"I think I must have been about ten years old when an event occurred that disturbed the even tenour of our placid life. One winter's morning I had risen betimes, and it so chanced that I was the first to open the massive door that opened on to the street. The snow was falling in slow, heavy flakes. It was scarcely light. There were no passers-by. The street was deserted, and covered deep by snow. I was peering through the gloom, looking for I know not what, when I was startled by a feeble wail that seemed to come from my very feet. I became aware of a small bundle, nigh buried in the cold coverlet of snow, that rested on the top most step of the broad flight that led from the street to the door. I stooped and picked up the bundle, and brushed off the snow, and carried it hastily into the kitchen, where the maid was lighting the fire. Between us we undid the wraps, and within we found a tiny infant, but a few months old. A scrap of paper was pinned to the poor, thin dress in which the babe was clad, and on it was scrawled in a rude hand: 'Her name is Esmeralda.' My mother was hastily summoned from her room. I was banished the kitchen, and when I was suffered to return beheld the child washed and kempt and clad in soft, warm flannels, and slumbering peacefully before a roaring fire on my mother's lap. "Now, whether it was that my mother's heart yearned for a girl child, or that the forlornness and helplessness of the babe appealed to her, or that my own delight in the foundling--whom I made no delay in claiming as my own treasure-trove--influenced her, I know not, but to all the counsels of her friends to send the infant to the workhouse she turned a deaf ear. I cannot, for time presses, and my strength ebbs fast away, tell how the infant grew in years, in strength, and grace; how we were brought up together, as though she were indeed my little sister. Now when I was nineteen years of age, and she a beautiful dark-eyed maiden some nine years younger, I was sent to the University of Oxford to pursue my studies and qualify for the ministry, to which my mother had destined me from my cradle. My vacations were spent mostly in foreign travel, making the Grand Tour, as it used to be called in my young days. And so it chanced that I saw little of Esmeralda, until, education being considered complete, my degree taken, and I admitted to deacon's orders, I returned in my twenty-seventh year to my mother's house to await my first curacy. And I found the little maid I had nursed in my arms and dandled on my knees a beautiful, bewitching woman, with a beauty rare it made men thrill to look upon. I suppose there must have been some strain of Eastern blood in her, for though but seventeen she looked older; her form was fuller, more rounded than those of the maidens of our colder clime, and there was a seductiveness and a passionate warmth about her whole being that allured me probably all the more that both by