54 TURNS OF FORTUNE

py; and respected; and if she could only live ta
see the odium cast upon her father’s memory
removed, she would not exchange her present
poverty for her past pride.” She frequently
afterwards thought of the clergyman’s rejoinder
—‘* That riches, like mercy, were as blessed to
the giver as to the receiver, and that they only
created evil when hoarded, or bestowed by a
heedless hand.”

They certainly were a happy group in that
lowly cottage room that evening. Mabel’s
proud bearing had given place, as‘if by magic,
to a blushing shyness, which she tried to shield
from observation by every possible attempt at
ease. She talked to Mr. Goulding, and found
a thousand uses for the old furniture she had
once so heartily despised. ‘She would sit in
the great high chair at the end of that table,
with her feet on the stool, and the china vase in
the midst, filled with humble cottage flowers—
meadow-sweet and wild roses, and sweet-willi-
ams, sea-pinks, woodbine, and wild convolvu-
lus! Did Mr. Goulding like cottage flowers
best?”’ No; the clergyrfian said he did not,
but he thought Mr. Lycight did, and the young
man assured her that it was so ; and then gazed
»on the only love his heart, his deep, unworn,
earnest heart, had throbbed to, with an admira-
tion which is always accompanied by fear, lest
something should prevent the realization of the
one great earthly hope.