She had been given to understand by the lawyers who had conducted the more than thirty years' Chancery suit which had been inherited with these estates, that one of them of about £800 a year in value, would remain to us. An income, which not very long afterwards would have been comparative wealth, now appeared the depth of poverty; and she sat, in sorrow and doubt, puzzling her brains over unintelligible accounts and statements, trying thus to ascertain if it might be possible to live on the income of eight-hundred a year.

Her twins came gently in, and the face they saw then never left their recollection.

Basil came up to the back of her chair, and leaning forward pressed his lips upon her fair smooth brow, now weary with care.

Let us make out

"Mother, let us help you. together what may be left for us to live upon, and then let us all try to live upon it happily and well."

The mother's tears flowed down, but her brow was brightened by a smile. Her son had divined what she shrank from telling him; and she

had got what she required-sympathy and help. It is seldom these go together: those who can give us help often cannot, or will not, give us sympathy: and those who sympathise most with us can frequently help us the least.

Our mother's easily changed mind was soon beguiled of half its grief, and though they did not make out much from the innumerable papers before them, she became an easy convert to her young son's belief that they could manage to live, and that they ought to live happily.

"But let us leave this place at once," I cried"O! let us go anywhere rather then stay in this dear old place, and feel that its very trees witness our degradation !"

"Degradation!" Basil echoed, turning his eyes upon me with a look which I felt.

'People regard us with pity, or scorn," I added.

"We must leave our home whether we like it or not, my love," said our mother," but I hope you will never meet with scorn, in any place." "Wilton, I said, with a heaving breast, "Wilton".

"Ah!" interrupted Basil smiling, "it is conscience makes you fear him. You think he will retaliate for the way you treated him. But Wilton has got his commission-depend upon it, dear, that he is thinking more of his new uniform than of us. If poor Walter, indeed"—

"Oh! he at least did not know this!" I cried; "he, at least, shall never know it," and with a burst of irrepressible emotion I turned to leave the room.

"Poor child!" sighed our mother, looking up at her son, "It is hard for her to bear this-just at the opening of life-and she so unsuited to struggle with any trial;-so thoughtless and ignorant of everything in the world. What can

we do for her, Basil? we must try and support her. Her spirits may be utterly broken."

"We are both learning, dear mother," the boy answered, with a smile that though sorrowful was full of meaning. "We are twin-souls, you know, and what one learns the other must learn."

This speech was meant for me. Our mother thought I had gone, but the long room was not

crossed, and I heard what she said, and what he answered.

And it was so. The twins were both learning. The world was to be their only school; and life their teacher.

CHAPTER XX.

THE home of the St. Pierres was to be desolate, as inhabited by strangers. More pleasant would it have been to me to think the bittern was to cry in the pleasant places of our childhood, and the bat and the owl to lodge in the beautiful mansion of our youth; better to have seen it moulder into ruin, than to know it was inhabited, not by strangers only, but by the attorney who had grown great by the ruin of its possessors. The "upstarts" and the "mushrooms" were the titles given to them by the poor and indignant tenantry. But the thirty years' Chancery suit was over, and such was its result. We did not think of seeking a home elsewhere, but it was