Eliza's countenance, it must have cost her an immense effort to restrain herself from giving vent to another explosion of mirth; but the sweet seriousness of those soft blue eyes, lifted so earnestly and entreatingly to her own, had an almost instantaneous effect in enabling her to check the threatened outburst, and she was even led, after a momentary hesitation, to stoop down and say something which must have been equivalent to the required promise, for Lily smiled and appeared quite satisfied, seeing which, the outspoken housemaid unceremoniously seized her in her arms and well-nigh smothered her with kisses.

"You've taken far too many," was the child's only remonstrance, when she was at length released, "but I s'pose I must 'scuse that as you're going to be so good."

"What a little darling it is, to be sure!" returned Eliza, gazing at her with unfeigned admiration, though her whole manner betrayed such manifest tokens of amusement that it seemed hopeless to expect her to refrain much longer from giving vocal ex

pression to some of the feelings which were stirring in her mind.

The object of this mingled admiration and amusement was, however, happily unconscious of the strangely-distinct, and yet inextricably-blended sentiments with which she was at the same instant regarded by the same person; otherwise, she might have been unnecessarily puzzled and perhaps a little distressed by the apparent inconsistency of Eliza's behaviour; whereas she now concluded that the latter's too perceptible risibility proceeded from an entirely different source-being, in short, a most natural result of the resolution she had formed of surprising Crossley by the unusual celerity of her movements, when proceeding to adorn herself after her customary fashion on the ensuing day.

CHAPTER XVI.

"There are in this loud stunning tide

Of human care and crime,

With whom the melodies abide

Of th' everlasting chime;

Who carry music in their heart,

Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,

Plying their daily task with busier feet,

Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."

KEBLE.

CROSSLEY wondered much how it was that, try as she would, she could not dismiss from her mind the simple words which Lily had in her unconscious innocence spoken regarding the public manner in which she was accustomed to administer her reproofs. It was a subject that had never before occasioned her a moment's reflection, and perhaps it may on this account have proved the more startling and attractive. Again and again did she revolve the matter over in her mind, but the more she thought of it the more was she bewildered by the strange

and conflicting ideas which it awakened within her.

"I declare I cannot understand it in the very least," she murmured to herself, when seated in her own comfortable sleepingroom that same night; "she said it was in the Bible, and so no doubt it is, but I cannot for an instant believe that we are expected to follow these Bible-precepts to the very letter."

"What an extraordinary child that is, to be sure," she went on, after a long pause, during which her meditations had once more turned to the scene of the morning; "sometimes she really startles me, coming out as she does with such queer sayings; I must warn Mary, however, not to read to her too much out of the Bible,”—here she glanced somewhat uneasily at her Bible and Prayer-book, which lay side by side upon the top of a remote chest of drawers,-" for she is by far too young to understand it." Then she suddenly paused as a certain sentence flashed across her memory,-a sentence which reminded her that there are things hidden from the wise and prudent,

and yet revealed unto babes; and she mentally asked herself whether she might not in this instance be mistaken in concluding that Lily was incapable of comprehending the meaning (in some degree at least) of what she heard. At this point of her reflections she slowly rose from her seat, and walked mechanically across the room until she reached the before mentioned chest of drawers. There she stopped, and laid her hand with a doubting, irresolute air upon the handsomely bound volume which, instead of being her daily guide and counsellor, the light to her path, and the very joy of her heart, had up to the present moment been only used on Sundays, and that more on account of the respectability of the thing, than because of any love she had for its contents, or any consciousness that she stood in need of its counsels or encouragements.

Now she took it up; and, having returned with it to her former place, she reseated herself in her easy arm-chair, and began deliberately to turn over its pages.

First of all she directed her attention to