sit down and take some refreshment, before she would even ask her what was her present business.
"I do not come on my own account," exclaimed Lavinia, eagerly: "believe me, Miss Churchill, I remember all your former kindness, and know too well the difference between us, not to know the best way I can mark my sense of it, is never to come near you."
"Oh, Lavinia!" exclaimed her young mistress; "how could you leave us? we used to be so fond of each other! surely I shall be able to prevail upon you to leave your present mode of life. Tell me, what can we do for you?"
"Nothing," said the girl, touched to the very heart by Ethel's kindness; "I could not come to you if I had been starving in the streets. Now I do not come for myself."
"On whose account, then?" exclaimed her listener.
Lavinia hesitated, she had persuaded herself into her visit; the whole way she had invented speeches, she had quite settled how to meet any possible objection; but now her voice
