the Rev. Thomas Bull had become engaged to the only daughter of a
deceased London trader--in fact, he had been a shop-keeper upon a large
scale. This worthy citizen had re-married late in life, choosing, or
being chosen by a handsome and rather fashionable lady of a somewhat
higher class than his own, who was herself a widow. By her he had no
issue, his daughter, Dorcas, being the child of his first marriage. Mr.
Humphreys, for that was his name, made a somewhat peculiar will, leaving
all his fortune, which was considerable, to his young widow, charged,
however, with an annuity of 300 pounds settled on his daughter Dorcas.

On the day before his death, however, he added a codicil which angered
Mrs. Humphreys very much when she saw it, to the effect that if she
re-married, three-fourths of the fortune were to pass to Dorcas at once,
and that she or her heirs were ultimately to receive it all upon the
decease of his wife.

The result of these testamentary dispositions was that one house,
although it chanced to be large, proved too small to hold Mrs. Humphreys
and her stepdaughter, Dorcas. The latter was a mild and timid little
creature with a turned-up nose, light-coloured fluffy hair and
an indeterminate mouth. Still there was a degree of annoyance and
fashionable scorn at which her spirit rose. The end of it was that she
went to live on her three hundred a year and to practise good works in
the East End, being laudably determined to make a career for herself,
which she was not in the least fitted to do.

Thus it was that Dorcas came into contact with the Rev. Thomas Bull.
From the first time she saw her future husband he dominated and
fascinated her. He was in the pulpit and really looked very handsome
there with his burly form, his large black eyes and his determined,