income, and his own, and a great deal besides, in London and on the
Continent.

Lady Blackwater, however, was not long before she obliged him by dying.
Her girl, then twelve years old, lived for a time with one of her
mother's trustees. But when she had reached the age of seventeen her
father suddenly commanded her presence in Paris, that she might make
acquaintance with his second wife.

The new Lady Blackwater was an extremely beautiful woman, Irish, as the
first had been, but like her in no other respect. Margaret Fitzgerald
was the daughter of a cosmopolitan pair, who after many shifts for a
living, had settled in Paris, where the father acted as correspondent
for various English papers. Her beauty, her caprices, and her "affairs"
were all well known in Paris. As to what the relations between her and
Lord Blackwater might have been before the death of the wife, Lord
Grosville took a frankly uncharitable view. But when that event
occurred, Blackwater was beginning to get old, and Miss Fitzgerald had
become necessary to him. She pressed all her advantages, and it ended in
his marrying her. The new Lady Blackwater presented him with one child,
a daughter; and about two years after its birth he sent for his elder
daughter, Lady Alice, to join them in the sumptuous apartment in the
Place Vendôme which he had furnished for his new wife, in defiance both
of his English and Irish creditors.

Lady Alice arrived--a fair slip of a girl, possessed, it was plain to
see, by a nervous terror both of her father and step-mother. But Lady
Blackwater received her with effusion, caressed her in public, dressed
her to perfection, and made all possible use of the girl's presence in
the house for the advancement of her own social position. Within a year