woman, to give her an income that she can live on, and bring up her children upon, with economy and good management. I don’t want any one to get damage by what she gives, as happens when you give a ten-pound note, or a fifty, or even a hundred. Let her give them enough--she has plenty to draw upon--according to their position and what they are used to; capital that can be of real use in business, or an income that can be managed, and made the most of. It is giving the money back to those from whom it came. I also require that my daughter Lucy should be left the fullest liberty of choice. She must satisfy my executors that the case is a necessitous one; but nothing more. She is not bound to give guarantees of any kind, or a good character even, or testimonials from other people. The thing is to be between herself and those she gives to. She will make many mistakes, but she is very sensible, and she will learn in time. “I further stipulate that my said daughter Lucy is to enter upon the possession of this right as soon as I am dead, whether she is of age at that period or not. I expect of her obedience to all my rules for seven years, as far as regards herself; but in this particular she is to be perfectly free, and no one is to have any power of control over her--neither her guardians, nor her husband when she gets one. This is my last wish and desire.” She had known vaguely that this was how it was; but when Lucy had heard the paper read by her father’s own lips, she had not paid very much attention to it. It was so far away--so unlike anything that lay in her placid girlish life, which, at that time, had no power whatever in it, except to buy Jock a new book now and then out of her pocket-money. Lucy fancied she could see herself sitting quiet and unmoved over her knitting, listening as a matter of duty, not thinking much of what it was that papa wrote down in these interminable papers. How placidly she had taken it all! It had been nothing to her; though she had received from him a certain gravity of reflection, and sense of the incumbrances and responsibilities of her wealth, yet that had come chiefly since his death, and she recalled the easy calm of her own mind before that event with surprise. Now, as she read these words over again, which had floated so calmly over her before, a thrill of warm life and excitement ran through her being. She had it in her power to change all that, to make poor Mrs. Russell comfortable, to lift her up above all necessity. Was it possible? Lucy’s heart began to beat, her mind trembled at the suggestion--it made her head giddy. That nervous, tremulous woman so full of self-betrayals, letting the spectators see against her will how anxious she was, how full of fear, even in professing herself to be full of hope. Was it possible that a word from Lucy would smooth away half of her incipient wrinkles, correct the anxious lines round the corners of