This was what Marion saw in the death column of the Times. “On the 10th of August, at Landour, North West Provinces, suddenly, Cecilia May Vere, aged 28, the beloved wife of Lieut.-Colonel Archer, H.M.’s 101st Regiment, and only daughter of the late Charles Hope-Lacy, Esq. of Wyesham, ——shire.” CHAPTER V. ORPHANED. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” MACBETH.