enough, I'll double it. A cruelly, ill-used lady! and as to her son, he's
the very image of the late Sir Harry Compton. In haste--J.T. I re-open
the letter to enclose a cheque for a hundred pounds, which you will pay
the attorney on account. They'll die hard, you may be sure. If it could
come off next assizes, we should spoil them for the county--J.T."

"Assizes"--"county"--"Sir Harry Compton," I involuntarily murmured, as I
finished the perusal of my old friend's incoherent epistle. "What on
earth can the eccentric old fox-hunter mean?" "Show the lady in," I added
in a louder tone to the clerk. She presently appeared, accompanied by a
remarkably handsome boy about six years of age, both attired in deep
mourning. The lady approached with a timid, furtive step and glance, as
if she were entering the den of some grim ogre, rather than the quiet
study of a civilized lawyer of mature age. I was at once struck by her
singular and touching loveliness. I have never seen a woman that so
completely realized the highest _Madonna_ type of youthful, matronly
beauty--its starlight radiance and mild serenity of sorrow. Her voice,
too, gentle and low, had a tone of patient sadness in it strangely
affecting. She was evidently a person, if not of high birth, of refined
manners and cultivated mind; and I soon ceased to wonder at warm-hearted
old Sir Jasper's enthusiasm in her cause. Habitually, however, on my
guard against first impressions, I courteously, but coldly, invited her
first to a seat, and next to a more intelligible relation of her business
with me than could be gathered from the letter of which she was the
bearer. She complied, and I was soon in possession of the following facts
and fancies:--

Violet Dalston and her sister Emily had lived for several years in close
and somewhat straitened retirement with their father, Captain Dalston, at
Rock Cottage, on the outskirts of a village about six miles distant from