necessary to prevent things from going to waste. Eleanor, who was fond of luxurious appointments, and especially of rich clothing, found it no light addition to her sorrows to learn the want of money, and to be compelled to fold over her aching heart faded and shabby silk. One night, nearly three years after she had left Aske, Eleanor was standing at the windows just at gloaming. It was the month of March, and the ground was white, and the trees restlessly tossing their bare branches above the neglected avenue. All was still in the house, all was still in the park, except the cawing of the rooks, sailing homeward in straggling flight. Never had. Eleanor been so conscious of the punishment of her sin as during that dreary day. Her father, full of trouble and anxiety, had gone to York, and had forgotten to bid her good-by. She had long felt that she was a trouble to the two women-servants, and that they heartily wished her in her own home. All outside sympathy for her was long ago dead. She was utterly forsaken and forlorn.
She was weeping silently, and almost unconsciously, when the house-maid, a woman forty years old, entered the room with coals to
