in these visions; and if anyone had called me so I should have been, I am sure, more shocked to think that _it_ had been prematurely discovered than struck by the unreality of the title. It was not unreal to me. Sometimes it would take other shapes, and my imagination would content itself with the notion of someone dying and leaving us a fortune, and how we would wear mourning and do our very best to be sorry; but the other idea was much the favourite. It was very sweet to me to think that, for all so humble and so unknown as we were, things would appear very different _if people but knew_! The old life comes round me as my thoughts go back to it, the afternoon sounds in the street--vulgar sounds, but softened by summer air as much as if they had been the sweetest; the drowsy tinkle of the muffin-man’s bell, the prolonged cry of “water-cre-e-e-sses!” the sound of children’s voices and dogs barking, and distant wheels that always ground out an accompaniment; and myself in the window, poor Mr Peveril the clergyman’s daughter, to my own knowledge Lady Mary, and a very great, small person. I wonder which was the real Mary--she or I. I have heard that in poor mamma’s time we were so fine as to have a drawing-room upstairs on the first floor, like Mrs Stephens next door; but that splendour was long, long over, for mamma died soon after I was born, and I was left all alone--a small baby, with papa on my hands to look after. I do not think, however, that I was at any time very sorry for this. I was sorry for her, who died so young, but not for myself; I felt instinctively that, had she been there, always poking between papa and me, I should not have liked it, and that on the whole things were best as they were. The room which had been the drawing-room was papa’s bedroom, and I slept in the room behind, over his study. Ellen had the three little places up above all to herself, though one of them was called--I don’t know why--the spare room. In this little place we lived, and never asked ourselves whether it was dingy or not. The walls were dark, with papers which had not been renewed so long as I could remember; and the curtains were dark, and always had the look of being dusty, though, thanks to Ellen, they never were so in reality. We had no pictures, except two old prints from Raphael’s cartoons. One was the “Miraculous draught of fishes,” and the other “Peter and John at the beautiful gate of the Temple.” How I remember those twisted pillars, and how many dreams have they twisted through! But I never admired them, though they were part of my life. I should have liked a landscape better, or some pretty faces like those one sometimes sees in the shop-windows. When the people who went to St Mark’s talked of having a lithograph of papa the thought made me wild with excitement; but the lithograph was never done.