little slights or omissions shown towards the nurserygoverness, with a sympathetic keenness greater even than that with which she imagined Miss Maitland felt those things herself.

They were both wrong. Phillis was too thorough a lady to be prone to affectations, or pretend in any way to be other than she was; while her state of mind was not that which admits any thought of lesser trials.

The small slights and petty humiliations which naturally attended her position, passed by her absolutely unnoticed; they affected her as little as the buzzing fly would disturb the slumbers of one under the influence of a powerful narcotic.

What should two light-hearted inexperienced girls know of the mental results on one of Phillis' disposition and temperament, of a life and experiences such as hers had been?

What should Lydia Cornish know; whose greatest trial had hitherto been a crease in the back of a new gown, her most humiliating mortification the nonappearance of a partner at the appointed dance,—and to whom leaving London at this present season, to be banished to the wilds of Germany, had appeared a blow too cruel to be credible?

And Miss Bellew; who, though she was the eldest daughter of a large family, and had the responsibility of much teaching and mending, and experienced all an elder sister's distress at the scrapes of 'the boys,'

was yet the darling of her parents' hearts; who rejoiced in all her joys, more than halved all her troubles, and let no evil or sad thing come near their treasure which they could either keep from or bear for her?

What would not such care and affection have been to Phillis now? She was in a state of mind and nerves which required the gentlest handling, the most tender care. She could not be said to be wrestling with mental disease, because she was absolutely passive; but she was drifting, slowly drifting down that dark and sluggish stream, whose course is long and tortuous, but whose turbid waters reach at length a black and fathomless pool that men call madness. Who will venture to say how many hapless passengers down that gloomy current might not have been stayed on their course to destruction by the mighty arm of love, the strong ties of a warm and human affection? Who can tell how many lose their hold on that frail thing we call Reason, because when the storms of trouble break over them, and sweep them away from the foothold of their daily existence, there is no motive-power in their lives strong enough to make them struggle for that health of the mind, in comparison to which bodily strength and activity is but a worthless feeble thing.

Affections and ties of family love, life interests and absorbing occupations, all the warm fibres that knit us to our existence-we may think that we value and

cherish them now, but we shall never know their true worth until staggering and fainting under some blow that has left us heart-emptied and life-wearied, and longing for death-it is by such threads as these that we hold on still to life (as it were against our will, and without actual volition), and in the course of merciful time are brought to give thanks that it has been so that our place knows us still. Nature is a tender Mother, but Use and Habit are her two skilled nurses; and it is by their voices that her appeals to her suffering children are frequently made. But no such voice appealed to Phillis; no gentle hand replaced in hers the threads of life-tangled indeed by sorrow, but still to be smoothed and made straight, and almost fair again in time by the aid of affection, and the many needs and uses of home life.

But Phillis had no home, and seemed to have no friends; at least, there was not one for whose sake she would wrestle with the deadly apathy that was creeping over her, and threatened to overwhelm her.

For her own sake she cared nothing; and darkness, black as night, was closing around her.

CHAPTER X.

A NEW FRIEND.

THE hour was two p.m., and the grave and weighty business of dining was progressing in every hotel and probably in every private house in Kreuznach. Even in the shops the inhabitants were seated in the doorways, partaking of potage, or devouring slices of tough and underdone meat at the counters. In short, every one was eating his or her own dinner, or else waiting upon those who were; and the smell of some strange sauce, which is the inevitable accompaniment of all German cookery, was everywhere.

At the English hotel the feast was at its height. The potage, the slices, the liver, and the dry salmon had all been disposed of; and the happy time of all possible combinations, when dishes, both savoury, sweet, and sour, were circulating round the table, and could be mixed at will by the happy epicure, was

come.

A student from Bonn, with double glasses on his nose, and the scars of many battles on his face, had just accumulated on his plate a varied mess that filled

the soul of his neighbour, Miss Cornish, with a truly English horror.

'Look at him!' she exclaimed to her brother, who sat on the other side of her. At this moment he has on his plate hot mutton and uncooked ham, brandy cherries, cabbage done in vinegar, and peas with sugar smoked herring, and compôte of pears; and he is shovelling it all into his mouth with his knife! It makes me feel ill to see it. I shall turn my back upon him ;' and she suited her action to her words.

'Look out what you say here; they'll overhear you,' said her brother, whose disgust at his first experience of a German public dinner was overpowered by his native politeness.

'Yes, take care what you say,' said Miss Bellew, leaning before Charlie Cornish to speak to his sister. 'The Cutler has his eye upon you.'

'Who is the Cutler ?' inquired Mr. Cornish, in the same key.

Why, that dark, fat, oily, middle-aged man, at the head of the table,' answered Ella, with a cautious glance in the direction indicated. 'Mamma and I dined here for the first time yesterday, and my discerning eye picked him out at once. I'm sure he is a German Jew. He observed my admiration, and opened a conversation with me, being evidently very proud of his powers of speaking English. He said he had been to England several times, and had travelled chiefly on the Bradford line-in the cutlery trade, I