very sure that of all things in the world she was not an aristocrat, endeavoring to shut the gates of any exclusive world against success (which she called genius); therefore it could not be this thoroughly old-world feeling which prompted her disdain of Charley Blake. She was of opinion that a poor man of genius struggling upward towards fame was the sublimest sight on earth, and that to help in such a struggle was a far finer thing for a woman to do than to marry a duke or a prince. But no such person had ever come in her way, nor any one else so gifted, so delightful, so brilliant, and so tender as to merit the name of a lover. She was a little surprised, but referred the question to statistics, and said to herself that because of the surplus of women those sort of things did not happen nowadays: though, indeed, this was a theory somewhat invalidated by the fact that most of the young ladies in the county were married or about to be so. The position altogether did not convey any sense of humiliation to Rosalind. It gave her rather a sense of superiority, as of one who lifts her head in native worth superior to the poor appreciation of the crowd. How the sense of being overlooked should carry with it this sense of superiority is for the philosopher to say. These thoughts belonged to the lighter and happier portion of her life, and were at present subdued by very sombre reflections. When she walked out in the morning after these events there was, however, a certain sense of emancipation in her mind. Her father had again been very ill--so ill that during the whole night the house had been on the alert, and scarcely any one had ventured to go to bed. Rosalind had spent half the night in the hall with her uncle, expecting every moment a summons to the sick-room, to what everybody believed to be the deatbed of the sufferer; and there had crept through the house a whisper, how originating no one could tell, that it was after an interview with Russell that the fit had come on, and that she had carried him some information about Madam which had almost killed him. Nobody had any doubt that it was to Madam that Russell’s report referred, and there were many wonderings and questions in the background, where the servants congregated, as to what it was. That Madam went out of nights; that she met some one in the park, and there had long and agitated interviews; that Jane knew all about it, more than any one, and could ruin her mistress if she chose to speak; but that Russell too had found out a deal, and that it had come to master’s ears through her; and full time it did, for who ever heard of goings-on like this in a gentleman’s house?--this is what was said among the servants. In superior regions nothing was said at all. Rosalind and her uncle kept together, as getting a vague comfort in the universal dreariness from being together. Now and then John Trevanion stole to the door of his brother’s room,