So Mrs. Pierreham, having cunningly and cautiously laid her train and lighted her fuse, sat down quietly to watch the result. Col. Pierreham came in with his usual cheery greetings, and, seeing Millicent and Mack on such cordial terms, supposed she was the child of some friend, for the moment out of the room. He was, moreover, very fond of children, and he immediately advanced to her, crying, "Whose little fairy is this?"

"Ask her," said Mrs. Pierreham, smiling.

The little fairy started back from this fresh intruder, and stood with her hands folded behind in the old doubtful attitude, and gazed at him with prolonged and curious seriousness. Col. Pierreham was much amused.

"Well, come now, how do I pass muster?" Then she began slowly to revolve around him, surveying him all the while with the closest, silent inspection.

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But not too young for me to be of the greatest use to her."

"But you don't think of adopting her?" "But I do think of just that." "But you know, my dear, my-"

"Yes, dear, I do know just what you feel on that point, and I respect your feeling, and have never taken any measure against it. But here is a child thrown up at our feet out of the great stormy sea, and to go away and leave it seems to me quite another thing from not going on a cruise to

The Colonel shouted with delight, caught her up in his arms, and sent her dancing aloft till her curls tumbled over her cheeks, and her eyes grew wide and wild with pleasure. "Come now," said he, as he sat her down again," tell me what is your ladyship's name.

"Name 'th Meeley Midget, lill Mith Muffet," said the baby, throwing her curls over her forehead. She had not yet got over her frolic, and was in too merry a mood to answer soberly; and, as the Colonel was just then called out, Mrs. Pierreham put the little girl to bed herself, and at dinner told her story to her husband.

Long before the tale ended he perceived its drift, and instinctively put on his defensive armor.

"Pity you had not found the poor woman sooner. Might have saved her life. Might have softened her down, at least. Have you reported the child?”

I

"N-no," said Mrs. Pierreham. "No matter, I will do it to-morrow. will step in before I go to the office. Pretty little creature, and bright as a butWhere on earth did she pick up that

ton.

"I don't want you to leave it, love. You shall care for its housing and clothing and feeding and faring to your heart's content. All I insist on is, that you shall not take a child into your heart and life without knowing anything about its origin or stock. She is a little beauty now, I confess, but she may grow up a little devil. You don't know what blood is in her. Most likely it is bad and low, and will breed moral pestilence in time."

"I really think not," replied Mrs. Pierreham. "Her poor mother, even in those last few moments of her wrecked life impressed me as a woman of superior power and fine instincts. And if you can judge at all by the looks, this child is surely gently born."

"You can't," said the Colonel succinctly, "and if you can't, what then? The mischief is already done."

"What mischief, pray, my dear? You don't mean to tell me you have already appeared before the legislature!"

No; but here is the child. Good or bad she is born, and is already three years on her way through life-on her way to happiness or misery, to good or evil. If she has good blood, even you would not object to her. If she has bad so much the. more she needs every restraining and constraining influence, every motive of love and tenderness to impel her in the right way. We are not responsible for the evil in her, as we should have been if she were

our own, but if we can repress that evil and subordinate it to good, we shall really be adding to the world's sum of virtue."

"You might say the same of any castaway in the streets, and fill your house with them on that principle."

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But this castaway seems especially cast away on us. Bad or good, she will be likely to be far better by living with us than by being left adrift. It is not as if we were standing between her and some other good fortune. It is between her and almost certain ill-fortune."

"And you would adopt her, and pet her, and accept her into your inmost home and heart, with the possibility that she is the child of vice and crime and infamy?"

"My darling, look at it as I do," cried Mrs. Pierreham earnestly. "If God lets innocent, beautiful little children spring from infamy, is it for us to be shocked, not at the crime but at the children? I cannot see why He does it. I should not think He would do it. I should think He would visit the sins of the parents on the parents alone, and not raise up helpless, blameless beings to bear the burden of a guilt not theirs."

"It seems to me you are getting into deep water, my dear, and muddy water

too.

"But it is out of this very muddy water that the spotless lilies spring."

"Well, what do you expect me to do about it? Bring in an Amendment to the Constitution of the Universe? It is rather late in the day to be sure. The old machine has got a pretty full head of steam on, but perhaps you can put in a new safety-pipe somewhere by taking thought." "Oh! now you are laughing at me. But here is a child as radiant and stainless as our own child could have been

"Superficially, my dear; but blood will tell in the long run.' "Blood

"Well, my dear, you need not spurt it at me!" and indeed Mrs. Pierreham's energy was almost explosive. She could not help laughing at it herself.

"But you lay so much stress on blood as if a few of us monopolized all the good and left an inferior quality to circulate among the rest of the world. Why, I don't doubt your family and mine, had botn, plenty of bad blood if we only knew it." "Ho! now. Don't let us go back on

our ancestors.'

"Our ancestors were well enough, I dare

say; but if we could follow out all the ramifications, no doubt we should find great villains and little villains who had lent their blood to our birth. Why is bad blood intrinsically better or less objectionable because it is ours?"

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That is the very reason, because it is ours. You don't mean to say that you could not bear with my failings, if I had any, more easily than if they belonged to Dr. Phillips? I reckon that is what we are set in families for. Every chimney consumes its own smoke with tolerable ease, so the general atmosphere is kept habitably clear."

"The child is God's child at any rate," pursued Mrs. Pierreham, who was not to be lightly turned aside from her theme. "That birthright she has never forfeited, and that is broader than all our little distinctions. Oh! my dear, can't you see it as I see it ?"

"No, my dear, I cannot,-sorry to say, and begging your pardon. You are a woman of a thousand, and if there was a question of marrying I would marry you right over again, will you, nill you. But as for taking in a child out of the streets, and fathering and mothering it, that I never will consent to. You may bless this child all you will, in the way of instruction and protection, and I am sure I hope she may do you credit. But it must be as your servant, not as your child. You may make as good a dressing-maid or table-girl out of her as you can, but not a daughter. Think you will keep her on that condition ?"

"I think I will," said Mrs. Pierreham, thoughtfully.

"You understand, my dear; I am not to be misunderstood on this point. If you retain the girl she is to be a servant, and to be treated as such, now and always. There is to be no reconsideration of the subject. It is not to be open to discussion, or to alteration."

"There would be small use in that," accorded Mrs. Pierreham.

"And you are not to go around with a sad face, and think wicked thoughts against your savage old brute of a husband, who, once in a thousand years, takes the bit between his teeth."

happy these dozen years without children," said the Colonel ruefully, and coming down from his high horse, "and it would be a pretty to-do now to have this nameless little wretch rise up from the gutter to come between us. That would be doing good with a vengeance." Already the honest soul was beginning to feel the pangs of inward remorse, which Mrs. Pierreham observed with inward glee; so she became instantly light-hearted, and certain that everything would come out right in the end—that is, just as she wanted it; and she could very well afford to soothe him out of all anxiety, which, indeed, she would have done, whether she could afford it or not.

Weeks rolled on, and little Millicent grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. She knew as yet nothing of position or blood. She had only a child's varying and infinite grace. She was timid and shy. She was bold and defiant. She was tender and heartless, and artless and sly, and good and naughty; and all the while she was Mrs. Pierreham's little waiting-maid, and, as such, entitled to a place on the ottoman at her feet; and, as a dressing-maid, she combed and brushed her mistress's hair into distressing tangles, using the back and the front of her implements with equal force and fervor. And "the dressing-maid" was abbreviated into "little maid," which Mrs. Pierreham often prefixed with the pronoun "my," till the words became a caress, and "my little maid" tripped through the stately rooms as airy and dainty as ever a little maid tripped down the stately measures of an old English rhyme.

As for the colonel, he was sore beset and knew it not. He could no more hold out against this prattling, unconscious, all-powerful fascination, this hovering, fluttering, vanishing humming-bird with a human soul foreshadowing fate, than a snowbank can hold out against the ever withdrawing but ever returning sunshine of the sweet, solicitous May. This little creature flew in the face of his prejudice, so utterly ignorant of his prejudice; she poured upon him with pitiless vigor all her infantile charms; she was so willful and wayward, she flaunted before him ridiculous little grown-up graces, she reeled off interminable threads of stories, absurd and grotesque combinations of memory and fancy, enforcing her points with shaking curls and solemn eyes, and dimpled, up

lifted fingers; she hid away his handkerchief with such candid cunning, and brought him his best coat with such loving haste, though dragging it across the floor by the tail, that, even if the Colonel had been a hard-hearted, sour-spoken man, he could but have softened to the small woman who bore him no resentment for his rejection of her, but filled the menial position to which he had doomed her as cheerfully and as spiritedly-and as winsomely, let us add, as she could have filled his daughter's place had she been that exalted and beloved daughter. But Colonel Pierreham was not a hard-hearted man. He was, on the contrary, a very soft-hearted man, and this blessed damozel kept poking her impertinent, dauntless fingers through the casing of pride and prejudice wherewithal he had tried to envelop his heart, and riddled his armor in all directions. The little maid amused him, entertained him, interested him, charmed him. He played with her, he brought home toys for her, he watched for her watching face at the window on his return; he taught her little tricks, and told her funny stories, and thought he was all right because he never took her in his arms and kissed her. Yes, there was where the foolish, fond old soldier drew the line between service and adoption. In the beginning he had borne himself high and mightily. Gradually won over by the child's irresistible attractions, and disarmed of anxiety and apprehension by his wife's ready and pleasant acquiescence in his wishes, he had imperceptibly lapsed to the enemy, but kept faith with himself by not giving this one special sign of surrender. He imagined he was true to his principles, and that he was bearing testimony against alien blood, because when this little alien went to bed she gave her good-night kiss to Mrs. Pierreham alone. The Colonel only said, "Good night, little Millicent," and threw the warmth of a thousand kisses into his tender modulations, and little Millicent never having known a father's kiss, missed nothing, knew no void in her happy life, suspected no defect in the quality of the Colonel's love, but went her merry way without a pang, without a misgiving. But the Colonel missed something. He would have given worlds had the radiant little fairy been his own daughter. That was the way it appeared to him

the way he put it to himself and to Mrs. Pierreham; but as time went on, this harmless hypothesis sometimes sank into the

back-ground, and he found himself more than once fairly longing to snatch the little creature and smother her with caresses. But there she was, a menial, his wife's servant, an alien from the commonwealth of his Israel, a child from the streets, and the poor colonel sighed and went back to wishing she had been his own little daughter that never came to him. To such straits are men reduced when left to the devices and desires of their own hearts.

In the winter following little Milly's arrival, the wife of a brother of Colonel Pierreham died, leaving a daughter about Millicent's age. Colonel and Mrs. Pierreham simultaneously and immediately conceived the idea of taking this little girl for their own. Here was a child who would fulfill all the conditions-a child in need of a home and a mother, yet of ascertained and respectable parentage. Mrs. Pierreham was doubtful of the effect on Millicent's fate, but was determined to do what seemed wise and kind, and not to trouble herself about the consequences. To their most earnest entreaties the father could not bring himself to consent. He would not relinquish his child permanently, but, fully acknowledging the wisdom of their plan, he yielded her to their care during her childhood, and she became at once the friend and companion of Millicent. Then, indeed, the staid old house could hardly know itself for fun and frolic. The two children were inseparable. Millicent was leader, not only by virtue of priority of possession, but by her stronger will, and her greater fertility of resources; but little Louise was gentle, and content to follow and adore; and every hidden recess of the great house, and every nook in the garden was alight and alive with their pattering feet, and their chattering tongues, and their merry, musical laughter.

Mrs. Pierreham made no difference in her treatment of these orphans. Their dress, their rooms, their attendance, their toys were entirely alike, and, in the advent of Louise, Millicent could find no violent contrast to her own condition. But Colonel Pierreham was put to a cruel test. Through the day he scarcely saw the children, but at night they were combed, and curled, and frocked, and sashed with especial view to his enjoying eyes, and their games with Mack, and their general play were carried on in his study, and often with him for a most submissive and engaging partner. At eight o'clock promptly,

-for the Colonel was a martinet in discipline, the nurse appeared at the door, and beckoned them to bed. And then Millicent and Louise hung about Mrs. Pierreham's neck with vigorous and rival huggings and kissings, to the great displacement of her laces and ribbons, and the imminent danger of her elaborate hair-architecture. And then Louise, as her manner had been at home, made direct for the masculine arms, and was received therein with great unction. But little Millicent went to bed with only "good night Little Millicent," sounding softly in her ears.

By what subtile magnetism I know not, but into the soul of this bright little tricksy Undine there came a shadow. Perhaps I ought rather to say, through the shadow she found her soul. Saucy, and sprightly, and resolute as she had been in love and mischief, and daring in the full assurance of faith, she made no attempt, no movement even, to share in the Colonel's manifestations to Louise. She had always showed great love for him, and delight in him, and no suspicion of any slight in her failure of his good-night kiss. But that such a thing was possible from him seemed a new revelation to her. She stood apart, and surveyed the scene with sober, silent attention. Mrs. Pierreham thought she would have immediately rushed up and claimed similar enactment with frolicsome pertinacity and clamor. Indeed, she had hoped it, and, perhaps, it is not too much to say, planned for it. Thus, she inferred, the last barrier would be broken, and the Colonel's prejudice, having nothing left to feed on, would vanish into thin air. But so far from disdaining his oversight, and compelling his obeisance with childish directness and persistence, she seemed at first amazed, and then sobered, and stood apart, and gave no sign of what was passing in her silent soul. But that she took intent and serious notice, both Colonel and Mrs. Pierreham were aware, and that she pondered deeply in her ignorant, affectionate heart they were convinced.

And this made the Colonel wretched. It was not only that he was truly fond of the gracious little damsel, but all his soldierly sense of justice was aroused, all his strong man's instinct to befriend the forlorn, and protect the weak, and equalize the unequal. So far from finding in Louise a substitute for Millicent, his soul was all up in arms to prevent himself from doing injustice to Millicent. He felt himself to be a great,