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THE WIDOW'S WAIL.-THE NEW HARTLEY PIT, JANUARY, 1862,

DRAWN BY T. MORTEN.

THE HOUSE IN PICCADILLY.

A TALE FOR MAIDENS, WIVES, AND WIDOWS; AND, INCIDENTALLY, FOR ELDERLY GENTLEMEN.

SHAL

CHAPTER I.

IN WHICH THEY TALK IT OVER.

HALL I ring for lights, Rupert?'

'Just as you please, Gussie; I don't care.'

'Not lights yet; do let us be without them a little longer, Gussie,' pleaded, rather imperiously, a third voice, a voice with some of the same notes in it as had the voices of the first two speakers; some of the same, and some that were younger, clearer, more ringing.

'Let us be without them a little longer, and talk it over; we can do so better in the dark.'

A sob here choked her utterance, and she-for the speaker was a female-bent her head down upon her sister's lap, and cried in that convulsive, passionate, violent manner that is so distressing while it lasts, and that generally lasts but a short time.

'My darling Floy; hush, dear. Do calm yourself.'

The soothing tones and words had their due effect. The sobs grew less frequent, less deep; and as they presently ceased altogether, she exclaimed quite clearly, and almost brightly: What a proof of love and confidence papa has shown to dear mamma, in leaving everything to her! I felt so proud of them both when that clause was read; didn't you, Gussie?'

'My dear Floy,' said her brotherthe Rupert' who was addressed in the first line- I don't think you're fonder of them than I am, but I can't go with you heartily in being enthusiastically pleased at our future being so entirely in our mother's hands; at our being so powerless to help ourselves.'

Rupert! you say this! you, for whom mamma would give her life! In whose hands could our future, as you call our getting on in the world, be safer than in mamma's? thought you would have been as

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well pleased to owe everything to mamma, as she will be to give everything to us.'

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Rupert means, dear,' said the eldest sister, quietly, that, considering how rich our dear father was, it would have been wiser to settle something definitely upon the sons at least, rather than to leave it all to mamma, who has such a distaste for business and exertion. And I agree with him in doubting the wisdom of the act as cordially as I agree with you in admiring the spirit which dictated it.'

But Rupert,' said Florence, earnestly, interrupting her speech with sobs, 'everything will be just the same, you know. Mamma said so to me when I would go in and speak to her. 66 Rupert's allowance shall be 'increased, if he remains away," she said, "and if he likes to live at home altogether, he shall have the management of everything." Will you live at home, Rupert?'

'No, Floy; I think not.'
'Why won't you?'

'I am no lawyer; consequently the management of other people's business is not in my line. But these are early days to talk of such things. Heavens! I can hardly realize that this day week my father sat here, alive and well.'

And we were all so happy,' moaned Florence; and now it's all over for ever.'

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'We think so now, Floy,' said her sister, and for a long time we shall all feel very sad; but time is healing, and we shall learn to think of our good, kind, dearly-loved father with less poignant grief. I thought poor Gerald would have been here by this time, Rupert, didn't you? Poor Gerald! how he will feel it! Though I long to see him, I dread his coming.'

Rupert bent down to look at his watch by the firelight; and then

rising, said, as he rang the bell, The train arrives by half-past six; if he came by it, he'll be here soon, for it's seven now. Let dinner be on the table by half-past seven, Thomas.'

This last sentence was addressed to the servant who brought in the lamp.

It was an argand lamp-one of those whose light falls almost as clearly and purely as moonbeams, instead of with the hot, coarse glare of gas. And as, when he had placed it on the centre table, he proceeded to light the wax candles on the mantelpiece, darkness fled, and the three whose conversation we have been listening to, stood out in full relief.

Sitting in a negligently graceful attitude, in a low lounging chair, on the left-hand side of the fire, was a lady over whose head some three or four-and-twenty summers had passed. The face which rested on the slender white hand, as she sat gazing stedfastly into the fire, was pale, clear, and dark. Her eyes were large and oval, and they had the same steel-blue reflection in them as might be observed in her hair when the light fell upon it. She wore the latter banded back in an apparently careless fashion-just leaving her ears visible-and coiled in a superbly massive roll at the back of her head, where a small jet comb confined it. Apparently careless, I say advisedly, for simple as the arrangement was, not one of the many who would have been glad to copy Augusta Knightly, could ever succeed in bringing about the same. result. On some statue that she had seen in one of the art-galleries abroad, the hair had been disposed in this way; and she had gone home and, with what looked like the wave of her arm, she had produced the self-same effect, and liked it, and continued it up to the present day. She had the straight nose that ought to belong to a downcast, modest face; and yet, though hers was generally borne aloft with a proud, imperial air, the straight nose did not seem at all out of place on it. With the delicate, curved beauty of her mouth and chin, no one could

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every line.

They were perfect in

This queenly head-for such it was-rose on a massive swelling throat, from shoulders low and broad, which sprang in turn from a tiny round waist. She was not a sylph. She was one of those women who, though delicately made, never look of fairy-like proportions, that is, thin; her shoulders were too wide for that, and her bust too full. She had the way of doing everything gracefully-the art of being perfectly natural.

As she sat there with one hand supporting her face, and the other smoothing the bright hair of Florence, her younger sister, her deep mourning garb making her look paler than usual, and the sorrow at her heart softening the proud expression of her eye and lip, something in her appearance—or in connection with her-seemed to touch her brother deeply, for bending down and kissing her brow, he said

'Dear Gussie, for your sake, even more than the others, I bitterly regret that my poor father should have been taken just now.'

Nonsense, Rupert,' she replied, looking up and attempting to smile,

it is on account of you and Gerald that I disapprove of certain arrangements my dear father deemed it right to make. To Floy here and me they will make little difference, but I disapprove of men being dependent.'

Even on their own mothers? ol, Gussie!' interrupted Florence.

Even on their own mothers,' responded Miss Knightly, calmly.

Well, thank heaven, I have no such absurd notions to add to my bitterness at this bitter time,' replied Florence, warmly; and once more there was silence in the room.

The last speaker was a girl about twenty. By common consent, whenever she made her appearance, Florence Knightly was voted the beauty of the occasion. She was taller and slighter than her sister, with a very fair face, and long golden hair and lashes, indeed, rather light than golden. The extraordinary feature in her beauty was that these lashes shaded eyes of the darkest brown. She had irregular features;

a little nose that had a decided inclination to turn up, and a mouth that some people said would have been pretty had it been a size or two smaller. Florence Knightly's face was more and better than beautiful; it was fascinating to an extraordinary degree. It was like her mannerlike her way as they called it; it was bewitchingly sympathetic. She was always desperately in earnest in what she said and did and thought; at least she always gave the impression of being so. She had the art of carrying her hearers with her on most occasions, for she had the eloquence of the eye as well as of the lip. Augusta's tones were perhaps better defined than Florence's, the tones more polished and the words more elegantly chosen; but Floy had the voice that lived in your heart the longest. She spoke impulsively, eagerly; and jumped her words into spasmodic sentences. Still it was a strain of purest melody; still you listened and longed for more of those notes, rich, soft, and clear as May dew. There was a difference, too, in the manner of these sisters, who had had the same instructors and advantages, learnt the same lessons, and gone into the same society. Augusta had that calm repose, that perfect self-possession, which is so eminently attractive. Florence, from rarely doing anything like other people, was very generally considered affected, and by her young-lady friends, theatrical. If she had not come of such a very unexceptionable race, there are many who would have called Florence Knightly bad style,' and her warmest friends felt in their innermost hearts, that if Floy had not quite so much action, it would perhaps be better.

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Rupert Knightly, to whom I come at last, was worthy to be the brother of such very lovely sisters. He was about eight-and-twenty; tall, and slight in figure; with the fair hair and face of his younger sister, and the proud expression of his elder; a reserved face, almost a stern one, and yet one to which you would instinctively turn for protection, if you were in any doubt, or difficulty, or danger. Though

VOL. I.-NO. II.

he was fair, with strongly marked aquiline features, he bore a very strong resemblance to Augusta; but the brow, which in the woman was low, though broad, was in the man remarkably high, and strikingly intellectual. The long, drooping moustache partially concealed the shape of his mouth, but still it could be seen that he had the short curved lip of his sister. He had her quiet, self-assured manner too; and her polished clear tones, and her undoubted air of being thoroughbred.

He was the head, nominally, of the house now; and in the midst of her deep, deep grief for her father, his sister Augusta had thought, through the last few sad days, thought with pride how worthy he was to be the head of that or any other house. He was so clever; not that she deemed there would be ever any call upon him to distinguish himself." She had only thought of him in one light-as her father's heir; as his successor in the borough he had represented so long; as the head of the house, the rich Rupert Knightly, Esq., M.P. for Warmingston. But on this day, on the evening of which I introduce them to the notice of the reader, on this sad day of their father's funeral, the will had been read; and to everybody's surprise-everybody's expressed surprise, which was worse-to the astonishment of the widow herself, every fraction of the property, both landed and funded, was left at the absolute disposal of the weak, irresolute Mrs. Knightly; and Rupert was indeed the head of the house, but dependent on his mother for his daily bread. The heir of the rich Mr. Knightly-one of the wealthiest commoners in the county had no profession. He had been brought up to play the part of a rich man, with large landed estates. He had chosen, for the most part, to reside in his own quarters in the Albany, and had been quite content to draw a splendid allowance quarterly from his father, without caring about anything being decidedly settled upon him. But now his father was dead, and things would be quite different;

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