There was another old friend who at this period was brought to her mind by an unexpected encounter at one of the exhibitions, which is a place where the poor may meet the rich without anything surprising being in it. Letitia, in the course of her cursory survey of the pictures, found before her a group which she recognized--or rather it would be more just to say she recognized one of the members of it. She looked, she turned away her head, she looked again. Yes, certainly, it was! it was! the very vicar’s daughter who had always been kind to Letitia Ravelstone, who had been held up to her as a model, whose neat frocks and pinafores it had been a vain effort to emulate. The name of the vicar’s daughter was Mary Hill, one of the most commonplace of names, yet capable of no such horrible travesty as that nickname of Tisch, which had been the burden of Letitia’s youth--yet she had always been prettier than Letitia, as well as more neat and carefully dressed. Mrs. John Parke stood in her fashionable London garments, in what might be called the height of her dignified maternal--but not too maternal--position (for Letitia had preserved her figure and was still slim) and gazed upon the companion of her youth. Miss Hill looked forty, though she was not quite so much as that. She was dressed in a grey alpaca, very simply made. She had a close little bonnet of the same color, tied with pink ribbons under her chin. She was as neat as she used to be in the old days when she was held up as an example to Tisch Ravelstone. She was accompanied by two elderly ladies of homely respectability, one of whom called to her continually, “Mary, Mary, you have not looked at this.” They were doing the honors of the pictures to her, not sparing her one. She had a catalogue in her hand, but between that and the lady who called Mary, Mary, and the other who stopped before all the worst pictures and said, with a wave of her hand, “This is one that has been a great deal talked about,” their gentle country cousin was evidently a little confused. She smiled, and allowed herself to be dragged in two directions at once. Letitia stood and watched with a sensation which was very mingled. There was good in it and there was evil, a sense of triumph which so swelled her bosom that had her dress not been so perfectly fitted some of the buttons must certainly have burst, but along with this a certain sense of kindness, of pleasure in such a kind face. If it had been anybody but Mary Hill not even the delight of showing how different she herself was from Tisch Ravelstone would have made Mrs. Parke pause. But a softer impulse touched her breast. She stood still where she was until Mary, in one of the many gyrations she had to make to please her companions, turned round full upon her and recognized her with a start and a cry. Letitia, in the excitement of the moment, actually forgave her old friend, whose cry was “Tisch!”