"O sorrow!

Why dost borrow

KEATS.

"She is starving." "Then, let her starve."

they had commenced, like the drops that fall in the lulls of a thunder-storm.

"What shall I do?" she said, pausing; speaking the words, not in a passionate, despairing manner, but quietly, as a person used to deciding without help under difficulties and

sorrows.

The daughter advanced from the door by which she had been standing, and gave the letter into the trembling hands of the old lady, who, without looking at it, tore it across and across, and threw it on the floor.

"Oh, mother, mother! may God have more mercy on you than you have on this poor creature. May God forgive you."

You

Her eyes streamed forth sudden tears. could hear them drop upon her dress, but the weeping caused no other sound-no sobbings nor sighings, nor catchings of the breath. There was no spasm of the face, scarcely any change in the voice. She lingered a moment, then opened the door noiselessly, and went.

The mother, propped on her sofa, turned with difficulty, just catching sight of the closing door. She was paralyzed, unable to move from the place where she lay without assistance; was carried from her bed (in the same room, behind yonder curtain) to the sofa, every morning, and back again at night. The partial use of her twitching hands still remained to her; the full use of her strong coarse intellect, of her merciless will, of her unchangeable hates.

"The strumpet!" she muttered, giving bitterest emphasis to the bitter word.

Outside the door the daughter paused. Her streaming tears had ceased as suddenly as

A little boy ran to her, and put his hand in hers, looking up wistfully into her face.

She placed her finger on her lips, enforcing silence.

"Has she read my letter? Will she see me? Will she help me? Will she save my boy from starving?" cried a haggard-looking woman, starting from her chair beside the fire. "Oh, May, tell me, is there any hope?—is there any forgiveness in her?"

May shook her head sadly. "Do not be impatient, dear," she said. "Our mother is not quickly moved, you know." "Mother!" interrupted the other; "no mother of mine. She always hated me: I hate her." "Stop!" May said, authoritatively. "She is not your mother, Kate; but remember that she is mine. Not one word against her."

"What are we to do, May? What are we to do?" (wringing her thin hands).

"You must stay here-for the present, at all events."

"Stay here, in hiding! in this house too! stealing our very bread from her—our bitterest enemy !"

"People are their own worst enemies," said May. "It is not you that steal: it is I, Kate. You must stay here until I can arrange better for you. Have you no notion where your husband is?" she continued, as she sat down, and took the boy upon her lap. "Is there no friend of his you could write to? His lawyer-any

B

Surely, some one knows

business connexion? where he is to be found."

"Write to him?" cried Kate. "Do you know," she hissed out, "that before he went he raised his hand against me? He struck me!" "Hush! For shame! before the child," said May.

The boy began to cry bitterly upon May's bosom.

"Tell me where I can direct, with any chance of finding him, and I will write to him," she continued. "I might do some good. I might." "You write to him?" said the other, with a little miserable laugh, sad to hear. "You write to him?"

"Are you jealous of me still, Kate?" May returned, curling her lip in scorn. "Well, think of it. I must go now to our mother. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?" "Oh, do not leave me, May dear! please do not go! My troubles drive me mad when I am alone."

"I cannot stay. My first duty lies by my mother's bed. There are books; read. There is Shakspeare. He has done me good in sorrow before now. There is better Book still; read that."

"I cannot read, with my mind in this state. Sorrow! what sorrow have you ever known?"

"I?. Take your boy on your lap then, if books will not serve you. In my sorrow I had no live thing-no other self to turn to."

She put the child on his mother's lap, kissed her forehead-kissed it again, and left the room. To hear these two pretty names bandied between them-what a mockery it seemed! Kate and May-names that bring with them pictures of young girls in their first happy beauty; young girls who, as yet, do not know the existence of sorrow; whose thoughts are of innocent, guileless love, true and lasting. Kate and May, under the apple-blossoms, talking of their boy-lovers; Kate and May singing a two-part spring song; Kate and May listening to the nightingale, and growing pale with mimic sentiment under the pale moon. The names last when all that seemed to be the essence of them has faded away. "Airy, fairy Lilian" becomes staid and sad, slow of foot, and dim of eye; all her "silver-treble laughter" dies into harsh discords. Latin Lydias grow old; and the same name suggests love or loathing, infinite delight or infinite sadness.

May Meryton and her half-sister Kate Meryton by birth, Blunden by marriage- had passed those happy days when their pretty names seemed suited to them. This haggard, thin woman, on whose form and face want had stamped its gaunt, wolfish outlines, who sat crying passionately over her child, clasping it to her meagre breast with feeble, feverish hands, had been but a few years ago the prettiest of village belles; coquettish, charming, such a picture as would rise ever after at the sound of "Kate" to those who had then known her. Her dark hair was grizzled and uncared for, her forehead furrowed, her fever-flushed cheeks

channelled as if by constant tears. She seemed to have forgotten her beauty-beauty, which women cease to remember only when they are utterly hopeless. Her pretty, self-willed temper, so bewitching in her girlhood, had hardened into querulousness most unlovely.

It is a sad story I have to tell, and so let any young Kate or May, who happens to glance over these pages, pass it by. Shadows of sin and sorrow are not good for all, in this beautiful spring time; though to some they may suggest beneficially how summer-storms, great or small, never fail to come in due season; how the leaves, now so fresh and bright, will fall from the trees one by one.

Mrs. Meryton, the stern-hearted woman, lying paralyzed on the sofa in that room whence she never comes forth; married, years ago, a widower with one child, Kate. The match was, I suppose, a love-match on her side (little as she seems capable of any gentle feelings now); for she was rich, and her husband was poor,so that all worldly advantages arising from the match were his. One child was born to them-May; and soon after the husband died. Thus it came to pass that Mrs. Meryton was left to bring up these two children-her step-daughter Kate, her daughter May, while they were both very young. She did her duty by them impartially, acting from a sense of rigid justice, which was at the root of her character, being equally kind and liberal to both, though demonstrative to neither. Kate was undeniably the most beautiful. May was the most amiable, and pretty too. She had brown hair, rosy bright complexion, and trustful, honest grey eyes. In disposition she was remarkable for the quiet depth of her affections, and for a simple, deep trustfulness in others, sure to bring sorrow upon her in afterlife. Kate was self-willed, jealous, saucyfoibles so pretty in a pretty girl, so intolerable when beauty is wanting. Of course it was known in the neighbourhood that Kate had little or no fortune, while May was heiress to her mother. "What a pity," thought many, allured by Kate's flashing eyes and bewitching coquetries, "that Kate is not the heiress." However, in due time a lover paid his addresses to May Meryton, and was accepted as such, though there was no absolute engagement between the lovers, May being as yet so young. This lover's name was Michael Blunden. He was much older than May, strikingly handsome, of winning manners, and good talents. He had been a little wild in his very young days, but his conduct now, and his promises were unimpeachable. May grew to love him, to trust him, to identify her every feeling with him, until her whole heart, down to its earnest depths, was his. Never was girl happier.

Meantime Kate manifested daily more and more a certain jealousy and envy of May's happiness. By three or four years the elder, she as yet had no declared lover, though she had admirers enough, with whom she coquetted turn by turn. She grew restless and uneasy, petulant, ill, unhappy. Blunden watched her

her not to be more cheerful. The poor mostly liked her, although she did not give them much in coin; and children, looking up into her grey eyes, clung to her instinctively. The doctor-a middle-aged bachelor, tart and shrewd, who came night and morning to move the invalid from sofa to bed and from bed to sofa-asseverated she was an angel; and people said, jestingly, he was in love with her-a notion too preposterous to be seriously held.

Meanwhile, Kate and her husband dragged on a wretched life: now together; now separated: now in momentary affluence; now miserably poor. He was a rogue in grain, this handsome specious Michael Blunden-a blackleg among men, a villain among women. He soon ceased to love his wife, and did not scruple to execrate her as the means whereby he had lost the heiress. She loved him still-as women will; loved him the more, I think, the more cruel and faithless and brutish he grew. Kate wrote for assistance to her old home again and again. Mrs. Meryton would never read or hear the letters. May did what she could; wrote in return, sympathizing, cheering, never reproaching by a word; sending money out of her private pittance, until her mother discovered this and the pittance ceased.

Which is the worse-one great woe, which prostrates by a thunder-stroke? or a life of continuous minor troubles? We recover from the thunder-stroke, maimed perhaps, but painless; we get used to the daily troubles, and sorrow becomes as the air we breathe. Which is the worse the intensity of the one, or the continuity of the other? Kate, of a lighter nature, had not the capacity of suffering that May had; her griefs tore up her surface-tempers into sharp angry jagged waves, vexing the depths but little. Earthquakes hurl seas upon their continents, or swallow them up, never to return to their old beds; when the winds lull for a moment, the foaming waves grow smooth. Kate not only forgave but forgot Michael's faithlessness when he came back to her; his return was always a renewing of her first love-a love not very pure, not very deep, much soiled and deformed with the dirt of materialism. When money poured in from some successful gambling transaction, Kate forgot the preceding poverty; relished the costly dainties, ruffled in the glittering plumes, giving no thought to yesterday, no thought to the morrow. She forgot even that first shame. She forgot there lay the fault. Sorrow had taught her no wisdom; sin no repentance. The past was as much a blank as the future "Forgive and forget," we say: while they are direct opposites. Sterne's Recording Angel blotting out an error with a tear, in that tear encrystallizes the remembrance for ever.

Years rolled on. .... One night Kate-} ragged, foot-sore, hungry, ill-crawled, with her boy, up the garden of her old home, and begged at the servants' door to see May. This was two nights before the conversation above recorded took place. Her husband had again de

serted her, quarrelled with and struck her, before he had gone-gone she did not know whither. He had left her almost destitute. Where to take refuge? She carried into operation a plan which had crossed her mind under like circumstances before, and made her way home. She had lost clear remembrance of her stepmother's relentless sternness, and felt sure that she would meet with compassion and forgiveness. May received her into the house-what else could she do?— but as yet said no word to her mother, hoping against hope to win her over to consent by slow degrees. Thus Mrs. Meryton, in her sick prison-room, did not know that this hated stepdaughter was under her roof.

It was a matter full of difficulties for May. She felt, probably, some compunction at the deception she was obliged to practise; but this was less than it would have been had she been younger and of a more tender conscience. She was not faultless; she only acted as she judged to be best, and doubtless her judgment was not invariably right: how far she was wrong in this instance let others decide. She accepted circumstances as they came, always looking to find in them a Divine purpose: looking for this, perhaps too earnestly, as is the way of those who have learned to acknowledge a blessing in sorrow. She acted as she honestly saw to be best according to the light she had. In this case the choice lay between turning her sister from the door to starve, and disobeying and deceiving her mother. She chose the latter; chose it, I think, more readily because the burden fell thus on her own shoulders.

Mrs. Blunden was ill when she arrived. Meagre diet, unwonted fatigue, excitement of grief, passion, fear, and anxiety had worn down her feeble body to an extreme of weakness. A low intermittent fever preyed upon her, destroyed her appetite, fretted away her strength shade by shade. If she had still been friendless-had been forced to exert herself to gain daily bread for her child and herself-she would not thus have given way; but now, having May to trust to and to advise with, having no pressing urgent wants to supply, or troubles to bear, her fortitude failed, her powers of resistance slackened, and the reaction came on. She took to her bed, and it became more and more evident to May that this exhaustion of system was dangerous.

One evening, as Mr. Gerard, the doctor, was leaving, after having performed his accustomed kindly offices, she followed him from the room, and detained him in the hall.

"Sir," she said, in her usual calm manner, "I must trust in you. There is a person in the house of whose presence my mother does not know-this person is ill. You must come and see her. Follow me, and please walk gently."

As he mounted the stairs after her, he remonstrated in a paternal manner, which his long intercourse with her justified-" A person of whose presence Mrs. Meryton does not know? What is all this, Miss May? Have you secrets?"