was, "That child looks consummately unhappy:" he was watching Miss Fitzgibbon, as she walked, by herself, fine and solitary, while her school-*fellows were merrily playing.
"Who is the miserable little wight?" he asked.
He was told her name and dignity.
"Wretched little soul!" he repeated; and he watched her pace down the walk and back again; marching upright, her hands in her ermine muff, her fine pelisse showing a gay sheen to the winter's sun, her large Leghorn hat shading such a face as fortunately had not its parallel on the premises.
"Wretched little soul!" reiterated this gentleman. He opened the drawing-room window, watched the bearer of the muff till he caught her eye, and then summoned her with his finger. She came; he stooped his head down to her; she lifted her face up to him.
"Don't you play, little girl?"
"No, sir."
"No! why not? Do you think yourself better than other children?"
No answer.
"Is it because people tell you you are rich, you won't play?"
The young lady was gone. He stretched his hand to arrest her, but she wheeled beyond his reach, and ran quickly out of sight.
"An only child," pleaded Miss Wilcox; "possibly spoiled by her papa, you know; we must excuse a little pettishness."
"Humph! I am afraid there is not a little to excuse."
CHAPTER II.
Mr. Ellin—the gentleman mentioned in the last chapter—was a man who went where he liked, and being a gossiping, leisurely person, he liked to go almost anywhere. He could not be rich, he lived so quietly; and yet he must have had some money, for, without apparent profession, he continued to keep a house and a servant. He always spoke of himself as having once been a worker; but if so, that could not have been very long since, for he still looked far from old. Sometimes of an evening, under a little social conversational excitement, he would look quite young; but he was changeable in mood, and complexion, and expression, and had chamelion eyes, sometimes blue and merry, sometimes grey and dark, and anon green and gleaming. On the whole he might be called a fair man, of average height, rather thin and rather wiry. He had not resided more than two years in the present neighbourhood; his antecedents were unknown there; but as the Rector, a man of good family and standing, and of undoubted scrupulousness in the choice of acquaintance, had introduced him, he found everywhere a prompt reception, of which nothing in his conduct had yet seemed to prove him unworthy. Some people, indeed, dubbed him "a character," and fancied him "eccentric;" but others could not see the appropriateness of the epithets. He always seemed to them very harmless and quiet, not always perhaps so perfectly
