the poorer neighbours, by many little traits of charity and kindness; many a sick child had she tended, and many a breadless board had stolen something from the stock set aside for her father's grave. "Don't you think," she once whispered to Vaudemont, "that God attends to us more if we are good to those who are sick and hungry?" "Certainly we are taught to think so." "Well, I'll tell you a secret--don't tell again. Grandpapa once said that my father had done bad things; now, if Fanny is good to those she can help, I think that God will hear her more kindly when she prays him to forgive what her father did. Do you think so too? Do say--you are so wise!" "Fanny, you are wiser than all of us; and I feel myself better and happier when I hear you speak." There were, indeed, many moments when Vaudemont thought that her deficiencies of intellect might have been repaired, long since, by skilful culture and habitual companionship with those of her own age; from which companionship, however, Fanny, even when at school, had shrunk aloof. At other moments there was something so absent and distracted about her, or so fantastic and incoherent, that Vaudemont, with the man's hard, worldly eye, read in it nothing but melancholy confusion. Nevertheless, if the skein of ideas was entangled, each thread in itself was a thread of gold. Fanny's great object--her great ambition--her one hope--was a tomb for her supposed father. Whether from some of that early religion attached to the grave, which is most felt in Catholic countries, and which she had imbibed at the convent; or from her residence so near the burial ground, and the affection with which she regarded the spot;--whatever the cause, she had cherished for some years, as young maidens usually cherish the desire of the Altar--the dream of the Gravestone. But the hoard was amassed so slowly;--now old Gawtrey was attacked by illness;--now there was some little difficulty in the rent; now some fluctuation in the price of work; and now, and more often than all, some demand on her charity, which interfered with, and drew from, the pious savings. This was a sentiment in which her new friend sympathised deeply; for he, too, remembered that his first gold had bought that humble stone which still preserved upon the earth the memory of his mother. Meanwhile, days crept on, and no new violence was offered to Fanny. Vaudemont learned, then, by little and little--and Fanny's account was very confused--the nature of the danger she had run.