"Look behind you," said Mrs. Hardy. "A little fair-haired child came running round the corner of the house towards

them, with his blue eyes gleaming with excitement, and his yellow locks flying behind him.

"Give me de sispence for de barleysudar,” said Johnny, thrusting his little fat hands confidingly into Mrs. Hardy's.

"You will understand, Ella, that without you I could never manage to bring up a child. Now, if it was a litter of puppies

"Where is de puppies?" cried Johnny, excitedly, and ungrammatically.

But Ella had drawn near in silence. Her quiet face, all lit up with a sudden flush of joy, bent low over the little dancing, eager child. She lifted the small

round face towards her own, and laid her soft hand across his clustering yellow curls, and looked into the azure depths of his sweet, fearless eyes.

"It is his child-it is Johnny Ormsby," she said tremulously, below her breath; and suddenly she caught the baby face to her heart, and covered it with wild, passionate kisses.

"Yes, it is Johnny Ormsby, Ella, and you are to have the care of him. Teach him to be brave and good and true; but, above all, teach him to think of others before he thinks of himself."

CHAPTER XII.

JOE'S LAST WORD UPON BLUE EYES.

LADY ALTHEA DALLAS stood alone in her drawing-room in Eaton Place, and looked at herself in the glass.

There was no vanity in her glance. The prospect was a sad one. The buxom comeliness which had stood her in good stead for so many years, was fast vanishing away. She looked old and wrinkled and faded. No one could even call her "middle-aged" now. An open letter from her old friend Mr. Marshall was in

her hand; it was to announce his approaching marriage. Lady Althea looked from her letter to her glass, and sighed.

Youth, admiration, friends-all gone! What was left to her?

She thought of Philip, and a pang crossed her worldly heart of real sorrow. If the "only son of his mother, and she a widow," is not to bless her advancing years with his affection and his tender care, what, then, is left to her? But she had blackened the name of the woman he loved, and Philip was an alien to her! Ah, what was life? Dust and ashes!

She turned from the glass with something like a groan, and her fingers happened to fall upon a photograph-book upon the table. She opened it at random, and there was a photograph of Ella, lovely

and radiant in all her beauty and her grace, as she had looked when she had brightened her aunt's home with her sweet young presence..

Somehow, Lady Althea must be strangely weak and childish to-day. The tears rushed into her eyes at the sight of the fair face that looked back, smiling and happy, into hers.

"I wish I had her here now," said Lady Althea, regretfully, half aloud. "I was fond of her when she was with me-she used to amuse me-and she might have married that man Snell in the end. To think of that loud, vulgar Carry Larkin catching him after all! How that girl must have plotted and schemed! It's quite disgusting to think of it. Poor Ella! I wonder where she is, and why Philip has