The Perils of Orphanhood.
The house in which the Vanes lived stood in a large and beautiful garden, and both were enclosed by a high brick wall, over which only the waving tops of the trees could be seen from the street. There were a good many such houses in M. at the time my story opens. They were originally built in the country, amid green fields and orchards, where, on summer days, one might sit and look at country sights and listen to country sounds, and quite forget that the hum and bustle of a great town sounded close at hand.
As time went on, and commerce prospered, the town extended itself in all directions. Houses, some large and some small, were built near those pleasant country homes, and in a few years stretched far beyond them. Sometimes the gardens were encroached upon, and streets were opened, and building lots laid out and occupied close to the house itself, till only a narrow strip of dusty lawn was left. But in some streets the high brick garden-walls made a blank between great blocks of stores and terraces of dwellings for a good many years, and in some streets there are high brick garden-walls still.
The house in which the Vanes lived was a long time before it yielded up a foot of its large garden which the wall shut in. This wall was broken on two sides by gates. In a narrow street which led down towards the river were two heavy wooden doors, one large enough to admit a carriage, the other smaller, for the convenience of those who entered on foot. On another side, from one of the great thoroughfares of the city, the grounds were entered by handsome iron gates. A clump of evergreens and ornamental shrubs in part hid the house, even when the gates, were open, and a low cedar hedge and a fence of iron network separated the lawn and the carriage-drive from the more extensive grounds behind the house.
The house itself had no particular claim to be called handsome, except that it was large and well built of grey hewn stone. It was high and square, and on one side a wing had been thrown out, which rather spoiled the appearance of the original building; but, standing back from the bustle and dust of the street, behind the green, lawn and pebbly carriage-drive, and partly hidden by the trees and shrubs, it looked a very pleasant and pretty place for a home.
This house was built and occupied many years by Mr St. Hubert, an immigrant from France, and at his death it was left to his only child, Mrs Vane, with a condition that neither it nor a foot of the land about it should be sold during her life-time. A great many tales might be told of what happened in that house from first to last—most of them sorrowful tales enough—but it is only the story of poor Mrs Vane and her children that is to be told here.
Almost every one spoke of this lady as “poor Mrs Vane.” Her friends had all said, “Poor Theresa,” when it was first known that she was to be married to Mr Vane; for he was a poor man, and a widower with three children, who, they all said, wished to marry her because she was the daughter of a man who was supposed to be rich. Her father would have given half of what he possessed, rather than that she should have married Mr Vane; but he had never crossed a wish of hers during all the eighteen years of her life, and it was too late to begin then. So, though he did not like him, he gave his consent to the marriage, on condition that he should leave the army, and accept a situation in a public office, which he, being a man of wealth and influ