“Your brother Mark and I were intimate friends, Miss Wilton, before he went abroad--will you not also look upon me as a friend? It is not in my power to do much, yet all that I can do to serve you shall be done with my whole heart. Pray believe me. I will not obtrude upon the very natural grief which now so heavily weighs you down, but I entreat you, when you may need aid not to forget me.” Flora rose up. She turned her large, beautiful eyes--yet more lustrous from the tears which filled them--upon him, and with a quivering lip, murmured-- “Oh, Mr. Vivian, kindness at a moment like this is doubly valuable. It has a language which of late has been very, very strange in our ears; and now that--that he--he is gone, I--I”-- Her voice gradually became inaudible, as her features were overspread with a death-like paleness. She stretched out her small white hand, as though to feel for some place to lean upon for support. She appeared at a moment to have been stricken with blindness; she tottered, swayed, to and fro, and would have fallen heavily upon the ground but that Hal, with a sudden cry, caught her in his strong arms and saved her. The exclamation uttered by Vivian attracted the attention of Mr. Nutty. He was making out an inventory of the furniture in the room, and had just written down in a penny memorandum book, “4 ’orsaire cheers, 1 tabbel,” when he heard the same voice cry--“Run for some water! Quick! Run!” He responded instantly: “Water be blowed; I can’t go for no water; I’m the man in possession.” CHAPTER II.--THE WORM UPON THE LEAF. I’ll tell thee what, my friend, He is a very serpent in my way; And wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread He lies before me. Dost thou understand me? --Shakspere. Sunshine still! Sunbeams making a golden palace of a Gothic mansion in the Regent’s Park, gilding its fretted roof, its traceries, and its triple arched and ornamented windows, tinting the graceful trees which gently waved in the gardens before and behind it, scattering golden stars upon the lake, and investing the flowers and shrubs with a beauty which rendered the place around little less than an earthly paradise. Sunshine and sunbeams in all places without the walls of the mansion--shadows within. In a room, magnificently furnished, containing every appliance a morbid attention to personal comfort could need, or the invention of luxurious imagination could devise, were seated an elderly gentleman, his wife and three daughters. One of these girls was a beauty--all had pretensions to good looks, but she was strikingly handsome. The name of the owner of this mansion was Grahame. He was a pale, stern-looking man. A dress suit of black, and a white cravat, which seemed to have the effect of being unpleasantly and rather dangerously tight about his neck, added to the austerity of his aspect.