that. Who are those people there?” he asked, in a different tone.
“Friends of mine, uncle,” Mrs. Darrell answered; “and one of them is a friend of yours. You know Mr. Monckton?”
“Monckton! O, yes—yes! Monckton, the lawyer,” muttered the old man; “and who is that girl yonder?” he cried suddenly, with quite an altered voice and manner, almost as if the shock of some great surprise had galvanised him into new life. “Who is that girl yonder, with fair hair and her face turned this way? Tell me who she is, Ellen Darrell?”
He pointed to Eleanor Vane as he spoke. She was standing a little way apart from Gilbert Monckton and Laura; she had taken off her broad straw hat and slung it across her arm, and the warm summer breeze had swept the bright auburn hair from her forehead. Forgetful of every necessity for caution, in the intensity of her desire to see her dead father’s dearest friend, she had advanced a few paces from her companions, and stood watching the group about the old man’s chair.
“Who is she, Ellen Darrell?” repeated Mr. de Crespigny.
Mrs. Darrell looked almost frightened by her uncle’s eagerness.
“That young lady is only the musical instructress of another young lady I have in my care, Uncle Maurice,” she answered. “What is there in her that attracts your attention?”
The old man’s eyes filled with tears that rolled slowly down his withered cheeks.
“When George Vane and I were students together at Maudlin,” answered Maurice de Crespigny, “my friend was the living image of that girl.”
Mrs. Darrell turned sharply round, and looked at Eleanor as if she would have almost annihilated the girl for daring to resemble George Vane.
“I think your eyes must deceive you, my dear uncle,” said the widow; “I knew Mr. George Vane well enough, and I never saw any likeness to him in this Miss Vincent.”
Maurice de Crespigny shook his head.
“My eyes do not deceive me,” he said. “It’s my memory that’s weak sometimes; my eyesight is good enough. When you knew George Vane his hair was grey, and his handsome looks faded; when I first knew him he was as young as that girl yonder, and he was like her. Poor George! poor George!”
The three sisters looked at each other. Whatever enmity might exist between Mrs. Darrell and the two maiden ladies, the three were perfectly agreed upon one point—namely, that the recollection of George Vane and his family must, at any price, be kept out of Maurice de Crespigny’s mind.
The old man had not spoken of his friend for years, and the maiden sisters had triumphed in the thought that all memories of their uncle’s youth had become obscured and obliterated by the gathering shadows of age. But now, at the sight of a fair-haired girl of eighteen, the old memories came back in all their force. The sudden outburst of feeling came upon the sisters like a thunderbolt, and they lost that common instinct of self-preservation, that ordinary presence of mind, which would have prompted them to hustle the old man off, and carry him at once out of the way of this tiresome, intrusive, fair-haired young woman who had the impertinence to resemble George Vane.
The sisters had never heard of the birth of Mr. Vane’s youngest daughter. Many years had elapsed since the intercourse between Mrs. Darrell and Hortensia Bannister had extended to more than an occasional epistolary communication, and the stockbroker’s widow had not thought it necessary to make any formal announcement of her half-sister’s birth.
“Tell that girl to come here,” cried Maurice de Crespigny, pointing with a trembling hand to Eleanor. “Let her come here, I want to look at her.”
Mrs. Darrell thought it would be scarcely wise to oppose her uncle.
“Miss Vincent!” she called, sharply, to the girl; “come here, if you please, my uncle wishes to speak to you.”
Eleanor Vane was startled by the widow’s summons, but she came eagerly to the old man’s chair. She was very anxious to see the friend of her dead father. She went close up to the Bath-chair, and stood beside the old man.
Maurice de Crespigny laid his hand upon hers.
“Yes,” he said; “yes, yes. It’s almost the same face—almost the same. God bless you, my dear! It makes me fifty years younger to look at you. You are like a friend who was once very dear to me—very dear to me. God bless you!”
The girl’s face grew pale with the intensity of her feeling. Oh! that her father had been alive; that she might have pleaded for him with this old man, and have reunited the broken links of the past. But of what avail now were Maurice de Crespigny’s compassionate words? They could not recal the dead. They could not blot out the misery of that dreadful eleventh of August—that horrible night upon which the loss of a pitiful sum of money had driven George Vane to the commission of the fatal act which had ended his life. No! His old friend could do nothing for him, his loving daughter could do nothing for him now—except to avenge his death.
Carried away by her feelings, forgetful of her assumed character, forgetful of everything except that the hand now clasped in hers was the same that had been linked in that of her father, years and years ago, in the warm grasp of friendship, Eleanor Vane knelt down beside the old man’s chair, and pressed his thin fingers to her lips.
THE IMPURITIES OF THE LOAF.
Any one who travels along the bye-streets of London comes now and then across what is called a “cutting baker’s shop.” If he be a family man, and knows the current price of the four-pound loaf, he is surprised to find the “cottage” and “tin” that he sees marked up in the shop-window, sold at a penny or twopence lower than he is in the habit of paying at home. If he goes in and examines the staff of life, he is struck with its whiteness and apparent fineness. At first sight it would seem
