“I have adopted a little girl, you know,” Roger said, after this, to a number of his friends; but he felt, rather, as if she had adopted him. He found it somewhat difficult to make his terms with the sense of actual paternity. It was indeed an immense satisfaction to feel, as time went on, that there was small danger of his repenting of his bargain. It seemed to him more and more that he had obeyed a divine voice; though indeed he was equally conscious that there was something comical in a sleek young bachelor turning nurse and governess. But for all this he found himself able to look the world squarely in the face. At first it had been with an effort, a blush, and a deprecating smile that he spoke of his pious venture; but very soon he began to take a robust satisfaction in alluding to it freely. There was but one man of whose jocular verdict he thought with some annoyance,—his cousin Hubert Lawrence, namely, who was so terribly clever and trenchant, and who had been through life a commentator formidable to his modesty, though, in the end, always absolved by his good-nature. But he made up his mind that, though Hubert might laugh, he himself was serious; and to prove it equally to himself and his friends, he determined on a great move. He withdrew altogether from his profession, and prepared to occupy his house in the country. The latter was immediately transformed into a home for Nora,—a home admirably fitted to become the starting-point of a happy life. Roger’s dwelling stood in the midst of certain paternal acres,—a little less than a “place,” a little more than a farm; deep in the country, and yet at two hours’ journey from town. Of recent years a dusty disorder had fallen upon the house, telling of its master’s long absences and his rare and restless visits. It was but half lived in. But beneath this pulverous deposit the rigid household gods of a former generation stand erect on their pedestals. As Nora grew older, she came to love her new home with an almost passionate fondness, and to cherish its transmitted memories as a kind of compensation for her own obliterated past. There had lived with Lawrence for many years an elderly woman, of exemplary virtue, Lucinda Brown by name, who had been a personal attendant of his mother, and since her death had remained in his service as the lonely warden of his villa. Roger had an old-time regard for her, and it seemed to him that her housewifely gossip might communicate to little Nora a ray of his mother’s peaceful domestic genius. Lucinda, who had been divided between hope and fear as to Roger’s possibly marrying,—the fear of a diminished empire having exceeded, on the whole, the hope of company below stairs,—accepted Nora’s arrival as a very comfortable compromise. The child was too young to menace her authority, and yet of sufficient importance to warrant a gradual extension of the household economy. Lucinda had a vision of new