Hardly was the girl out of short frocks and pinafores, before the anxious, scheming mother set to work to plan her future and obtain for her the desired opportunity. Nor must we judge her harshly. Poverty, and above all poverty of the striving, pinching, keeping-up-appearances kind, is not an influence likely to exalt or refine the character, and poor Mrs. Vyse, no lofty-minded woman to begin with, sank and deteriorated beneath it, as many better people have done before and since. In one direction her efforts met with success. It happened thus. Among the few friends, who in the long weary years of her widow-hood and adversity, still remembered Mrs. Vyse, none was kinder, or showed her more substantial proofs of good will than Lady Severn, her husband’s cousin by marriage. No very near connection certainly, but there was another reason for this kindness to the poor widow and her fatherless children. The history of Dame Eleanor Severn, like that of most people in this world, had begun with a first volume, or which the hero was not her lamented and much respected husband, the late Sir Ralph Severn, but a certain harum-scarum sailor cousin of his, a handsome auburn-haired boy, with beautiful black-fringed eyes: Gordon Vyse by name. Of course it was “utterly out of the question.” She was, an heiress, consequently it would never have done for her to have married a prospectless younger son. In time, suppose, she herself was brought to see the thing in this rational light. Any how she married Sir Ralph, her own cousin, and (she being an only child), heir to her father’s title, though not to his wealth, which was all settled on Eleanor Severn herself. So title and wealth were re-united by this marriage; a highly satisfactory arrangement in the eyes of the family and the world at large. Nobody troubled him or herself much about poor Gordon; who before long consoled himself by marrying, considerably beneath him, a rather pretty, inferior-minded, managing little woman, who made him as good a wife as she knew how, and after his death did her poor best by the three daughters left to her care. They got on somehow. Florence seemed the most fortunate, for Lady Severn saw her as a child, took a fancy to her, and paid for her education at a fashionable boarding school. Questionable good fortune; but the girl was capable of gratitude, and honestly loved her mother and sisters. So she made what she truly believed to be best use of her educational privileges, devoted herself to accomplishments, including the art of dressing, and arranging her magnificent hair to the best advantage; and so succeeded as become, before she left school, the show pupil of the establishment. The thought of furnishing the inside of her head with any knowledge really worth acquiring, never occurred to her. And indeed it is difficult to say if she could ever have succeeded in doing so, for the cleverness which she certainly possessed, was of that self-conceited, essentially superficial