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heroine of Il Trovatore. She could neither write nor spell, but she could perform the most surprising tricks with cards. She confessed to a passion for strong green tea, and to an interest in the romances of the Sunday newspapers. Evidently she had sprung from a horribly vulgar soil; she was a brand snatched from the burning. She uttered various impolite words with the most guileless accent and glance, and was as yet equally unsuspicious of the grammar and the Catechism. But when once Roger had straightened out her phrase she was careful to preserve its shape; and when he had decimated her vocabulary she made its surviving particles suffice. For the rudiments of theological learning, also, she manifested a due respect. Considering her makeshift education, he wondered she was so much of a lady. His impression of her father was fatal, ineffaceable; the late Mr. Lambert had been a blackguard. Roger had a fancy, however, that this was not all the truth. He was free to assume that the poor fellow's wife had been of a gentle nurture and temper; and he even framed on this theme an ingenious little romance, which gave him a great deal of comfort. Mrs. Lambert had been deceived by the impudent plausibility of her husband, and had come to her senses amid shifting expedients and struggling poverty, during which she had been glad to turn to account the voice which the friends of her happier girlhood had praised. She had died outwearied and broken-hearted, invoking human pity on her child. Roger established in this way a sentimental intimacy with the poor lady's spirit, and exchanged many a greeting over the little girl's head with this vague maternal shape. But he was by no means