story. It is the plot we want, not beautiful writing, or long conversations, or elaborate disquisitions. But tell me how Nepenthe Stuart, as poor as you make her out to be, ever got away from the Elliott's, and into the School of Design; for you can't get any kind of a room in the city, unless you pay twelve shillings a week for it."

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Well, aunt Lydia, be patient, and I will tell you how the morning after Nepenthe sang and played for Carleyn, a letter came from the lawyer Douglass to her, informing her of a bequest of two hundred dollars from Miss Susan Simpson, deceased.

"With this money she resolved to seek the cheapest respectable quarters for lodging, and furnishing her own food, attend the School of Design, and learn some of the many arts taught in that noble institution; that when her little pile of dollars was gone, she could sustain herself, either at the School of Design, or by giving instruction in some private family.

"There is a benevolent lady who has given so much time and money to the institution, that her name will always be associated with it; and she has a specimen book, in which each pupil, after being a certain time at the institution, puts a specimen of that which she can do best. After Nepenthe had been there a few months, her specimen was really considered the most beautiful and perfect by all the appreciative eyes which looked over the pages of the specimen book."

Nepenthe's hired room was in the top of Mrs. Edwards' house. She went there the morning after Mr. Selwyn sailed for England. She lived on smoked beef, boiled rice, brown bread, crackers, boiled eggs, and all those nameless relishless articles upon which ladies with slender purses, without cooks and kitchens, usually subsist.

Neither the Elliott's nor Carleyn knew where she had vanished. Florence felt much relieved. She was once more the sole attraction and queen supreme of her elegant home. Had she heard of the sudden or tragical death of this innocent and friendless Nepenthe, not one real pang of regret would have disturbed her selfish heart.

It was not until Nepenthe Stuart's vacation in the summer that Frank Carleyn happened to see the specimen book, and then found out how and where she had spent her time the last few months. Under the beautiful painting of a

group of violets he read, in clear, distinct letters, Nepenthe Stuart. And one of the young ladies, having begged a copy of some verses of Nepenthe's about her first gift of flowers in the hospital, had shown it to several of her intimate friends. The verses were so beautiful that one of the numerous friends who boarded with Carleyn showed it to him, and he managed to copy them for himself; he was delighted to find the name of that little pale girl at the hospital. The original copy of the verse was in the same handwriting of those beautiful lines he had found folded in the Hyperion belonging to Florence Elliott, to whose fair hand he had attributed the writing of the poetry. He understood it now -Nepenthe had written both. They were the same metre, the same style; but yet, there might be some mistake: Nepenthe and Florence might write a similar hand, or Nepenthe have copied them for Florence. Florence was too noble to stoop to such an imposition; he had condemned her rashly and wrongly. There are minds in themselves so noble and honorable it is hard to get them to believe that an apparently high-minded woman would stoop to an ignoble or mean action. He asked the young lady who first showed his friend those verses of Nepenthe Stuart's if she had any more of Miss Stuart's poetry.

I have but one other piece," and she showed him an exact duplicate of the copy of verses he had found in the volume of Longfellow's Hyperion which he borrowed from Florence Elliott.

He sighed as he said to himself, "Mr. Nicholson will have a very sweet wife; she sings and plays with great expression, and she writes very beautiful poetry; and now I wonder who that tall, elegantly dressed, hollow eyed woman was 1 met at that reception. She seemed to know all about Nepenthe Stuart, for she spoke so positively of her being soon the wife of Mr. Nicholson. That woman must have been handsome once; her eyes are radiantly bright, yet fearfully hollow. Yet it is a queer place for Mr. Nicholson's expectant bride, in the School of Design. One would think his wife need to perfect herself no more in any branch of science or art. She knows a great deal too much for him already."

After this, Carleyn and Florence were often seen together. He was becoming one of the first artists in the city.

He

was young, good, gifted, handsome, graceful and accomplished. Everybody thought he was engaged to Florence Elliott, and many said what a beautiful wife for an artist. He could model his ideals from her.

Mrs. Elliott, though a very fine looking woman, began to look worn and worried; something troubled her. She had frequent and long consultations with Mr. Trap, from which she came out with a heavier cloud on her brow than ever. She would sit by herself, silently thinking, for days, as if in a deep, troubled reverie. Ever since Nepenthe's mysteri ous disappearance, she had been anxious and uneasy; while Florence, who neither knew nor shared her mother's troubles, was delighted that the girl was out of her sight. Mrs. Elliott would have given much to have found out where Nepenthe had gone.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE NEW PRIVATE IN COMPANY G.

"For when we may not do, then will we speken,
And in our ashen colde is fire yreken."-CHAUCER.

WHEN I see a head of beautiful curls, I am apt to think they adorn some plain face, for I have seen so many ordinary looking girls whose hair curls splendidly, as the schoolgirls say, but there never was any curl in Charity Gouge's hair; nobody ever suspected such a thing, nor do I suppose that was the reason of her plainness. But she never tried to curl it; she said "Let well enough alone," when Mr. Vole mischievously asked her one day Why she never curled her hair." He always liked to see brown hair curled -wavy and brown ought always to go together.

But" something must be going to happen," Mr. Vole said, "for Miss Charity was really trying to educate some curls." True enough; she had her hair done up in papers for three days, and that was the reason her meals were sent up to her room. Mr. Vole found it out some way.

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I wonder when we are to see those curls," said he to himself one evening. "Miss Charity must be going to That was the phrase she always

'have a companion.'

used when she spoke of any of her friends marrying.

Wednesday morning the curls were all right-thirty-two of them, long, smooth and glossy. She had brushed and combed, pomaded and fussed, twirled over her fingers, then rolled them over a stick; they were real bona fide curls, and so she came down to the breakfast table. I thought Mr. Vole would nearly crush one of Kate Howard's little fairy feet-he kept stepping on her toes and looking so expressively. "Good morning, Miss Gouge; and how do you this morning?" said he. Have you been ill? You look VERY well this morning."

Kate Howard was almost convulsed with laughter. She stuffed her kandkerchief in her mouth, and kept wiping her face with her napkin, and fidgetted in her chair, and tried to become absorbed in a dignified conversation with old Mrs. Vole, who sat the other side of her. Mr. Vole stepped on her toes again just as she was getting respectably straight, and whispered in a low tone, "I guess Miss Charity is go ing to have her vignette taken."

Miss Charity went out quite soon after breakfast. Mr. Vole stood by the window with Kate Howard, who was scolding him for making her laugh so. She should have to change her seat at table. As Charity went out Mr. Vole said, "Miss Gouge always walks as if she was afraid she would be too late for the cars-or as if she had some important business to transact immediately. Did you see that new green velvet waist ? and all that display of jewelry? Won't she make a picture? Did you ever see such a nose? Thin at the top, as if there wasn't flesh enough to cover the bones, and the end is large and rather fleshy; the olfactory commencement is dearth, and the end superfluity."

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She has such cold, clear, staring grey eyes," said Kate, "I feel, when she looks at me, as if I were being dissected, body and soul, as if I ought to be wicked, if I ain't."

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Yes," said Mr. Vole, "she has scalpel eyes, as if she could take you all apart and put you together again a great deal better than you were before. The mouth is cold, critical, gossippy; it always looks as if it wanted to say 'what's the news?' and the chin is sharp enough to cut window glass with."

Mr. Vole was more than half right. Charity had gone to sit for her picture. She had made an appointment with the artist Carleyn. She wanted to be taken in a cloud, and yet

she wanted the green waist to show. Perhaps Carleyn could compromise the matter, and show a little of the clouds and some of the green, too. Mr. Vole thought it too bad to Gouge out a cloud so.

Quite tired and out of breath, Miss Charity climbed the stairs and reached Carleyn's door. She paused a moment to adjust her curls, smooth down the folds of her green dress, and arrange the corners of her mouth and droop her eyelids a little; then she knocked gently, but the response was only an ominous silence. Carleyn had actually gone;

the studio was closed.

If anybody said, did, or looked anything that Miss Charity didn't like, or with which she didn't agree, she called it insulting her. It was a queer construction of the word. "How did Mr. Carleyn dare to insult me so ?" said she, angrily, "as to go off without fulfilling his appointment."

If you would think Miss Charity's eyes sharp and critical when in a serene state, what would you think to see her angry? They had a stab you, shoot you, knock you down look, and her voice was a combination of sharp steel and loud thunder. It was enough to make a quiet gentleman tremble and a timid woman shiver; but she often said, "I don't want to be amiable. I don't like amiable people. Carleyn is treacherous and perfidious. With all his cat-like softness of manner, he is really a hypocrite," said she, indignantly.

How she wished there was somebody there she could scold! She had flattered herself that her portrait would be hung in a conspicuous place at the next exhibition of the Academy of Design-perhaps in the very spot where this year had hung that wonderful Nepenthe, which had so bewitched everybody, and about which the critics never would get tired of talking. Then those curls-that three days' tribulation-were all for nothing!

Carleyn had gone, and so suddenly, that few knew where Some great emergency must have called him peremptorily from his beloved easel.

The next week, as Prudence Potter stood in the postoffice, waiting for a stamp to put on her letter, a gentleman by her side dropped a letter he was just about to hand to the clerk to mail that morning. Prudence picked it up, and