Thornycroft Hall

A little while ago, as I sat reading by the fire, I took up my "Tennyson," and, turning over its well-conned and well-beloved pages abstractedly, lighted, as it were by chance, on one of the poet's vigorous sonnets, wherein occur the following lines:--

"Hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Browbeats his desk below."

Now you must not suppose that I am going to write a tirade against sermons, or against parsons--far from it; I love good sermons and I love good parsons; but sermons may be too long, and parsons may be none of the cleverest--and then! Well, reading the above lines, addressed to "J. M. K.," who was not a"pulpit drone," but a "latter Luther," carried me back in memory to an evening long ago--to the evening, in fact, when the story of my life really and truly begins: for on that memorable evening I, Ellen Threlkeld, a young damsel of ten years of age, was dismally wearied and cruelly oppressed by a sermon of tedious duration, preached by the Rev. Octavius Longman, my dear father's immediate successor, in the ancient' parish church of the North Country town of Battlebarrow.

Now, as all sermons, even if divided into four-and-twenty heads, and blessed with a "finally," a "lastly," and an "in conclusion," must come to a termination some time or other, so ours, following the natural course of all things mundane, was over at last; and, the Benediction being pronounced, the Rev. Octavius Longman retired into the vestry, where, alas! I had no longer any reason or any business to intrude myself.

Gradually the congregation dispersed, and the last note of one of Handel's magnificent choruses died away in the dark-arched roof of our beautiful, old, minster-like church; and then Mrs. Jackson slowly uprose from her cushioned corner in the "Castle-pew," and said to me--"Now, Miss Ellen, dear, we must go home." I was standing within the chancel-screen, before a plain marble slab, bearing the following inscription:-

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
ELLEN,
THE BELOVED WIFE OF THE REV. EDWARD THRELKELD,
WHO DIED DECEMBER 4TH, 1832, IN THE 22ND YEAR OF HER AGE
ALSO, OF THE
REV. EDWARD THRELKELD, MA., VICAR OF THIS PARISH,
WHO DIED AUGUST 3lST, 1842, AGED 40 YEARS.
"BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHO DIE IN THE LORD."

And as I read and re-read the simple inscription, I knew that the stone beneath covered the mortal remains of my fair young mother, whom I had never known; and of my dearly-loved, almost worshipped father, who had lain but a few weeks in the cold, voiceless chambers of the grave. I remember that grief unutterable weighed down my childish heart as I turned away, with tearless eyes and aching spirit, from that most sacred spot. I remember that I gazed lingeringly on the quaint pulpit, with its faded, threadbare velvet, and its heavy sounding-board, where Sunday after Sunday my father's familiar form had appeared; on the narrow winding pulpit-stairs, which his feet had so often trodden; on the grim faces that frowned between the arches; on the half-decayed altar-screen; and especially of the vicarage-pew, where I might sit nevermore--nevermore. I could not make up my mind to go yet; and so Mrs. Jackson talked to the clerk, While I made the circuit of the dimly-lighted church, and finally mounted to the organ-loft, in order to take a bird's-eye view of the whole interior, and also to bid farewell to two dusty, gilded angels, blowing trumpets on each side of the fine old organ, that had seen better days in the cathedral of another county. Neither of these angels, if I recollect aright, were by any means of celestial aspect; one of them looked like a person suffering an excruciating toothache with pious resignation; the other gazed with an expression of mingled despair and stupidity on a mass of dusty carved work, supposed to represent lyres, harps, and shawms, and other canonical musical instruments; and besides these two, there was yet another angel, bodiless, fat-faced, and with clipt wings, at the very top of the organ, right in the centre of the ceiling above the gallery, and a very ill-favoured, unpleasant-looking angel he was! Judging from these, and from similar works of art, I have often wondered what must have been the ideas cherished by our forefathers of the heavenly world and its angelic hierarchy. And yet I loved them all--nay! I am not ashamed to say I love them, or rather their memory, very dearly now: they beguiled many a weary hour, when, too young to understand the sacred service, I sat in my corner, trying to count the tarnished pipes of that dear old organ, and wondering if the real angels up in the sky were anything like the imitation ones in the church. I think, if I had been alone that evening, I should have tried to devise some means whereby I might climb up to the more accessible angels, and imprint a parting kiss on their dusty, awful faces. But I was not alone. Mrs. Jackson stood regarding me with watchful eye from below, and the clerk, commonly called Lazarus, because his ghastly countenance and attenuated form suggested the idea of recent resuscitation, was hovering about the aisles, slowly extinguishing the candles.

Just as I joined Mrs. Jackson, Lazarus came up, and he really did look as if he were newly risen from one of the mouldering tombs around us. "And so you're a-going, Miss Ellen?" he said, with a twitch of his lank, black hair; "so you're going right away into the South! Ah! it's sad times for we all! Mrs. Jackson, ma'am, did ye ever hear sic a sarmon?--I never did." Lazarus had not heard much of it; he had been enacting Tennyson's "worn-out clerk" with much success. I am afraid he even snored. "There's to be all sorts o' new ways, fashing and vexing add steady bodies like we. Why, there's the new parson, that don't know the faces of us yet, talking about gas! yes, Miss Ellen, gas!--flaring, stinking, unhealthy GAS! Says I, 'Yer reverence, there isn't none laid down in these here pats.' Says he, 'Never mind that; we'll make it ourselves. I'll start a company; we'll have a gas-chronicler in Tinker's-lane.' What's gas-chronicler, Mrs. Jackson? Then he says these candles do gutter and run, and wants a world of snuffing, that takes off the people's attention; but what then? can't we get wax tapers? They'd be a deal more properer, and I'd rather have them, anyways, for they're cleaner, and last longer, and the ends 'ud gie my missus more light to knit by," said poor Lazarus, innocently revealing his primary objection to the flaring,unhealthy gas; for "the ends" were the lawful perquisite of Mrs. Atkinson, Lazarus' better half; and there were people uncharitable enough to say that her notions of how much candle went to make "an end" were, to say the least of it, unreasonably extensive.

All the "ends" were' extinguished now, save one which Lazarus held in his hands and that one did certainly gutter and run, to an extent that fully justified the new vicar's unconservative preference for gas. Then the clerk, marshalling us before him, turned the key in the heavy door, and bidding Mrs. Jackson "good night," and me "goodbye," went slowly and sadly to his own lowly domicile on the confines of the churchyard.

Mrs. Jackson and I proceeded up the street; it was bright moonlight, and we saw John Wharton standing at the door of his shop, where on week-days he dispensed groceries, stationery, perfumery, drugs,and toys. The worthy man was looking for us, and he came out with a pretty little box fitted with writing materials in one hand, and a huge packet of sweets, or, as I called them, "goodies," in the other, which he begged me to accept as a small token of respect. Miss Dobson, the lame dressmaker, was leaning on her crutches, waiting to say her last "God Almighty bless you, my dear, and make you worthy of your dear sainted father; and here's some silks I've been saving for you." And Jeanie Grahame, and Aggy Dawson, and old Eleanor Thwaites, who was said to be a hundred years old and upwards, were standing in front of the almshouses, and came hobbling to meet us, each one primed with a valedictory address, as hearty and sincere as it was quaint and ungrammatical, and that is saying a good deal.

I was sobbing by the time we reached the Castle, where I had been living with good Mrs. Jackson, the housekeeper, ever since my father's death; but my uncle was now at Battlebarrow, for the express purpose of taking me away to Thornycroft Hall, his own house, and my future home. He was the husband of my father's half-sister, whom I had never seen, and seldom heard of for very little intercourse was maintained between the wealthy Mrs. Ward and her reverend brother, who had not the remotest prospect of a mitre, or a deanery, or of any of those good things which Mother Church keeps in store for her more highly-favoured sons. Then, my father had been weak enough to marry the portionless daughter of a clergyman poor as himself, for no better reason than that he loved her very dearly. My father was meek, quiet, studious, erudite, and contented. Mrs. Ward, as I afterwards discovered, was haughty, violent when offended, ignorant, and ever dissatisfied: the two were utterly and always dissimilar.

If I had heard but seldom of Mrs. Ward, I had never heard at all of Mr. Ward; I had no idea how many cousin Wards I possessed. I knew that my aunt was rich, compared with my father; that she lived at Thornycroft Hall, hear the large manufacturing town of Hackington, in one of the Midland counties; that she had several children; and now, to this previous stock of information, I added the knowledge of her husband's existence, and a personal acquaintance with a stout, good-natured, well-dressed elderly gentleman, whom I was instructed to call uncle.

The day after my father's death, Mrs. Jackson had written to Mrs. Ward, giving her verbatim his dying appeal on behalf of his desolate and almost destitute orphan, at the same time inquiring her wishes respecting me.

For more than a week no answer arrived, though Mrs. Jackson had fully expected some one to come to the funeral; and at last she became morally certain that either her own missive or Mrs. Ward's reply had miscarried. For three days Mrs. Jackson, the housemaid, and the head gardener inveighed against the shameful carelessness of the Post-office authorities; but on the fourth morning the long-looked-for letter arrived. Mrs. Jackson was very much surprised to see a rather short epistle; she read it in silence--read it again, and looked discontented and suspicious.

At length she yielded to my earnest entreaties, and imparted to me the contents of my aunt's letter, first reading, with a strong emphasis, the address--"Mrs. Jemima Jackson, the Castle, Battlebarrow." "The Castle, Battlebarrow!" quoth the good lady, in a tone of intensest annoyance; "just as if I kept 'the Castle,' down the street, and let out neat gigs, and post-chaises, and stuck up 'good stabling and well-aired beds!' I wonder what my lord would say to it! And Mrs. Jemima Jackson! as if I were an elderly maiden lady, ashamed of calling myself Miss any longer! I--that have had two good husbands of my own, and two highly-respectable offers, since my poor dear Mr. Jackson departed this mortal life. There was Mr. Brunskill, at the Nether Croome Farm, and there was my lord's steward, you know, Miss Ellen--"

Yes, I knew very well. I knew all about Mrs. Jackson's husbands and lovers, and I made haste to assure her I remembered it quite well, for I was impatient to know what might be in the inside of a letter, the outside whereof caused so much indignation: so, after two very audible sighs--to the memory of Mr. Jackson, deceased, I suppose--the good lady deliberately settled her spectacles, cleared her voice, and read as follows:--"Mrs. Ward thanks Mrs. Jackson for her considerate communication, and for her care of Miss Threlkeld. Mr. Ward will be at Battlebarrow in a few days to take charge of Miss Threlkeld, and convey her to her future home. Mrs. Ward sincerely trusts that her niece is of an industrious and tractable temper, and religiously disposed; she would also feel obliged to Mrs. Jackson if she would take care to have Miss Threlkeld in readiness for her journey, as, after the 20th inst., Mr. Ward may reach Battlebarrow at any time."

"There, my dear, that's all," said Mrs. Jackson, handing me the letter without comment, but with a look and a gesture that spoke as plainly as words. From that hour I have believed unwaveringly that handwriting is an index of character. Mrs. Ward's sharp, cramped, yet methodical and respectable-looking caligraphy shadowed forth the enter woman and her innermost soul. Of course I could not there and then form my conceptions of Mrs. Ward's character; but I felt an instinctive and childish dread of the person whose written communication I held in my hand, which the experience of after-days strengthened and confirmed.

But to return to that mournful Sunday night. Owing to various causes, which I never understood, or else forget, my uncle did not come for me till the beginning of November; and, greatly to my content, I stayed in the dear old place till I began to have faint hopes of remaining there altogether. But one Saturday evening Mr. Ward made his appearance; and I was instructed to hold myself in readiness to set out early on Monday morning. So Mrs. Jackson and I sat down together for the last time to our supper: then she called the maids, and read prayers, according to custom, and finally counted the spoons, went her rounds, and retired to rest.

My trunks were packed and corded, my travelling-gear lay on the table near at hand, and Mrs. Jackson's parting admonition to Deborah, the housemaid, was to be sure and have a good fire, and breakfast ready at half-past five. When Mrs. Jackson was fairly asleep, I sat up in my little bed, and cried quietly, but bitterly: I would have given worlds to stay at Battlebarrow, roaming over the Castle, where "the family" seldom or never came, taking pleasant walks by the sweeping river, through the deep woods, or in the wild glens of the mighty mountains, that girdled us in with their strong, giant arms; going in and out among old familiar faces, and attending Divine service every Sunday in the dear old church, where those who had given me life were quietly, side by side, sleeping the sleep of death.

But it could not be. Even then old things were passing away like a dream, and a new life and a new world lay before me; and while I was wondering what my aunt would be like, and what she would say to me, and hoping that my uncle would not think it necessary to converse with me during the journey I fell asleep.

I seemed to have slept but a few minutes, when I was awakened by Mrs. Jackson striking a lucifer match. She consulted her watch, and then, looking wistfully towards my bed, and seeing my eyes open, told me it was time to get up. The dear old lady helped me to dress with infinite care and tenderness; but she did not speak, nor I either; our hearts were too full. Then we went down, and found breakfast all ready; but I could not eat; I could only swallow half a cup of coffee, and essay to swallow a tiny bit of toast; and very soon Robert came to take my luggage to the terrace; and when my bonnet and cloak were fairly on, and there was nothing more to be done, dear Mrs. Jackson took me on her lap, and cried over me heartily.

Presently the carriage came rattling up, and with many tears we parted. Robert gave me a nosegay of beautiful winter roses, and Deborah presented me with a crooked six-pence, and a many-coloured engraving of the nuptials of Her Majesty and the Thrice Consort. I promised to keep both till I died, and the coin is in my possession still.

I remember how the carriage passed slowly across the courtyard, and under the dark archway, with its iron-clenched gates and long-disused portcullis. I have a vivid recollection of how the Castle looked in the slanting lines of yellow light, which the setting moon cast on the dark turrets, and on the heavy balustrades of the stately terrace; how the black shadows lay en the silvered turf, as we went swiftly across the park; how the newly-lighted fire gleamed from the lodge windows, as we passed the limits of the Castle precincts, and began carefully to descend the steep, ill-paved street; how sad and sombre looked the almshouses, and the grand old church, and the grey, shadowy cloisters, and the white vicarage under the shelter of its stately sycamores--that pleasant happy home that had been mine ever since I was born--that was to be mine never, no, never again!

I was not long in passing from the Castle to the principal inn, where my uncle had taken up his quarters; but into that brief transit were crowded all the memories of my short life: I felt as if I were somebody else, whom I pitied exceedingly, and not the orphan child herself--the poor, desolate, sorrowful Ellen Threlkeld. I found Mr. Ward rising from the breakfast-table, which was covered with the remnants of a right noble repast.

"Well, Nelly," he cried, kissing me with a mouth full of muffin, "we're off in excellent time; you are a very good girl not to keep me waiting. But come, have some breakfast; there is a quarter of an hour yet. Have an egg? Like duck eggs, or hen eggs? Have some damson jam and toast? And here is cold fowl, and something made of sausages; and here is honey, and marmalade, and muffins, and eat-cakes, and we'll have some hot coffee in, and there's plenty of sugar and cream; and be quick about it."

And before I knew what was coming, my bonnet was whisked off, and I was placed in the vacant chair, with an injunction to make the most of my time, and clear the table, if I could.

It was several minutes before I could make my uncle understand that I had already breakfasted, and could not, under the circumstances, accept his kind invitation.

"Well, well," he replied, at last, "if you really have had enough, don't try to eat any more; there is nothing worse than indigestion when you are on a journey; and 'enough's as good as a feast'--only be sure to have enough. Now then, child, tie on your bonnet, and if you are ready jump into the carriage; the coach starts at eight, and we have eleven miles to go, and not the best road, either. Boots, tuck that rug round the young lady's feet, and see to the other window."

Then the ostler lifted me in, bidding me "Good-bye," and giving me his sister's love and humble duty; and "Boots" thrust fresh straw round and under my feet, and told me "Battlebarrow wouldn't look nohow now."

And then my uncle jumped in, and established himself as comfortably as circumstances permitted, and we drove off, as fast as we could, over the bridge, and into the darkness; for the moon had now set, and all the eastern horizon was heavily clouded. I had seen the last of my native place; when should I behold it again?

Till that hour, I had never felt quite orphaned; but now the full misery of my position came upon me with overwhelming force: I knew that I was fatherless, and that I was going to live among strangers; and I tried to think of my father's last words--"I commend thee to God, my darling. In his hands thou wilt be safe; he will bring us together again, in his own good time."

And so, sadly and tearfully, I was borne along the familiar road to Kendal, where the coach started for the south.

Mr. Ward was soon fast asleep, and, as I grew more composed, I occupied myself with peering out of the window and trying, as the cold grey dawn began to glimmer, to discern familiar landmarks and to trace the outlines of tie well-known mountains. Also I speculated on my probable manner of life at Thornycroft Hall, and felt, with an inexpressible dreariness, that every turn of the wheels bore me farther and farther from Battlebarrow--from all that I loved and trusted, and from that quiet grave in the solemn shade of the ancient chancel. As the sun rose--that is, as he rose conventionally and astronomically, for he might have remained below the horizon for all we saw of him--the gloom deepened, the clouds lowered, and the impenetrable mists rolled down from the heights, and presently a thick beating rain began to descend. A little before eight we reached Kendal, and, to my infinite regret and disappointment, neither Benson's Knot nor Scout Scar were visible; even the old Castle, with its four ruined towers, was hidden from view by that dense, heavy, leaden vapour, that blotted out hills and mountains, and everything else that was not within a given circumference, as if some giant power had uprisen, and swept them bodily away.

Kendal streets looked dreary enough: they were very nearly empty, and all the shops were still shut; while under the gateway of the coach-office stood the coach itself, as disconsolate and helpless a thing as ever I saw. But by-and-by the horses were brought out and put to, and then the dingy travelling machine looked a little more like a thing of life and business, and we were exhorted to take our places without delay. My uncle saw our luggage deposited, and he settled me in a corner of the inside of the coach, and almost smothered me with straw; then he stepped in himself, exchanged his hat for a cozy woollen cap, and resigned himself to nap number two.

Once on our way, we got pretty quickly over the ground, catching here and there a vision of rocky headland, looming spectre-like through the mist, or a flash of the swollen Ken speeding on its way to the sands of Morecambe Bay; the last thing I recognized was the ancient hall of Levens. In a few hours we were clear of mountains and mountain-streams, and in the heart of Lancashire, amid large, many-windowed brick buildings and tall chimneys, with torrents of black smoke descending from their elevated summits.

And all day long it rained, and rained thickly, steadily, drenchingly, and perseveringly. How we pitied the poor outside passengers, sitting in pools of water, receiving on neck and shoulders the drippings from the oil-skin that protected the heaped-up luggage, and sundry miniature cascades from each other's umbrellas--their persons saturated and their tempers exasperated! O! the good old coach-days that some people regret as the passed-away golden age of our island! I wonder which they thought the more charming--to sit outside a coach on such a day as I have described, or to sit inside it on a broiling July day, shut up with three or four more full-grown people, and children in proportion, suffocated when the glasses are up, choked with dust when they are down, knowing you are in a most beautiful country, and yet seeing little beside the hedgerow, and visited every few stages by a stout red-faced person, who desires you to "remember the coachman."

Late in the afternoon we passed through some town--I think it was Wigan--and my uncle remarked that it rained black mud there, which seemed highly probable, considering the universal state of griminess in which the whole place seemed to rejoice.

Soon after dark we left the coach, or it left us, and we rested for the night in one of the towns of South Lancashire. Next morning we were to take the train, and somehow we managed to miss the one by which we were to travel; it was middle day before we were fairly on the line, and the speed of those days was not at all equal to that of our own time. It reined, moreover, as heavily as on the preceding day, and looked very much as if it never meant to leave off again. Our road lay now through a fiat country, among low marshy meadows, intersected by sluggish, tortuous streams, and through dreary little villages, alike destitute of beauty and interest. At last, thoroughly worn out, I fell asleep; my uncle kindly arranged some sort of cushion for my head, and I slumbered on profoundly, till I woke up with a start, and found myself in the Hackington Station, where there was a great noise of steam, and engine-wheels, and shrieking steam-signals; and, before I quite knew where I was, I was placed in my uncle's carriage, which was awaiting our arrival.

Just as the clocks struck eight, we drove up to the principal entrance of Thornycroft Hall, and I prepared, with no small trepidation, to meet my unknown aunt and my cousins. I felt as if I were thousands of miles away from my old home, as if Battlebarrow and Thornycroft were antipodes, and yesterday morning seemed a very remote period indeed.

We entered a large, handsomely-furnished room, dimly lighted, however, and not a little stiff and precise in its general aspect. I cannot say what it was, but it was not a bright, cozy, genial drawing-room, where, in summer-time, you might rejoice in windows opening on the lawn, and in flowers and music, and pleasant talk; or where, in wintertime, you might luxuriate in damask and velvet, and glowing fires, and unrestrained intercourse with all around. The only occupant of this wide, shadowy apartment was a little girl, about a year younger than myself. She was sitting, sultana-fashion, on a sofa near the fire, which was not blazing, but only smouldering in the bright polished grate. She was a pretty child, the prettiest I had ever seen, with smooth, rounded limbs, dark curling hair, magnificent Oriental-looking eyes, checks coloured with a delicate rose, like the pure faint flush on a sea-shell, and a tiny mouth, that made one think of a damask rose-bud.

"What, Julia, all alone!" said my uncle, as we advanced towards the fire-place. "Where is mamma?"

"Mamma is gone to church," replied Julia, as she sprang upon her father's knee, and gave and received I know not how many warm, loving kisses. How that tender caress made my heart ache! Happy Julia, to have a living father to kiss and to prattle to! And she began assiduously unbuttoning his great-coat, her little rosy fingers fumbling, and yet glancing so prettily among the large, stiff buttons; and then she added, "Maria is gone to church too, and so is Arabella; it is lecture night."

"Then, Julia, my pet, run to Miss Lambert, and ask her to come down and give us some tea."

"Miss Lambert is gone to church, papa."

"Well, then, Julia, suppose you take your cousin to the nursery, and help her off with those heavy shawls and cloaks: she is very tired and cold, and we are both very hungry. I will ring, and tell John to bring in the tea: I suppose we must manage for ourselves."

My uncle rang the bell, and a footman answered the summons with all alacrity--"Did you ring, sir?"

"Yes, John--tea immediately."

"My mistress and Miss Lambert, and the young ladies, are at church, sir."

"Well, never mind; I cannot wait: Miss Threlkeld and I are both cold and hungry."

"But my mistress has the keys, sir; and the tea-chest is always locked."

My uncle uttered something between a lamentation and a whistle, and then added, "Well, John, make haste and get everything ready, and bring up the tray, and tell cook to send in some cold meat, or broiled ham and eggs, or something substantial: we have had no dinner. I dare say your mistress will be at home in a few minutes."

John bowed and disappeared, and Julia said, "I do not think they will be home soon, papa. It's one of the Prophecy lectures, and you know Mr. Graves preaches such a time."

When we cane down again my uncle was trying to open the tea-chest, and a whole regiment of little keys lay before him; but a fitting one was not to be found, and so we were obliged to wait with patience till about nine o'clock, when a bustle in the hall announced the arrival of Mrs. Ward and her daughters. My uncle immediately swept off the whole array of keys, sat upright, and tried to look pleasant; John tackled the fire with great zeal and address; I felt very nervous, and consequently looked very awkward and silly; Julia shared the general trepidation, for she looked appealingly to her papa, and whispered, "I ought to have gone to bed."

"Certainly not; by no means," said papa, with a funny little air of authority, that he seemed to have borrowed from some one else; "you staid up to welcome your cousin, you know: it's all right."

But Julia evidently feared the verdict of a higher tribunal; and in another moment the door opened, and a tall lady, a short lady, and two young ladies, both much taller than myself; made their appearance. The tall lady, with a motion of her hand, dismissed the rest of her party, and advanced towards her husband. There was no conjugal embrace, not even a friendly salutation, for Mrs. Ward opened fire at once--"Well, you are come at last; I expected you at five o'clock; and dinner was kept back, and everything was spoiled; and we were too late for church."

These words were uttered in a tone that would have exasperated anybody besides Job, Socrates, and Mr. Ward. The reply was deprecatory: "My dear, consider the immense distance, and the weather; I assure you we wasted no time. Poor little Nelly there is quite worn out."

Mrs. Ward replied not; but she looked dreadfully grave, and gave a long, loud sigh. I had never heard such a sigh but once before, and that was from a poor girl at Battlebarrow, who, being deceived by her lover, drowned herself in the river next morning. I wondered, therefore, why Mrs. Ward sighed so desperately: whether she was thinking of my father, whether Mr. Graves had been preaching a very moving sermon, or whether she was sorry at being absent when her husband returned, or whether, as seemed most probable, she grieved over the defunct dinner. And, finally, I thought of seals or walruses, and, from the testimony of Buffon, I felt sure they "blew" after the exact fashion of this extensive sigh. Ever afterwards I called it "walrusing." All this passed in half a minute; and then my aunt turned round and accosted me. I came forward and kissed her, in obedience to Mrs. Jackson's instructions, and she kissed me again, and bade me be a good girl, and keep my hair out of my eyes.

The tea was quickly infused, and Mrs. Ward and her two eldest daughters, and the governess, took their respective places at the table. Julia, who seemed now like an old friend, was gone to bed.

While we drank tea I was able to observe my cousins. Maria, the eldest, was in her fifteenth year: she closely resembled her mother; that is, she was tall, unmercifully erect, had a high narrow forehead, and was glaringly deficient in the organ of benevolence; she had fine dark curling hair, bright piercing eyes, and cheeks and lips like damask roses. So Maria and her mother, all things considered, ought to leave been handsome; and my aunt always averred that she had been a beauty, and that Maria would be one some day. The first assertion I found it difficult to believe; the second remains to this day an unverified prediction.

Arabella was thirteen: poor girl, she was plain--so plain, that her mother was continually tormenting her on the subject--now lamenting her deplorable complexion, which was indeed neither dust-colour nor straw-colour, but something between the two--low searching old books, which treated of cosmetics; now reading new ones, which gave the physical reasons for a defect so unfortunate, till poor Arabella was nearly beside herself, being dosed with nostrums, which were to act upon her bilious constitution, and subjected to pumpings and dippings, intended to counteract the evils of her lymphatic temperament, and persecuted beyond endurance with lotions, washes, and pomades, warranted by quacks to clear and beautify the most obstinately opaque complexions. Tier eyes were light blue, round, and expressionless; her hair was neither brown, flaxen, nor golden, but undeniable drab; her features were good, but heavy and lowering; her mouth large, her lips thin, and her teeth bad. She looked stupid, weary, and discontented.

My uncle sat sipping his tea with a pleasant countenance. He was certainly very good-looking, having a fresh clear complexion, delicate features, with beautiful mild grey eyes, and a mouth expressive of great goodness and sweetness, but entirely destitute of firmness and decision; while his deeply-arched eyebrows and his white forehead, high, but not broad, testified to the weakness which was the great enemy of his happiness and usefulness, in his own family, if not everywhere else.

In the firm, compressed mouth, the dark, well-defined, knitted eye-brows, and the shrewd, suspicious glances of my aunt's dark but most unpleasant eyes, a disciple of Lavate might have read: "My opinion is the right opinion; my way is a super-excellent way: I am a saint; but, woe is me, I dwell among sinners! No one shall dare to controvert my opinion, or question my judgment, or do otherwise than follow my way in all things."

In my uncle's mild eyes, sweet mouth, and high white brow, might be read: "I do not like it. I know I am wrong, it is all wrong; but then she is the stronger. It is too late now; I should have taken my proper place long ago. I must submit--the children must submit--anything for peace and quietness."

Some men and some women, but they are the very few, are born to peace and quietness. They open their baby-eyes in calm, secluded valleys; they grow up in a tranquil, stormless atmosphere; for them the world is a pleasant, uneventful place; life is a long, happy dream; they walk always in green pastures, and beside still waters; and death comes at last, with loving gaze and gentle clasp, to lead them away into the Silent Land. These are the very few.

There are others who attain peace only after a long and weary strife: they suffer a baptism of blood and tears; they know what it is to weep and pray through the long night watches, and to rise up to daily duties, that make their daily cross, and to wear a calm and passionless brow, while the poor human heart within is throbbing with anguish unutterable, or aching with dull despair. Hand to hand and face to face with the enemy must the great Battle of Life be fought; and at last there is peace--that peace which the world giveth not. Such

"Have striven,
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with heaven.

Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream."

Ah! far deeper is their joy than the joy of those who have never heard the clang of arms, and brandished sword and shield; for theirs is the joy "according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil." It is well to bear the heat and burden of the day, for then is the rest at evening fuller and sweeter. It is well to tread awhile earth's rugged, stony paths, for then more glorious are the "everlasting hills."

And they who strive, and lawfully "achieve calm," are the many.

But the very many are those who seek peace at any price, who reject the discipline, and the toil, and the struggle, content to yield all that is truest and highest for inglorious ease--"for peace's sake," they say, but really for an illusive shadow, that bears the lovely name, while it mocks and tortures the weak, weary spirit, that would fain find repose, but is ever tossed to and fro, borne on the turbulent waves of a stronger will and a tyrant power. And of such was my Uncle Ward.

There is yet one more person to describe--Miss Lambert, the governess. She sat with downcast eyes, saying little, and eating bread and butter genteelly. She seemed to be a person without opinions; but I afterwards found she had them sometimes, and very much to the purpose too; only they were always put to death, strangled in the birth by Mrs. Ward; but their ghosts walked.

I sat on a very high chair, and I was a very little person, and my feet dangled uncomfortably. I had a cup of very hot tea, and no teaspoon, and I scalded my mouth severely in trying to drink the first, and I dared not ask for the latter. I looked industriously at the painting on a small china plate, for I felt that my aunt's keen eyes were upon me, and I could not meet them without feeling miserably guilty of unknown misdemeanours, and blushing "celestial rosy red."

When tea was over, we drew round the fire, and after a brief; oppressive silence, Mrs. Ward began:--"We have had a most solemn sermon this evening."

"O, indeed, my dear! rather long though, eh?"

This little remark being clearly beneath Mrs. Ward's notice, she continued:--"A most impressive sermon, and strikingly original. Miss Lambert, I shall trouble you to arrange those notes you took at my request, that we may all go over the subject again. Mr. Graves' power of research is unequalled, and his views are--really, the only views that can be taken. He has discovered that Newton, Faber, Keith, Bickersteth, Elliot, and Dr. Cumming are all wrong, in toto."

"But, my dear, are you quite sure that he is right? May not the pious and learned men you have named be as discriminating as Mr. Graves?"

"Mr. Ward, there is something else required besides mere learning and discrimination; but that you cannot understand. I know Mr. Graves is no favourite of yours; but that is your misfortune, not his."

"My dear, I like the young man well enough, but, in short, I think he would be more in the path of duty if he preached a little less about the Millennium, and more about people's souls, and about--about the common things that are in the Bible, you know; it would be more like preaching the Gospel, eh, my dear?"

But Mrs. Ward only shook her head, and sighed again, and presently said, in a sharp tone, "Maria, Arabella, go to bed! Miss Lambert, do you know bow late it is? Ellen, come and sit by me."

I noticed that both my cousins kissed their father more warmly than their mother, and I obeyed, and drew near the sofa.

"I think Ellen must be very tired," interrupted my uncle.

Are you sleepy, Ellen?" inquired my aunt.

"No, aunt," I answered, timidly. Sleepy, indeed, under those eyes that were piercing me through and through!

"Well, I will not keep you now; but look me in the face, child. How you colour! I am afraid you are not truthful; it is a dreadful thing when little girls do not speak the truth. And keep your hair out of your eyes." And then she put back my straggling leeks behind my ears, and inflicting upon me another kiss, bade me go to my cousins, for it was very late.

My uncle kissed me tenderly, and patted my shoulder, and I went out of the drawing-room, across the hall, and upstairs. But there all was silent and dark; and, after trying in vain to discover the nursery, I sat down on the top of the stairs, and cried like a baby. I did not cry long, for Miss Lambert speedily discovered me and conducted me into a large chamber, where I undressed, and thankfully lay down in a little bed, with dark crimson curtains. Released from the spell of the eyes, I did feel sleepy, and I fell into a profound slumber before Miss Lambert left the room.

I was roused next morning by Julia, who occupied another bed in the same wide, lofty chamber. I was very sleepy, and quite inclined to turn round and drop off again; and the morning, as I half opened my drowsy eyes, seemed raw and uninviting, and the dim November sun was obscured by heavy mists; but Julia reused me again and again, shaking her dark curls very ominously; and declaring that mamma would be ever so angry if I were not down to prayers.

A servant-maid was in attendance, and assisted us to dress; and when the ceremonies of the toilet were complete, Julia led the way to the schoolroom. Here we found Miss Lambert sitting lose to the fire, reading a book, and looking more like a free Englishwoman than when I had first seen her; but on the entrance of Maria and Arabella she hastily consigned the volume to her pocket, and looked like a bond-woman again. Maria accosted me with a mingled air of pride, ill-temper, and patronage: Arabella, with a countenance expressive of untold misery, muttered something that might have been intended for a morning greeting, and then a little bell tinkle, and immediately afterwards a great bell clanged, and we all went downstairs.

My uncle sat at the breakfast-table, with a small Bible in his hand; my aunt sat opposite, with a mammoth Bible before her. I suppose she did not consider her husband good enough to be chaplain to his own family, for she always conducted our morning and evening devotions herself. Her reading was very peculiar, too; she evidently preferred those chapters which abounded in warnings and threatenings, and she had an unpleasant habit of reading the denunciatory passages with awful emphasis, glancing keenly at the same time at any particular person who might chance to be under her displeasure. She seemed to relish the curses uncommonly, and read, or rather pronounced them with infinite unction, as if she were cursing us, and liked nothing better; a chapter of blessings, or of thanksgivings, was very rarely selected. Before the service began I had leisure again to contemplate Mrs. Ward, for she sat shading her eyes with her hand. She looked so sad, yet so morose, so gloomy, yet so fierce, that I was more puzzled than ever about her; and then those seal-like sighs, surely they betokened conscious guilt and agonizing remorse. So I settled it in my own mind, there and then, that my aunt had once been a very wicked woman, and was now grieving over her former life.

The prayers, although they seemed interminable, after my father's few verses, and his simple commentary, and his equally simple but most earnest prayer, came to an end at last, and breakfast succeeded, during which repast Mrs. Ward entertained her husband with the recital of all the abuses she had discovered in his absence; particularly in the farming department, where she had evidently been ferretting with indomitable zeal and pertinacity. "And I must part with Morgan," she continued, peevishly; "the morning you left home, I went into your dressing-room to put your things away, for I knew you would leave everything littering about; and I declare the dust lay so thick that I could have written my name on every article of furniture."

"And did you write it, my dear?"

"No, Mr. Ward, I did not; but I wrote 'SLUT' in great capital letters on the looking-glass, and on both the tables, and I had Morgan up; and I am sure I spoke as mildly as possible, but she fired up, and--would you believe it?--affirmed that she had cleaned the room, and dusted everything in it, only the evening before."

"And I dare say she had, my dear; for I made John bring me that heavy cloak, with the capes, that you banished to the lumber-room; and really it was such a dust-bag, that I told him to beat it with my thick walking-stick; and clouds of dust flew out, I can tell you, and I dare say settled all over the room."

"I don't think anyone in this house cares about order and respectability besides myself," said my aunt, in an injured tone. "Could you not have desired John to carry the heavy, vulgar thing, fit only for a stage-coachman, downstairs? It could have been beaten with impunity in the yard. But, really, you never care about anything; you never agree with me; you take no interest in religious subjects, nor in--nor, in fact--"

"Nor in dust," interposed my uncle, helping her to a word, as, for a wonder, she seemed at a loss for one. "But you mistake, my dear; I do, I hope, take a great interest in religion, and in you, and in the children; and I do not care how much Morgan and the other girls scrub and clean, if it pleases you, provided they will let my room alone, and not leave their pails and brushes about."

This seemed, to my mind, perfectly reasonable; but my aunt thought otherwise, and gave her husband a lecture, that would, if printed, eclipse for ever the fame of the notorious Mrs. Caudle; but I am not going to inflict it upon you, my friends, for it could do you no good, and might do you harm. Enough to say, that Mrs. Ward dilated luminously on Mr. Ward's untidiness, carelessness, slovenliness, idleness, provokingness, irreligiousness, and general good-for-nothingness. What could have induced her to marry a person whose defects were so many and so glaring? I am afraid the broad acres of Thornycroft had something to do with it. He--good, easy man--looked grave enough, but ate ham and eggs, and drank coffee, with undiminished appetite; while I wondered greatly at so strange a specimen of feminine verbosity in the upper classes of society.

She was just settling down into offended silence, making good the old saying, that "it takes two to make a quarrel," when she unluckily caught sight of a ragged shoulder-strap peeping out from the tucker of Arabella's frock; and then ensued lecture the second--more pointed, more severe, and more terrible than the first. Then arose a very tempest of wrath and grief, and Arabella cried, till she looked frightfully ugly. Mrs. Ward was accomplished in the delicate art of talking at people; and I quickly perceived what I am sure the wretched Arabella never suspected, that more than half her mamma's vituperation was intended to overwhelm Miss Lambert with shame and confusion of face. I was more amused than annoyed, for my childish sagacity had not yet divined the intolerable misery of living in daily and hourly intercourse with such a temper, and that temper swaying, to the last point of tyranny, the whole unhappy household.

The breakfast seemed as interminable as the prayers, but that, too, came to a conclusion, and Miss Lambert and her pupils adjourned to their own territories. My uncle went to speak to his bailiff, and my aunt marched off into the back settlements, ostensibly to give cook her orders for the day, but really to torment and exasperate the whole staff of domestics, till half of them, tired and disgusted with the incessant scolding and lecturing, summarily gave notice.

In the schoolroom things went on more comfortably: Miss Lambert was kind, but evidently afraid of Maria, who enacted the role of Princess Royal to perfection, and advanced her opinions on every subject with a confidence and audacity that fairly made me tremble. Arabella's indolence seemed to be indomitable: she sat listlessly turning over the pages of a French grammar, that deserved superannuation for more reasons than one, and fixing from time to time her swelled blue eyes on my blushing countenance. She was repeatedly called to order--gently by Miss Lambert, and sharply by Maria.

Julia held in her hands a Compendium of English History, and laudably confined her attention to the battle of Bosworth Field. I was surprised to find no lessons allotted to myself: Miss Lambert gave me an entertaining book of travels in Central Africa, and told me to sit quietly till my studies were arranged. My cousins said their lessons: Maria repeated hers glibly and scornfully, as if she had known them all beforehand; Arabella was "turned" twice, and read the greater part over Miss Lambert's shoulder at last; and Julia stumbled through the reign of Richard III., of crooked memory. Then succeeded something which sounded to me like gibberish, but which I quickly ascertained was intended for French.

"Jer pawle,
Too pawle,
Eel pawle,"

stammered poor Arabella, as she endeavoured to conjugate that much-enduring French verb, "parler, to speak."

Just then the door was opened, and Mrs. Ward entered. Miss Lambert immediately assumed an air of uncompromising severity, and returned the unfortunate verb to her still more unfortunate pupil, desiring her to sit at the other end of the room, and neither speak nor look up till she had thoroughly learned her lesson. Meanwhile, I discovered, to my extreme consternation, that my aunt was come for the express purpose of examining into the state of my education, and regulating thereby my future course of study. Maria drew, Julia sewed; so did Miss Lambert; and Arabella sat with her back to the company, in perfect silence. A solemn stillness pervaded the room; not n coal cracked in the fire; not a cinder fell to the hearth; each needle worked noiselessly as an apparition; and "the eyes" were bent scrutinizingly on me. The following dialogue ensued:--

"What have you been learning, Ellen?"

"The collect on Sundays; and 'Can you tell me, child, who made you?'"

"And the Church Catechism--of course you have learnt that?"

"No, Aunt Ward, I didn't like it, and papa said it was no matter."

No matter! My aunt was evidently shocked. I--ten years of age, and a clergyman's child, and the grandchild of a clergyman, and her niece, not to know the Church Catechism! I did not tell her that once upon a time Mrs. Jackson did set me down to learn it, and I, finding it difficult and uninteresting, learnt a portion of the Marriage Service instead, observing, to the infinite amusement of Deborah, that I should want to know it some day.

"What else did yen learn on Sundays, besides the collect and Watts' First Catechism?"

"Nothing else, aunt."

"Nothing else? What did you do all day?"

"I said the collect before breakfast, and read to myself afterwards; and then I went to church with Mrs. Jackson. In the afternoon I said, 'Can you tell me child, who made you?' to papa, and he talked to me, and we rend a chapter together; and if it was winter, we sang seine hymns; and if it was summer, we went a walk by the river, and--"

"A walk on Sunday!" groaned my aunt, not waiting to be assured that the river ran through our own garden, and swept through our own meadow, or croft, as we called it--"terrible! most terrible!" Then, turning to Miss Lambert and Maria, she continued, "I could not have believed it of my brother Edward, though I knew he held many peculiar views, but his own child condemns him."

Quick as lightning I fired up at the odium cast on my dear pious father: child as I was, his holy life and peaceful death had left on my mind a most abiding impression. I accordingly burst forth--"No, it was not terrible: papa never did anything terrible. He talked about God, and about all good things. He showed me the mountains, and told me how they ware round about Jerusalem, and how God's promises were firm like them; and he gathered me flowers, and told me about 'the lilies of the field' in Palestine, and, and"--but I fairly broke down: the remembrance of those holy, happy Sabbaths overpowered me, and I wept bitterly, and would not be restrained. Even now my eyes are dimmed with tears, as I recall the bright, calm time when I, the happy child, walked with my father through the green flowery vales, and ever the breezy hills of my own native Westmoreland. Once again I seem to stand by his side: his dark serious eyes and his sweet smile are before me, and I hear his dear voice--so deep, so musical, so tender, telling me of the mystery of life and the glory of the world to come. From him I learned, even in these childish days, that the immortal soul was caged but for a time in its tenement of clay; that it mattered comparatively little how or where the frail prison-house sojourned, if so it were that the undying essence pent within partook net of its earthliness; but, day by day pressing onwards to the gee', sat with her wings ready for expansion, whenever the blessed angel of death should whisper, " The Master is come, and calleth for thee." I do net think my father was a man of brilliant parts; though he was a great scholar and a deep thinker, his was not the gift of eloquence: but there was one subject that always made his heart burn and his eyes kindle--the subject that he loved above all ethers--the only subject on which he cared to expatiate in the closing moments of his life--and that was the love of Christ to fallen sinners. Like the noble Arnold, of Rugby, whose fervent piety is still dear to the memory of the Universal Church, his countenance would light up with a sublime animation and a seraphic joy at that glorious clause of the "Te Deum,"--"Thou art the King of glory, O Christ!"

But I wander; let me leave the memories of that old church and the girdling mountains, and come back to that dreary schoolroom. My aunt, being satisfied as to my ignorance in religious matters, preceded to catechize me on secular subjects.

"I suppose you knew nothing of French?"

"No, aunt; but I have learned seem Latin."

"You have learned grammar and geography?"

"I have learned some geography; but not any grammar out of a book."

"What have you learned, child?"

"I can say, 'Can you tell me, child, who made you?' all through; and Watts' Scripture Names, and Watts' 'Hymns for Children;' and 'Edwin and Emma;' and 'Edwin and Angelina;' and 'John Gilpin' and 'Young Lochinvar;' and 'Roderick Dhu;' and the fourteenth of St. John, and the twenty-third and the nineteenth Psalms; and 'Hamlet and the Ghost;' and 'Vital Spark;' and I know all the Latin declensions perfectly, and all the regular verbs, both in the active and passive voice; and I know a great many of the gods and goddesses, and all about Nero, and Caligula, and--"

"There! there! that will do; a catalogue of nonsense." I suppose my aunt did not mean that the fourteenth of John and the Psalms were nonsense, because she afterwards made me learn whole books of the Bible; and I imagine that she did not despise a little intimacy with Nero and Caligula, for we read the Roman history twice a week regularly. After a little consideration, she bade me fetch my books.

They were close at hand; they had been newly covered and packed by dear Mrs. Jackson in a nice deal box with a lock and key; and the said box had been brought into the schoolroom, and steed at that moment close to my aunt's feet.

My books were soon laid on the baize table-cover, and here, gentle reader, is a catalogue of my library:--A handsome Bible and Prayer-book, the last birthday gift of my father--I had another little red morocco Bible which had been his, and a Prayer-book that had belonged to my mother; but these I kept upstairs, as too sacred for common use--then Shakespeare's Plays, in a huge, tattered, well-thumbed volume; then Watts' "Divine Songs," "Beauty and the Beast," Gaultier's Geography, "Cinderella," Baxter's "Saint's Rest," "Evelina," " The Children of the Abbey," Cowper's Poems, "The Speaker," two or three of Mrs. Sherwood's Tales, a little "British Flora," a book on Ferns, a book on Farming, a treatise en Mensuration, another on Acoustics, " The Mysteries of Udolpho," "The House that Jack Built," "The History of Joseph," and a Latin Grammar and Delectus.

The Bible and Prayer-book, the Catechisms and Hymns, the Geography, the "Flora," "The History of Joseph," and, with some little hesitation, Mrs. Sherwood's Tales, my aunt replaced in the box; the rest, she said, were improper books, and she would burn some, and lock up others. Baxter's "Saint's Rest," however, I might have to read on Sundays; "The Speaker" might be useful to me when I grew older; but of what use could the Latin books be?

I modestly explained that my father had taught me Latin, and that I had brought the Grammar and Delectus with the intention of pursuing my studies in that ancient language. My aunt's indignation was almost uncontrollable; she pushed away the books with a look of utter contempt, remarking that though Latin might be a credit to a man, it was a disgrace to a woman; and I saw at once that I had better relinquish any idea I might have entertained of further prosecuting my classical studies.

A conversation then ensued between my aunt and Miss Lambert, if indeed that can be called a conversation which consists of dictation on the one side and passive acquiescence on the other. However, in some way my future curriculum was arranged, and my aunt departed, taking with her the objectionable volumes, and desiring Maria to follow her to her room.

In the afternoon we sewed, and again I was mightily discomfited, for I could not hem a pocket-handkerchief decently, and my first hour's work was very justly sentenced to unpicking; and so, what with hemming, unhemming, and rehemming, with warm, damp hands, my piece of cambric, at five o'clock, looked like a dirty, tumbled duster. I wrote a copy tee, and blotted it twice, and smeared it extensively; and after tea we sat in the schoolroom, preparing lessons for the morrow, while Miss Lambert worked like a negress at an immense piece of Berlin work, stretched in a huge frame. At eight o'clock we obeyed the summons of the prayer-bell, and again we sat in a row before Mr. and Mrs. Ward, and the servants sat in a double row behind us, and Maria looked daggers at Arabella, who was biting her nails with apparent relish.

Then we had rice-milk for supper, except Maria, who drank tea in the drawing-room with the elders, and then came good-night, and that unloving kiss again.

I went to bed so much depressed that I cried myself to sleep, and so ended my first day at Thornycroft Hall.

When I had been several weeks at Thornycroft Hall, I began to feel myself at home. I fell in with the family habits and rules; I knew where everything was kept, and where I ought to keep my own especial goods and chattels: I learned Mangnall's Questions and Murray's Grammar; I puzzled over vowels, semi-vowels, and diphthongs; I stumbled through "First Lessens in French," imbibing at the outset Miss Lambert's truly barbarous accent; and very soon I came not only to hem decently, but to darn stockings--after a fashion.

Moreover, I romped with Julia, whenever we were quite sure that Mrs. Ward was ought of sight and hearing; I played and talked with Arabella a good deal; and she seen gave me to understand that she liked mo much better than Maria, which was net saying a great deal, since she constantly, and in the most forcible terms, proclaimed her aversion to her elder sister. Also I gave the whole party much information respecting the geography of "the Lake District;" and made strenuous endeavours to disabuse the minds of Miss Lambert and Maria of certain erroneous impressions they had conceived with respect to my native county, and its next-door neighbour, Cumberland.

Our geographies said that the principal mountains of England were "Skaw Fell, Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Ingleborough," &c., &c.; and my companions, in their simplicity, imagined that these were all. Their idea of my beautiful North Country was as fellows:--A good deal of weed, particularly fir-wood; several large sheets of water like the Hackington Reservoir; the said mountains rising in solitary sternness from the plain; one waterfall, viz., Lodore; and a mine for plumbago, or black pencil-lead. They had no conceptions of chains of mountains, or of the intersection of range with range; so I descanted largely on the subject, and told them how the mountains, whose names they knew by heart, were only the highest peaks of the vast ranges to which they belonged. I poured forth a whole list of mountains, for they had never heard of Saddleback, or Cross Fell, or Fairfield, or the Langdale Pikes, or countless others; I told them of sixteen lakes, besides tarns innumerable, of wild lonely glens, of mountain torrents, and mountain passes, and blue sweeping streams; and Miss Lambert fairly confessed her astonishment, while Maria flatly declared "she did not believe it."

Happily I was able to prove my veracity, for I had several stray books among my clothes, and these had escaped confiscation, and among them was an antiquated "Guide to the Lakes," which more than demonstrated the truth of my propositions, and compelled my mistrustful cousin to give full credence to all I had advanced. I also proved myself to be thoroughly domesticated by the various lectures and scoldings I sustained; I rapidly imbibed my cousin's habits, and always laid down my tale-book when I heard Mrs. Ward coming. There were tales, and fairy tales too, in the house, although mine had been so mercilessly confiscated, and we all read them, Maria included. There was a tacit understanding among us to say nothing about them, even to each other, and to hide them the moment Mrs. Ward's voice or foot was heard in our vicinity, and, happily, she had stentorian lungs and a heavy tread.

There were novels, too, which I now and then caught a glimpse of, and they were net of the most improving character; and these were the private recreation of Miss Ward and Miss Lambert; governess and pupil both feigning ignorance of each other's clandestine pursuits. I do not know to this day who procured them; I only know that they came from the Circulating Library at Hackington. I soon learnt to fling my doll aside, and snatch up a half-mended stocking or a partly-hemmed frill, and to bury my tale-book under cover of something or other, and begin to pore over "Mangnall's," or that dirty ragged French Grammar, that was such a terrible stumbling-block to us all, Miss Lambert included, whenever my aunt's advent among us was expected or feared. And yet I did not mean to be deceitful, though undoubtedly I had learned to deceive better than I had learned to sew, or to play "In my cottage near a wood." I had made more rapid progress in deceit than in any other branch, in which I had been newly indoctrinated; and I deliberately declare that it was impossible to live with Mrs. Ward, and not learn untruthfulness in action, if not in speech. No one ever dreamed of trying to deceive Mr. Ward. I did not exactly know what I feared in my aunt, for her looks were worse than her words, and her words than her deeds; but you must know there are some tempers that act upon your mind as a perpetual blister would act upon your skin. I hope you know it only in theory; if, alas! you know it experimentally, poor unhappy one! and have borne it with tolerable patience, then you deserve canonization at least, and if you believe in purgatory you may count upon a plenary indulgence; you have had your purgatory, and can scarcely imagine a worse.

I saw ray uncle sometimes: of course I saw him several times daily; but it was rarely that I met him alone, and talked to him. In his wife's presence he never addressed me, and never took my part when scolded and punished, even when the injustice of my treatment was self-evident. Mrs. Ward had a great objection to hair worn at all over the face; I should think the Eugenic style would have suited her exactly, but in those days the hair was simply parted in front, and mine, all rippling and waving with natural curls, came pertinaciously into my eyes. Then she foolishly considered blushing an infallible sign of guilt and shame; and I had a tormenting propensity for blushing whenever any one spoke to me abruptly, or looked at me suspiciously. Had not this infirmity--for infirmity it was--been noticed, it would, doubtless, have passed away with other childish defects; but my aunt no sooner saw me than she remarked upon my malady, and failed not to animadvert upon it in a most uncomplimentary strain; so that in the course of a few weeks I came to blush every time she looked at me, and the very desire not to blush was certain to bathe me in a violent perspiration, and to suffuse face, neck, and arms with a fiery glow. O! little do suspicious, exacting people reflect how much irremediable evil they may produce in children of nervous temperament and sensitive disposition!

My aunt set me down for "a very artful child;" and an artful child I was, in comparison with the frank, truthful, transparent creature I had been in my own home; but it was she who made me artful, it was she who assimilated my character to that of her own children, formed by herself, and wrought upon and developed by her most injurious system of education. The "squint suspicion" that I daily writhed under would have gone far to corrupt Cromwell's Ironsides; her dark, distrustful, lynx-eyed gaze would have discomfited an Aristides or a Fabricius.

But sometimes my aunt went out visiting, and took Maria with her; and then Miss Lambert took her ease, and real her novels openly. Arabella coiled herself up in some snug corner, and dreamed and dozed as if Nature had designed her for a dormouse: but Julia and I, disdaining our accustomed precincts, took possession of the drawing-room, where we generally found Mr. Ward, and chattered to him without restraint.

Then it was that I dared to turn over the leaves of the splendid volumes in the book-case; then it was that I ventured, without fear of reproof, to examine the portfolios of beautiful engravings which my uncle loved to collect. Then I first saw Una and the Lion, and learned from my uncle's lips the whole exquisite story, for he possessed the rare talent of reciting poetry in perfection. Finally I coaxed him to give me an old "Faerie Queene" of his own, and forthwith I hid it away, lest it should meet my aunt's prying eye, and come under the category of "improper books."

But in secret I read it over and over, and learned by heart page after page of Spenser's exquisite stanzas.

And while I rummaged the book-shelves, or hung enraptured over an engraving or an illustration, Julia played voluntaries on the grand pianoforte, and sang songs of her own composing. And lovely songs they were: I used to listen to her in the dusky twilight, and think that angels must sing as she did. Every one declared she had quite a talent for music; they were wrong: Maria had a talent for the piano, and so had I; but Julia was gifted with absolute genius. Her little fingers went wandering over the keys without ever producing a discordant sound, or an imperfect harmony; and While my uncle dozed, and I tried to read by the fitful firelight, strains of silvery sweetness, and melodies, half-sad, half-triumphant, floated through the silent rooms and I listened with wonder and delight.

And then my uncle would awake, and Julia would leave the piano and come and climb on his knee; and he would draw me to his feet, and place my footstool so that I could lay my head on his other knee, and we asked him not to ring for candles, but to sit there, and talk to us, and tell us tales of his school-days.

And I, too, could relate long histories of my old home to no unwilling auditors. Mrs. Jackson, Deborah, Lazarus, the old almshouse women, and poor Bob Gray, "the fool," as the Battlebarrow people called him, were my dramatis personae. Even the dusty angels in the church were described; and again and again my uncle would say, "Now, Nell, tell me about the Battlebarrow people," or, "Come now for some of Bob's Gray's wit and wisdom;" for Bob Gray was more of a jester than a fool, and quite qualified to fill the post of court-fool, if only her Majesty would keep up that ancient and dignified prerogative of royalty. There was one tale of poor Bob's wit that my uncle loved to hear; and as it is a bonâ fide story, and not borrowed from mere hearsay, or from the humorous corner of a newspaper, I will set it down here. There are people still living on the banks of the Eden who will remember Bob Gray and the tale I am going to give you.

The justice-room of Battlebarrow was very thinly attended; there was little to be done, and the magistrates were in a general way careless and supine. But Dr. Lowthian was always to be found on the bench at the right time, and was always quite ready to perform the duties of the day. He was the terror of poachers, the dread of juvenile scapegraces, and the hope and anchor of all worthy and distressed people. One day he came in as usual, and took his accustomed place; after him sauntered in Sir Henry Vallance, and his cousin, Mr. Vallance, both magistrates, and both perfect drones in the hive of justice. They came now and then, at long intervals, yawned, talked of dogs, and guns, and farming, and Lever failed to endorse the opinions of Dr. Lowthian, whatever they might be. So, when these three had taken their seats, they became cognizant of the presence of Bob Gray, who was there to answer for some mischievous prank he had been playing.

"Well, now, Bob," said Dr. Lowthian, "what brings you here?"

"A hundred justices!" was Bob's most irrelevant rejoinder.

"A hundred justices?" repeated the doctor.

"A hundred justices?" repeated the dummies.

"A hundred justices here to-day," persisted Bob, in a tone of solemn triumph.

"How do you make that cut?" was the demand of Sir Henry Vallance. "There are but three."

"Why," returned Bob, grinning with delight, "there's the doctor, he's one, and after him comes two ciphers; and ain't that a hundred?"

The doctor fairly cried with laughing, and the two ciphers joined heartily in the mirth, Bob was dismissed with a reprimand, and an injunction to mend his manners.

Christmas came--a mild, warm, sunny Christmas--and we had holiday, for Miss Lambert went home for several weeks to visit her mother. It was a melancholy Christmas, though; to me it was a season of unusual depression. We had a grand dinner, certainly, and Arabella made herself very ill with excess of turkey and plum-pudding; otherwise the day was anything but festal. My aunt would not allow holly in the house, and Mr. Graves would not allow it in the church. They objected to it as heathenish and Popish; but I ventured to make an evergreen wreath for Julia, who looked so lovely, with the bright coral berries in her dark, curling hair, that even my aunt had not the heart to make her take it off; but she told me privately that I was never to make a "Jezebel" of Julia again.

When it grew dusk on Christmas-day I stole away from the lighted dining-room and sat down in the cold, desolate schoolroom, thinking--O, how sadly!--of "the days that were no more," the merry Christmas-days of old, when our vicarage parlour was decked with holly and evergreens, and any lingering roses that I could obtain from the precincts of the Castle.

And then the dressing of the church in its animal, or rather semi-annual, green robes--for we had "the Rush-bearing" in July, and then the grand old pile was radiant with emerald leaves, and purple heather, and queenly lilies from the lake. and bright glowing flowers from all the gardens and greenhouses far and wide. I always went to church to assist in the decorations, and I always insisted on making the vicarage pew into a veritable bower. O! it was so pleasant to twine the burnished ivy, the rich green holly, with its coral gems, and the dark, pensive yew, about the quiet tombs of other days.

Strangely, but, to my mind, sweetly drooped the wintry garlands over the marble faces and the uplifted hands of the old Crusaders in the chancel. And then the Christmas hymn--"Hark! the herald angels sing"--sounding through the green-wreathed aisles, and dying away in the dark arches of the roof! And then my father's face lighting up, as he stood in the desk, his arms folded on his snowy surplice, and his fine brow lifted up to the streaming sunshine, that lit the dusky stones and the mouldering pews with a golden glory, blent with red and purple dyes, and every rich hue of heaven's own radiant bow. How the light came to that calm, bright face, as he sang, in his own deep tones--"Glory to the newborn King!"

And I, in my childish anguish, with my loneliness and my passionate regret, could not think of him as singing now, with the angels, the "Gloria in excelsis" of the heavenly hosts. I thought only of the grave and its darkness, and of my own aching, empty heart; not of the crown of glory that fadeth not away, circling the brow of the faithful under-shepherd. I thought of the voice that I might never hear again, of the eyes that would meet mine no more, of the lips that were pressed to mine whenever we met, after the briefest absence, and of the dark hour when those lips, all cold and still, had met mine unanswering, when

"The mouth that kissed last kissed alone."

A few years afterwards I read the noble poem from which this one touching line is taken; and every pulse of my heart thrilled as I traced the lines of a picture, never to be effaced from memory's records: Once more I stood alone, a childish, silent watcherwaiting for the coming of the last enemy to that quiet, peaceful chamber. Again the light of the rich autumnal sunset fell aslant the giant hills, and robed them in more than earthly beauty; and the robin, "sweet messenger of calm decay;" trilled his evening song; and the church clock told the hours and the quarters, O! so quickly! as if time fleeted then more rapidly than ever. And again I heard the whispered words of love--saw the upward glance of faith that committed the fatherless child to Him who has promised to be a Father to the fatherless and again I bent down to kiss the lips that were so cold and tremulous. And I turned to the page before me and read:--

"'Yea,' he called softly through the room--
His voice was weak, yet tender--'come,'
He said, 'come nearer; let the bloom

Of life grow over undenied
This bridge of death, which is not wide;
I shall be soon at the other side.

Come, kiss me!' So the one in truth,
Who loved him best, in love, not ruth,
Bowed down and kissed him on the mouth.

And in that kiss of love was won
Life's manumission! All was done,
The mouth that kissed last kissed ALONE!

'And who,' I asked, a little moved,
Yet curious-eyed, 'was this that loved,
And kissed him last, as it behoved?'

'I,' softly said the child; and then,
'I!' said he, louder once again;
'His son! my rank is among men!

Glory to God,' resumed he,
And his eyes smiled for victory
O'er their own tears, which I could see;

'Glory to God, to God,' he saith;
'Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death!"

But all this I knew not then: how could I? I was a child, orphaned and alone, and I sat in the solitary, darkening room, thinking only of the last happy Christmas-day, and recalling, with a vividness that loving retrospection alone can supply, the aspect of all things that were around me then-- the decorated church, the coloured light streaming in on the shattered altar-screen, the dilapidated organ, the grim angels, and the armed knights, who had lain there, in their stony panoply, for centuries. And I seemed to hear my father's voice, that voice so earnest, sweet, and thrilling, telling us, in the simplest way, the simple story of the Babe that was born in Bethlehem, and of the work He came to do.

And after morning service the school children dined on the usual Christmas-fare; at least, the very poor ones came, for the day before my father issued his invitations, and he called not his friends, nor his kinsfolk, nor his rich neighbours, but in the spirit of his Master he made a feast, and called the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind. And of him, and of all such, the Master has said, "And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just."

And then came afternoon prayer, but no sermon; and then the carriage came from Raby Garth, where we were expected to dine, according to custom. And very happy we were, gathered round the hospitable board of Sir John Garth; and after dinner I went with the Lady Gertrude to he; own boudoir, and saw all the beautiful things she had brought with her from foreign countries, where she and Sir John had sojourned long in their early married days; and rapturous was my admiration of coins, and cameos, and costly toys, and real lava, from the real Vesuvius itself.

The Lady Gertrude was very kind to the motherless little girl, who had never known a mother's love. She had no children of her own: one only son had been born in Italy, and he had lived but a few hours. Had Sir John and his lady been at home at the time of my father's death, I am sure that, with them, I should have found a home till claimed by my own kindred; and 1 know that the kind-hearted baronet, and the noble lady herself, would have shielded with their care, and comforted with their sympathy, the desolate child, whose heart was well nigh broken at the sudden rending asunder of all the sweet home ties, which had blended hitherto continuously, but insensibly, with her stream of life, from its source to the first wild rapids that impeded its peaceful flow.

But the Lady Gertrude and her husband were far away on the shores of a blue southern sea; and good Mrs. Jackson it was who led me from the silent chamber where alone, and for the first time, I stood face to face with death; and she took me to her own motherly arms and heart, and would have kept me always had I not had relations to whom it was proper in the first instance to refer, and who were named by my father himself, in his last hours, as the natural guardians of his orphan-child.

The chronicles of Thornycroft Hall were for the most part prosy and uninteresting. Events were continually occurring, it is true; but they were not of a nature to interest my readers. There was constant guerilla warfare between my aunt and her domestics; and wonderful things sometimes fell out, but they would not look well in print; and it would be worse than useless to record how the poultrymaid cheated, and how the preserves turned mouldy, and how on the eve of a splendid entertainment the key of the wine-cellar was discovered to be lost, stolen, or strayed; and, worse than all, how the maids smuggled in a real gipsy to tell them their fortunes, and how next day the spoon-basket and its contents were missing from the butler's pantry, whither they returned nevermore. But such events as really influenced the fate of my cousins and myself I will briefly relate.

Nearly a year had elapsed since Thornycroft Hall became my home, and already Battlebarrow and its pleasant surrounding seemed more like a lovely dream than a far-away reality. It was autumn--a sunny, glowing, mellow autumn--and my cousin Maria was going to be confirmed. What she was to be confirmed in I was at a loss to suggest; so, with my usual laudable thirst after useful information, I asked Miss Lambert, and she replied, "In the doctrines of the Church of England."

A reply perfectly definitive, but very far from satisfactory to my mind, so I inquired further, "What are the doctrines of the Church of England?"

Miss Lambert being no theologian, referred me to my aunt, wondering at the same time that a clergyman's child should be so ignorant in matters of faith, and hinting, moreover, that the instruction I had received was not of the most orthodox kind. Did she imagine that clergymen's children imbibed dogmatic theology as naturally as carpenters' children, from always hanging about the bench, learn to handle the plane, the chisel, and the hammer? Or did she think that Exegetical Divinity should be imparted with the rudiments of English grammar?

Perhaps so. There are many who confound Christianity with sectarianism, and disavow all dogmas save those that savour of their own dear particular ism. My father had never said much to me about the Church of England, though he often discoursed about the Church of Christ--the Holy Catholic Church, in which, from Sabbath to Sabbath, we audibly professed our belief.

As to Maria, she learned the Church Catechism, and "Questions on the Church Catechism," and texts supposed to be confirmatory thereof, till her temper, naturally acid, became of the sourest and most sensitive. And indeed she had much provocation: none of her secular lessons were remitted, and Mr. Graves overwhelmed his unfortunate candidates with preparatory studies. He might have discovered a horde of heathen, whom it was necessary to "cram" for a Divinity examination, for he insisted on the young people knowing and understanding all the Articles of the Christian faith, and so far he was perfectly right; but then they were also to be well up in Church history and ecclesiastical polity; and, above all, in the study of prophecy; and what with the book of Daniel, and computations intricate enough to alarm the Astronomer Royal, and the question of Church-rates, and the Catholic Emancipation Bill, poor Maria was fairly worried; and when to these inflictions were added special sermons of terrible length, private interviews with her pastor, and one long series of admonitions from her mother, she may be certainly excused for any increase of acidity and bile in a disposition never very meek and tractable.

I privately resolved never to be confirmed till I could find a clergyman like my father, and imparted this resolution to Arabella, who fully coincided in the sentiment, "but supposed she should be obliged to be, when the time came to be."

Poor Bella! her English was never very choice, but when she was exasperated it became fairly unintelligible; at least, to those who construct their sentences on the principles of Lindley Murray.

But the confirmation morning arrived, and I, for my part, changed my mind. We were all gathered in the old church at Hackington--we, the spectators, in the galleries and the candidates in the body of the church below. And I saw many an earnest brow beneath its bright ringlets, restrained only by the simple cap, worn in obedience to the dictates of a decent custom, and many a young face, pale With thought, and resolute with holy purpose, as the solemn "I do" was murmured through the vast, crowded building, in the soft voices of the young girls on one side, and in the deeper tones of the youths on the other. And then I watched the candidates as they knelt down at the communion rail, and I listened to the beautiful prayer of the bishop: "Defend, O Lord, these Thy servants with Thy heavenly grace that they may continue Thine for ever; and daily increase in Thy Holy Spirit more and more, until they come unto Thine everlasting kingdom. Amen."

And the words seemed like an echo of the past, and I bowed down my head, and prayed--and I really think it was my first true spontaneous prayer--that "I might come in due time to the everlasting kingdom." And so the confirmation was a blessing to me, and I went home grave, and thoughtful, yet happier than I had been for a long while.

Of course, I am not going to say whether confirmation is or is not a necessary rite; this is not the place for sectarian controversy; I would only remark that the Confirmation did me good, and that I think Mr. Graves was injudicious and unreasonable, and did not, after all, establish his young parishioners in the doctrines of Christianity, or in the dogmas of the Church to which they belonged. But Maria having been confirmed, felt herself quite grown up, and comported herself accordingly, and snubbed Miss Lambert till she was at length fairly exasperated, and once for all stated her opinions to Mrs. Ward with perfect unreserve; and, before my aunt could regain her composure, struck her dumb with anger and astonishment by giving her a quarter's notice. I was present when the catastrophe took place; for I was writing out half a dozen French verbs, which had been assigned me as a punishment, while my cousins took exercise in the garden. It was some minutes before Mrs. Ward could speak; she was fairly beside herself with indignation; but at length she burst into such a tirade as only a lady of her capabilities could achieve, and she called Miss Lambert everything that was not legally actionable.

The charge of ingratitude was the one most forcibly preferred against the mutinous hireling; but she, having cast off her chains, was in no hurry to resume them, and she flatly denied having incurred the slightest obligation during her four years' residence at Thornycroft Hall. "You hired me to instruct your daughters," said Miss Lambert, with cool equanimity; "and, to the utmost of my ability, I have discharged the trust. I have never received any favour at your hands; I have patiently submitted to a yoke that custom has made heavier rather than lighter; and I have endured not only your tyranny and caprice, but the insolence and arrogance of your eldest daughter, whose character strongly resembles your own, and of whose habitual conduct I stand, as her preceptress, involuntarily ashamed."

Now, Miss Lambert was not generally given to eloquence, and, as I bent over my grammar, I shrewdly suspected that she had composed and carefully prepared this oration some time before its delivery. Presently Mrs. Ward, white with anger, and with a cruel, bitter smile on her lips, to think of the retribution that awaited her recreant bondswoman, cried tauntingly, "Do you suppose after this I can give you the testimonials requisite to secure you another situation?"

"I shall never ask them, Mrs. Ward," was the calm and unperturbed reply.

"And who do you suppose will be rash enough to engage you without references? And even supposing any one, through your own representations, should be so foolish, do you not think I shall at once interpose, and, as my bounden duty, warn any mother, who may be about heedlessly to intrust to you the education of her children, against the utter selfishness and the base ingratitude of your character? And do you imagine I should not apprize her of your unfitness for the office you have assumed, both as regards actual acquirements and method of instruction? You have never been a competent instructress to my children. It is no fault of mine that you have ruined your future prospects, Miss Lambert. I must do my duty. Yes; whatever it may cost me, I must do my duty."

"I hope sincerely you will ever do your duty, Mrs. Ward. I, at least, will be no hindrance, you may rest assured."

"I am really at a loss to understand you, Miss Lambert. I assure you I cannot, must not give you commendatory testimonials."

"You are right; you will not be able to give me testimonials, I am aware; but not entirely from the reasons you have mentioned. I require nothing of the kind; my governess days are happily over. I am going to be married."

She left the room two inches taller than she had entered it, and Mrs. Ward, after turning scarlet, and white, and lead colour, began to weep. She cried more and more bitterly, us the time passed on: at last her sobs became convulsive; she choked, and laughed, and gurgled, and finally screamed, to my infinite distress and terror. I flew to summon Maria and the servants; when I came back Mrs. Ward was in strong hysterics.

Of course, it was very clear after this that Miss Lambert and her patroness could not exist under the same roof, and accordingly, in four-and-twenty hours after the rupture, that lady, with all her moveable property, bade farewell to Thornycroft Hall; and in three months we received her wedding cards, and read the announcement of her marriage in all the papers. It was reported everywhere that she had made an excellent match; though, as Mrs. Ward said, in a depreciatory tone, "he was only a widower." And Mr. Ward, who was present, made answer, "Well, my dear, widowers are sometimes very excellent husbands; I think if I were a young lady I should have no objection to a widower."

Unhappy man! he was always saying something he had better have left unsaid; and this speech of his, uttered in perfect innocence, made Mrs. Ward very miserable, very unjust, and very ill-tempered: she was convinced that her husband only waited her demise to espouse some young, giddy, silly thing, and make her mistress of Thornycroft Hall. She dared say he would not have the decency to wait till she was cold in the grave; and she inveighed against second marriages in most furious style, and made assertions of so baseless and unqualified a nature that one would have imagined she concurred in the crafty and most charitable declaration of the stage-queen in "Hamlet"--

"None wed the second, but who kill'd the first."

At length Mr. Ward gravely replied, "My dear, we have had enough of this nonsense. Should it please Providence to take you from this world--mind, I make no promises, but I think I should not be tempted to risk a second matrimonial venture." And after a pause, "You will find, my dear, that those widowers who are most desirous to marry again have had loving, amiable wives, and, consequently, happy matrimonial experiences. I think I may safely say once in a lifetime will suffice for me."

This was the only occasion on which I ever heard my uncle retort acrimoniously. To my great surprise, the rising storm of anger and reproach, which I expected each moment to break forth in unparalleled fury, died murmuringly away, and subsided into sullen silence. I think Mrs. Ward saw something in her husband's countenance which convinced her she had gone quite far enough. Tempers like hers are often cowed at the first symptom of just resentment. Would that Mr. Ward had asserted himself more frequently in the first years of his married life!--the whole family might then have been happy and united.

For six miserable weeks Mrs. Ward and her vicegerent Maria reigned in the schoolroom, and from "morn till dewy eve" I was in some kind of disgrace and trouble. I do not know how it was, but I never could say a lesson perfectly to my aunt; however thoroughly I had learned it, the words went sliding away the moment I tried to repeat it. And then she was so terribly strict. Not a word must be omitted or misplaced; every syllable must be repeated precisely as it stood, and the whole must be recited with fluency and proper emphasis. O that dreadful "Mangnall's!" O that terrible small print in Murray's Grammar! And O those dragons of Catechisms, those unmerciful Compendiums of Astronomy, Botany, and Heraldry, compiled, I am convinced, by somebody who knew nothing about them himself! What I endured all through those wretched weeks of my aunt's instruction no tongue can tell; and my sufferings were insignificant compared with poor Bella's; for from being confused she became stupid, and being stupid she was cross, and being cross she grew sullen, and at length desperate, and was continually confiding to me her earnest desire to depart this life, and be where geographies, and grammars, and Compendiums of science can weary and exasperate no more. Poor girl! I believe her idea of heaven was very like that of the old German Frau, who anticipated sitting still for evermore, singing hymns, with a clean apron on. Though she had never read Hood, she frequently gave vent to that well-known dismal sentiment--

"Swift to be hurled
Anywhere, anywhere out of the World."

However, one evening Maria informed us that a new governess, a most superior and extremely interesting person, was to arrive the next day, and commence forthwith the duties of the schoolroom. We were all very glad; we thought no change could be for the worse; but we proceeded to make various natural inquiries, for it came out that Maria had seen her, and, child-likes we were eager for a description of our future instructress.

"Well," replied Maria--she was in a very good temper that evening, and had actually helped Arabella to work a hopeless-looking sum in compound long division--"her name is Mademoiselle Bernay; she is a Frenchwoman, of course, and comes straight from Paris."

"But you have not been to Paris," said Arabella, stupidly.

"Of course I have not. What senseless remarks you make! She left Paris a month since, and made some stay at Hackington, where she stopped on her road to Holyhead, for she was going to Ireland to visit her sister, who is the superior of a convent there."

"Is she a Roman Catholic?" I asked, in extreme surprise.

"Of course not, Ellen. My parents--at least mamma is very particular about religious training. Mademoiselle is a Protestant--a convert--and she has been obliged to leave her friends in consequence of her altered views."

"What does she look like?" inquired Julia.

"She is tall and dark, and is about thirty years of age; she would be handsome if she had any colour." And Miss Ward tossed back the ringlets from her own peony cheeks, adding, "She will keep you all in order."

"And you too, Maria," suggested Julia; whereupon her sister bade her go to bed, and not make impertinent remarks.

Mademoiselle Bernay arrived in due course, next day. It was easy to see that my aunt had resolved to patronize her, if, indeed, so stately a lady would brook patronage; and so she was welcomed and greeted with a cordiality never evinced by Mrs. Ward towards any one whom she had not resolved specially to hold in honour. Mr. Graves was invited to meet her on the very first evening. "A most interesting case, conversion from the bosom of Popery, persecution," &c., &c., I heard my aunt whisper, as she shook hands with him in the hail, on the morning of Mademoiselle's expected advent.

It was a curious party assembled in my aunt's drawing-room that evening. We were all allowed to be present, that we might profit from the luminous remarks Mr. Graves was expected to make. He evidently intended to draw out the new convert, but Mademoiselle either could not, or would not, enter into any kind of controversial discussion; she spoke modestly enough of her escape from error, but of the faith of the Church whose doctrines she had lately professed to embrace, she seemed about as ignorant as an unenlightened Cherokee Indian. There was one little obstacle, certainly, in the way of a discussion. Mademoiselle spoke the most barbarous English that can be imagined, and Mr. Graves' French was incomparably worse than any I have heard since; and, to the infinite amusement of us juveniles, our pastor and our governess played at "cross questions and crooked answers," and enacted a whole pantomime of gesticulation for a quarter of an hour. Mrs. Ward tried to act as interpreter, but all in vain, and so the conversation was obliged to be relinquished.

For a while all things went on smoothly; Mademoiselle's pure accent was undoubtedly an acquisition; and as every day her English and our French became more correct, and more fluent, it was evident we should soon be in a position to understand each other. She was an excellent draughts-woman, and an accomplished pianiste, and under her tuition Maria began to play with taste and execution; I improved rapidly; Arabella came to distinguish "Annie Laurie" from "Rory O'More;" and Julia's exquisite gift was developed to a degree that astonished all who heard her. We began German also, for Mademoiselle was strong in Teutonic literature; we did not suspect then the peculiar nature of her German studies.

Now Maria and Mademoiselle became fast friends; they read and walked together, and shut themselves up together, for the purpose of confidential communications, more frequently than one would have supposed to be necessary. Very soon I began to perceive that Mademoiselle was not exactly that which she had been represented to be; it seemed very strange, but she was nearly always indisposed on Sundays. She never went to church if she could possibly help it, and one day she shocked me extremely by saying that the observation of the Sabbath was a mere superstition, soon to be discarded by the progress of intellect. Then I found her ridiculing Mr. Graves, which perhaps was not much to be wondered at, but she need not have sneered at the Church to which he belonged; and presently it struck me that it was neither Mr. Graves nor yet the Establishment that she wished to hold up to derision, but Christianity itself. I was quite certain that she did not believe the Bible, and I felt very uncomfortable, for I thought my aunt ought to know, and I dared not take upon myself to tell her. It was, however, clear that no long period could elapse before matters came to a crisis, only it was fearful to think how much mischief might be effected in the interim. Balancing Mademoiselle's infidelity against Miss Lambert's incompetency, I was sure we had the better bargain in our old governess.

For the first time in her life, I suppose, Mrs. Ward seemed to have met with her match. Mademoiselle, unlike Miss Lambert, held her own way, and a superbly independent way it was, making her own plans, doing and undoing at pleasure, choosing her own hours, and regulating our studies and recreations with a despotism that, in spite of imperious sway, was, on the whole, judicious and agreeable. Maria and her governess became more and more confidential, and, as time glided away, and Mademoiselle became more at home in our midst, she promulgated her extraordinary code of belief or unbelief with increasing freedom and unreserve; and I soon discovered that I had in nowise misjudged her when I suspected her of holding sceptical opinions. The critical, carping Colenso himself could scarcely have argued more skilfully against the integrity of the Pentateuch than did our highly-recommended governess, the interesting convert from the errors of Romanism; and day by day some fresh, astonishing discovery dawned upon our minds, and the foundations of our childish faith were shaken to their centre.

About this time I discovered that my cousin Maria was engaged to be married, and the engagement stood in this wise:--Mr. Ward had an only sister, a widow, and she had one only son, and this son, Marshall Cleaton, whom I had never seen, was in some sort the heir of Thornycroft. Mr. Ward, the elder, had willed that the Thornycroft estates should descend in the male line, as had been the case for many generations, and he had actually named Marshall Cleaton, then a babe in arms, as the successor of his eon, who was lately married to my aunt, in case only daughters should be born to the newly-wedded pair, of in ease their union should not be blessed with say offspring at all. But the succession was hampered with one condition: if my uncle had daughters, the eldest was to be the wife of her cousin Marshall; if he refused to fulfil the contract, the estates were to pass to a distant branch of the family, and the fortune of the young lady, which was to exceed that of her sisters, was to be secured to her and to her heirs for ever, and she was at liberty to make any choice she pleased. Such, at least, were the provisions of the will itself, though a codicil, added at a later period, made one important alteration, of which more hereafter. If, on the other hand, the young lady herself saw fit to decline the matrimonial alliance arranged for her long before her eyes opened on this world, she forfeited the handsome fortune which was to have been her portion, and Marshall succeeded to the Thornycroft estates, without let or hindrance; In the first year of her marriage my aunt presented her overjoyed husband with a fine little son; and fifteen months afterwards there was a further addition to the Thornycroft nursery, in the person of a delicate young male infant, who, however, as all reliable authorities decided, might with great care be reared, and live to become a hearty, stalwart man. There seemed little prospect of Marshall Cleaton's succession to the broad acres his grandfather loved so well. But the old gentleman lived to mourn the death of both these children; they fell victims to that fell destroyer of baby-life--the croup; and finally, he himself departed this life, soon after the birth of a third child, who proved to be a daughter.

Then in less than two years Arabella was born, and lastly Julia, and, as time passed on, it seemed almost certain that no son of John Ward was to inherit the paternal estates. And the marriage contract, which had been little regarded while hopes were still entertained of a direct male heir, began to be held in serious consideration.

The young people had met, of course, though merely as cousins, neither of them being in the least cognizant of the somewhat singular clauses of their grandfather's will; but about this time, as far as I remember, when Marshall was twenty-one, and Maria in her seventeenth year, they were made acquainted with the peculiar position they held as regarded each other. How Marshall took the information we were not informed: he did not decline the honour of his cousin's hand; but he wished the marriage to be postponed, at least, till the young lady should have completed her twenty-first year. He was very happy with his mother; he had at present no desire to settle, and he had sufficient romance in his nature to make him wish to woo and win for himself, as far as might be, the bride already provided for him by the foresight of his maternal grandfather.

Maria, on her side, as I subsequently found, was not troubled with any hesitancy whatever; her handsome cousin had made a vivid impression on her imagination, and she had no idea of letting Thornycroft and its surroundings slip through her fingers; she was quite ready to fulfil her part of the contract when the time came. It was deemed desirable by the parents on both sides that the young people should now see more of each other than had hitherto been the case, and it was arranged accordingly that the long midsummer vacation should, for the most part, be spent by Marshall Cleaton in the society of his affianced bride. It was now winter--at least, the snow was upon the ground--though the lengthening days and the timid crocuses warned us that spring-time was near at hand; in fact, it was February, and I was counting the months to midsummer, not because I wanted to see Mr. Cleaton, about whom, however, I felt sufficiently curious, but because it was settled that we should all go about the middle of June to the seaside, and remain there for several months, while Thornycroft Mall underwent certain repairs and renovations, which had been postponed longer than was at all desirable.

Of course Miss Ward was fully alive to the dignity of being engaged; and I suppose it was on the subject of her betrothal that she talked so much with Mademoiselle Bernay in her bed-room. But after a while a coolness sprang up between the friends, the elder lady becoming scornful and satirical, and disposed to revive certain discipline which had been suffered to fall into disuse so far as regarded her eldest pupil; the younger lady manifesting a cold and haughty, not to say sullen, demeanour, and evincing a very determined spirit of opposition and rebellion. And Mademoiselle being a woman of strong resolves and fiery temper, which, however, she knew how to keep in curb on occasion, it was very clear that present hostilities would soon break out in furious and declared war.

Now, the ban against novel-reading was as decided as ever; and, considering what novels were only twenty years ago, it was quite as well they should be excluded from the libraries of young ladies. I see now that Mrs. Ward was but doing her duty when she confiscated certain beloved volumes of mine, which I brought in the new deal box from dear old Battlebarrow: it was not the action itself that was wrong or illiberal; it was the manner of the action, which was both unkind and injudicious; and then she included inthe category of novels and "foolish books" nearly everything that was interesting, amusing, or poetical. It was the custom of those days to condemn the youthful mind to an undeviating regimen of heavy, inaccurate histories, garnished, however, for our delectation with scandalous episodes, that puzzled our innocent brains, and led us to ask questions at once undesirable and inconvenient. Then we had served up as mental aliment learned disquisitions on the Roman Legion and the Greek Phalanx; and the defects of each system were carefully presented; and we learned what were the Hastati, the Principes, and the Triarii, also the Rorarii, and the Accensi, and a great deal more, that ought to have made up quite equal to the command and disposition of any quantity of battalions and cohorts, if only we could be ever placed in circumstances favourable to the development of military sagacity.

But to return to the forbidden fruit, after which our depraved appetites would perversely hanker: if novels in the mother-tongue were strictly prohibited, translations from the German were regarded only as profitable and laudable studies, and Mademoiselle, who, to do her justice, was an admirable linguist, was kind enough frequently to read for our benefit her own extempore and tolerably spirited translations of sundry and divers German romances. Some of them certainly were intensely metaphysical and transcendental, and many of them were strongly tinctured with neology; and sentiments were occasionally enunciated of so unmistakable a character, that even Julia would open her large lovely eyes to their utmost extent, and telegraph to me her disapprobation and astonishment. These favourite writers of Mademoiselle seemed also rather loose as regarded morals, and their notions of the holy estate of matrimony were, to say the least of it, somewhat objectionable. Still, we enjoyed these readings exceedingly; for while we listened with all due decorum to the crazy philosophy, the strange social ethics, and the doctrines of Kant, mildly diluted with vapourish sentimentality, we knew there was woven in with all this half-incomprehensible, yet poisonous twaddle, a red-hot love-story, and a frequent garniture of ghostly legends, somewhat in the old-fashioned " Castle of Otranto" style.

One day Mademoiselle told us that if we were industrious, and finished our work betimes, she would read to us all the afternoon and evening, Mr. and Mrs. Ward being ten miles away on a short visit. Accordingly, we rose betimes, got our practising over before breakfast, toiled away at our French and German, and prepared our "Lessen on the Terrestrial Globe" with praiseworthy assiduity, and after our early dinner were in a position to profit by our governess's kind intentions.

We all drew up round the schoolroom fire, for the day, though bright and clear, was intensely cold, and we were all provided with needlework, and quite disposed for something extremely thrilling and pathetic. I forget the name of the story which Mademoiselle that afternoon commenced; I only know that as it proceeded Miss Ward looked haughtier and more indignant than was even her wont. I was mystified to the last degree, and Julia evidently thought the whole narration "very queer." Arabella devoured toffey surreptitiously, and sometimes her craunching seriously interfered with the reading. I am not going to tell you, my dear friends, much about the story that was read to us that afternoon by Mademoiselle: there is a certain kind of literature that any one with a conscience will refuse to propagate, even by casual repetition. I will only tell you that our heroine's name was Alette, and I think she lived somewhere about Heidelberg; anyhow, she was always getting herself into scrapes in ruined castles, and losing herself in trackless forests. And Alette had a husband, whom, to her shame, she did not love. Shame? Yes. I know one cannot make one's self love; but shame a thousand times on the woman who desecrates God's holy ordinance of marriage by wedding one whom she does not love. But Alette loved some one else--nice literature, you will say, for young ladies in the schoolroom--and her goose of a husband, I cannot call him anything else, what do you think he did? Why, he pretended to die and be buried, that Alette and her lover might be married!

This may sound very pretty in German, and to German ears; but in plain English, and to plain English understandings, it sounds silly and wicked. And Miss Ward--herself looking forward to an honourable, straightforward English marriage--felt extremely disgusted; and even we, children as we were, though sufficiently interested in the tale, which was altogether "sensational," were convinced that we were listening to what never ought to have been poured into our ears.

Next day I was alone with my cousin Maria, who sometimes deigned to converse with me as though I were her equal, or something approaching to it; and she said, abruptly, "Ellen, how do you like that tale about Alette?"

"Not at all!" I replied, emphatically. "I think Alette was wicked, and her husband silly, though the book makes them out to be something too good for this world."

"The book is utterly disgusting," returned Miss Ward; "and I am glad, Ellen, that you see the matter in its true light. I shall speak to mamma about it as soon as she comes home."

"I am very glad," I replied; and then ensued a confidential talk; and I found that Mademoiselle had offended Maria by speaking of marriage vows as a superstition of the dark ages; and I had to tell how she laughed at the books of Moses, and how she called the Church of Rome a painted--something!--and the Church of England, the same something with all the paint washed off."

The very next day Maria made the threatened disclosures. I was called in to add my testimony. My uncle, for once in his life, was consulted; and he immediately took the matter in his own hands, paid Mademoiselle Bernay a quarter's salary in advance, and desired her to remove herself and her belongings from Thornycroft as soon as possible; and in the meantime our lessons of every kind were suspended.

We were not long without a governess: another French lady, who had remained nine years in one family, and only left because the youngest daughter had finished her education, was recommended from really reliable sources. So Mademoiselle de Lavalle came to live with us, and I may as well say at once that she was as truly pious, trustworthy, and sincere as her predecessor had been sceptical, dishonourable, and untrue. Also she was a gentlewoman, and her talents and acquirements were little inferior to those of Mademoiselle Bernay, whose name was never mentioned in the presence of Mrs. Ward. She felt keenly the deception which had so skilfully been practised upon her, for she plumed herself not a little upon her talent for physiognomy and her general powers of discrimination of character.

We were scarcely comfortably settled with our new governess, when another event befell us--an event which concerned not only our own family, but the entire neighbourhood of Thornycroft. Somebody heard Mr. Graves preach one of his most eloquent sermons, and forthwith offered him a nice fat living in the south of England, where there was little work and plenty of money. To the profound astonishment of nine-tenths of his flock, he instantaneously accepted, and some of them straightway accused him of loving filthy lucre, and nourishing vain and worldly ambitions. I never liked Mr. Graves, but I must say I think no one had any business to make remarks of the kind. He had eleven children, and a delicate wife, to whom a warmer climate had been recommended; and his income being only £300 a-year, and that of the new living in the south £1,000, I think no one had any right to blame him for making the exchange.

Before he went away he preached a farewell sermon, and his bereaved congregation presented him with a silver tea-service, a gorgeous Bible, and a purse containing I know not how many bright shining sovereigns. Moreover, he received embroidered slippers, book marks, French cambric bands, and watch-guards innumerable; and Mrs. Graves was overwhelmed with anti-macassars, wool mats, and similar contributions that might have stocked two or three stalls at a "grand bazaar."

Our new incumbent was a Mr. Elton, a middle-aged gentleman of grave yet comely countenance, and no lack of ability; but his sermons were as different from Mr. Graves' as they well could be, seeing both were of that section of the Episcopal Church commonly called Evangelical.

Very simple, earnest sermons they were--eminently faithful and practical, and graced with an unstudied eloquence that delighted his hearers in spite of themselves, for they had made up their minds not to like him. When solicited by some of his lady-hearers to deliver a course of lectures on the prophetical Scriptures, he replied, with unaffected humility, that he felt himself incompetent to so serious and difficult an undertaking: the study of prophecy demanded such deep research, such an intimate acquaintance with the original text, such strength of mind and godly caution, such consummate prudence, and, above all, a spirit of such child-like simplicity and deepest reverence, that he must decline, at least for some time to come, entering publicly upon so momentous a field of inquiry. In the meantime, however, if prophetical subjects came in due course of exposition, he would take them as they occurred, and say candidly what he believed to be their true interpretation.

My uncle was delighted with Mr. Elton, whether he were in the pulpit or out of it. Mrs. Ward called him "compromising, weak in the faith, and a man of a legal spirit."

But for all that, the church filled, and there was a devout and attentive congregation. Mr. Elton stirred up his people to do as well as to hearken, and all the works of charity commenced by Mr. Graves were zealously carried on, and in many instances on an enlarged and improved scale. New institutions were planted, and took root; there was an adult school on the Sunday, and a sewing-school for the poor women on two evenings in the week, when they were encouraged to bring their humble making and mending, and taught to do it in the neatest and most expeditious way, while Mrs. Elton, after the work was arranged, read to them from some suitable volume. So St. Faith's Church prospered exceedingly, although Mr. Graves was so far away; and, what is still more singular, after a little while he was scarcely regretted; save by a few, among whom my aunt stood first and foremost. We were the gainers in more ways than one: not only was the Sunday teaching clear, earnest, and persuasive, and such as we could all understand and profit by, but Mrs. Ward, caring little about anything Mr. Elton could say, gradually allowed the custom of writing the morning sermon from memory to fall into desuetude; and as I already knew the collects by heart, and had no great difficulty in learning the Epistle and Gospel, if of moderate length, and as I was always ready to increase my store of hymns and sacred poetry, I began to have rather an easy time of it on Sundays.

And so the spring passed away, and the time came for making preparations for our migration to the coast. We were going to a sequestered bathing-place in North Wales, and it was understood that Marshall Cleaton, whose mother was an inhabitant of the Principality, was to join us soon after our arrival. Whether Mrs. Cleaton would accompany him was doubtful; but I quickly discerned, from Maria's manner, that she was not at all desirous of her aunt's presence among us.

It was scarcely the middle of June when we left Thornycroft Hall, and late in the evening of the same day we reached Pen Aber. It was dark when we arrived, as dark as it could be in a June night, for it was past eleven; and we, who had been up and dressed that morning before the clock struck five, were sadly tired. Nevertheless, I felt my spirits rise as I heard the deep voice of the waves on the rocky shore, and caught the shimmer of water rushing down from the heights, and thundering under a bridge over which our road passed. And when I lay down I knew that I rested once more under the shadow of the ancient mountains, the glorious everlasting hills. And when I awoke in the morning, and sat up in bed, there were the great waves tumbling and foaming at the foot of the dark, scarred cliffs, and the sea-birds were skimming and gliding from rock to rock, and on the bosom of the restless deep were broad flecks of sunshine, and lines of shadow. My heart danced within me to see those leaping billows, and those fair-winged birds, glancing like flashes of silver in the slants of vivid sunlight, and those great headlands, with their solitary storm-beaten precipices, lifting up their hoary brows far above the restless sea-water. And then to look on mountains again!--I, who had literally pined among the dead levels of Hackington and Thornycroft! I, who had yearned with a great and unutterable yearning for cloud-crowned hills, and mighty peaks! I, my own happy self, to look on their majestic forms once more!

There was only one drawback to my exceeding satisfaction--they were not my own mountains. O! if only my aunt had thought of taking a house at Battlebarrow;--but then, there was no sea at Battlebarrow--dear, beautiful Battle-barrow--and Arabella was ordered to bathe, and my dear, blue, sweeping river would certainly not do for that.

How delightful it was at Pen Aber! We had glorious weather, and being left a good deal to our own devices were continually out of doors; Mademoiselle accompanied us, and she poured forth a literal flood of treasure in the way of botanical, geological, and conchological information. I became insatiate after knowledge, and I had not to dig for it, for it lay at my feet, and I had only to take it up; even Maria troubled herself about the strata, and the primary and secondary formations, and we both grew to respect the carboniferous limestone, and to speak slightingly of "the stupid, new red sandstone" on which Thornycroft, and indeed all Hackington, rested.

Our house stood at a short distance from the shore, and considerably above it: there were two ways down to the sand; one, a smooth winding road, not too abrupt; and the other a wild thread of a path, running over rocks and broken ground, and involving many a scramble and many a slide ere it ended in a little pebbly cove, that was sheltered from the salt breezes by overhanging cliffs, and low ridges of rock. This cove was my especial haunt; I loved the rude way by which I reached it, and I loved its quiet recesses, where I could sit and look found at the rugged walls, and the blue sky, and the rolling waves that seemed to shut me in, and listen to the gulls' plaintive wailing, and hear the deep sound of the sea--the music of the mighty flood that has poured forth its glorious harmony, now in loudest diapasons, and now in silvery, flute-like chiming, ever since God created the heavens and the earth--the "Te Deum" that was chanted on every shore, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy--the anthem of praise that will never cease till there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and "no more sea." And I used to sit under the rock, watching the ebbing or flowing of the tide, or reading, or thinking of the days that had been, and those that were, and those that were yet to come. And no one ever came to disturb me: my cousins visited me once, but they thought the place dull; they were soon tired of seeing only rock and sky and sea, and they wondered at my caring for it, and named it "Ellen's Cove."

But I loved my cove all the better for its seclusion; and sometimes among the hollows and shingles at its mouth I found lovely tinted shells, and beauteous seaweed, and in the sheltered fissures of the battlement-like cliff, running up into the land, gay-coloured flowers, yellow stone-crop, briar roses, both red and pale, and wild geraniums of the tint we now call "magenta." I never saw any of the country people there; there was nothing to bring them to my solitary retreat;--one path only, besides that which I called mine, led up the rocky sides to the heath above, where there was a beaten track, leading straight to the little town of Llanglas, five miles away, among the slate quarries and the mountains.

One day, when the home atmosphere was not quite so serene as that which brooded so softly over sea and land, I took my book, my old beloved "Faerie Queene," and stole away to my cove, there to read in that delicious seclusion, for the fiftieth time, the beautiful legend of Britomart. I had left Arabella in tears, and Maria in a most evil state of mind; for Bella had spilt a quantity of ink over her newest and most becoming dress, and on the morrow Marshall Cleaton was expected. Sweet was the harmony of the scene without, after the strife and tumult of tongues within. I bounded down the steep rugged path into the little wood below, where the light was golden-green on the bright-hued moss, and on the emerald banks of delicate wood-sorrel; and then I was in my cove, where all was still, and sweet, and fair, and the smooth sea was drawing back, in large waves, from the wet rippled sand.

I sat down with my book, and read one whole canto, and then I laid it on the rock that I called "my table," and began to look for shells, which the ebbing tide had left. They were many and very lovely, and it took a long time to gather them up, and wash them from the sand in the clear pools between the rocks, and dry them--with my pocket handkerchief, of course.

Suddenly I heard the deep bay of a hound, and I looked up, half in astonishment, half in fear. In another second I and my treasures lay prostrate on the shingle, and a great wolf-hound stood over me, evidently much ashamed of his uncourteous behaviour, and quite inclined to apologize as best he might. Where did the great dog come from? Was he the spirit of the lonely cove, where I had never before seen any living thing, save sea-birds, and starfishes, and waddling little crabs? I had gained possession of an old Iliad, and I had been reading "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" surreptitiously, and my head was full of river-gods, and dryads, and naiads, and spirits of flood and fell. And the huge creature looked so weird, as he came suddenly from I knew not where, and stared at mg so solemnly and kindly with his large, soft, human-looking eyes.

But presently I heard a loud, clear whistle, and a voice calling "Gelert, Gelert!" and then some words followed in an unknown tongue, which I supposed was Welsh. I tried to get up, but Gelert was in my way, and I was afraid that he might consider me in the light of a vanquished foe, and resent any attempt I might make towards regaining my normal position; and he was the most tremendous canine creature I had ever encountered.

"Gelert, Gelert! off, sir!" cried a voice close to me, and Gelert withdrew, looking penitent and abashed, and I tried once more to get upon my feet. But this time a strong hand laid hold of mine, and a strong arm encircled my waist, and I stood upright, and face to face with a young gentleman, who was evidently Gelert's owner. This second apparition astonished me more than the first; I had had my cove to myself morning, noon, and evening, till I began to believe that other feet than mine would never reach its quiet beautiful recesses; and the young man who now stood before me, hat in hand, as reverently as if I had been "the king's daughter of Hongrie," and he "the squire of low degree," evidently came from afar, and was no peasant churl of Pen Aber, but a gentleman born and bred. And yet he knew the way to my cove.

"Allow me to apologise on my dog's behalf!" he said in good pure-toned English, not in the unknown accents I had heard him address to Gelert: "I am quite ashamed of his rude behaviour; I really feel as if I had been knocking you down myself. I hope you are not hurt?"

"Not at all!" I replied; and indeed I was not. I was a very little personage, and I fell lightly; but my shells, my beautiful shells, that I had washed and polished with so much care, were strewn about among the pebbles, and my basket had rolled into a tiny silt lagoon. He saw my glance towards it, and my regretful look; and in an instant he comprehended my trouble, and sprang away to the rescue. Then he fell to collecting my scattered treasures, though I begged him not to take so much trouble, assuring him that I could get plenty more after the evening-tide. But he went on hunting among the pebbles, end picking up shells, and I helped him till a very fair portion of the spoil was restored. Then he took out his handkerchief, much larger and finer than mine, and marked in the corner with a pretty-looking crest, and wiped away a streak of green slime on the edge of my basket, and finally swept into it the shells we had jointly recollected, and handed it to me with n graceful reverence, just as if I had boon a princess.

"And now will you tell me," he said laughingly, "how you found your way into this cove? Do you not know that the fairies and the mermaids lived here long ago, and when they deserted it they bequeathed it to me? I call it my cove."

"And I, and all of us, call it my cove," I replied, very much amused, and quite at my ease with the kindly, courteous stranger. But only to think that he and I both claimed the cove! and I wondered whether he and Gelert would want to come there constantly, because then I must needs abandon my beloved haunt.

"That is strange," he said, brightly; "I never saw a human creature here before. I have not been here for two years; and when I first saw you, as I bent over the cliff, I thought it must be one of the fairies come to see if I had arrived. Gelert's uncourteous conduct, however, soon dissipated that illusion, for fairies, I believe, never allow themselves to be knocked down on any pretence whatever; and I do not believe they wear sun-bonnets--do you?"

"No, indeed," I said, laughing; "and I am sure I am no fairy."

"You are the Maiden of the Cove," he replied gravely, "and I am the Knight of the Cove, and Gelert is my squire. Here, sirrah, come and do homage to your liege-lady. Will the maiden extend her hand to her humble servant ?"

I put out my hand unhesitatingly, and yet I was rather afraid of Gelert, for he seemed to know all we were saying; and the squire, if he did not exactly kiss my hand, did as much as a dog could; for he put out his long red tongue and licked it from the wrist to the tips of the fingers: and then he stood by me with a satisfied air, and evidently regarded me as a friend.

He was a noble creature, tall and broad-chested, with a beautiful head, and a sleek dark coat. His master was an equally fine specimen of his kind; and the expression of his face struck me as being good, and gentle, and chivalric; and as I looked at him I thought of Sir Guyon and the Red Cross Knight.

"Do you live here?" was the Knight's next question.

"Here, in the cove?" I asked wonderingly.

"No! not in the cove!" said he, with a merry laugh; "even Gelert and I would find it too rough quarters; though I think I could bivouac in a cave for a night or two; some heather and my plaid ought to make me a good enough bed. But I meant to ask whether you lived at Pen Aber?"

"No, I have been here only a fortnight; we shall go away again when the summer is over."

"And do you come to the cove very often?"

"As often as ever I can; I like it, and no one else cares a bit about it; but, now you are come, I will not disturb you. There is the Druid's Cove, half-a-mile further along the shore."

"Indeed you will not disturb me. Henceforth we will divide the sovereignty of the place, and hold our court together. I suppose you know all the nooks and crannies pretty well?"

"Yes, I think so; I have scrambled up and down where-ever it was not too steep."

"Do you know the great cave? There, look! behind that old stunted elder tree."

"No; I did not know there was a cave there at all, and if I had known it, I could never have got up to it--it is so high, and I see no path."

"But there is one; I will show it to you. Are you surefooted?"

"O yes! like the goats. I used to live in a mountain country before I came to live at Hackington."

"Hackington, indeed! so you live at Hackington, of all places in England? How do you like it?"

"Not at all! There is not a hill so high as that lowest cliff anywhere near it. The town is all red brick and smoky chimneys, and dirty people push against you in the streets. And what they call the country round it is all flat fields and muddy streams, without a single fall, and close-cut hedges. No; I cannot bear Hackington."

He smiled very kindly; and then half to himself, and half to me, repeated--

"Needs no show of mountain hoary,
Winding shore, or deepening glen,
Where the landscape in its glory
Teaches truth to wandering men;
Give true hearts but earth and sky,
And some flowers to bloom and die--
Homely scenes and simple views
Lowly thoughts may best infuse"

Little lady! there is beauty everywhere, if we will but look for it."

The identical observation I had heard more than once from the dear lips that were cold and mute under the stone in Battlebarrow Church! I wondered more and more who the Knight of the Cove could be--one thing I knew, I liked him better than any one I had seen since my father's death. He was not at all like the Thornycroft Hall people, and I esteemed him none the loss for that.

And yet, writing this, I feel self-condemned, for I have no right and no wish to include my kind, generous uncle in the circle of those whom I could not wish any Mend of mine to resemble; and why should I speak censoriously of the lovely little Julia, who grew in grace and beauty month by month. Presently my Knight said, "Come, let me show you the way to the cave--not that path, we must go lower down before we ascend."

Accordingly, I followed my guide, Who, in his turn, seemed to be following Gclert, to whom the place was certainly familiar; and in a few minutes, by a path almost invisible from the bottom of the cove, we reached the older-bush; and stooping down and putting the branches aside, we entered a cave, much larger than any I had hitherto seen. It was quite dry, and, near the entrance, full of a dim, pale green light ; but the recesses of the cavern were dark with shadow; and at the very end it sloped downwards a littler and there was e fissure in the rock above, which showed a clear, bubbling spring, and one or two pale specimens of the hart's-tongue fern, pushing up their tall yellowish fronds to the light, which glimmered through the granite roof.

My companion drew from his pocket a flask, Which he filled with the crystal fluid, and presented to me, saying that the water was the coldest and the best in all that part of the country. I drank, and found it to be, indeed, the most delicious water I had ever tasted. Nay, I have never taken such a draught since. It was cold as the unsunned snow of the Himalaya, and sparkling as diamonds, and clear as--clear as what? I have already mentioned crystal; I think I must adopt Mr. Tennyson's imagery, and he says,--

"Bright as light, and clear as wind."

A sort of pure, colourless champagne it seemed to be, as I raised it again and again to my lips, and drank deep of the sparkling, primeval wine.

"Where does it run to?" I asked, seeing that the limpid fount filled its rocky hollow, but came not over the edge of the natural basin.

"Ah! that I cannot tell you. Perhaps Gelert knows, but he will not tell. I suppose it finds its way through the rock, and filters out somewhere in the glen yonder."

"And runs into one of those little foaming streams," I said.

"Yes, and from the stream into one of the creeks, and so out, away into the great salt sea. Come, let us go down; it is too cold to stay here long. Here is a fern leaf, to keep as a memorial of your visit to the 'Fairies' Spring.'"

"Yes, a scolopendrium," I said, taking it into my hand.

"What do you know of scolopendriums?" he asked, good humouredly. "Who told you its botanical name?"

"Mademoiselle de Lavalle, my cousin's governess, told me; she knows everything about ferns, and sea-weeds, and mosses, and she teaches me a little botany now and then."

"Mademoiselle de Lavalle! Why, she used to be governess to the young ladies at Thornycroft Hall"

"Yes. We are here for the summer," I replied, wondering more and more.

"Well, I ought to beg your pardon, for really I have suspected for some time that I was talking to my cousins' cousin--Miss Ellen Threlkeld."

I assented; I knew now who my Knight was. No, not my Knight, my cousin Maria's--loyal and true, no doubt. How I had thought and dreamed about Marshall Cleaton! and here he was before me in a cave, half-way up the precipitous cliff. How came he to think of visiting the cove before he hastened to the presence of his lady-love?

"They did not expect you till to-morrow," I said, when at length I regained my powers of speech.

"I know they did not, but I left Oxford a day sooner, and altered my plans. Now, I have no idea of troubling the mail, and I am no friend to post-chaises; as a rule, I prefer going on foot. I got into Llanglas late last night, for I stupidly lost my way; and this morning I overslept myself. I know a short cut over the hills, which brings one to the moor, at the head of this glen; and when I felt the salt breezes blowing in my face, and saw the great waves tumbling out there in the bay, I felt that I must just go to the edge of the cliff; and look down upon the shore; and looking down, I espied my old haunt, and on the impulse I began to descend, Gelert going on before; and you know, Miss Threlkeld, in what style we mutually made your acquaintance."

By this time we were again on the descent, and Mr. Cleaton handed me from rock to rock, and led me along the narrow ledge with a care and respect I had not experienced for many a long day. When we reached the cove again, I went up to my table, to re-possess myself of my book and my basket, wondering all the while whether he would now go on his way to the White House, and whether I ought or ought not to accompany him.

lie took up my "Faerie Queene," and opened it. "Do you really like this?" he asked, eyeing me somewhat curiously. I was very little of my age, as I have said before, and I found afterwards that he took me for no more than nine years old, whereas I was really twelve.

"What have you been reading this morning?" he next inquired.

"The first canto of the third book--about Britomart, you know."

"Have you read it before?"

"Yes, often; I have read the book from beginning to end, more times than I can count; I saw the picture of Una and her Lion, and I wanted to know all about it, and my uncle gave me this book."

"And which part do you like best?"

"O, that about the Red Cross Knight; and I like Amoret very well, and about the true and false Florimell; and it is nice to read the chronicle of Briton kings."

"Do you remember how the county of Kent came by its name?"

"Yes--

'But Canute had his portion from the rest,
The which he cald Canutium, for his hyre;
Now Cantium, which Kent we comenly inquyre.'"

"I am sure Mademoiselle must ho well satisfied with her pupil," he said, kindly. "But tell me, Miss Threlkeld, do your cousins read Spenser with as much relish as you do?"

"I think not," was my reply. "Arabella does not like poetry."

"Poor girl! But your eldest cousin, Miss Ward, she reads poetry, I am sure

"Yes, I think so," I replied, faintly. I remembered seeing Maria take up a volume of miscellaneous poems several times; and once she asked me to read aloud Milton's "Il Penseroso;" but I could not honestly aver that she had any great taste for the Muses.

"And which of all the poets that you have rend do you like best?" asked Mr. Cleaton.

"First Spenser and then Homer; but I have only read the Iliad--I wish I had an Odyssey. And I like Sir Walter Scott's exceedingly; but I think the old poetry is better than the new."

"I am not so sure of that. Poetry, if good for anything, is like wine: it is prized according to its age, As I was coming down the cove, half an hour ago, I was thinking of some lines of my favourite poet, and he is quite a new poet, for he is still living, and long may he live and sing! You cannot think how perfectly they harmonized with the scene. Shall I repeat them? I will not occupy your attention long."

"O, please, do!" I replied, delighted at the prospect of a fresh glimpse into the land of song.

In a quiet, low tone, that blended like music with the deep murmur of the receding waves, Mr. Cleaton recited--

"Mariner! mariner! furl your sails,
For here are the blissful downs and dales,
And merrily, merrily carol the gales,
And the spangle dances in bight and bay,
And the rainbow forms and flies on the land
Over the islands free:
And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand;
Hither! come hither, and see:
And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave,
And sweet is the colour of cove and cave,
And sweet shall your welcome be
O listen, listen I your eyes shall glisten When the sharp, clear twang of the golden chords
Runs up the ridged sea.
Who can light on as happy a shore
All the world o'er, all the world o'er?
Whither away? Listen and stay:
Mariner, mariner, fly no more!"

"Do you like that Miss Threlkeld?"

"Yes, that I do. What is it called?"

"It is called 'The Sea Fairies.' Furthermore, they say, by way of alluring the mariners to their haunts--

'Down shower the gambolling waterfalls
From wandering over the lea:
Out of the live-green heart of the dells
They freshen the silvery, crimson shells,
And thick with white-bells the clover-hill swells,
High over the full-toned sea!'"

I held my breath with pleasure. Ah! I was glad to think we were going to live in the same house for some weeks to come. And O if my dear father had but known Mr. Cleaton, and if Mr. Cleaton had but known my father, how they would have loved one another! But it was time we began to turn our faces homewards. Gelert was evidently tired of our chattering and reciting, and he wanted to be on the move; perhaps he thought it a long time since he breakfasted in the little sanded parlour of mine host at Llanglas, and every one knows how appetizing is the combination of sea-breezes and pure mountain air.

Through the little wood we went, with the young purple larch tassels shaking around us, and the moss and the odorous pine leaves and last year's foliage of oak and beech under our feet. Presently we emerged on the higher ground, and there was the White House before us. What would Maria say to see Mr. Cleaton and myself, hand-in-hand, crossing the fields towards the house? But she did not see us; no one saw us till we reached the garden-gate, and there stood Arabella, with her face frightfully disfigured with crying; and when her cousin accosted her kindly, she burst out afresh, and sobbed so hysterically, that he could not but try to soothe her, and inquire the cause of her affliction.

"It's Maria," sobbed Bella; "she's always going on to me. She thinks she's everybody, and I'm nobody, and she's the most ill-tempered thing that ever was. I hate her, that I do!"

Delightful assurance for Maria's betrothed to receive! He looked pained, but said nothing. What, indeed, could he say?

We all went towards the house. Maria lay on the sofa in very decided déshabillé, and catching a glimpse of Arabella's dress as we entered, cried out, "Go upstairs, and wash your face, you stupid simpleton, you everlasting cry-baby!"

But Arabella marched doggedly into the room, and said, "Marshall's come: he's here!"

Maria sprang up, incredulous. But there stood the young gentleman, and he must have heard every word of her amiable, sisterly speech.

In nearly nine cases out of ten the meeting of a betrothed pair is either sacredly tender, or ridiculously absurd; and the re-union of Miss Ward and Mr. Marshall Cleaton was of the latter description. There stood Maria, in her most unbecoming morning wrapper, her long, black hair, all rough and tangled, streaming down her back, her hands stained with strawberry juice, which she was vainly trying to wipe off with a pocket handkerchief that ought to have been sent to the laundress several days before, and her cheeks redder than anything, except a full-blown crimson peony. Opposite to her stood Mr. Cleaton, looking as embarrassed as if he had been caught scolding, en déshabillé; and by his side was Arabella, with a face that might have been stained all over with hot red currant jam, so very peculiar was its hue, and an aspect that evinced her extreme satisfaction with the turn things had taken.

Of course Maria and Marshall shook hands, and inquired after each other's healths, and the general welfare of their respective mammas, and assured each other that it was a remarkably fine day, and that the heat would be insupportable but for the sea-breezes; and then they were evidently at a loss what to say next, and Maria luckily remembered that Marshall must be very tired and very hungry, and that the room intended for him was still in a state of insurrection. This led to an explanation of his premature appearance, and an intimation that his luggage would come on in a cart some time before midnight; and then, to the relief of all parties, Mr. and Mrs. Ward made their appearance, and there was a general salutation and welcome.

Maria took advantage of the entrance of the decanters and biscuits, and bread and butter and cheese, and pale ale--for Mrs. Ward was on hospitable thoughts intent--to escape to her own room, beckoning me to follow her, that I might officiate as lady's-maid. I heard Mr. Cleaton refuse lunch, and then I obeyed with no small trepidation, for I was sadly afraid that I was about to pay the penalty of having spent an hour or more with him in the cove; and, worse still, of having permitted him to make a raid on the White House without giving previous intimation of his approach. But Maria was thinking more about her dress, and the sharp words she had unwittingly used in Marshall's hearing; and she did not for some time ask me any questions about our meeting on the shore.

At length the black hair was reduced to order, and very well it looked, gathered up behind in large smooth coils, as the fashion then was, and hanging down before in long glossy ringlets; the ill-fitting slovenly peignoir was thrown aside, and a handsome silk donned in its stead, and the gold chain and the new lace cuffs were brought out and daintily adjusted, and Miss Ward was dressed for dinner. She had no occasion, however, to wish for a little rouge by way of completion to her toilet, for she had bloom enough for at least four young ladies.

"And now, child, you had better go and make yourself presentable," said Maria, looking in the glass with an air of exquisite complacency; "you must make haste, too, for the first bell has rung some time, and you cannot sit down to dinner in a muddy frock and a sun-bonnet. By the way, what a mess you have made of that thee clean bonnet! Have you been cockle-gathering or mussel-finding, you careless little thing?"

"Neither; Gelert threw me down, and I was close to one of those little pools that the spring-tide leaves, and I splashed myself. I could not help it."

"Gelert! Who is Gelert, pray? I am afraid you go playing with boys down on the shore. Mamma thought you could not possibly get into any mischief if she allowed you to be out of doors by yourself."

"Gelert is not a boy," I returned stiffly; "he is Mr. Cleaton's dog. Mr. Cleaton thought he would visit the cove on his way here; he knows it very well, and likes it; and Gelert came bounding down the rocks, and rushed against me so violently that I was thrown down."

"And how did Marshall find out who you were?" and-Miss Ward fixed upon me her most piercing regard; I felt as if she were looking me through and through, and I blushed scarlet.

"O, he picked me up, and then he began to talk to me, and he showed me some ferns, and I said they were scolopendriums; and he asked me who told me their botanical name, for he called them hart's-tongue; and I said Mademoiselle de Lavalle was my governess, and then he knew I must be your cousin."

"I am afraid you have been a very forward little girl," said my cousin, severely; "I have no doubt Mr. Cleaton is very much disgusted with you. You must cure yourself of that habit of promiscuous chattering, or you will get yourself into scrapes as you grow older. Now go and make yourself fit to be seen; and mind, you are not to speak to Mr. Cleaton unless he speaks to you. I am quite ashamed of you, Ellen."

I ran away with cheeks to match Maria's, feeling dreadfully ashamed of myself, for, now I came to think of it, I had talked a great deal to Mr. Cleaton, and I had said just what came uppermost, and had displayed no reserve whatever. O, dear! suppose he had been thinking all the time what a bold little thing it was in a muddy pink frock and a limp sun-bonnet! But then, he had shown no symptom of disgust, and had talked so nicely and kindly, that I could not help talking again; and he looked so pleasant and so true, that surely he would not make believe to be pleased, while all the time he was secretly "disgusted."

Still I felt some dismay as I reflected on my obvious want of reticence, and I was half inclined to make some excuse, and not go down to dinner; for at Pen Aber we dined all together at three o'clock. But then, I should have to face mes dragons at tea-time, and delay would only increase my embarrassment. So, hastily arranging my hair, and changing my frock, I ran down to try to find Julia, that I might enter the room with her. I happily succeeded, for she was standing at the back hall door, awaiting the ringing of the second bell.

How lovely she looked in her cool, white muslin frock, with her dark curls falling in glossy rings on her ivory neck, and shading the beautiful contour of her rose-tinted cheeks! And then the smile that parted her coral lips, and lighted up her large Oriental eyes, and made her look more like a Pen or a Houri than a mere mortal child of clay! Ah! my beautiful, gentle cousin, little did I think, as I gazed with wonder and delight on her exquisite form and fair child's face, how dark and drear a lot would be hers! There came a time when Julia was almost the dearest thing on earth to me. Could I have looked forward through the shadowy vista of coming years--could a magic mirror have been uncurtained before me, what should I have seen?

Not "the sweet green fields of Wales"--not its restless, ever-changing sea, its proud, dark mountains, and its glorious streams--not my own lovely northern home, on the banks of the blue sweeping river. No, nor the dull, formal precincts of Thornycroft Hall. What then?

A sea of silver, a sky of intensest azure, a large, bright moon, looking down upon olive groves, and orange-bowers, and purple clusters of the vine--on the dim, distant hills of the Abruzzi--on "temple and tower," grey, beauteous ruins of the majestic past. And two women--lone sojourners in the land of strangers--one passing away to the world where wrong and grief may never come, one weeping to think that the earth was so fair, so bright, and life so sad, so pale!

But I am anticipating sadly: I must leave for the present those pensive memories of the sunny Italian land, and come back to Pen Aber, and to little Julia, in her short frock and coral necklace, and to the dinner-bell, clanging so furiously that I am sure it must have startled all the nervous fish in the sea. There was no help for it now; we must go in immediately; for it was a solemn ordinance of Thornycroft Hall, transplanted for the nonce to Pen Aber, that at the very first sound of the second bell all the juveniles of the family should bestir themselves, and take their seats, with due order and decorum, before the appearance of the elders.

So Julia and I, hand-in-hand, walked straightway to the dining-room, intending to take our usual places, one on each side of Arabella; but Marshall Cleaton was there before us, regarding the specialities of a fishing-boat through a pocket-telescope. He had not yet seen Julia, and he sprang towards her with an exclamation of wonder and delight, and kissed her affectionately, and called her "his own pretty little coz." Then he began to tell her what a glorious morning he had had in the cove with Gelert and me, and he wondered she did not like gathering shells, as well as her cousin; and while he was holding forth, and playing with Julia's soft glossy curls, Maria came into the room, evidently armed for conquest. She was certainly not pleased to find us both on such good terms with her betrothed; had we been coquettish damsels, far advanced in our teens, she could scarcely have watched us with keener annoyance and more thorough suspicion. She gave me a look of warning, that was intended to remind me of our conversation at dressing-time, and I blushed furiously, for at the same moment I saw my aunt looking at me rather sternly; and instantaneously I felt convicted of unknown misdemeanours, and my sensations under this double fire were far from agreeable. Nevertheless, I felt well assured that I had not disgusted Mr. Cleaton by any audacity of speech and behaviour, and that was some consolation.

Now, I thought, I shall see what real lovers are like; I had never met with any before in my own rank of life, and my ideas of courtship in the upper circles of society were principally derived from Mrs. Jackson's interminable and somewhat discursive stories of my Ladies Blanche and Evelyn, and their innumerable suitors. So I watched the pair on the opposite side of the table with peculiar and secret interest, but I saw nothing to reward me for my pains. The gentleman ate roast lamb with an appetite, and evidently relished his green peas, freshly gathered that morning; the lady looked more amiable than was her wont, and refused mint-sauce and young potatoes. There was nothing else to be remarked during the first course, and the second was like unto it. Cheese also was partaken of in the ordinary way; but the dessert afforded a little variety, for Marshall sugared Maria's strawberries, and persuaded her to drink Médoc instead of Sauterne; and she mourned the absence of a certain case of sparkling Moselle, entirely on his account. There was little conversation during dinner. Mrs. Ward gave a pathetic account of Mr. Graves' farewell sermon, and set forth her objections to Mr. Elton's doctrine; and Mademoiselle made a few witty and brilliant remarks on the state of society at Pen Aber. I think Arabella enjoyed herself the most; she had recovered her equanimity, and revelled in trout, and lamb, and peas, and young potatoes, and custard-pudding, and red currant and raspberry tart.

In the cool of the evening, when everybody else was out of doors, I put on my bonnet and went into the garden. I longed to go to my cove, but I fancied Marshall would take Maria thither. I wanted to get down to a certain strip of sand, where the prettiest shells were to be found; but looking down from the garden terraces, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Mademoiselle pacing backwards and forwards under the rocks; and Julia and Arabella, I knew, were on my favourite bench under the fir-trees, and I was not in a mood for company. Where should I betake myself?

The White House stood, as I told you, on a rocky eminence, considerably above the shore; the garden extended to the very edge of the wild slope, and then came bowery walks and rude terraces cut out of the wooded cliff, and leading from level to level, almost to the bottom of the rock, which, however, stood up sheer and bare thirty or more feet above the shingle. There was a certain grotto in one of these winding paths where I thought I should like to pass an hour, reading another canto of Britomart; but I could not see the sun set thence, so I strolled on till I came to a rugged, stunted oak-tree, the roots of which, swelling up in mossy mounds, presented an alluring resting-place. There I threw myself down, casting off my bonnet, and tucking my feet nicely under me; and there I read, and watched the broad waves grow brighter and brighter, as the glorious sun sank to the edge of the horizon.

I had not read long before I heard voices on the other side of the tree, coming nearer and nearer, and then I became aware that I was sitting at the back of the grotto, and that I could not leave my present position without encountering the speakers--one of whom was certainly my cousin Maria. I hoped they would take the little path that led up to the higher walks; but no, on they came, straight into the grotto, where they seated themselves, to my intense discomfiture; for I dared not say that I was within hearing, and yet I knew I ought not, and indeed I did not wish, to listen to their private conversation. So I sat perfectly still, and tried to read. In vain I endeavoured to fix my attention on the page before me; I saw the words--

"And now faire Phoebus gan decline in haste
His weary wagon to the westerne vale;"

and I tried to feel how well they accorded with the scene and the hour, but it would not do. I heard. Maria telling Mr. Cleaton that the heat was oppressive, and that she never felt quite well in hot weather; and Mr. Cleaton replying that he was sorry to hear it, and that he enjoyed the summer months excessively. Then there was a brief silence, and I heard Maria's fingers tapping a tune on the back of her seat. Again I read most sedulously:--

"Beside the same a dainty place there lay,
Planted with mirtle trees and laurells greene,
In which the birds song many a lovely lay
Of Gods high praise"--

"Your cousin Ellen is a very nice little girl," said Mr. Cleaton.

Why did I not get up and show myself? But every moment increased my difficulty.

"Mamma thinks her a very artful child," replied Maria coldly. "She is good-natured, I think, and Mademoiselle praises her for attention to her lessons; but she has a violent temper, and she is so well aware of her frequent delinquencies that she colours and looks guilty if one only happens to catch her eye."

"Colouring is not always a sign of guilt, but rather of extreme sensitiveness," said Mr. Cleaton.

I was colouring now with something more than confusion. I could scarcely refrain from stamping with indignation.

Mr. Cleaton resumed:--"I should not have thought her deceitful; she seems to me one of the frankest, nicest little things in the world. We had quite a pleasant morning in the cove, I assure you."

"O, I dare say!" I felt Maria's sneer, though I could not see it. "Ellen can talk fast enough when it suits her purpose; she is sadly forward; she quite forgets her age and position; but then, poor child, she has been most carelessly brought up--she had no advantages of any kind before she came to us; you cannot imagine how ignorant she was, her education quite neglected--left entirely to servants and low people, I believe."

"Indeed! she did not give me the idea of a child left to the training of inferiors. And I must own her tastes surprised me; she was reading 'The Faerie Queene'--not an ordinary child's book, you know--and she really seemed to have read it with close attention, and full appreciation of its beauties."

"O! it is one of her peculiarities to be fond of books she cannot possibly understand. It is papa's fault; he humours her a great deal, and she has wit enough to perceive that she curries favour with him by pretending to be passionately devoted to one of his own pet authors--Sir Philip Sidney, or whoever he may be."

"Edmund Spenser wrote 'The Faerie Queene,'" said Mr. Cleaton, gently; "Sir Philip Sidney was the author of the 'Arcadia.'"

"Ah, well," returned Miss Ward, crossly; "it does not matter which; I always confuse the two; they were contemporaries, I think."

"They were." Again there was an awkward silence. My heart was beating so loudly that I was afraid it would be heard by my friends in the grotto. How true it is that listeners never hear any good of themselves! To be sure, I was, in some sort, an involuntary listener; but then I ought to have had sufficient moral courage to extricate myself at the outset; weakness, like wickedness, generally brings one to grief; and I knew, as I sat there hating Maria and trembling with passion, that I was weak--and, with my vehement anger towards my slandering cousin, was mingled hearty contempt of my own conduct.

"What a lovely girl Julia promises to be!" was Mr. Cleaton's next remark. He was evidently tired of discussing my character, and wished to change the subject.

"I think she is at her best now," replied Maria; "she falls off in looks: handsome children seldom grow up to be handsome men or women."

"But, really, I think Julia will prove an exception--she has such exquisite features, and her complexion is really celestial."

"They will not grow up with her," persisted Miss Ward; "two years ago she had a much brighter colour than she has now. Those delicate lilies and roses never stand, you know."

Mr. Cleaton could not say--what I am sure he thought--that Julia's colour was still quite deep enough for beauty; for such a remark would have seemed a reflection on the damask roses of his betrothed's bonnie cheeks. Again unsuccessful, he turned to another subject. "Maria"--and his voice softened--"I think, I hope my mother will be here in a few days; she will quite enjoy being among so many young people again, and I am anxious to lose as little of her society as may be."

"I hope she will come," responded Maria; but there was no truth in her voice.

Mr. Cleaton continued:--"I sometimes think no man on earth is blessed with a mother like mine. Her innate kindness and thorough unselfishness, her perfect truth, her fortitude, her angelic patience, her just discrimination, her nice perceptions, and, above all, her pure and unaffected piety, combine to render her the loveliest and best-beloved of her sex."

Miss Ward uttered something like assent; but she made no remark: perhaps she thought she was peculiarly unfortunate, and Marshall peculiarly unlover-like in thus celebrating the praises of other people in preference to her own; she forgot that a devoted son almost always ensures an excellent husband.

Marshall went on:--"I hope you will love my mother dearly, Maria; I always think Tennyson must have had her in his mind when he wrote 'Isabel.' They are intimate, you know--Tennyson and my mother. You know 'Isabel'?"

"Yes--no. I forget: there are so many poems about pattern ladies."

"Ah! you would never forget 'Isabel.' You must read it before my mother comes. O! I recollect; I have the book in my pocket; let me read it to you now."

I listened, and drank in every word. Marshall read so well, and I thought how nice it would be for Maria to have a husband who would read to her. I have always thought that to sit down comfortably to your sewing, and listen to good reading--especially if the words flowed from beloved lips--is one of the most perfect luxuries that a woman can enjoy. But was Marshall's mother really like this exquisite portraiture of "perfect wifehood and pure lowlihood?" I did hope she would come to Pen Aber very soon; I did so want to see and to know a good, kindly, noble woman. Was it fancy, or did Mr. Cleaton lay a certain stress on two lines, that I always remembered afterwards--

"Sweet lips, whereon perpetually did reign
The summer-calm of golden charity?"

"We must be going in," said Maria, when he closed the book. "Mamma will be looking for me."

I heard them rising; I heard the rustling of Maria's rich silk, as she swept out of the grotto; and then I heard Mr. Cleaton say, "Let us take this path."

"No," replied Miss Ward, "there is no road: the path turns the corner, and ends abruptly at the back of the grotto."

"Let us just turn it, however," pleaded the gentleman. "I think we should see the bay; and those soft, ruby clouds must cast a glorious reflection."

Horror of horrors! If they turned the corner they would see something else besides the crimsoned sea and the rosy clouds. I felt sick, cold, faint. I rose from my cramped position; but my knees trembled, and would scarcely bear my weight. O! if the solid rock would only open and swallow me up! O! if I could only be changed into a shrew or a field-mouse, or a dear little rabbit, with a white turned-up tail, like happy people used to be in the mystic days of old! O! if I had but Gyges' ring!

One wild thought of leaping from the mound and down the smooth face of the rock below crossed my mind; but it was only a thought: thirty feet sheer, and rough granite at the bottom, did not present a remarkably safe mode of descent, and I was not quite desperate enough for suicide, or even for the risk of broken limbs. All this passed through my dizzy brain with electric rapidity; in less than half a minute the rustling silk swept the very bush at my side, and Mr. Cleaton and my cousin stood before me. Pity me, dear friends; for you can imagine what a convicted criminal I felt myself to be.

Yes a self-convicted culprit, I stood before my cousin and Mr. Cleaton; and sea and sand and shingle and rock and tree and sky seemed wildly swimming round me, as I stood awaiting the thunders of Miss Ward's displeasure. They came quickly enough, and far exceeded even my terrified anticipations: Maria was not in amiable mood, and the surprise was too sudden and the habit of scolding too inveterate to afford any opportunity of controlling her wrath, of postponing her denunciations to a more convenient period.

"YOU here! you here!! YOU here!!!" she exclaimed, in the natural tones of her sharp, shrill voice--she had spoken so gently, for her, during her conversation in the grotto. "Did I not tell you, Marshall, what that child was? A little artful, designing, sly impostor, with her 'Faerie Queenes,' and her ferns, and her flowers! You see now for yourself what she is. She must have been here when we came, and she has been listening to every word we said. A little mean-minded, dangerous spy!" She stopped from literal want of breath, possibly also from exhausted powers of eloquence. I stood still, not blushing now, but white with shame, and misery, and terror, and a sense of unjust judgment. Weak I had been, miserably, palpably weak; and my weakness had made me in spite of myself dishonourable; but I had not hidden myself there of malice prepense, as Maria unhesitatingly alleged. I had felt no desire whatever to intrude upon their private conversation; it was a foolish, reprehensible fear, an unworthy want of courage, and not a contemptible curiosity, that had placed me in the very equivocal position in which I had unhappily been surprised.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself, you good-for nothing little thing?" asked Miss Ward, grasping my shoulder as she spoke. I felt that her hands were cold with excitement; as for myself, a clammy chillness had spread itself over my whole person.

"I couldn't help it," I gasped out: "indeed I could not!"

"You could not help hiding yourself for unworthy purposes? For shame, for shame, Ellen Threlkeld! What a sad untruthful child you are!"

She gave me a slight push as she spoke, and, already dizzy and faint with emotion, I stumbled against the twisted roots of the tree, and fell heavily. For the second time that day, Marshall Cleaton raised me from the ground, and inquired kindly whether I was hurt. I made no reply, I could not; but I sat down on the mound where my book still lay, and cried passionately. And Maria stood before me, upbraiding me more and more for my baseness, and bidding me rise and go into the house without further ado.

"Are you going?" she said at length, perceiving that I did not attempt to move: her voice was low, but tremulous with anger.

The spirit of resentment suddenly laid hold upon me: I felt bitterly the injustice of her reproaches, and the remembrance of her unkindly remarks in the grotto was still fresh in my memory. For the moment, the fear that had overmastered me was quelled, the habit of subjection was broken through, and taking my hands from my face, all streaming as it was with tears, and now blazing and quivering with passion, I exclaimed: "No! I will not go till I choose! And you know, Cousin Maria, that I did not hide myself here, that I might listen to your conversation: I did not know you were coming till I heard your voice close at hand; and then I was afraid to get up, and go away. Yes; you need not sneer; I was afraid, and afraid of you! Everybody is afraid of you, you have such a cruel tongue, and such a wicked, spiteful temper! But I will never be afraid of you again--no, never! I am a great deal better than you are, and I despise you--with all my heart, I despise you!"

And so I raged on, reckless and heated, and Maria stood like one transfixed. Had not Mr. Cleaton been there, I think she would have beaten me. But I had passed the Rubicon, and I cared not how far I went: I knew I had already incurred terrible pains and penalties, so I determined that I would not be punished for a light offence; and I felt a grim satisfaction in making the case as bad as it could be. I, hurled back at Maria every accusation; I gave scorn for scorn, and insult for insult; and Marshall vainly strove to interpose his mediation. We were so carried away by our passion that we did not hear Mrs. Ward approaching; she came up, however, in time to hear the conclusion of one of my hottest, bitterest tirades against Maria in particular, and against herself and the household of Thornycroft Hall in general.

For a moment she remained dumb with angry astonishment, and my wild, furious words died away in incoherent murmurs: the next moment she was shaking me violently.

"You little viper!--you wicked, ungrateful girl!" she exclaimed when she had shaken nearly every particle of sense out of my reeling brain; "how dare you speak in this way? how dare you speak of me, your aunt, your benefactress, your only friend, in this shameful style? Are you mad, Ellen?"

I held my hand to my forehead, and tried to think--perhaps I was mad. Yes, I was mad with impotent wrath, with a wild, burning desire to wreak my vengeance on something or somebody. But I said nothing, simply because I could not: a whole tornado of words was struggling for utterance; but I could say no more, and I sank again on the mound from which, in my fierce anger, I had unconsciously risen. Then my aunt turned to her nephew, and apologized for what had taken place, declaring that I had been to her one continual source of misery and anxiety ever since I came to Thornycroft Hall, and adding that it was her only consolation to reflect that it was no child of hers; for, had such been the ease, she must have died long ago of a broken heart.

After which assurance she made me rise, and go immediately into the house. I obeyed, not because the spirit of resistance was quelled, but because I was too much exhausted to struggle any longer, and I knew that, sooner or later, I must succumb. I gave one glance at Mr. Cleaton as I passed him; he looked grave and thoughtful; but his eyes were fixed on some distant object, far out at sea, and I could not guess what judgment he had passed upon me. My aunt drove me before her, and when we came to the hall-door, there was my uncle, peacefully smoking his evening cigar among the roses. He took his cigar from his lips, and regarded us both with blank amazement, as, nearly breathless, we reached the portico.

"Eh, dear?" and what's the matter now?" asked Mr. Ward, looking extremely sorry at these indications of domestic tempest. "Why, it's not Arabella! What have you been doing to get yourself into trouble, Ellen?"

I was in no condition to explain, and I held my peace, while Mrs. Ward descanted largely upon my wickedness, insolence, ingratitude, and baseness of disposition; and Maria thereupon making her appearance, the whole tale came out; and as I really had been found behind the grotto, and had overheard a conversation which it was not intended that I should hear, and as I really had expressed my contempt and aversion towards Maria and her mother in pretty plain, Unmistakeable English, and had moreover put myself into a raging, frantic passion, there was very little that could be actually gainsaid had I been at all in a condition to defend myself. It is astonishing how far even a pennyweight of truth goes in a pound of falsehood. And all they said in this case was true, with a single exception. My uncle looked at me very sorrowfully, and that cut me to the heart: he only said, "Did you really say such naughty things, Nellie?" I sobbed out an affirmative, and crept upstairs in an agony of grief and remorse. I wanted to be alone--O, how I longed to be alone! but my aunt followed me to my room, and she shut the door after her, and bolted it, saying that she must have some very serious conversation with me.

What that conversation was I cannot record, for it made no impression on me; I only know she persisted in questioning me again and again about my motive for wishing to overhear Maria's conversation with Mr. Cleaton, and again and again I asseverated my innocence, and entreated her to believe that I was not guilty of any dishonourable design or desire; that I wanted to get away out of hearing, but did not dare--did not like to let myself be seen.

"Did not dare!--did not like!" returned Mrs. Ward, in a tone of withering scorn. "You need not trouble yourself to devise such false, foolish excuses in my family; we are not devoid of common sense; let us have no more prevarication."

For a whole weary hour--till the last gleam of golden light faded from the sea and from the hills, till the shore was wrapped in gloom, and till the stars came out, one by one, in the blue, silent sky, Mrs. Ward. continued her "serious conversation," and by turns admonished, entreated, inveighed, denounced, and threatened. Her words sounded to me like a pitiless weary wind, that goes on blowing from the north-east day after day.

At last she said she thought she must keep me in her house no longer; home discipline was too mild for a character like mine; I must be sent to a strict school to learn meekness and obedience and truthfulness, and to learn, also, how to appreciate the advantages I now so wickedly despised. She forbade me to speak to my cousins when they came up to bed, and added, as she left the room, that I was to consider myself in disgrace for the remainder of the holidays.

With this sentence she went away, and I was left alone at last in the dim twilight, and I could lie on my bed and bury my head in the pillow, and sob and cry and gasp to my heart's content. I knew I had been very wicked, for I had felt so deep a hatred towards Maria, that I would willingly have committed a crime if only I might wreak my vengeance upon her; and even now my poor heart throbbed with cruel sense of injustice and pain, and it was full of bitter thoughts and mad rebellion. O, the misery I endured that night! no excess of bodily suffering could have been worse.

By-and-by, Arabella and Julia came up to bed, and I remembered that I was not to speak to them; I rose silently, and began to undress. Julia came up to rue, without a word, and threw her arms round me, and kissed me fondly, while the bright tears stood in her glorious dark eyes. Arabella said plainly that Maria was more hateful than ever, and that she would take my part, in spite of everybody; and in proof thereof she had brought me some supper in her pocket--a small tartlet, a slice of cheese without bread, and a crab's claw. Poor, kind Bella, she could imagine no fate more terrible than that of being sent to bed supperless.

When I rose next morning my head was aching violently, and I felt giddy and faint. My troubled sleep, broken by miserable dreams, had done me little good; and when I went to the glass to arrange my hair I saw that my eyes were frightfully swollen, my cheeks pale and puffy, my eyelids purple and rigid, my whole physiognomy the reverse of handsome. I felt very much ashamed of myself--ashamed of my imputed meanness, and of my actual weakness; ashamed of the raging passion into which I had fallen; ashamed of my ugly countenance; ashamed, miserably ashamed, of meeting the eye of Mr. Marshall Cleaton. How was I to appear at breakfast? How was I to sit down, the observed of all observers, the convicted miscreant of the grotto-walk? Again and again I washed my face, and bathed my eyes, but all the waters of Pen Aber could not have washed away the traces of last night's tears and passion. In vain I tried to shade my heavy eyes, and my swollen cheeks, by bringing my hair unduly forward; it only made me look "like an owl in an ivy-bush." And at length I gave up attempting to mend matters, and sat down in a state of desperation and resigned misery to await the usual summons to morning prayers.

I need not have troubled myself. While I listened for the dreaded peal, a message arrived from my aunt--"Miss Threlkeld was to breakfast in the young ladies' sitting-room." I went accordingly to the room devoted to the use of Mademoiselle and her pupils, and there I seated myself, with a mingled sense of relief and disappointment, and awaited the appearance of my breakfast. It came in due time; the coffee rather muddy and cold, and the bread and butter served with more regard. to quantity than quality. There was sufficient for half-a-dozen hearty people, and that morning my appetite was unusually poor and capricious. I could have eaten a little, very little, bit of delicious frizzled ham, and just one thin strip of toasted bread. But I could not devour a plateful of hastily and scantily-buttered hunches; my utmost endeavors would not even make an impression on the mass of solid wheaten food sent up for my sole and separate consumption. I knew who cut those hunches. Dear reader, they were not slices, or pieces, or even, as Jane Eyre hath it, planks of bread and butter, but great, clumsy, stale, undeniable hunches! That Brobdingnagian pile of bread and butter was Miss Ward's achievement. Did Mr. Cleaton see her cut hunch after hunch and pile them up, and send them me? What a cormorant I must seem! "A very nice little girl," forsooth. Ah! he thought so at eight o'clock last night, but now he probably judged me as the rest. I was mean, curious, deceitful, madly passionate, and horribly ungrateful; and now he would imagine that I was also a glutton.

Then I wished Marshall Cleaton had never come to Pen Aber; I was comparatively happy till he came; but ever since he greeted Maria at the dining-room door I had been in trouble of one kind or another. If he had but kept away--but then I should be sorry never to have known him. Then I thought of my dear old home under the shadow of the Westmoreland hills--that home where the arms of love encircled me, where injustice, unkindness, and cruel provocation never came.

Ah, me! my father, could you see your poor little Ellen now, so sad, so solitary, so unloved, would you know her again? Would you recognize in that white, swollen, tear-stained face the frank, clear, joyous countenance of the child who used to find the happy day too short for all her happiness in the humble, pleasant vicarage of Battlebarrow? "O! papa, papa! I am so lonely, so sad! let me come to you. No one cares about me; I am not wanted in this world; let me lie by your side, by you and mamma. O papa! dear, dear papa!"

I pushed away my untasted breakfast, and, laying my head on the table, I cried bitterly, thinking of the beloved past, and the hated present, and the dreaded gloomy future: and hearing all the while, as in a dream, the merry voices is the room beneath, and then in the garden among the strawberry-beds, which were just then in their prime, and a call for baskets, and an injunction to gather none that were not fully ripe.

How long I remained in that position I know not: the voices died away as they receded towards the rock-terraces; the day began to grow oppressively hot, and my headache was excruciating: once, when I raised it suddenly, I could have shrieked with the sharp, shooting agony in my temples. Suddenly I felt a hand on my head, and in the same instant I was conscious of the approach of something fragrant. I looked up, with difficulty repressing the cry of pain that rose to my lips. It was Marshall Cleaton, with a little basket of red ripe strawberries in one hand, and a half-blown rose in the other. I sat still, not daring to look in his face, for I felt humbled and ashamed, as indeed I had cause to be.

"Ellen," he said, cheerfully, "I have brought you some strawberries, and a bonnie rose to fasten in your sash. Why, you have not touched your breakfast yet. Do you know it is past ten o'clock?"

I was glad--silly child that I was--that he should know that I had not consumed that huge pile of bread and butter.

"You must eat," he said, kindly, but decidedly, "or you sill be ill. Had you any supper last night?"

"No," I whispered, in a thick, nasal tone; my crying had induced all the unpleasant results of violent influenza.

"Then you have already fasted fifteen hours, and at your age, and agitated as you have been, that is quite too long: you must eat, my child."

Had he said I must leap out of the window I should have obeyed. I drew towards me my cold coffee, and the despised hunches; but the effort to taste the food turned me sick and faint. For the first time I looked up at him--pitifully. He saw how it was, and, without a word, he removed my cup and plate, and placed them on a side table, and then went out of the room, saying he should be back in a minute. The minute I occupied in swallowing down a legion of sobs, blowing my nose, wiping my eyes, and wondering how Arabella lived through so many attacks of violent and prolonged weeping.

Mr. Cleaton soon returned with a cup of milk. "See," he said, "what a clever young man I am. I found my way to the kitchen, and softened the heart of an irate-looking woman, who was making a beehive of shrimps, and begged a cup of new milk. It is for you: I think with the help of the strawberries you can manage to take it; you will feel better when you have broken your fast, little lady."

"But my aunt," I objected, "does she know? If she finds me eating strawberries she will be so angry."

"Did she desire you not to eat strawberries? because if she did, of course you must not eat them, even to please me."

"No; but I am in disgrace."

"I know it; but there is no law of the Principality forbidding a person in disgrace to eat strawberries, and, as a true-born Welshman, I assure you there is no reason whatever why you should not immediately cat these. Let me see you begin."

"Where are they?"

"Do you mean your aunt and cousins? They are gone down the rock, and by this time they have missed me, and are looking for me through the walks--I have treated them to an impromptu game of hide-and-seek."

Finding there was no immediate danger of invasion, I tried my strawberries and milk, and found that I could eat them, and the more I ate the better they were. When I laid down my spoon at last I thought they were excellent, and I felt much better.

"And now," said Mr. Cleaton, "I want to know why you were so naughty last night?"

My countenance fell, my eyes sought the carpet. At last I said, "I couldn't help going into a passion."

"But you should help it. I own you were very much tried; but goodness very much consists in resisting temptation; there is but little virtue in doing right when we can scarcely do anything else. And, when all is said and done, there is no excuse for being in a passion. But why did you place yourself in so equivocal a position? I am quite sure you were not hiding that you might overhear our conversation."

"Indeed and indeed I was not. I had no thought of such a thing. But I did not like to disturb you; I could not go away without showing myself, and every minute I stayed made it worse, and I hoped you would soon go."

"You ought to have got up and gone away," he returned, gravely. "Never be afraid of doing that which is right and honourable. You must cultivate moral courage. Do you know what that is?"

I thought a little, then I said, "Yes, it is the courage that makes us do right things, when they are very difficult and very painful."

"Just so," he replied--

"'To live by law,
Acting the law we live by, without fear;
And, because right is right, to fellow right.'

But you will hardly understand that; and I am sure no one ever followed right simply for right's sake, of his own unaided strength. You must pray, Ellen, that God, for Jesus Christ's sake, will enable you to resist temptation, to overcome evil with good. You cannot do it of yourself, my child, neither can I; but strength may be had for the asking--there is the comfort."

"Do you ever do wrong?" I asked, wonderingly.

"Indeed I do," he replied, emphatically. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. All have wandered away from their Home, from their true Source of joy and peace. But. Ellen, you know the way, the one way back again."

Yes, I knew it well, for that lesson had been taught me long ago; and I answered, "The way is Christ."

"Yes; and remember, whatever you may hear, there is no other way; and for His sake, and because He loves you so well, you must struggle with your naughtiness. Now, goodbye, my child. Do not trouble yourself any more about last night's mistake; but do not let it occur again, for weakness always prepares the way for sin, and sin is what you cannot indulge in if you love our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I must go back to your cousins; it is too ungallant to keep them hunting about any longer. If you take my advice you will get a good sleep, and then go down to your cove and watch the tide coming in or going out, as the case may be. There is nothing like a good sea-breeze for blowing the cobwebs out of one's brains."

And picking up my soaked and very unpresentable pocket-handkerchief, which I had dropped at his feet, he handed it to me as politely as if I had been a grown-up young lady, and again bidding me a kind adieu, ran down-stairs, two steps at a time, humming one of his favourite snatches of song as he went.

Mr. Cleaton's visit cheered and comforted me very much, and after a little meditation, I regained sufficient energy to go to my bedroom, where I performed another series of ablutions, brushed my hair, and provided myself with another pocket-handkerchief. And while I was thus occupied, I heard voices again in the garden beneath, and, looking from my window, descried my aunt and her daughters coming up from the rock terraces. Maria was leaning rather affectedly on Mr. Cleaton's arm; she was talking very fast, and looking very handsome, in spite of her peony cheeks. I fervently hoped she would never know how it came to pass that I bad breakfasted on strawberries and new milk. As they came near the house I could hear them all speaking about some excursion that was in contemplation, and it ended in orders being given to have the carriage ready, and a hamper of provisions packed, in an hour's time. My uncle was standing in the verandah immediately under my window, and I heard him say, "Is poor Nelly to go?" Mrs. Ward made answer, "No, my dear, my niece Ellen is not to go. I will not encourage her, or allow others to encourage her, in her naughtiness. You are much too indulgent to her; she cannot bear petting or being taken notice of, as I have often told you. She is a pert, forward little thing."

I knew that Marshall Cleaton was there; would he put in a word, just one little word, on my behalf? Would he try to qualify this unkind assertion? I listened, but it was not his voice that I heard next; it was Miss Ward's, remarking that I was, "without exception, the most conceited and self-opinionated little mortal that ever wore short frocks." A minute afterwards the party dispersed, and I heard Arabella tumbling upstairs, in her usual clumsy fashion, and Julia coming at the same time, singing merrily one of her own peculiar bird-like "songs without words." They entered the room, and Julia stole up to my side, and threw her arms round me, and kissed me, as she had done on the preceding evening; and we sat down together on the side of my bed, and rocked ourselves to and fro, in true nursery-comforting fashion. My sweet little cousin, how inexpressibly precious were her mute, tender caresses! how softly and warmly her crimson lips touched mine, all colourless, and parched, and fevered! and how her arms were folded round me, so gently, yet so firmly! How her beautiful face looked lovingly and pityingly into mine, as I lay, or rather reclined, in her embrace, with my aching head on her bosom!--for she was now taller than I, and she drew me towards her as if she had been a woman grown, and I a little, weary, sorrow-laden child, as indeed I was.

Ah, Sympathy, how inexpressibly sweet thou art! Sweet are the pitying accents of a loving mother to the terrified babe who wakes up in his cot, with silence and darkness around him; sweet the same dear voice to the little child, whose lips are quivering and whose eyes are overflowing under some tiny wrong, or for some puny disaster; sweet to the maiden and to the youth, to the stalwart man and to the grave matron, to those who are buffeted about on the rough tide of this world's ocean of life, and to those whose joys and sorrows are passing away for ever, under the chill grasp of Death, is the precious voice of true and heartfelt sympathy. And sweetest of all to know, to feel, that when all human affections fail, when all earthly cisterns are dried up, when we look in vain for one "kindred spirit" to mingle with ours the deepest feelings of our nature, there abideth still the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother--the Friend who knows more of our secret care and grief than even we ourselves--the Friend who underwent all sorrow, temptation, and loss, that throughout all time He might sympathize with His own beloved ones, whom none can pluck out of his hand, because they are his own, and bought with his own precious blood. Well may we say,--

"Abide with me, fast falls the eventide:
The darkness thickens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!

Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings,
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea;
Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me!

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eves,
Shine through the gloom, and point mc to the skies;
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee:
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!"

Even so, "in life, in death," Lord Jesus, abide with us, Thy sorrowing, erring children.

But in those sad days I felt not thus; nor yearned even for any sympathy beyond that which I could receive from those around me; and Arabella, too, had her mite of consolation to offer, but it was quite of another character, and developed itself in a peculiarly substantial, not to say ludicrous fashion: witness the supper so kindly abstracted the night before, for my special benefit. She came forward now, and seated herself opposite us, on her own bed, at the same time drawing something excessively greasy from that favourite receptacle, her pocket. "See here," she cried, "and I've forgotten it all this while. I saw the horrid breakfast Maria sent you; and we had eggs, and ham, and bacon, and pigeon pie on the table. Yes, and watercress--but that was not good, rather out of season I fancy-- and honey in the comb, and potted trout, and a lot of things. And the nasty thing! she took care you should not have anything but that disgusting bread and butter and thick coffee, just come to the grounds. And she told me this morning that I was uglier than ever, and she thought it a great pity there were no Protestant nunneries for young ladies of good family who were too plain ever to expect to marry. Go into a nunnery, indeed! let her go herself. For I know, after all, Marshall will never have her; at least, I shall pity him if he does."

There were times when Arabella waxed eloquent, and this was one of them. But she quickly returned to the subject of my breakfast, and continued, "And so you see I made up my mind you shouldn't be served so; for I like you a million times better than I like her, and I jump for joy when I can upset any of her nasty, spiteful plans; and so, when they had all got to the strawberry-beds, I made an excuse, and ran back, and I just took a fork and caught up two bits of bacon that were left on the dish--they were not quite cold then--and I wrapped them up in the first paper I could find, and slipped them in my pocket, and meant to run up to you that minute; but mamma called me to go for the rush-basket, and then I began to gather strawberries, and we went down to the rock, and somehow I forgot all about the bacon, till I saw the grease coming through my frock. But here it is; better late than never."

And poor, kind Bella spread out the tempting morsel, which had certainly been cooked a second time, and, making a plate of a scollop-shell, besought me to partake of it before it melted quite away. To comply was of course out of the question; and I at length persuaded her that I had no appetite, and could not possibly eat cold (?) bacon at that time, so by the help of some sweet biscuits, of which she kept a private store, she ate it herself as lunch, and amazingly she seemed to enjoy it.

"We are going up into the mountains," she said, presently, the bacon being disposed of. "We are to drive to Pont-y-frydd, and then we are to get out, and go up the pass, and have dinner under a rock that Marshall knows of; and we are to stay out all day, and come back late in the evening, that we may see some glow-worms. Maria says she has never seen a glow-worm, and she wants to; and I wish you were going."

"Thank you; I should like it very much, Bella; but as things are, I had rather stay at home; besides, I am so poorly, I do not think I could enjoy myself: my head aches dreadfully, and when you are all gone I shall lie down, and try to get some sleep."

"And mind you get some dinner too. There's plenty of cold lamb and mint sauce, and I am sure those trout ought to be cooked; I thought we should have had them for supper last night; nod I dare say there's a fruit pie or two. Ask if there's another red currant and raspberry one; and have that and some cream to it--it's nothing without cream: cream gives it such a smooth, rich, almondy flavour."

I am afraid I scarcely appreciated these benevolent anxieties on my behalf. However, I thanked Bella, and told her I would certainly have some dinner; but my greatest consolation lay in the prospect of being left to the enjoyment of perfect solitude, and I was longing for them to be gone, that I might roam about the house and grounds at will, and do what I liked, fearless of sneer or reprimand.

Presently Mademoiselle put her head in at the door, and desired Arabella and Julia to get ready quickly; she did not address herself to me, but she gave me a friendly nod, which showed that she was not of the hostile party, and retired to make her own toilette, which was always of the most recherché description. I never saw an Englishwoman tie a bonnet or wear a shawl as she did, and her gloves fitted and suited à merveille. She certainly taught Miss Ward to dress with some degree of taste, and she actually persuaded Arabella out of a passion for a silk dress, exactly matching her hair, and not very dissimilar from her complexion. I learnt from her that a lady cannot be too particular about her hands and her feet, and that she should never be seen with disordered hair or with a soiled pocket-handkerchief.

My cousins made haste to get ready, and Bella ran downstairs, wondering whether the cold chickens were in the hamper, and hoping her mamma had ordered a lobster-salad. Julia lingered behind, and when we were alone she threw her arms round me again, and, with many fervent kisses, declared that she should have done just the same, if she had happened to be behind the grotto when Maria and Marshall began to converse. "She knew I didn't mean to be prying or deceitful; and all what Maria said--and before Marshall too!--it was enough to put any one into a passion. I must not fret, but make myself very comfortable at home--sit in the drawing-room, and read tale-books, and go down to the shore after tea, and see the sunset; and she would tell me all about the mountains, and the black lake or lynn at the foot of--some tremendous peak, with an unpronounceable Welsh name all consonants--and bring me ferns and wild flowers, and anything else she knew I should liked"

And with another kiss she ran away, and soon I saw the party assembling in the garden; my aunt in an access of amiability leaning on her husband's arm, and Maria standing by Mr. Cleaton, apparently teaching him the language of flowers, and coquettishly presenting moss-rosebuds, heliotrope, and cape jessamine. Presently the carriage drew up, and I watched them take their seats, and drive off, and then I began to cry again; for, after all, it did seem hard that I alone should be left behind, and no one interfere on my behalf. Julia would have begged for me, had she dared, I was sure of that; but I did not know till the carriage had turned the angle of the road, and I was left to undisturbed solitude, how very much I had counted on the interposition of my uncle or of Mr. Cleaton. They might, I thought, have persuaded my aunt to reverse her stern decree.

I wiped away my tears, though, very soon, and my first care was to place my rose in water, that I might have the comfort of admiring it for several days, and then, feeling very tired, and remembering Marshall's advice, I lay down on my bed, and tried to go to sleep. And I did not try in vain, for in a few minutes the measured murmur of the waves, the rustling of the trees, and a busy chattering among the servants, that had sprung up simultaneously with the disappearance of the carriage, all blended together; my meditations were half dreams, and soon I was fast asleep. When I awoke the slanting sunbeams told me that it was already afternoon; my head still ached, but I felt refreshed and rather hungry; I thought I would go and see whether any dinner had been ordered for me.

I found Kitty, the school-room maid, lying on the drawing-room sofa, reading the newspaper. She jumped up when she saw me, crying--"Laws-a-mercy, Miss Threlkeld! how you frighten one, going about as quiet as a ghost, and looking like one, too! Miss Julia said I wasn't to disturb you, if you stopped in your room, because your head were bad, and you wanted to go to sleep; have you had a good sleep, miss?"

"Yes, thank you, Kitty. And now I should like some dinner; I suppose there is some?"

"Well, miss, I dare say I can find a bit of fowl or some pickled trout, and there's plenty of pies. I'll go and see."

And Kitty, abandoning her studies, ran away to the back settlements, leaving all the doors wide open behind her. As the day was intensely hot, I did not mind that; but surely I was fated to overhear conversations, for the house being rather small and as quiet as the desert, and the servants' voices hone of the lowest, I could distinctly hear every word that passed between Kitty, Mrs. Cook, and Susan the housemaid.

"I say, Mrs. Cook!" said Kitty, what's for Miss Threlkeld's dinner?"

"Bless us!" was cook's reply; "if I haven't bin an forgot all about Miss Threlkeld! Why missus said as the cold beef could go in, and if there was any rice-pudding left from our dinner the could have it."

"Well, I never!" cried Susan; "that beats all! O! but the missis is a stunner. To think now of leaving that poor thing at home on a day like this, when the very donkeys is enjoying theirselves! And then ordering up them beef bones as was cooked on Saturday, which I did not think them over-fresh the day before yesterday. And the rice-pudding we've left, too!--a pretty way to treat a young lady! Kitty may carry in them stale beef bones, if she likes, but I won't; indeed I feel that delicate this hot weather that I can't bear the sight of butcher's meat. So don't ask me to take Miss Threlkeld's tray in."

"Well!" returned cook, "I'm sure I've no ill will to Miss Threlkeld, but when our missis gives a horder, she looks for that horder to be attended to. Mercy on us! what a tongue she has! clack! clack! mag! mag! from morning to night. Poor master! I be-pities him! I listened at their bedroom door the other night, and my! wasn't she giving it him! If I'd bin him, I'd have got right up and shook her well. If I was her rightful husband, I'd cure her of going on for ever, see if I wouldn't!"

There was a general laugh at this--the idea of master chastising missis in the privacy of their conjugal retirement was quite too much for the risible nerves of the servitorial censors.

"Master's a world too good," said Kitty, when she had regained her composure. "He's like an angel, and missis is like--the other sort, you know, I don't want to say bad words. O how the farm men at home does cuss her! and you should have heard John swearing at her last night when she couldn't hear him. It was just awful."

"And what do you think of Miss Ward's sweetheart?" asked Susan.

"What do I think of the lambs and the calves I see being druv to the butcher's? what do I think of the poor fellows as is going to have fourteen years at Botany Bay?" cried cook, emphatically. "But there--he'll never have her mother's daughter. If I was a nice young man, I'd rather have Miss Arabella, ugly and stupid as she is; but as for Miss Ward--no, thank you, ma'am; not if there wasn't another of the female sect left in the world. Brain sauce and tongue is all very good in its way, but nobody likes it for constant, you know. And that's what the man that marries our young lady is sure to get."

"Well," said Kitty, "them's my sintiments; but that's neither here nor there. Miss Threlkeld wants her dinner, and she'd no breakfast; did you see the coarse lumps of bread Miss Ward sent up to her?"

Whereupon there was a bustle, and I opined that the beef bones were brought out for consideration. "I shall just give them to the big dog," said cook, with a loud sniff; "and if missis goes on again I'll give her notice. Sixteen guineas a-year, and tea and beer found, and no perkisites, and no followers, ain't much now-a-days; good cooks can get good wages, and have their friends to see them too,"

"Yes," persisted my faithful Kitty: "but I want Miss Threlkeld's dinner. If the dog is to have those bones, it's quite clear she can't. And the rice-pudding is all gone, for I had the last bit, which John said was a sign that I should have a handsome husband."

"Well, well; go yourself into the pantry, and get what you like; let the poor thing have a nice dinner, to make up for the trouble she's in. May be she'd like a glass of my treacle beer."

Kitty profited by cook's permission to get what she liked, for in ten minutes I was served with as nice a little dinner as Arabella herself could have desired, and cook sent her love and duty, and would I have a bottle of her treacle beer?--"it was up like pop, and as mild as milk."

I ate my dinner quietly, not forgetting the cream to the tart, and then I told Kitty I was going down to the shore. Before I was out of the house I heard John and the boy come in from the stable, and the whole party commenced singing glees. It was well for Mrs. Ward's peace of mind that, dining up in the bosom of the mountains, she innocently imagined cook to be potting trout, Susan cleaning the attics, Kitty unpicking Miss Ward's spoilt dress, and the men-servants steadily at work in their own quarters.

It was about four o'clock, and the sun was shining in cloudless splendour on the glittering sea and the yellow shore; as Susan said, "even the donkeys were enjoying themselves," for I saw one, with a clog on his feet, trying insanely to frisk about. I took the little rocky path, and passed through the wood, down into my cove, with two lines, that I had heard yesterday, ringing in my ears--

"And sweet is the colour of cove and cave,
And sweet shall your welcome be."

All was still as ever down in the cove: high up the rock the purple heather and the golden trefoil bloomed in the sun, and the half-buried shells peeped rosily from the cool, damp sand. There were the very flowers I had wreathed and cast away yesterday; there was my favourite seat under the grey cliff, and the great smooth stone I called my table. All was unchanged, of course; the cove was exactly as it always had been on warm, sunny afternoons, and yet, yet it did not seem the same to me. I missed the loud barking of Gelert, and the kindly words and tones of his master. It seemed like a month since yesterday morning; I seemed to have lived a lifetime since I went, unfortunately, to walk in the rock-terraces. But I sat down and began to think--to think of what Marshall had said to me that morning--"I was never to be ashamed of doing right." Ah! I had been very weak, very cowardly. If I had but cried out at once, "Cousin Maria, I ant here," all would have been well. There might have been some sharp words when we were next alone, but I should have been free from blame. No one could have accused me of mean curiosity, and my own conscience would nave been quite at rest. Foolish girl that I was!

Ay! and worse than foolish--that violent passion, that impotent rage, that wild burning desire to be revenged, seemed now horribly wicked! Alas! alas! how had my father's child forgotten his teaching, his example. Was this the way to attain unto "the everlasting kingdom?" I was very, very sad, sitting in the quiet cove, looking through my tears at the shining sea, and the soft, serene, blue sky. "If only they would be kind to me; if only my aunt and my eldest cousin would not exasperate me so!" I cried in the bitterness of my heart; but then I remembered how Marshall had said, there was no goodness in following the straight path when it was smooth and pleasant; it was in resisting evil that the true spirit of heroism lay.

But then, how was I to resist evil? I thought a little, and I remembered what my father had said to me long ago when I had vexed him by flying into a passion over some trifle-- "My little daughter always means to be quite good; she thinks now she will never be naughty again, but she must learn not to trust herself; she must pray, to her heavenly Father, for Christ's sake, to change her evil heart, and to make her humble, meek, mild, and unselfish. She must ask Him to take away her passionate temper, and to give her the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit." Dear, dear papa, your words were little heeded, scarcely comprehended then; but now that the cold stone covered those wise and loving lips, your poor Ellen recalled them in all their simplicity and force. I was alone in the cove; no eye but God's rested on my sad, upturned face as, kneeling on the mossy rock, I besought Him, for His dear Son's sake, to forgive me all the evil I had done, and all the good I had left undone; to make me meek and forgiving, and to chase away all vindictive feelings from my heart. Then I tried to pray for Maria and my aunt, but I think my chief petition on their behalf was that they might be brought to trust me and to be kind to me. Finally, I prayed that in the end I might come to the "everlasting kingdom."

I lingered in the cove till sunset dyed the waves with crimson and gold, and then I rose to go home. I felt quite calm and peaceful, and not at all angry with Maria, or with her mother. I was more inclined to censure myself: I had been thinking closely and deeply for the last two hours; I had been reviewing my life and my conduct since my arrival at Thornycroft Hall, and I felt that the nice principles of truth and honour which I had brought with me from my early home were sadly weakened and tarnished. My standard of right was lowered, the tenderness of my conscience impaired.

Through the darkening wood and up the steep path I took my homeward way, vowing within myself to begin from that night a new life of perfect integrity, meekness, and obedience.

And I thought, as I stood at the garden-gate, that the stars, peeping forth from the far-off silent sky, whispered words of good cheer, and looked down upon me with love.

It is recorded of a certain Grecian sage--I am not sure, but I think it was he of Miletus--that being asked, "What is the easiest thing in the world?" he replied immediately, "To give advice." And I have no doubt he was quite right; experience confirms the assertion, and besides, was he not a sage, and the very sagest of sages? But I also have made a discovery, though my friends may consider it wanting in originality; I think I have found out the next easiest thing to giving advice, and it is making good resolutions.

I have told you in how calm a frame of mind I returned to the White House, how chastened was my childish heart, how soothed were my feelings as I stood alone at the garden-gate with the gentle stars above me, and how cheeringly their pure lustre beamed down from the azure arch of heaven. And I entered the house with the same feelings, and found everything quiet and dark--no lamps lighted, no sounds of music, no murmur of voices--all was hushed and silent. They had not returned from Pont-y-frydd, and so I sat down on the steps of the verandah, and listened for the sound of wheels. But the shadows deepened, and it behoved me to go to bed, so I asked for some biscuits and some milk, and when the clock struck ten, I went upstairs weary enough for all my noonday repose, and very glad to find myself with my head once more on the pillow. It had been a long, long day. Soon afterwards I heard the horses' feet, and then the sound of voices, and I knew that my aunt was at home again; and in about a quarter of an hour Arabella and Julia came into the room dreadfully tired, and not at all inclined for conversation.

Arabella seemed out of humour; she and Maria had evidently been carrying on a species of guerilla warfare the whole day; there had been no lobster-salad, and she had not even been asked to partake of cold chicken, sandwiches being handed to her and to Julia, without any question of preference. It was hard to be treated like a little child when nearly fifteen years of age. The glow-worms, too, had retired into private life; not one had deigned to kindle his tiny lamp for Maria's special edification, and my uncle had lost his gold pencil-case up among the rocks where they had dined. More I could not gather. Julia was asleep as soon as she lay down, and Bella, after a little inaudible grumbling, followed her example.

I arose the next morning, wandering whether I should be permitted to join the family at meal-times, half-dreading and half-longing to go down with the others to breakfast. My doubts were soon resolved: I was not to appear at table with the others; my tray would be sent up, as before, to our own sitting-room, and, with a weary feeling that my troubles were interminable, I sat down to wait for my breakfast. It came in due time, but this morning the coffee was clear and warm, the bread and butter was presentable, and there was an egg at my disposal. It was certainly not Miss Ward whom I had to thank for this improvement in my commons. I took my breakfast with a tolerable appetite; my headache was quite gone, and, refreshed by a good night's sleep, I began to feel myself again. But how long was my punishment to last? My aunt had said I was to remain in disgrace till the end of the holidays; did she mean that I was to eat, drink, and live alone like a hardened criminal till in three weeks' time we returned to our studies? Being naturally of a cheerful and social temperament, such a prospect was decidedly ungratifying, for already I felt tired of my banishment from the family board.

I finished my solitary meal, and took up the first book that came to hand: it happened to be a somewhat erudite History of the Greek Empire, and, as I only half comprehended it, of course it failed to interest me. I tried, however, to concentrate my attention on its pages, and I read how the unfortunate Baldwin de Courtenai, the mendicant Emperor of the Latins, was reduced to pawning his jewels and all his valuable effects, and lastly his own son, to those princely pawnbrokers, the Venetians of the twelfth century. Whether the jewels and the luckless youth were left as "unredeemed pledges" in that glorious city of the East, where "the sea is in the broad, the narrow streets," I did not find out, for I fell to thinking I might as well be pawned myself as condemned to this miserable state of exile from all the amenities of social life; then I began to wonder whether I should see and converse at all with Marshall Cleaton during the day, and while I was thus reflecting I was aware of the approach of somebody. It was not Marshall Cleaton, nor my uncle, for it was not a man's tread. It was not Mrs. Ward's strong, measured tramp, nor Julia's light trip, nor Arabella's clumsy flounder, nor Mademoiselle de Lavalle's soft, gliding pace, but it was a short, quick, imperative little step, that unmistakeably proclaimed the advent of Miss Ward. Yes, it was Maria, without doubt, and "my prophetic soul" told me she was coming expressly to pay me a visit. Very nervous I felt, for I had not seen her, save at a distance, since the evening, when the tide of my troubles--an equinoctial spring-tide it must have been--first set in. She came in now, blooming as ever, and looking as imperial as the picture of Anna Commena, which I had just been regarding and criticizing. I seized upon the Greek History again, and began to read something about a Doge of Venice, one Faliero Dodoni--though what he had to do with the empire of the Constantines I had at that moment no conception, and I scarcely looked up as she entered the room.

She marched straight to the window, threw it wide open, and drew down the blind before she accosted me. Then she said, "Ellen, I have come here at great inconvenience to myself, for Marshall is waiting for me in the garden; and therefore I must beg you to be expeditious in what you have to say."

"I have nothing to say," I returned, quietly, and I was going to add, quite humbly, "I know it was very wrong of me to speak as I did;" but Maria cut me short; perhaps I had hesitated too long before making the necessary avowal, for she burst out with--

"Nothing to say, when you insulted me and mamma in the grossest style? Nothing to say, when you know you will not be permitted to return to your place in the family until you have humbly begged my pardon? Mamma fully expected to find a penitent note from you when she came back from Pont-y-frydd last night; she was quite astonished and extremely indignant when she ascertained that you had left no message of any kind. Of course, you will go to her, and humble yourself; but as far as I am concerned individually, I wish the whole affair concluded. This state of things, with a visitor in the house, is very far from pleasant; and let me tell you, Mr. Cleaton is thoroughly shocked and disgusted at your conduct; I wonder you are not overwhelmed with shame, exposing your evil propensities with so little reserve. He thinks you the most impudent and artful child he ever encountered."

I knew better than that. There was my precious rose, now fully expanded, in a glass of water, on the chimney-piece, and that told me a very different tale. O! if Miss Ward could but have guessed who gave me that rose.

With all her intense self-appreciation, I have no doubt that she secretly mistrusted her power over Marshall, and that she was by no means certain whether he really had for her any special and lover-like regard. It was this, doubtless, which caused the development of one of the most disagreeable traits of her character--excessive and irrational jealousy. She evidently wished her betrothed to dislike me; she could not bear to hear a word or see a look exchanged between us; and yet I was only twelve years old, and my most fervent wish was that Mr. Cleaton had been my own brother. She was jealous, too, of Julia, and dreadfully irritated when he praised her beauty; and if she saw her little sister sitting on his knee, or lifted by him over one of the low stone walls abounding in our neighbourhood, it was sufficient to disturb her equanimity for several hours. Nor was the case better as regarded Arabella. Marshall evidently pitied her awkwardness and stupidity, and he showed her many little kindnesses, which Maria secretly resented. Truly, Miss Ward was not to be envied.

And now she stood before me, drawn up to her full height, scornfully twisting one of her long black ringlets, and waiting for the expression of my contrite repentance. If she had been less haughty, less arrogant, less confident of my humiliation, her wishes might have been gratified; I believe honestly I should have begged her pardon with the best grace I could.

As it was, I became suddenly rebellious; last night's wholesome determinations were forgotten; any cheeks flushed and my eyes brightened as I resolved that I would not beg pardon. There was even an involuntary smile on my lips as I surveyed her attitude of expectancy, and thought of her immediate discomfiture.

"Ellen, I wait," she said at length, very grandly.

"What for?" I asked, calmly. No! I was not going to be brow-beaten by a girl of seventeen. If I owed obedience to my aunt, there was no such obligation to her daughter. I would not humble myself to her, come what might. Alas! where was last night's meekness and humility?

"For your submission--your apology," she cried, hotly. "I expect it; I demand it."

I was silent, and she began to tremble with passion.

"Speak!" she cried, stamping her foot and raising her hand, as if she were sorely tempted to box my ears. "What a little dummy you look, standing there like a post, or a donkey, or any other insensate thing! SPEAK!"

"I have nothing to say, cousin."

"Are you not going to beg my pardon?"

"No!"

"Very well; you will suffer for this. Do not blame me if you are in worse trouble than ever. You little wicked, base-minded, ungrateful child! I never liked you from the moment I first saw you, and now I literally hate you. No, you are beneath my hatred--I despise you, I loathe you, you mean, deceitful, low-bred, little listener!"

"I am no more mean and deceitful than you are," I cried. "I did not want to hear the senseless things you said. When I went behind the grotto, did I make you come that way? You intruded upon me, not I upon you. And as to deceit, who keeps novels under her pillow and in her pocket? Who covers them with school-book covers? Who was dishonourable about her lessons? Who took 'The Secret Marriage' to church, and read it all through the sermon?"

I need not say that I had again lost all control over myself; and if the question had arisen which of the two was in the greater passion, I think there would have been very little to choose between us. But Miss Ward, finding that abuse only produced recrimination, determined to resort to other and stronger methods of attack. Her hands were to be restrained no longer, and she accordingly administered such a shower of blows on the side of my head, that for the moment I was confounded and reeled giddily to the other side of the room.

"There!" she cried, triumphantly. "I will teach you to be saucy to me, you little wretched creature! I hope I have tamed you now."

Vain hope! for she had roused every evil passion of my heart: instead of taming the wild animal, she had lashed it into uncontrollable fury. I was fairly beside myself; but for one half minute I was stunned and breathless, and my head swam, and my eyes saw double; then I began to recover, and springing on a chair by which she stood--she was so much taller than I--I dealt her one sharp, stinging blow, that made her ear, and indeed her whole face, as scarlet as her cheeks. She turned white, however, the next moment--deadly white; and I was scared, for I had never seen her colourless before. But no harm happened; she did not have a fit, as I feared; but, after a brief pause, during which she set her teeth, and clenched her hands, seized hold on me and gave me a thorough good beating--the first and the last I ever received.

And finishing up with a shaking that must have exhausted even her physical forces, she departed, leaving me lying on the floor, trembling with mingled fear and rage, and aching all over, and in a state of such complete prostration that I felt it quite impossible to rise then--if ever again.

How long I lay there I cannot tell, for no one came near me; but at length Mrs. Ward made her appearance, and she was rather aghast at the condition in which she found me. She commanded me to get up; I did so, but immediately staggered down again; whereupon she picked me up with an energy in which apprehension and anger were pretty equally balanced, and required to be told "why I persisted in such atrocious, extraordinary behaviour." I looked stupidly at her; her words seemed to come from afar, her voice sounded like the distant murmur of the sea; at length, comprehending that she desired some kind of explanation, I strove to gather up my scattered senses, and told her that Maria had been "beating me."

"Maria has given you several smart slaps, you naughty, exaggerating child. She told me herself how she had been compelled to punish you thus, for you struck her--you actually struck my eldest daughter."

"She struck me first," I replied, doggedly. "She struck me several times, or I should never have thought of touching her. I am sorry, though, I lowered myself to do such a thing."

Mrs. Ward was dumb with astonishment; but presently she burst out, "You wicked, depraved child! is there no end to your untruths? Maria told me that she was speaking to you quite quietly on the sad impropriety of your conduct, when you sprang at her like a tigress, and struck her with so much force that she nearly fell over the footstool. Had she fallen a victim to your shocking rage, what think you would be your position now?"

I could not think: in the first place, I was in no condition to pursue the simplest course of inquiry, and in the next place, the idea of Miss Ward, with her five feet seven inches of stature, her corresponding breadth, solidity, and muscle, falling a victim to my puny strength, was too absurd to be entertained.

Mrs. Ward saw, however, that it would not do to excite me any more: taking into account all things, she certainly manifested a consideration I had not given her credit for. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she thought it just possible her dear daughter might have overstepped the bounds of moderation, and, perhaps, the bounds of truth. She simply told me to go to bed.

And to bed I went, nothing loth; but my hands still trembled so much that I could not unfasten the strings and buttons of my clothes; and if Kitty had not come in with our clean muslins I must have sat there, I believe, till my cousins came to dress for dinner. She, however, assisted me; and I found myself presently, to my intense relief and satisfaction, safely between the sheets, with the blinds lowered and the bed-curtains drawn--thanks to Kitty's thoughtful kindness. No sooner was I left alone than I fell into a deep sleep, from which I did not awake till evening, and though my cousins came to dress for dinner and for a drive, and though my aunt and Mademoiselle visited me several times in the course of the day, I was never disturbed; but lay in a profound and dreamless slumber, that, Kitty told me afterwards, looked more like death than sleep.

Mrs. Ward, I believe, was seriously alarmed, and Maria was frightened. She knew that her blows had been many and heavy, and she feared lest an unlucky one might have punished me more than I deserved. I believe they were all very glad when, just after sunset, I opened my eyes, sadly puzzled to find myself in bed, uncertain whether it was evening or early morning, and quite unable to recall the circumstances which had led to any being invalided for the day. Finding that I was quiet, and looked and spoke rationally, Mrs. Ward went away much relieved; and presently Kitty came in with a supper of some farinaceous sort of food, with wine in it.

Afterwards, as I lay awake in my bed, my memory began to revive, and, little by little, I remembered everything that had taken place. I wondered very much whether Mr. Cleaton would be informed of our passage-at-arms, and I thought not; for, even making the best of it, and placing me in the light of an aggressor, the combat did not tend to the embellishment of Miss Ward's character. But I knew now that I had nothing to expect from her but the most unrelenting enmity and, as I lay still in the solitude and the darkness, other thoughts came over me. I sadly remembered the night before, when I had come in from my ramble, full of peace and goodwill, and hope for the future.

How would the stars look down upon me now? I was in an infinitely worse position than when, leaning on the gate, I had looked up with so much faith in their kindly, beaming glances. What a time it seemed since I came up with Marshall Cleaton from the cove! I felt years older than I had been only two days before; I was sure a few more such days would kill me. I was tolerably strong, and quite healthy, but I was excitable, and I had not Arabella's stolid powers of endurance. But O! was this doing the right thing? Was this walking in the narrow path? Was this acting as befitted my sainted father's child? Was this the way to reach "the everlasting kingdom?" If I had died in that wild frenzy--if, when I felt so ill and powerless, it had really been the hovering presence of death that overshadowed me--what then? Ah! I knew very well that it could not have been an entrance into the "everlasting kingdom." O, my temper, my temper! what misery might it not cost me! If I were only away from Maria, who seemed born for my provocation and torture!

But then I recollected, once more, what Marshall had told me about true heroism and true goodness, and I concluded it was right I should be subjected to such trial, and that I must conquer myself, let the work be ever so difficult.

Then I thought I would say my prayers, but though my lips repeated the words, my heart was cold and heavy, and I felt that I was only going through a form. When I came to the Lord's Prayer I knew the reason--when I reached the clause, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us," I stopped, frightened and confounded, for I had not forgiven, neither did I mean to forgive, Maria's trespasses against me; so asking God to pardon my own sin was out of the question--it would be equivalent to saying, "Punish me, O Lord, for my sins against Thee as I would, if I could, punish her for her faults towards me."

I suppose no one would have the temerity to present such a petition. And yet there must be many people who do virtually say it every Sabbath, if not every day of their lives. How they dare to join in the Lord's Prayer is inconceivable to a mind of ordinary reverence. How can they ask the Eternal God to forgive them as they forgive? If their awful prayer were answered, what would be their fate?

An old writer, I think Baxter, says, "You must either leave off praying or sinning; you cannot do both." I am sure you cannot carry on praying and that deadly sin, hating, at the same time. I can believe in a backsliding Christian, a stumbling Christian, a hot-tempered Christian--even in that anomaly, a melancholy Christian. But in a hating, enmity-cherishing Christian, I cannot believe, any more than I can believe in an ice-cold sun, or in sky-blue grass, or in perpetual motion, or in anything else that is clearly non-existent and mythical. Good men have, ere now, fallen into grievous sin; but no good man ever nourished hatred at his heart. God is Love; the Devil is Hatred. And the hating, malicious man is Satan's own child, nurtured in his likeness, and having the same dark ends and miserable aims.

Hatred is a mortal sin--"a sin unto death." I do not mean, of course, that it is unpardonable; but it is so deadly in its effects on the soul of him who nurses it in his bosom that it gradually hardens the heart, and excludes first one and then another of those impulses and influences which are given him for good, till all that is heavenly is driven away, and there remains only "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness." I do not say this without authority, for it is written in the pages that I trust no reader of mine will ever question: "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." Yes, God's own Word, and our own actual experience, teach us that hatred is an awful and most deadly sin.

And I say so much about it because I think people do not award to it its proper place and character. They do not think that it stands side by side with murder and other abominable crimes. I have known a mother who would weep bitterly over indications of drunkenness or profligacy in her son, go placidly on her way, while hatred grew to be a part of his very nature. Unhappy mother! and thrice unhappy son! Awful, most inexpressibly awful sin of hate!

So there I paused that night; I could get no farther; I began the petition; I did not finish it--I dared not! Thank God I dared not! I tried to say, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory;" but it sounded like blasphemy. I felt, child as I was, that while malice and hatred were in my heart, my lips were unclean; it was unmeet that my tongue should pronounce the praises of the God of love, whose very name was a reproach to my vindictive spirit. Sore was the struggle, but I did not relent; I went on hating Maria, and I fell asleep at length, knowing that God was angry with mo, and that I could not in my present frame of mind ask Him to forgive me.

And all night long I dreamed dreadful dreams, and I woke, starting up in bed, my heart beating, and my limbs trembling, and my fancy strangely excited. Then I was with my father, and he knew my wickedness--he knew I had gone to sleep without praying, and he looked at me with such a sad, entreating gaze. And then we were roaming together through the green meadows by the river-side, overshadowed by the Castle woods at Battlebarrow. Like the unhappy, erring Onora of Mrs. Browning's exquisite lay, I might have murmured in my troubled dream--

"I only walk among the fields beneath the autumn sun,
With my dead father hand-in-hand, as I have often done.
I never more can walk with him, O! never more, but so!
For they have tied my father's feet beneath the kirkyard-stone,
O deep and straight, O very straight--they move at night alone;
And then he calleth through my dreams, he calleth tenderly,
'Come forth, my daughter, my beloved, and walk the fields with me."'

And again I awoke sobbing and shuddering; nor did I sleep again till the morning light shone grey and dim into the quiet room.

The next morning found me weary and sad, sick at heart and languid in frame, sitting over my third solitary breakfast, and wondering what I should do with myself all the livelong day. It rained slowly but perseveringly; plainly there would be no going out for any one that day; and, tired and chilly and dispirited, I sat at the window listlessly watching the mist steal over sea and headland, and wishing it were time to go to bed. Arabella was lost in wonder and admiration at my yesterday's prowess; she declared it was as good as eating pineapple, and lying in bed as long as she pleased, to know that Maria had had her ears well boxed. She only hoped I would do it again, and that she might be there to see. Poor Bella! she was by no means as sisterly as could have been wished, but then it would have been a very hard thing to love Maria. How could Marshall Cleaton?

Towards, evening the mists dispersed, the rain ceased to patter on the laurel leaves beneath my window, the sun broke forth, and once more I gazed on a cloudless sky, and a sea all glowing with the rich colouring of a magnificent sunset. But that which once would have filled me with pleasure akin to rapture had no longer any power to dissipate the gloom, shrouded in which the long hours had drearily worn away. I saw the flushed and heaving sea, and the ruby clouds on the mountain-tops; I heard a little bird sing cheerily among the still wet branches that every now and then sent down showers of brilliant drops to the damp, freshened greensward beneath I inhaled the fragrance of dewy flowers; and I watched the golden light falling in vivid slants adown the valley, and gathering like an aureole round the hoary heads of some ancient shaggy pines that shot up from some rocky heights not very far away; but I eared not for the beauty that heretofore had filled my eyes with tears, and my heart with a strange mysterious happiness. My feelings were torpid and my thoughts stagnant, my head ached miserably, and the grey, dull, rainy day had been more in unison with the weary apathy of my mind than the resplendent evening with its glowing skies and waters, its carolling birds, and its flowery fragrance,

That day, as far as I was concerned, was the counterpart of many others; but we had no more rain, the heat became intense, the flowers drooped their heads for want of moisture, and the turf lost its emerald verdure, and showed all browned and scorched under the fierce burning noontide rays. And I remained sad and solitary in my disgrace. It was a weary time; I had all my meals alone, and no one took any notice of me. I could do as I liked, provided I secluded myself from the rest of the family; and sometimes I read, and sometimes I wandered about the garden and the rock-walks, scrupulously avoiding, however, the one that led to the grotto. And sometimes I went down to the shore, or climbed the hills near home; but I never once went near the cove, lest haply I should encounter Miss Ward and her lover.

Yes; it was a weary, dreary time, and the hours seemed interminable, and my life a real burden to me; and sometimes, after turning over the pages of the large volume which gave the miserable episode of poor Baldwin do Courtenai, I began to consider the possibility of pawning some of my own property, and using the money to effect my escape to Battlebarrow, where I doubted not Mrs. Jackson would be delighted to receive me.

But then the Venetians were far away in their island home, and six centuries might have wrought some change in their habits and feelings; and they might, as a nation, have retired from the pawnbroking business altogether; and as for their humbler brethren, who hang their gilt balls in all our great cities, it seemed very unlikely that one of the fraternity should have located himself among the fastnesses of the Pen Aber mountains. There was a general shop, where everything earthly and unearthly was to be obtained; there was a smithy, and there were two or three very modest establishments, doing a comfortable little trade in peppermint drops, brandy-balls, and a particularly unpalatable kind of ginger-bread, supposed to be endued with certain medicinal properties--I think it rejoiced in the name of "Parkin"--but no pawnbroker, and, of course, no jeweller or goldsmith to whom I might sell outright the two or three trinkets that I had in my own possession. Circumstances were clearly against my evasion; and at last I concluded to go on in my own miserable way, and hide my time: surely there was no lane so long bat a turning might be some time reached; and a change for the worse, I thought, could not possibly befal me.

But, apart from the isolation in which I was compelled to exist, my frame of mind was far from peaceful and happy in itself. I was, after all, my own most cruel tormentor. I still hated Maria, and resolved never to forgive her, or to ask her to forgive me. I knew that I was living in a state of enmity towards God, and in complete estrangement from Him; and, during the whole time, I never attempted to pray, or to read in my Bible. I read the "Faerie Queene" all through once more; and I pored over my ill-printed Iliad till I knew some of its pages by heart, yet without the keen enjoyment I had hitherto derived from them. It was, as it always must be, dismal work to be at feud with "the powers that be."

At the end of a fortnight came a great thunderstorm. The day had been sultry to the last degree: every one was complaining of lassitude, and Bella was exceedingly cross and snappish. I felt as if there was nothing in all the wide world worth the trouble of living for. Should I never more be free from the headache that had haunted me day and night ever since my encounter with Miss Ward?

As the afternoon wore on a thick darkness grew upon the mountain-tops; then a brooding cloud hung heavily over the sea, that began to stir itself restlessly, and to moan like a living thing in cruel pain. O, that darkness! I had never seen anything like it; it made me think of "the darkness that might be felt"--that awful gloom on the hills and on the sea; and along the shore that line of pale, dim, spectral light, such as might have gleamed forth, coldly and lividly, just ere the moment of the sun's total eclipse. An ominous silence reigned around; there was no twittering of birds, no hum of insects, no rustle of leaves, no murmur in the dark pine woods--all was hushed as death.

Blacker grew that fearful blackness, more and more livid that pallid beam on the lonely shore, and still no sound of the coming tempest. But by-and-by there was a deep voice in the hollow of the mountains, and soon the waves mingled their rear with the ever-lengthening, ever-deepening peals of thunder. And then came the lightning, blue, forked, vivid; and earth and sky and sea were wrapt as in a garment of living flame.

Alone, at my bedroom window, I watched the gathering of the storm: at first with pleasure, for I had always loved the sublime beauty of the tempest. But that most awful darkness smote my heart with fear: it seemed supernatural, and as it deepened and deepened, and flash followed flash, and peal succeeded peal--rolling, cracking, crackling, exploding, as it always does when the lightning and the thunder are simultaneous--my fear became terror, and I crouched en the side of my bed, almost believing with the terrified servants that it was the beginning of the day of doom

And then I felt that I was indeed orphaned: my earthly father slept the holy sleep of the just; and from my heavenly Father I had wilfully turned away. I was alone in the world, alone in that awful storm, for I dared not go to the drawing-room, and I would not seek the company of the servants, whose loudly-expressed terror was worse than solitude. At last I went to the sitting-room, where I took my meals, hoping that Mademoiselle might be there; my cousins, I knew, were in the drawing-room with their parents and Mr. Cleaton. But the apartment was vacant, and as dark as night, save when the intense brilliancy of the electric flame lighted up its every nook and corner; and every minute the wild fury of the tempest increased. I lay on the sofa, hiding my face in the cushion, and feeling that if the storm did not abate, or if somebody did not come to me, I should go out of my senses. Then I remembered the words and the tune of an American hymn, common enough at camp-meetings, I believe, but then little known in England

"See the lightnings flashing, flashing, flashing--
See the lightnings flashing on that great day!

Hear the thunders rolling, rolling, rolling--
Hear the thunders rolling on that great day!

See the Judge descending, descending, descending--
See the Judge descending on that great day!"

And the wild, wailing tune, as I had heard it long ago, seemed mingling with the storm, and the house seemed to rock to its foundations, and I could not shut out the blaze of the fierce lightning. Nay! I even felt the heat of the electric flame as it flashed over me where I lay, expecting--nay, almost waiting, to hear the trump of the archangel. O! if it sounded then, where should I be?--caught up to meet the Lord in the air, or left to perish with the finally impenitent? O! it was awful--agonizing!

Presently there came one flash that, for the moment, blinded me. I had looked up, and it blazed and flickered from the zenith to the horizon, showing the wild waste of raging, surging waters, and the sable pall that overhung them. And then there was midnight darkness, and a roar and a boom, as if all the artillery on earth were discharged at once. I thought the house was falling, and I lay still, waiting for what was to follow; but I lay in mortal terror, scarcely breathing from excess of fear.

But ere the dreadful crash was over I saw some one moving through the gloom. It was Marshall; he had found out that I was not with the servants, and he came to seek me. He saw how frightened I was, and his kind heart pitied me--poor little white-faced, trembling, panting creature, unable to speak or to move. I never thought then about being "forward;" I cared not for Maria's displeasure; I rushed into his arms, and clung to him as though my only safety lay there. But still the storm raged--nay it grew worse; and finding that I shook in every lime, and almost gasped for breath, he lifted me from the sofa, and carried me downstairs into the drawing-room, where the rest of the family, servants and all, were assembled. Down the stairs and across the hall we went, as it seemed, through sheets of fire, and such thunder as I have never since heard--may I never hear the like again! I was really fainting when Marshall brought me into that terror-stricken circle, who could not see each other's pale faces in the solemn darkness. There was wine on the table, and he poured some out, and made me take it; and then I revived a little, and crept close to Julia, who sat still, and almost breathless, at her end of the sofa. Maria was sobbing hysterically, and Arabella was crying drearily, now and then breaking out into a dismal wail. But Mrs. Ward seemed to have really lost her senses; at every flash and peal she shrieked for "Mercy! mercy!" and at last, when there came to be a sheet of piercing flame, scorching our very faces, and a crash that might well have heralded the dissolution of nature, followed by a stifling odour of sulphur, she fell upon her knees, wildly adjuring the Almighty, with groans, and cries, and ejaculations, that added ten-fold to the terror of that truly awful hour.

"Hush," said Mr. Ward, laying his hand on his wife's uplifted arms--she was praying more like a raving maniac than a Christian woman--"Hush, my dear; be calm; be reverent."

"It is the end of the world!" she shrieked; "the end is come! I knew it would; I knew it would."

"I think not yet," was his quiet reply. "I think it is only the most awful storm I ever remember; but if it be the end, my dear wife, let us meet the Master, the Judge, as men and women who have prayed for years, 'Thy kingdom come!'"

His voice was calm; and as the lightning flashed again and again across the room, I could see his face, grave yet serene--the face of a Christian man--whose grasp on the promises was firm and sure, and whose hope was anchored on the Rock of Ages. But my aunt heeded not his words--"O! O! how dreadful! how awful!" she groaned out; and Maria, catching the infection of her mother, threw herself, also, on her knees, crying bitterly. And all the while I heard, between the pauses of the thunder, Arabella's low piteous wail. Julia was quite silent; and we grasped each other's hands as we sat, or rather crouched, together in one corner of the sofa.

And still it thundered on, and still Mrs. Ward sent up her lamentation; and now and then my uncle said, as if to comfort himself as well as her, "Be still, and know that I am God!"--"The Lord reigneth!"--"The God of glory thundereth!" And Marshall, bending over us little ones, repeated two verses that I had learned in my own happy Battlebarrow home

"The God that rules on high,
Whose thunders roll above,
Who rides upon the stormy sky,
Whose throne shall ne'er remove;

That awful God is ours--
Our Father and our Friend;
His care shall guide life's fleeting hours,
His love shall never end."

At length, very gradually, the storm subsided, and Mrs. Ward regained her equanimity. But she evidently considered the composure of her husband and nephew as unmistakeable signs of reprobation. "Such calmness," she said, severely, "evidenced hardness of heart." What her wild terror and her incoherent prayers and frenzied ejaculations evidenced I cannot say; but surely not trust in God, not reliance on the promises, not the child-like faith that fears no ill, because its Father is at the helm.

When the storm was nearly over I stole away back to my own quarters. There, an hour afterwards, Marshall found mc watching the beautiful, harmless lightning, still playing on the edge of the fast-receding cloud. "Poor little thing!" he said--and he bent down and kissed my pale, thin cheek--"she is alone in a wide, wide world, but the God that ruled the tempest is her Father and her Friend. Will she not henceforth be His loving, obedient child?"

He went away, and I cried for joy; I could not sleep for thinking of his words and his tenderness. Some one was kind to me. O, how I loved Marshall Cleaton!

The next morning, of course, everybody was talking about the storm, and the damage it had occasioned: some sheep were killed by the electric fluid under Carnedd Llandhu, not two miles from Pen Aber; several trees had been split from top to bottom; the little barn with a bell at one end of it, that served the aborigines of Pen Aber for their church, was half unroofed, and its cracked bell half melted; a hay-rick had been burned; and, more than all, a stack of chimneys at the back of the White House had been struck; and--as Susan and Kitty phrased it--"the thunderbolt" had come right down the back kitchen chimney, breaking the window, and scorching the woodwork, and finally passing through the open door into the courtyard, where it killed an unfortunate hen, sitting with her brood under a coop. Upon surveying the premises it was found that the servants' version of the affair was strictly correct, and a great mercy it was that in their fright they had all rushed to the drawing-room, leaving their own part of the house utterly deserted; for had they remained in the kitchens some one would certainly have been severely injured, if not killed. As for the poor hen, I am inclined to think, with Mr. Cleaton, that she was drowned; for after that terrific crash, and the strong smell of sulphur which succeeded--we could account for it now--the rain fell in sheets, and in a few minutes deluged the surrounding country.

In the afternoon, knowing that Maria was lying in her bed very poorly with a nervous attack, I strolled down to my cove to see if there were any traces of the storm there. Yes, the little trickling springs had evidently been for the hour raging water-courses; and earth and stones were washed down from the heights. My seat and table were nearly overwhelmed with debris from the upper cliffs. Otherwise, all remained as when I had last seen it. Only I was changed--so changed that I found no comfort in my own beloved haunt; and with an aching heart I turned away from its peaceful seclusion, longing to escape from--I knew not what; but I suppose, though I knew it not, from my own proud, rebellious, undisciplined self.

Was I the same Ellen Threlkeld who made acquaintance with Gelert and his master on that very spot so short a time ago? Alas! alas! what had passion wrought! I was more inclined now to blame myself than others; I went home sadly enough, thinking how there was nothing to give me pleasure, hating the very sight of bright, beautiful Pen Aber, and longing morbidly for the monotony of Thornycroft Hall once more.

Nothing to give me pleasure? O yes! there was Marshall Cleaton's kindness. I loved the very ground on which he trod; I longed to do something for him; I thought how pleasant it would be to die for him. Dear, dear Marshall! if only he had been my very own brother, that I might love, and serve, and minister to him, so long as we both should live. Alas! I knew that when once he and Maria were married, we should meet but seldom, if at all--he could never again come to me and say, in those deep, thrilling tones of his, "Poor little thing!"

I had just reached the boundary of the small wood, and I was beginning to climb the rocky, winding path that led up to the field adjoining the White House, when, turning round a sharp angle of the hill, I stood suddenly face to face with him of whom I had been so tenderly thinking. I stopped, reddening with pleasure and surprise.

"Ah!" he cried, "you look a little better to-day; the sea-breezes have brought some colour into your cheeks. I was looking for you, Ellen. I have a book for you--nay, I have two. See! here they are. Will you have them now?-- should you mind carrying them home ?"

Always the same kind consideration; always the same gallant deference to the, weaker sex. Through life it was the same. Marshall Cleaton never said an ungentle word to a woman, were she duchess or scullery-maid--were she young, fair, and gifted, or wrinkled, old, and dull.

Of course I was only too glad to carry home the books; and I stretched out my hand for them. They were Wilberforce's "Agathos," and the much-coveted "Odyssey," which I had so greatly desired to peruse.

"Ah! thank you, Mr. Cleaton," I cried, ready to dance with joy. "How nice it will be to read them! I have not had a new book for ever so long. And how long may I keep them?"

"Always; they are your own; I give them to you. 'Agathos' is a new book; but the 'Odyssey' is one that I have used myself--but perhaps you will not mind that; it is quite uninjured."

"No, indeed; I shall like it all the better. Now I shall know all that Ulysses did before he went to the Isle of Calypso, and all that he did there; for 'Télémaque,' you know, begins about the goddess being inconsolable for his departure. And there is about his returning like a beggar, when at last he got back to Ithaca, and even Penelope did not know him. Mademoiselle told me about it. But I think it was very strange that Penelope should forget him. If he was ever so much altered, I think there must have been something that she might have known him by."

"And I think so too, Ellen. I do not quite believe in Mrs. Penelope, though I suppose it is heresy to say so. I always fancy she might have got rid of her hundred lovers if she had pleased--if she really ever had so many."

Not having read the story, I could not give an opinion, and I began to turn over the leaves of the other book, "Agathos."

"I have given you that," he resumed, "chiefly on account of an allegory it contains--'The Runners:' I learned a great deal from it myself, some years ago. I was very fond of reading it, and my mother used to explain it to me. One of her favourite texts is, and always was, 'Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.' And, by the way, Ellen, do you know that my mother is coming very soon--perhaps in two or three days?"

I replied that I did not; but I felt very glad, for I wanted so much to know Marshall's mother.

"Yes," he continued, "she cannot do without her little boy any longer, so she is coming to Pen Aber forthwith--and, Ellen, I am glad for your sake, for you will like to talk to her, and she to you; she will do you good, and tell you what you ought to do, a hundred times better than I can. You will not be able to help loving her."

I thought that very probable, if she at all resembled her son. I was only afraid I might love her too well, for already I began dimly to perceive how painful a thing it is to love those with whom we must speedily part, and that without any definite prospect of re-union. The idea of the time when I should see Marshall Cleaton no more was inexpressibly sad.

I placed my books in the basket, which I always carried with me, and wished him "good-bye." He went on through the wood, and I climbed the hill with renewed vigour and in excellent spirits; the short interview had done me great good, the kind words and looks had re-animated my drooping energies, and the prospect of my dear new books, and still more the anticipation of Mrs. Cleaton's arrival, had given me something to look forward to. I felt almost blithe again as my feet pressed the thymy turf in the field adjoining our garden.

I carried my books to my room, and there I sat the whole evening devouring "Agathos," especially delighted with the beautiful and striking allegory of "The Runners." Several passages were marked, as if for my special consideration; one of them, doubly bracketted, was this:--"Then I thought within myself of the man who had passed so nimbly by me and promised so well for a crown, and yet who had not yet reached the end. So I walked slowly down the course to see if I could light upon him. I had gone but a little way, when I saw a choice arbour, shady with flowery shrubs, and sweet with every scented flower; and there, on the mossy seat within, I saw the nimble runner stretched out at length, and fast asleep. So I tried to waken him, but could not--he only turned in his sleep and slept the sounder. My heart was grieved for the man; but as I came out of the arbour I saw he had not been unwarned, for it was written up over the doorway by which he had come in--'Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep.' And as I came out I heard the same voice of one calling on the King which I had heard before, and, looking round, I saw the runner who had so late cast off his flowery robes and girded himself for the race. He was toiling, indeed, with his eye fixed on the end, and yet only seeing its brightness at times, and when it was clouded over I heard him call again upon the King, like one who feared that all was lost. But now his troubles were well-nigh ended, for soon he heard the welcoming music of those heavenly harps, and a crown was brought out for him, which shone with these words, 'Faint, yet pursuing;' and the golden door opened for him, and the scales fell altogether from his eves, and all the labour of his race was forgotten in the fulness of the joy which flowed into his soul. So whilst I was thinking how I could myself begin to run in this race, I awoke, and behold! it was a dream."

With a heavy sigh I laid down my book. I might be weary and faint, but it was not with running the race; I was not "pursuing." I began to think I must humble myself to Maria; I would try also to forgive her, and then I could pray once more, and ask God to pardon me, and make me a better girl. It was dark now, so I put my books away, and went to bed, thinking of the pleasure I should have in reading the Odyssey, and longing for a certain map, which I knew was in the schoolroom at home--a map on which the wanderings of Ulysses were duly traced. I was not disappointed; I revelled for three days in the Odyssey, and, though I could not say I liked it as well as the Iliad, I thought it nearly everything that could be desired. Above all, I enjoyed the marvellous story of Polyphemus, and I dwelt with ever-recurring pleasure on all that was said of the luxurious Phæacians, their beautiful gardens, and their hospitable king, Alcinous.

On the evening of the fourth day Mrs. Cleaton arrived. I saw her when I went down to prayers--the only time when I mingled with the family circle. At first I was disappointed; I did not think she was much like her son; but when she spoke the resemblance was truly startling. It is true his eyes and hair were dark, and hers rather light; for she had soft, pale, brown curls, just beginning to be streaked with silver, and clear, soft, beaming, grey eyes; but there was the same expression of goodness and benevolence, the same earnest gaze, the same exquisite smile lighting up both countenances. She sat by the pianoforte, where Maria presided--for at Marshall's request we sang a hymn every evening.

She joined in the strain, her voice, of peculiar melody and power, leading all the others. Before prayers were over I was quite ready to agree with Marshall, in counting among his chief blessings this inestimable mother. I was sure that 1 could perceive an added brightness on his face whenever he gazed upon her, and the very tone in which he addressed her bore witness to the tenderness, reverence, and appreciation with which she was regarded. Happy son and happy mother!

I did not see Mrs. Cleaton or her son the next morning, except at prayer-time; and I occupied my lonely hours in reading the last book of the Odyssey, and, when that was finished, in making a little muslin bag for the dried petals of my precious rose. Then I bethought myself of the scolopendrium that I had pressed between the leaves of the large French dictionary, and if I left it there longer it might be injured or lost; so I took it from its hiding-place, and finally bestowed it in an old book of flute-music that had belonged to my father. That poor little frond, small, and rather crooked, and so pale! Since that day I have made a glorious collection of ferns, both British and foreign; I have in my possession specimens of the scolopendrium more than two feet in length, specimens of the graceful maiden hair of our own climes, and of the sunny isles of the southern seas; of delicate spleenworts, of fairy-like oak and beech ferns, of the Royal Osmunda, and of many more, strange, elegant, and rare, natives alike of our own island shores, and of far-off lands; but none so precious, so beautiful in my eyes as that one poor, rigid, yellowish, stunted frond of the scolopendrium vulgare, gathered by Marshall Cleaton from the clefts of the rocky cave of the Pen Aber cove.

Of course I did not go down to dinner; I took that meal, as usual, alone in Mademoiselle's sitting-room, feeling heartily tired of the cold lamb that was sent up to me day after day, and wondering whether it would ever be given to me to know the taste of hot meat any more.

The afternoon was peculiarly pleasant, and I saw Maria and Marshall go off in one direction towards the shore, and Mademoiselle and my two younger cousins in another. Then my uncle took his cigar into the garden, and the house seemed nearly deserted. I was thinking that I would go down to the cove. Marshall and Maria had gone quite another way, and Mademoiselle and her pupils had taken the path that led up into the bosom of the nearer hills, when some one tapped gently at the door. Who could it be? No one, not even Kitty, thought it necessary to pay me the compliment of knocking at the door of any room where I was supposed to be. Privacy, at home, was a luxury I could never command, except at the price of being left alone when all the rest went out; for it was against the laws of the house of Ward for any junior of the family to keep locked drawers or boxes, or to lock or bolt herself in any room on any pretence whatever. Of course I said, "Come in." And then the door opened, and Mrs. Cleaton entered.

I rose, looking, I dare say, very foolish and confused; for I felt sure she had been told the whole story of my misdemeanours, as it was current in the household--that I had, without provocation, violently assaulted Miss Ward, who, in self-defence, and in the pursuance of her duty, had reluctantly felt herself compelled to administer a mild castigation. For the first fortnight of my seclusion, and up to the night of the thunderstorm, I had longed wildly and passionately for justice; I had yearned for the revelation of my truth and my cousin's falsehood; I would have given anything I possessed--bartered whole years of future happiness--if only I could secure her exposure, and behold with my eyes her consequent discomfiture. But now my mood was changed--not that I was softened toward Miss Ward, nor that a more Christian spirit was developed within me--but that it suddenly occurred to me that if Marshall knew the real state of the case, if he found out how falsely and unworthily Maria had acted, he would be exceedingly pained; for as he was engaged to her, I argued, he must care very much about her. So, from this motive, to spare him present pain, and from nothing higher, I concluded to suffer the wrong, and make no attempt to clear myself from the aspersions so freely cast upon me. I know now that my reasoning was extremely fallacious; for it was certain that the concealment of Miss Ward's true character was most unlikely to minister to the real and permanent happiness of my friend; but, of course, I was not old enough duly to consider these facts; neither could I have any idea of that most intolerable of all earthly miseries, an ill-assorted, uncongenial marriage.

Mrs. Cleaton sat down beside me, and asked me why I did not go out this cool, pleasant afternoon--my cheeks were pale and my eyes heavy--I looked as if I wanted exercise. I replied that I was tired of going out by myself, and that I was forbidden to accompany the others.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Cleaton, "your aunt has been telling me that sad story: indeed I had heard something of it before, for my son mentioned your troubles in his letters to me. I think there must be some mistake; I wish you would tell me all about it, dear child."

How motherly, yet how pretty she looked sitting by my side, her lovely white hand caressing mine, and her mild grey eyes looking with such a clear, truthful, kindly, straightforward gaze into mine! I felt that I must tell her all that was in my heart, and in the same moment I saw the heinousness of my own conduct in its true light.

"Well, dear," she resumed, "how did it all come about?"

I told her how it had come to pass that at the first I fell into disgrace through listening to a conversation between my cousin Maria and Mr. Cleaton, and I explained how I happened to be behind the grotto, and why I did not go away when first I heard them beginning to converse, and how afterwards no one would believe but that I had hidden myself there out of mean and low curiosity to overhear what they might say. "And then," I continued, "I got sadly vexed. I know it was weak of me to stay there, and very foolish, as Mr. Cleaton says, but I did not mean to be base or deceitful; and when Maria said such hard things of me, I fell into a dreadful passion, and I do not know what I said, I was so angry, but I am sure it was all very fierce and bitter. And two days afterwards she came to me, and said I was to beg her pardon."

"And you would not?"

"No, ma'am. I could not beg her pardon for 'listening;' for I would not have listened if I could have helped it: but I would have apologized for the rude things I said in the heat of passion, if--if--if she had only spoken to me gently."

"But what could have induced you to strike her?"

I was silent: if I told Marshall's mother the truths it was tantamount to telling it to Marshall himself.

"Did you really strike her first?"

"Please, ma'am, do not ask me," I replied, greatly distressed; "I would rather say no more. I am not believed--indeed, I would rather have no more said about the matter. I am used to being in disgrace now; I don't mind it much."

"But, my dear child, you ought to mind it very much. A stained or suspected character should always be a source of trouble and anxiety. I wish you would tell me all that transpired from the beginning to the end. I am sure you will speak only the truth."

Her tone of trust gladdened my heart, but I said nothing. I was struggling to keep down my desire to right myself.

Mrs. Cleaton looked disappointed. She mused awhile, and then she said, "My dear, did your cousin strike you first?"

I became scarlet; but bit my tongue lest an involuntary affirmative should escape me.

"If you do not tell me," continued Mrs. Cleaton, "I shall be very much grieved, and my son will be excessively disappointed. I will tell you, in confidence, that he wished me to hasten my visit, in order that this affair might be investigated and set right."

"Does he know then," I asked, "that she--that I--that we struck each other that morning?"

"Yes; Arabella told him, or he would not have known. Maria simply said that you were insufferably insolent--was that true?"

"Yes, ma'am, it was; I said a great deal that I am ashamed to think of now."

"And so you provoked her to strike you, to box your ears. My dear Ellen, I know more about it than you imagine. Kitty was in the next room when all this happened, and though she could not hear what was said, she heard distinctly every blow; and she tells my maid that somebody's ears were boxed sharply five or six times; then that one violent blow was given, and then that some one received a thorough chastisement. Now, Miss Ward herself asserts that you only struck her once, and thereupon she punished you as she thought you deserved. Who then struck the previous half-dozen blows that Kitty so distinctly heard?"

I saw it was useless to try to conceal the matter any further. It was evident that Mrs. Cleaton would question and cross-question me, and, if need were, bring Kitty to the bar rather than be foiled in her intention. So I told her the whole history of the quarrel from first to last, admitting that I had given my cousin excessive provocation, by addressing her in a style especially offensive from one five years younger than herself. Finally, I begged Mrs. Cleaton to make no use of this extorted confidence of mine, and, above all, not to let her son think that Maria had spoken falsely. Mrs. Cleaton smiled, and replied, "As the matter is now nearly three weeks old, perhaps we had better not renew the subject; and I promise you, nothing shall be said to my son that can in any way give him pain concerning Miss Ward. But, my dear, they tell me you are prolonging your punishment by still refusing to ask pardon of those you have offended--is it so?"

"Yes," I answered. "I felt that I could not ask Maria to forgive me, when really she had behaved worse to me than I to her; and my aunt has been unjust; and if I were to humble myself eve: so much, she would still misunderstand me, and say cutting things."

"Still, you own that you have behaved badly to your aunt and to your cousin? And remember, freedom of speech, that is only, perhaps, rather objectionable in a grown person, becomes insolence in a little girl."

Yes, I confessed that I had said a great many very insolent things. I had given way to excessive passion, and for many days I had been hating my cousin in my soul. And confession once begun, I poured out my whole heart to Mrs. Cleaton: I told her of the sullen enmity I had cherished, of my ceasing to say my prayers, and of the loneliness and misery that had oppressed me ever since I found out that I could not, or dared not, repeat the Lord's Prayer.

"Poor child! poor child!" she said, gently. "But it is over now, I am sure; you will beg Maria's pardon, and your aunt's also."

"I will humble myself to my aunt, but I don't know about Maria; she ought to beg my pardon; if I insulted her ten times, she returned it a hundredfold. I struck her once; she struck me more times than I could count; and she was the first to insult and the first to strike."

"But, nevertheless, you did insult her--you did strike her?"

"Yes; I am sorry for it."

"Then go and tell her so. You will never be happy till you have done the thing that is right. Put her conduct out of the question, and think only of your own--does it demand humiliation and avowal of contrition?"

"Yes, ma'am; but I am punished for more than my fault."

"To a certain extent you are; but your fault was greater towards God than towards your fellow-creatures. Passion is a grievous sin; hatred and vindictive feelings are far worse. Besides, my child, even if, in some measure, you suffer wrongfully--which is really the ease--remember what the Bible says:--"For what glory is it, it; when ye be buffetted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but it; when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God."

My heart was subdued at last; the adamant was melted. I burst into tears, and said, "Indeed, I have done very, very wrong; and I knew it all the time. I will beg pardon, and I will--I do forgive Maria for all the pain and sorrow she has caused me."

"And one thing more, my love; confess all your sin to your heavenly Father, and beseech Him to restore you, for Christ's sake, to His favour and to the light of His countenance. Ask His pardon, humbly, heartily, for the sake of His dear Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. And I think you cannot do better than go to your aunt this very minute; I left her alone in the drawing-room. Go at once, dear; delay and irresolution will only increase your difficulty."

I knew that; and with a beating heart I rose to go downstairs. But, first, Mrs. Cleaton took me in her arms and kissed me, and said, solemnly, "God bless you, my dear little girl; and may He teach you, and guide you, and lead you in the way everlasting! Now go, my dear."

I went; and, finding my aunt sitting alone, as Mrs. Cleaton had said, I walked up to her, and made my apology thus:--"Please, aunt, I am very sorry for my naughty conduct; I have said a great many things to you that I ought not to have said, and I have been impertinent to Maria. I hope I shall never do it again. Please forgive me."

Of course I had to listen to a long exorcism before I received forgiveness; my aunt could not neglect so favourable an opportunity of "speaking seriously" to me; but her homily came to an end at last, and forgiveness was accorded, and I was presumed to be happy. So half my task was done, but the more difficult half yet remained to perform. I felt that it would be easier to kneel at Mrs. Ward's feet in figurative sackcloth and ashes than to say to Maria, "I beg your pardon."

But I had to say it; and, seeing her cross the lawn and enter the house, I listened for her going up to her own room. When I heard her shut the door, I summoned up my courage, and trampled on my rising pride, and went immediately and knocked. When she saw who it was seeking admittance, she looked first extremely surprised, and then extremely sulky. When Miss Ward tried to look dignified she always looked sulky; it was very unfortunate, but her grand airs were inevitably a failure--she only looked stupid and heavy, and awfully ill-tempered.

She did not speak: she went on brushing her hair without looking at me.

"Cousin!" I stood close by her. "Cousin, will you forgive me for saying rude things, and for striking you? I was very naughty, and I am very sorry; I beg your pardon."

I think if Marshall Cleaton had flung himself at her feet enacting the despairing lover, she could scarcely have been more astonished than she was at any humble request for pardon. She knewthat I had more to forgive than she had; and she knew, too, that in my circumstances nothing would have induced her to express contrition.

However, she acted for her with the most delightful amiability. "O, yes; she was only waiting for this; she was impatient to forgive me; she would never think of it again." Whereupon she kissed me, and desired me to take the brush, and brush out her back hair. Of course, I obeyed, and I further assisted her in arranging her toilet for tea. And then we descended to the drawing-room, going downstairs and entering together, Maria's arm being thrown caressingly around me. When Marshall saw this great sight he was evidently astonished, but also very much pleased; and during the whole evening he exerted himself to please Maria; and he succeeded so well that she went to bed in a state of extreme hilarity, telling me the last thing that I might come to her room, as usual, in the morning, and help her to dress. Julia was rejoiced, and Arabella very sorry, that matters were, at length, amicably arranged.

And now I was once more restored to society; I was no longer, metaphorically speaking, an inhabitant of the ancient city of Coventry; and I ate hot meat and genteel slices of bread and butter like other people. Mrs. Cleaton and I became great friends; and already I anticipated with pain the time when she must return to her own home; but, strange to say, she sojourned at Pen Aber long after I had left it. I was on the eve of a great change; I was about to take a long and important journey.

One day Mrs. Cleaton and I were walking on the shore, when she asked me how I should like to go to school. In an instant it flushed upon me that she purposely introduced the subject, because I really was going to school. My aunt had said I should go; and though I had heard nothing about it since, I doubted not that she had made all the necessary arrangements. I replied that I couldnot tell; I had never been at school for a single day; I rather thought I should not like it. I concluded by asking if there was any probability of my having to go.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Cleaton, "there is every probability of it. In fact, your aunt received a letter this morning, which decided the whole business. She is occupied to-day, and therefore begged me to tell you."

"When am I going?" I asked, my eyes filling with tears at the idea of leaving her and Marshall very soon.

"Next week. I wish to visit an aged relative at Kirby-Lonsdale, so I shall have the pleasure of taking you myself."

"Kirby-Lonsdale in Westmoreland?" I cried. "Am I going there?"

"Not exactly; you are going to Casterton, a very beautiful village, about a mile and a half from Kirby-Lonsdale. There is an excellent institution there called the Clergy Daughters' School; and you, as the daughter of a clergyman, are, of course, eligible as a pupil. You will receive a good, sound English education, besides learning music and drawing and French; and I am sure when you are reconciled to the change you will be very happy."

"And am I to go next week, Mrs. Cleaton? How can I be ready? I have worn out my things sadly since I came here, and all my frocks are too short."

"You will not need any frocks or bonnets; the young ladies dress in uniform, and all that is necessary will be provided for you. As for your under-clothing, Kitty and Susan are busy about it now, I believe; and whatever is wanting can be procured at Liverpool, where you and I will spend several days."

The idea of a journey of some length with Mrs. Cleaton quite reconciled me to the idea of going to school. And, in fact, the more I thought about it the more I liked it. I felt that I should have a better chance among a number of girls, with whom the strictest justice and impartiality would probably be observed. I believed, too, that I could more easily obtain the conquest over myself, if Maria were not at hand to nullify or to retard the victory, and I told Mrs. Cleaton what I thought.

She replied, "I think, my dear, it is an excellent arrangement: I look forward to your being quite happy, and giving perfect satisfaction, at the Clergy Daughters' School. Of course you will find troubles there, as everywhere else; and in so large an establishment there must be errors and abuses, of which the principals are probably not cognizant. Trials are allotted us in every state of life, and I doubt not there is discipline awaiting you at Casterton. But remember, my child, the gold that is tried longest and most severely is the purest. Pray that all your dross may be purged away. And, above all things, never be afraid to do or to say what you know to be your duty. Never have any concealments from your teachers, and never let evil companions tempt you to join in folly or deceit. I need not tell you to learn all you can. And I think I need not tell you not to trust in your own strength; for you know, dear Ellen, where the only sure help is to be obtained."

That day week was my last at Pen Aber; my uncle talked to me very kindly on the eve of my departure, telling me several things about my own affairs, which I did not know before. Among other information he remarked:--"Remember, if anything happens to me, you have £500 of your own. It is the little fortune your poor father left you; it has never been touched since you came to Thornycroft; it never will be while I live. The interest shall accumulate till you are of age, or till you marry. Now, be a good girl; let me have a first-rate account from Casterton; and do not forget your uncle. Speak the truth, and never be afraid of any one. Nelly, my girl, you mustn't be weak, as I have been. Weakness has been my ruin. There's a sovereign for you. Kiss me, darling. Good night; God bless you!"

The next morning found me on my way to Westmoreland, viâ Liverpool, the first stage being Llanglas, whither Marshall accompanied his mother and myself, in my uncle's carriage. It was a beautiful August morning; and as we drove away from Pen Aber, as it gleamed, like Tennyson's clover-hill, "high over the full-toned sea," yet nestling under the wavy heights around it, it was looking its very loveliest. Presently, having crossed the moorland, we came upon a more cultivated tract, and lo! the valleys standing thick with corn. The reapers were at work in some of the fields, the women with their blue and red petticoats and white jackets, commonly called bed-gowns, reminding one of gigantic corn-flowers and poppies; and here and there were the gleaners, making one think of that sweetest of pastorals, the sacred book of Ruth, and also of that pretty little episode in Thomson's "Autumn,"--

"The lovely young Lavinia once had friends," &c.

Mrs. Cleaton was thinking of something else, though I thought she was intent upon the motions of the reapers, as, thrusting their sickles in among the golden grain, they reaped handful after handful of the precious spoil.

"What does that suggest?" she said to her son, as the carriage rolled along a lane redolent with flowery fragrance, its banks perfectly auriferous with long superb spikes of yellow toad-flax---the linaria vulgaris of the botanist, and the "eggs-and-bacon" of our nursery days--diversified, too, with the scabious in every shade and tint of lavender, from deep reddish purple to palest lilac.

"Tennyson's new poem," he replied at once; "I read it only yesterday--his 'Dora.' It is a tale of harvest-home:--

'And the reapers reaped,
And the sun fell, and all the land was dark.'"

"What a boy you are for Tennyson!" she replied. "Well, I do not wonder at it; I think after all I begin to like him better than Wordsworth. And yet I scarcely know--I am so fond of 'The Excursion,' and of 'The White Doe of Rylstone.' But I am very glad you are not a Byron worshipper."

"No fear of that, mamma; I grant the beauty of his song; but his continuous tone of morbid introspection wearies me; he is a complete egotist, referring everything to himself; whether it be that which is bad in the social world, or that which is pure and beautiful in the world of nature. Still, I suppose there is frequently great force in what he says; and then his verse-sketches of scenery are exquisite and truthful, scarcely inferior to Tennyson's."

"Would you compare the two?"

"I think not; they are great masters in different schools. But then, mamma, reading Byron does me no good in the world; in fact, it makes me wretchedly mawkish and sentimental; while reading Tennyson makes me feel stronger and braver, and more manly. There is the ring of the true metal in his lines. But let me turn the tables, and ask you and Ellen what this scene suggests. It is curious to trace the different directions in which people's thoughts travel; their bodies are close together--their souls are at antipodes."

I told him what I had been thinking of and he replied-- "Good! most elegant and orthodox, little lady! Now, mamma, if you please, let us hear your ideas."

"I was thinking," she replied, "of one of our Lord's parables, 'He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man. The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world.' Marshall, what were those verses you used to say to me at harvest-time, when you were a little fellow?"

"Do you mean these?--

'Another harvest comes apace;
Meeten our spirits by Thy grace,
That we may calmly meet the blow
The sickle gives to lay us low.

That so, when angel-reapers come
To gather sheaves to Thy blest home,
Our spirits may be borne on high
To Thy safe garner in the sky."

"Well remembered, my boy. It is a long time since I heard you repeat them; the last time, I think, was that golden evening five years ago, when you and I stood together watching the piling of the last sheaves at Treherne. I am glad you love our best poets, and glad that your Oxford lore is dear to you; but I am specially glad that you do not forget the hymns and the pleasant memories of your childhood."

"I trust I never shall forget them, mother; I believe that our earliest lessons are those that will abide with us to the last; those whose teaching will be clearest and best, when all the learning in the world is fading out of sight and memory, 'as a dream when one awaketh.'"

And so the mother and son conversed. And in their religious converse was a healthiness and soundness and a simplicity that particularly impressed me, after the moody, morbid reminiscences of the last two years.

It reminded me of my father's quiet talks on Sunday afternoons: it was like a familiar strain of music heard again after a long and weary interval--

"Echoes of harp-strings broken long ago."

No, not broken; only loosed; unstrung for a little while, to be tuned hereafter to a fuller melody and a more perfect harmony in the world beyond the grave.

But here we were at Llanglas. There was the quaint little town on the mountain-side, with its grey church and its greyer abbey, all ruined, and sinking calmly to decay. There were the ladies of the town knitting fiercely at their doors, and holding conversations across the narrow street at the very top of voices whose pitch was naturally of the highest. And there was the inn where we were to stop in order to wait for the single chaise that the humble hostelry afforded, and where we were to say good-bye to Marshall, who was to return to Pen Aber as soon as the horses were rested. Yes, that farewell must be spoken; but how I dreaded it words cannot tell. I dreaded the moment of separation, and at the same time I wished the inevitable parting were over; I could not talk, I could not eat; even the crisp oat-cakes and the newly-churned butter of mine hostess could not tempt me; I was too sorrowful to do anything but nurse my sorrow. Arid the moments waned, and I saw the ugly, lumbering chaise brought out of the inn-yard, and the horses put to, and I knew that the time was come. Mrs. Cleaton went away, and Marshall and I were alone.

He came up to the window where I was standing, and drew me away; then he kissed me tenderly, saying, "Goodbye, dear little Nellie! Be of good cheer; we shall meet again some day, or I am not Marshall Cleaton. And, Nellie dear, keep to the right path, straight on, you know, running with patience the race that is set before you. Do not be weak and irresolute: think of the grotto, and all the trouble that sprung up there. And if you are ever in any kind of sorrow or difficulty, write to my mother, and she will send to you, or come to you, as the case may require. Now good-bye, Nellie: God bless you, and guide you, and keep your heart pure from the evil that is in the world."

I was literally choking; I could not say a word, I could scarcely cry; but I clung to him as fast as my trembling arms would let me, and I felt as if such parting must be the very bitterness of death. O, if he had only been my brother, my own dear brother Marshall!

"Nellie," he said gravely, at length, when he saw that I made no effort to conquer my emotion, "this will not do: you will make yourself ill, and then my mother will be distressed. Try to be calm, dear; it is not right to give way to our feelings when their over-indulgence can produce no good effect, but rather evil to ourselves and to others. It is God's will, Nellie, that you and I should part now--I believe it is also His will that in due course we shall meet again; but if it be not so--if we are not to meet again on earth, let us meet again, my Nellie, in God's own heaven. You know the way--the one way--and so do I: let us seek continually for strength to travel in that blessed road. Be strong, be true, and wait patiently for what shall betide, knowing that all things concerning you are 'ordered and sure.'"

And, with one more kiss, he placed me on the sofa, and went out of the room. He did not return, and in a few minutes Mrs. Cleaton came to say that the chaise was waiting. I rose and accompanied her, and when we were just starting Marshall came out and waved us a parting salute, and I tried to look calm and happy, that he might know he had not spoken in vain. But when we turned the corner of the lane, and were once more fairly on the road, I burst into an agony of tears, and flung myself into the arms of Marshall's mother.

"Poor child! poor child!" she said, stroking my cheek gently. "Ah, Nelly! if you yield to suffering now, what will it be when the real troubles of life come upon you? Take courage; you will see Marshall again, I think. And now, for my sake, try to compose yourself."

Thus entreated I did try, and after several struggles I gained the victory over my agitated feelings, and strove to interest myself with all that was passing on the road. After a time we left the chaise for the mail-coach, and for miles we skirted "the sands of Dee." In due course we abandoned the road for the rail. It was the first time I had ever travelled by train, for railroads were then few and far between, and people who had carriages and horses at command were, generally speaking, shy of them, and bestowed their patronage very sparingly, or not at all. But I was not troubled with nervous tremors, and I enjoyed my ride mightily, and felt that my experiences were enlarging already. Late in the evening we reached Liverpool.

There was so much to be done, and so much to be seen, that we lingered there till the fourth day. I had never seen a seaport before, and great was my wonder and delight as I beheld the forest of masts which lined the shores of the salt Mersey, and saw the proud vessels lying quietly in dock, or floating with their white wings and their streaming pennons on the bosom of the broad, restless river. I never forgot my first impressions of that "City by the Sea," as I poetically called it; our English Venice, as some have aptly, or inaptly, named it.

Years afterwards, in reference to this very morning, I wrote these lines:--

O, much of joy, and much of woe has been.
Since that bright morn, when, in its pride and glee,
My eyes first saw that City by the Sea!
Yes! I remember well the tall ships lying
On the blue waters, and the snowy sails
Like fluttering wings across the waters flying,
Swelling and drooping in the fitful gales.
What joy it was upon the sandy shore
To rest and listen to the city's roar,
Softened by distance to all-lulling sound;
To hear the proud waves with their moan profound
Break on the weed-girt pier!

There is more of it, but I think you will scarcely care to listen to it. One's own early poetry is like one's first child. The stranger may see in it little to attract him; the mother holds it in her heart of hearts as fairest, sweetest, and best.

In the evening of our last day's travel we reached Casterton--that brightest gem of the lovely valley of the Lune. I have travelled many a mile on British shores, and in foreign lands, but I never saw a sweeter spot. And now I am going to tell you something--though not much of Casterton, and of my life there; because, as you all know, Casterton is the "Lowood" of that most powerful and world-renowned novel, "Jane Eyre." I want to tell you my own actual experience of the school., and of the people in whose hands the principal authority was vested.

We came, then, in the cool of the fair August evening, to the little, half foreign-looking town of Kirby-Lonsdale, its belting moors and fells shutting it out from the rest of the world; thence we drove straight to Casterton, over the beautiful arched bridge that spans the Lune, past the grounds of the Hall, by the pretty grey chapel, covered with ivy, and roses, and flowering creepers, up to the gate of the schoolhouse itself. Here, then, we were at last, and my heart beat audibly as I left the carriage, and followed Mrs. Cleaton up the broad steps into a tolerably spacious entrance-hall. opposite the door was the staircase, of solid stone--an important arrangement in large establishments, where the breaking out of a fire would be a most terrible calamity--an untold calamity, seeing that there is but one fire-engine probably within a circuit of many miles, and certainly no fire brigade. Near the bottom of the staircase stood an empty semi-circular flower-stand, and on the lowest range was placed a ponderous bell. Ah, that bell! how often it has called me in cold wintry dawns, when I was so snug and warm in bed! How often it has summoned me from the pleasant garden to the hot, noisy school-room, on bright summer afternoons! There are hundreds--I was going to say thousands--of women in England and elsewhere who know that bell, and remember it with affectionate respect.

We followed a servant into the superintendent's parlour, where everything was plain, and neat, and comfortable; and here we found the superintendent--a kind, sensible, elderly gentlewoman--ready to receive us.

Mrs. Cleaton did not remain long, for she was anxious to return to Kirby-Lonsdale before dark, and the shades of evening were already rapidly falling. So, after a short conversation with the lady-superintendent, she departed, leaving me with a promise that she would come and see me before she went back to Pen Aber.

And now, as I have nothing particular to tell about the history of my first few weeks at Casterton, I will take the liberty of giving some true particulars respecting the institution of which I had become a pupil. To begin:--It is an immense boon, an unmistakeable benefit to a very important class of the community. Within these sheltering walls girls are received, fed, clothed, educated--and for how much? For fourteen pounds a-year, including, as far as I remember, instruction in French. Music and drawing are imparted at an extra charge of three pounds each per annum.

And it was no "Do-the-girls Hall," as some people have asserted: I here solemnly declare that during the whole of my residence--nearly five years--I never saw the table otherwise than plentifully and wholesomely supplied. Of course, there were accidents in the cooking department sometimes; disasters that interfered with our comfort occasionally occurred; for the Clergy Daughters' School happens to be on earth, though it be in a terrestrial paradise, and not in some beatific region where cooks are infallible and housekeepers ubiquitous; where the whole machinery, both social and domestic, works as regularly and accurately as a Dent's chronometer; and where events flow on as smoothly as the last chapter of an old-fashioned novel, where everybody gets married, inherits a fortune, and lives happy ever afterwards.

I confess that sometimes, at the breakfast hour, our olfactory nerves were saluted with a perceptible odour of burnt porridge; but I have known the milk to be burnt now and then at Thornycroft Hall; and certainly our bread and butter was cut in "planks," not slices, and the butter was, perhaps, a little hard to find; indeed, if I recollect aright, at our time the bread at our morning meal was not buttered at all. But if you had seen the large dishes-full replenished again and again till every girl was satisfied; if you had seen them passing down the long narrow tables in the lofty eating-room, disappearing with astonishing rapidity; if you had counted the number of "planks" each young lady consumed, you would not have imagined any pupil to be badly served. Certainly, no one was in danger of starvation in my time; in a less bracing air, and with less simple fare, there might have been considerable chance of repletion.

I went to Casterton a little, puny, white-faced thing of twelve; I came away a tall, well-formed, and perfectly healthy young woman of seventeen, and, people were flattering enough to say, with a very fine complexion. If it were so, I only resembled the majority of my companions, for a Dissenting clergyman, who visited Casterton in 1848, told me "that he had never seen so many fine, handsome, well-grown girls and young women in his life; it was evident their mode of life tended to beauty as well as to health." And he was right. Of course there were exceptions, because, as I said before, Casterton is in this world, where imperfections everywhere abound; and it was inhabited by human creatures, liable to sickness and death; but, taken as a whole, the girls were--and, I dare say, still are--healthy, blooming, well-taught, and happy.

Yes, they were happy as a general rule. When they first came, no doubt they scorned the very simple fare, and writhed under the strict rule of the establishment; but, as time passed on, they became accustomed to plain food and stringent discipline, and, if they were not decidedly naughty girls, they were happy. Of course, among so large a number, there was always a disaffected party, who sneered at the founder and all his arrangements; but they were always an inconsiderable few, while the many loved, revered, and blessed their friend and benefactor, the Rev. William Carus Wilson. He was, as Jane Eyre tells us, a very tall man. When I first saw him he was already grey and looking elderly; he must have been fifty years of age. He was not an eloquent preacher, nor an erudite divine; his writings were always simple, but sound; he was, perhaps, not singularly large-minded, and he certainly held some peculiar views; he attached great importance to trifles, and was in some degree self-opinionated, and inclined to arbitrary action.

But his works of love and mercy were manifold. He was thoroughly sincere and unostentatiously generous. A kinder man I never knew: I could tell you countless instances of his benevolence, of his thoughtful kindness towards us girls; but a few may suffice. They are unimportant in themselves, but they actually occurred, and they show unmistakeably what manner of man he was. When his beautiful rose-garden was in its bloom, we must go down and see it. When the gooseberries--or "berries" as they are called in the North--were ripe, clothes-baskets-full were gathered from his own kitchen-garden, and sent up to the school for our delectation. Once he came in, and said he would take us all on the fell. And up we went, carrying our dinners with us, and there we lingered till the shades of evening lowered, listening to his interesting discourse, asking him questions, and even venturing now and then on a little pleasantry. I remember that he told us we might choose the text for his next sermon, and some of the elder girls fixed upon one peculiarly appropriate to the grand and solemn scenery around us--"As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth, even for ever," Psalm CXXV. 2. Some of the girls, who were my co-pupils, were orphans, and very poor. There were four sisters, left in most pitiable circumstances, the daughters of a clergyman in the South; and 1 know that Mr. Wilson rescued these girls from servitude and miserable dependency, paid their school expenses, and actually supplied them with pocket-money, of which they had not one penny from other sources. For a length of time they were ignorant of the name of their benefactor, and--they were among the disaffected.

When, as generally happened, there was a smaller or larger number of girls left at school, during the summer vacation, he took a house for them at the sea-side, about ten or twelve miles from Kirby-Lonsdale, where they enjoyed for some weeks the pleasures of the shore, and the renovating influences of marine breezes. Upon one occasion a large number of girls with their teachers were assembled at this lovely coast residence, and he wished to give them all a treat. Accordingly, a trip to Windermere was planned, and successfully carried out. A number of carts came to S------ early one fine July morning, and the happy girls, and their scarcely less happy governesses, were carried in them, at the lowest ebb of tide, across the sands of Morecambe Bay to the village of Lindale on the opposite shore, and thence to Newby Bridge, where a steamer was in readiness to receive the party.

Up to Waterhead, the length of the lake, and down again they went, in the little steam-yacht, "The Firefly;" and, returning to Newby Bridge, they found a substantial dinner awaiting them. Towards evening they returned, as they came, "over sands," crossing the channel of the Ken, or Kent, which flows into the bay between the villages of Grange and Arnside. It was one of the most innocently happy days of my life; and I doubt not that many others, who then shared with me the beneficence of that kindhearted man, would willingly endorse the sentiment. Many were the excursions afforded by the generosity of Mr. Wilson to his delighted protégees during their summer vacation: for some were homeless, and some were the children of missionaries, sent to England, for a term of years, to be educated; and some, from various causes, visited their distant families only once in two or three years.

One more little trait, and I have done. One day Mrs. Wilson brought some friends to visit the schools; they were limited in point a time, and could only see what leisure permitted. So Mrs. Wilson carried them first to the " Servants' School," an admirable institution for the training of girls in the lower ranks of life; thence to the "Preparatory Clergy Daughters' School," where the children under twelve years old were educated; but there their peregrinations ceased, their time was expired, and they must hasten away. Afterwards Mr. Wilson inquired what the ladies had seen, and being told, he exclaimed, "What! you took them to see the leaves and the bulbs, and not my flowers!" This speech was presently reported to us; and very proud we were of the pretty involuntary compliment.

Now all this ha little to do with my own story, but I write it as a duty. Great misapprehensions have prevailed respecting this excellent man, his motives, his ways, and the institution which he founded, and over which he reigned, in former years, with undisputed sway. His motives were pure, let no one gainsay it; his ways were not faultless; and there were those who were ever ready to point at him, as at many other thorough-going Christian men in public life, the finger of scorn and the dart of slander. The institution was certainly not perfect in all points; but then I, for one, do not believe in perfection in establishments of this kind, any more than I believe in perfection in churches. What I have written here is simple truth, an unvarnished narrative of facts. And again I say, I have written it as a duty, which I cannot, and do not, wish to evade.

Perhaps, now that he is gone, even worldlings may acknowledge his worth. Sweet is his memory; for he laboured for Christ through youth, and middle age, and elder years; and now he has entered into rest, and his works do follow him. Let none presume to descant upon the trivial failings of the holy dead. It is written that "they that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever." And of such was William Carus Wilson, the kind, the good, the laborious, the eminently pious.

I was soon absorbed in my new duties, and as my teachers were kind, though strict, and perfectly impartial, and as many of my classmates were exceedingly nice, pleasant girls, I became quite happy, when the first feelings of awkwardness and the first pain of exile from those I loved best had passed away. One day was exceedingly like another; we knew exactly what we should be doing a week hence, or a month hence, if Providence permitted. Sundays and half-holidays marked the weeks; the number of good "reports" we could obtain was the principal object of solicitude, and our chief dissipation was the celebration of the birthdays of our favourite governesses; which celebration mainly consisted in the presentation of certain curious works of art, achieved by our own hands, such as pincushions, and book-markers, and crochet collars; and the mystery which was observed during the process of manufacture added very greatly to the zest of the event

Let me tell you, as well as I can recollect, the routine of the day. The "getting-up bell" clanged furiously through the passages at six or half-past--I forget which now, it is so many years since I last obeyed its summons--and in three minutes "the lady of the room," as the teacher in charge of our long dormitory was called, emerged from her own little chamber to see that every girl was out of bed. Rather sharp practice for the lazy ones; three minutes' grace was little better than none. In twenty minutes the teacher came again, and, standing at the top of the room, gave the word of command, "Turn mattresses." In the twinkling of an eye, and with military precision, fourteen or twenty mattresses were turned, and the lady retired. Presently the "kneeling-down bell" rang, and every girl immediately knelt down at the foot of the bed for private devotion--it was strictly forbidden to kneel at the sides--and meantime the officiating governess walked softly round the room. Every girl was obliged to remain on her knees for five minutes, at the expiration of which time the teacher said, "Girls, you may rise." Not "must," you perceive, for any girl wishing to remain longer at her prayers was at perfect liberty to do so.

Once more the great bell sounded, and "the ladies of the day," that is, the teachers on active and constant duty from morning till night, two of them in regular turn, called over the names, class by class, to see that all were present; and every girl not answering to her name was reported, unless unavoidably absent. There were two large rooms for study, one containing an organ, where we all assembled morning and evening for prayers, and the two ladies of the day were always with us; the others, whose turn it was not to be on duty, were at perfect liberty when school-hours were over. After roll-call came Bible-class, then family prayers, then breakfast. This was an error: there was too much early morning work, and delicate girls and delicate teachers suffered from it; still it was only an error, and not a narrow-minded piece of tyranny.

After breakfast there was a run in the garden, or in the verandahs, if it rained; then, from nine o'clock to twelve, regular study, class succeeding class, without intermission. Then came the walk, and a slice of bread for lunch; then dinner, when nearly everybody played an excellent knife and fork, twice of meat and twice of pudding being the ordinary complement. Then from two to five afternoon school, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays; then tea, then recreation till seven, or thereabouts; then preparation of lessons for the next day, till eight o'clock; then supper--plenty of bread and butter; then family prayers and our curtsies, and good night. The private devotions were regulated as in the morning, and "the lady of the room" saw her charge safely into bed.

Rather monotonous, you will say. It would have been so had we been less busily occupied; but in the performance of duties, and their quick and constant succession, there was no leisure to think about monotony. When there is plenty to do that must be done, the demon ennui is generally expelled without ceremony; and the mind, if at all in a healthy state, has seldom to complain of sameness. Certainly with us days and weeks fleeted away most rapidly, and I never heard any, save the very idle and ill-disposed, complain of time's slow progress.

And now to come back to myself. I soon fell into the routine of the house, and being already pretty well disciplined, I was considered from the first an average specimen of docility. The simplicity of the regulation-dress never annoyed me, as it did some girls. I was fully satisfied with my neat lavender print dress and tippet, my comfortable check shawl, and my plain straw bonnet tied with dark blue ribbon. On Sundays we wore white frocks and tippets, and our best crimped collars and tuckers were our sole finery. In the winter-time a dark stuff dress served on all occasions, and we had warm dreadnought cloaks, and mud-proof clogs, that were, I must confess, clumsy and fatiguing in the extreme. Every girl on leaving the establishment was provided, at the expense of the institution, with a proper supply of underclothing, a neatly-trimmed bonnet, a serviceable shawl or mantle, and two or three nice, suitable dresses.

I worked hard at my studies. To my great delight I found a lady, one of the English governesses, who volunteered to give me Latin lessons, so that once more I was able to return to my long-forsaken but still tenderly-regarded Delectus. French I completely mastered, and I caught a smattering of Italian from private sources; but German was not then taught in the house, and the utmost I could do was to keep up what I had already learned. With music and drawing I believe I succeeded indifferently well; languages and general literature were my forte.

I heard regularly once a fortnight from Mrs. Cleaton, and occasionally from my aunt; now and then from Julia; once from Maria, and not at all from Arabella. But before I had been many months at Casterton, I received the information that Mademoiselle de Lavalle was deposed, and that another lady of doubtful age, with crisp little grey curls and blue spectacles, but a paragon of goodness, and a pianiste of marvellous powers, reigned in her stead. Of course Maria had finally left the schoolroom, and was every inch Miss Ward; so that only Arabella and Julia required the services of a governess.

Two years passed away, and the second Midsummer vacation was close at hand, when one morning I received a letter from my aunt, inviting me to spend my holidays at Thornycroft Hall. I was very glad, for although I was fully resigned--indeed, quite content to remain in Westmoreland--the prospect of a journey was altogether charming: and then, it was so nice to be packing up and going home like the majority of my companions. Then I should see Julia again, and Arabella; yes, I wanted to see Arabella--she had always been so kind to me in her way. And perhaps--who could tell?--I might meet Mrs. Cleaton and Marshall again. I rather feared, however, such would not be the ease, for my last letter from Mrs. Cleaton--a very delightful one--was dated from Interlachen, and Marshall was with her, and they were thinking of spending some little time in Germany.

And so it came to pass that one bright June morning, while the rosy mists were yet hanging over the Barbon Fells, and the dew was still sparkling on blade and spray and flower, I was passing over Kirby-bridge, and beginning my journey to the station, which was some miles away, over a long stretch of breezy upland moor. How glorious it was! the sun rising higher and higher in the azure, cloudless sky; the light mists of early morning melting away before his broad, golden, midsummer splendour; the sweep of mountains stretching around in every direction, save one, and there the blue waters of Morecambe Bay were dancing at full tide on the broad expanse of yellow sand. Past the fine old church of Burton we went, and we reached the station just five minutes before the thirsty steam-horse came up panting, and puffing, and screaming, till Farleton Knot re-echoed again; then, with a snort, a bang, and a yell, worthy of such a brazen-looking, fiery-hearted demon as our engine was, we started on our way, and soon mountain and moor and crag were left behind. Before eleven o'clock we were in the heart of South Lancashire, and Wigan and its countless water-butts looked as black as ever.

The summer evening was fading into a most lovely twilight when I reached Thornycroft Hall. The sound of the carriage-wheels brought out my uncle, and Julia, and Arabella, and I was kissed and hugged to such an extent that I became almost uncertain as to my own identity. Mrs. Ward and Maria were in the drawing-room, and I received what from them was certainly a pretty cordial welcome. Mrs. Ward was not at all changed; she looked just as sharp and authoritative as she had looked on that November evening when, returning from Mr. Graves' week-day lecture, she had found me, a poor little, frightened, grief-stricken child, nervously awaiting her arrival. Maria had developed into what might be called a very fine young woman, for she was tall and stout, and carried herself in right stately fashion; her raven-black hair was more glossy and more abundant than ever; but alas the hues of the peony still glowed on her chubby cheek, and her dark eyes had lost none of their haughty fierceness. She bad the good sense, however, to dress generally in black or white; she had learned by this time that she wanted toning down.

"Well, you are grown," she said, when I was fairly seated at the table--"really, I thought you were going to be a dwarf--and you don't look quite so much like a scared mouse; but what a guy you look, child, in that lilac print, and that Methodist bonnet! It is just like those our Sunday-school girls wear. Why, the people will think, when they see you with us at church, that we have taken one of the younger servants to sit with us in the pew."

My proud spirit chafed at this; but I was determined that I would not allow myself to be irritated by my cousin's uncomplimentary remarks; at least, I would not commit myself by word, deed, or look, on this the first night of my return. They should see what two years of wise training and self-government had effected. Besides, I knew that I was a lady born and bred, and I did not believe that any homeliness of attire could make me look like what I was not. Maria's rude innuendoes might annoy, but they should not humiliate me, or provoke me, as in time past, to forget my own self-respect. "Forewarned is forearmed," I thought, as I looked up, and said pleasantly that I was myself so entirely accustomed to the school uniform that I had ceased to regard it as peculiarly plain; but that I could, if my aunt pleased, make some little alteration in my dress while I remained at home.

"And what a colour Nellie has!" said my uncle, regarding me critically through his eye-glass. "Not quite so blooming as Maria, perhaps, but still quite rosy--O yes, decidedly rosy! And she used to be so pale, and even sallow--yes, certainly, a little sallow."

"I trust the improvement is not all external," said Mrs. Ward, solemnly: "I hope Ellen has corrected those evil habits and tendencies that gave us so much trouble two years ago. I hear no complaints from Casterton; therefore, I would fain hope it is so. Do you not feel, Ellen, the extreme impropriety, the sinfulness of your conduct at Pen Aber--indeed of your whole conduct, from the time of' your first coming among us, till--in order that you might be reformed, and for the sake of my own children--I was reluctantly compelled to banish you from the bosom of my family?"

I coloured violently, after my old childish manner. Those piercing eyes made me feel once more guilty of unknown and manifold misdemeanours; besides, I thought it rather hard that, after two years' absence, my former delinquencies, now stale, and, as I vainly trusted, forgotten, should be dished up again without an hour's delay, for my solo benefit. But I said "Yes" in a faint tone; and Mrs. Ward was happily satisfied, and ceased to descant on my ancient depravities: and Maria smoothed her shining black braids of hair--she had discarded the long ringlets--and seemed satisfied also.

Presently we went upstairs to bed; and by-and-by Arabella and Julia came in; and the former seated herself, sultana-fashion, on my bed, and began to talk very fast. She was now as tall as Maria, and her personal appearance was improved considerably; her complexion had cleared, and her eyes were not continually swelled and reddened with crying. The neutral tint of her hair was but slightly altered; but she made the most of her straggling locks, and wore them in the style that was the least unbecoming. Her temper, I am afraid, was very much what it had been; and in her eighteenth year she was, in some things, as childish as in those earlier days, when she and I were first acquainted. However, she seemed extremely glad to see me; and we were no sooner shut up in my room than she began to converse with her usual volubility.

"O Ellen! I am so glad you are come. I have oceans of things to tell you. Isn't it a real shame that I should be kept in the schoolroom? and I am turned seventeen, you know. Maria never had regular lessons after she was seventeen; she used to go in and read history and German when she liked, and she practised, and drew great ugly heads of heathen gods, and all that, in chalk; but she was not under the governess, as I am, and I say it is a great shame."

"How long are you to be in the schoolroom?! I asked, chiefly for the sake of making some rejoinder.

I had learned many things at Casterton, and among them was the duty of paying respect to elders, and submitting one's self to the powers that be. My feelings had undergone considerable changes since that bright morning when I had said good-bye to Arabella, in our pretty bedroom at the White House; and though my aunt had grieved and irritated me by her unkind references to past offences, I felt altogether unwilling to assist her daughter in one of those reviling tirades in which, I am sorry to say, we frequently indulged in old time.

"How long? Who knows?" replied Arabella, crossly. "Of course, as long as mamma and Maria choose. They say I want another year to finish me--finish me, indeed! as if fifty years would do that! Finish me in what, I wonder! I don't want to be finished; and what's more, Nellie, I won't be finished. But I know that Maria wants to queen it all by herself; she doesn't want me to be introduced till she's married, and that will not be for two or three years yet, if ever."

"O!" I replied, "I would not be vexed at one more year's restraint. I have heard some of our governesses say that a girl's best time in the schoolroom is from sixteen to eighteen, and I can quite believe it, for every year I find I can understand things more quickly and more thoroughly, and I learn much more now in a given time than I could six months ago. I hope I shall stay at Casterton for three or four years yet."

"Now don't go and turn against me," said Arabella, in a fretful tone; "I have so looked for you to come home, that I might tell you all my troubles. I know you can't bear Maria, nor mamma either, in your heart, so it's no use pursing your mouth up in that way, and looking so proper. I tell you I don't mean to take their aggravating ways quietly any longer; I am seventeen now, and if that isn't being grown up, I don't know what is. Why, Lucy says there's many a girl married and settled at my age. I wish I could be married-- don't you?"

"Do not I wish to be married?" I asked, in great astonishment. I did not like this style of conversation: I knew some of the silliest elder girls at school were given to discoursing on matrimony in a somewhat similar strain; but there were none of them my companions.

Arabella made answer--"Yes; why shouldn't you? You could have your own way then."

I replied, "It is absurd to think about such a thing; I am a child yet; I want to learn as much as I can while I have the opportunity. But who is Lucy?"

"Our maid. Kitty is gone away, you know; she married the butcher's man; and they keep a little shop on the other side of Hackington. I like Lucy a great deal better."

"I do not think it is right or nice of Bella," interposed Julia, "to make such a friend of Lucy. She is not a good girl, I am sure, and I am nearly certain she tells stories. Besides, young ladies ought not to be too familiar with servants. Miss Latimer says so, and she scolds Arabella when she finds her gossiping with Lucy. Bella, you know what I say is true: she fills you up with all kinds of nonsense."

"Now just shut up with you!" retorted Arabella, elegantly. "When I want your opinion I will ask it, and till then I'll thank you to hold your tongue."

The tone, as well as the words, were vulgar. I thought Lucy must have been giving some lessons which had entirely obliterated Miss Latimer's. Julia drew herself up, and turned away her beautiful face in disgust. Arabella continued:--"Yes, if Maria doesn't take care, I shall get the start of her. She may tell me how ugly I am, and how stupid, and how ill-tempered; but I know better. Some people, that I could name, like soft blue eyes rather than great fierce black ones, and some people--I don't mention names, you know--think cheeks like red turnip-radishes rather over-coloured, and prefer pale ones instead; and they care more about golden hair than they do about such black, thick, shining stuff as Maria has on her head. O! I've oceans of things to tell you, Ellen; you will be so surprised. Wait till we are alone, and then you shall hear all my secrets, and tell me all yours."

I was just beginning to say that I had no secrets when Julia rose, and saying that she would be very sorry to put any restraint on our conversation, and that it was a pity to defer the promised confidences to a future day, left the room, with all the dignity and grace of a young princess.

"O, that's right!" cried Arabella, clapping her hands exultingly. "I am so glad she is gone; she is nearly, if not quite, as unsisterly as Maria. I haven't really a creature to unburden my heart to. except that good, faithful creature, Lucy; so no wonder I make a friend of her. But now you are come it will be quite different; I shall tell you everything. Well, I dare say you guess what it is. I have got a beau."

I started in extreme astonishment. If she had told me that she had a live Megatherium, I think I should have felt less surprised. But in a moment I knew what I ought to say, and I said it--"Hush, please, Arabella. Wait a minute--one thing first; I cannot hear anything that uncle and aunt are not to know; I cannot promise to keep secret anything that I think they ought to be told."

"O, very well," said Arabella, sulkily. "Then of course I have nothing more to say; I don't want to force my confidence on anybody; but you've turned very disagreeable, Ellen; you are not like the same as you used to be in old time. You silly child! what can it matter to you whether I keep secrets from papa and mamma or not? 'Why, all girls have their secrets and their little love affairs, haven't they? and what's the harm? Come now, do be a dear, good Nelly, and vow you'll never say a word, and I'll tell you such a story--a real love story, just like a novel, and every word true too. Well, one day Lucy told me that she had seen a dark gentleman, with an Albert chain on, in pile lavender gloves--"

"Hush, hush!" I cried, stopping my ears. "I will not listen, Arabella, for if I hear anything that I am sure aunt or uncle ought to know, I must tell it them. Now, I do not want to make any mischief or to bring you into trouble, so pray say no more. If I know nothing I can tell nothing. Even if questioned, I should not be able to reply. Besides, Bella dear, I do not like to hear you talk in this way. At Casterton, we think it very vulgar to be talking about beaux. There are some girls who, I believe, think of nothing else, though they never see a gentleman the week round; but they are low in the classes, they get no end of bad 'reports,' and no one respects them, and only the silly and low-minded girls care to associate with them."

"And do you mean to say you never talk about young men?" asked Arabella, sneeringly.

"No, indeed," I replied, with some indignation. "Bella, you forget that I am only fourteen. What have children to do with such nonsense? We cannot understand such matters. Please let us talk about something else; or, if you like to go on with the subject in another direction, tell me when you think Marshall Cleaton will come back again. Maria has not seen him for some months, I think."

"I don't know, and I don't care anything about Marshall Cleaton," returned Arabella, sourly. "As you are so nice and particular, we had better not say anything about lovers at all. Not that they can be called lovers though, for I am sure the love is all on one side. I should be very sorry if my Cha--I mean if any friend of mine were as cold, and indifferent, and neglectful, never asking one to name the day, and writing stupid letters about foreign countries, and sending journals, just like the books of travels that mamma makes us read for the improvement of our minds. I read one of Marshall's letters one day--Maria dropped it in the large greenhouse--and do you know it was almost like a sermon, and just like a dull book, that is all about one's duty, and all such stuff?"

What further Arabella might have chattered about I do not know; I was quite ready for bed, and longing for repose after my long day's journey; and I was wondering whether she would take it very ill if I asked her to say good night, when the door was opened, and Mrs. Ward, in her dressing-gown, came to see if Arabella, whom she had missed from her own room, was to be found in mine. Of course Bella received a severe reprimand, and she went away looking very sulky, and telegraphing to me what I supposed to be an injunction to keep silence about our conversation. Mrs. Ward then told me that she did not allow gossiping at bed-time, and went away, leaving me, to my delight, to the peace and quietude which I so greatly desired. I felt rather troubled about what I had just heard; but I soon fell asleep, and dreamed that I was driving again over the wild moors beyond Kirby-Lonsdale, and that I was going to Arabella's wedding, and her bridegroom was no other than the butcher's man, wearing lavender gloves and an Albert chain, and Marshall Cleaton was going to be best man. Presently I slept more soundly. Once again I was resting under the roof of Thornycroft Hall.

After that little conversation referred to in my last chapter, Arabella was sulky and moody. She did not trouble me with any further confidences, and seemed decidedly to prefer Lucy's company to mine--indeed, to any other company in her little world, save and except, I suppose, the company of the young man "in the lavender gloves, with the Albert chain," who, I doubted not, was the swain upon whose sweet perfections I cruelly refused "to be discoursed," as an Irish friend of mine at Casterton used to say. But the bond between Julia and myself was drawn closer and closer, during my six weeks' stay at home--as somehow I could not help calling Thornycroft Hall. Nor were the links of the chain that united us in more than cousinly, ay, in more than mere ordinary sisterly regard, ever loosed; the childish fancy grew jute a girlish attachment of more than common stability, and then deepened into strong, abiding, womanly love--love which never wavered, never faltered, till one lay down under blue Roman skies, never more to waken till the trumpet of the archangel should summon the sleepers of that fairest of burying grounds from their flowery graves, to meet the Master and the Judge. Nay, and it did not falter then: the love was still abiding, only it wore a new and solemn aspect--it entered upon a diviner existence, when one of the twain was left on earth and the other lifted to a higher, purer sphere. Ah! I know now; it was all well--all ordered: it was best as it was-- best in every way, that my darling should be taken from a world of pain and sorrow; that she should be borne so early "over the river" to that other side, where I know, with others, on that further shore, she waits and watches for me.

Maria was condescendingly kind; but, of course, it was not to be expected that Miss Ward, now fully introduced, and thinking of being married, should trouble herself much about a little girl five years her junior. But the old grudge, the ancient enmity, whatever it might be, seemed to have died out, and she was contented to tolerate my presence, and even occasionally to testify her satisfaction with the general course of my proceedings; and when I had done anything for her especial benefit, as I often did, she would say emphatically, "You are very much improved, Ellen, very much improved; your going to Casterton was a most excellent arrangement." I thought so, too; but how excellent, how felicitous, she did not know and never would. And if, on these occasions, Mrs. Ward happened to be present, she generally added her comment, "I only hope the improvement is genuine; I hope it is a reformation of heart and mind, as well as of temper and manners; I most sincerely hope it is."

I hoped so, too; but my aunt went on to expatiate on the blessing of strict schools, like the Casterton C. D. S., and I felt that the perfect discipline and the impartial strictness of my school were preferable in every point of view to the mingled harshness and indulgence that pervaded the whole training system at Thornycroft Hall. Harsh as related to the educational system, both moral and intellectual; and indulgent in the way of creature comforts: for while our reading was restricted to the narrowest bounds, while our minds were fettered, and cramped, and held in slavish bonds, our bodies were certainly allowed many luxuries that might have been dispensed with, and we none the worse. My aunt would have been shocked had there been any stint of food, and of dainty food too, in her house, while she allowed her children's minds to starve from sheer want of nourishment; and so it came to pass, at it nearly always does in such cases, that they ceased to care for good, solid, wholesome mental nutriment, and greedily devoured poisonous trash, whenever it could be obtained. O! how much have parents to answer for, who neglect the training of their children's minds! Is the parent who stints his child of bread and meat for his own selfish or careless ends to be shunned as a monster, and no blame to be attached to him or to her who wilfully withholds that which will give strength, and fervour, and judgment to the mind, as the mere material food will give bone, and muscle, and sinew to the corporeal frame? You will see, as my tale goes on, how Mrs. Ward's system worked. I am quite sure that if I had not been sent to a good school I should have been irretrievably ruined; but a gracious Providence watched over the desolate orphan, and in due time brought all things to a happy issue, so that the prayer of her dying father, breathed in faith, and perfect trust in the word that never yet failed mortal man, was wonderfully answered. O! how marvellous are God's ways! Out of darkness He educes light, out of bitterness He brings forth sweetness. In the wild uproar of the seemingly reckless storm, He knows there are the sure elements of a perfect calm. It is well sometimes to pause,

"And backward force the waves of time,
That now so swift and silent bear
Our restless bark from year to year."

It is well to look back on the way by which we have been brought, step by step, along the road of life, to contemplate the path behind us, even as a man high up the mountain side turns to look on the winding course he has pursued. When he was in the valley the way turned and wound so much that he could only see a few paces before him, he had to go on believing that he was in the right direction; now, lifted above the level of much that bounded his prospect, he sees, to a great extent, all the intricacies of the narrow way, from his first setting-out to his present position; by-and-by, on the mountain-top, he will see more clearly, as on a map unrolled before him, every portion of the road by which he has reached his journey's end. So, even now, we can look back and see the way by which the Lord our God has led us these thirty, forty, or fifty years through the wilderness; we can look back and wonder and adore; but what will be our wonder, what our reverent thankfulness, when from the heights of heaven's "golden hills" we retrace our earthly steps, and with clear vision and perfect comprehension see the snares we have escaped, the dangers through which we have been borne, the help that has been our aid when our feet faltered and the darkness and the mists came upon us! All this will be revealed to us, when we know even as we are known.

But I must muse no longer; my history, as It proceeds, must speak for itself; and I must return to Thornycroft Hall. The vacation, for the most part, passed quietly away, though one great event did occur; and something else, rather trifling, as it seemed then, set me cogitating afterwards about whys and wherefores, to an extent that would have made some people very uncomfortable, had they only known it. I will narrate both events in order. First of all the trifle, which I could not forget, and which I could not divest of a certain amount of mystery.

One day, in reading the Record newspaper, my aunt chanced to meet with the name of our former pastor, "dear Mr. Graves," as a few of his forsaken flock still called him; and she began to talk about him to Maria, and to compare his sermons with Mr. Elton's, and finally to recal some of his prophetical lectures, which had been carefully taken down in notes, then fairly copied, in Miss Lambert's clearest writing, and finally corrected by Mr. Graves himself.

"But I forget exactly," said Mrs. Ward, pausing in the middle of her reminiscences; "what was it, Maria?"

"Indeed, mamma, I do not recollect. Why, it is three or four years since that sermon was preached; how can you expect me to remember it?"

"Well, I suppose it is too much to expect; you were almost a child then. Ellen, take my keys, and go to the left-hand small drawer of my wardrobe, and bring me a packet of papers, wrapped up in a pink cover. We will look and see whether Mr. Graves' arguments do not confute Mr. Elton's."

I went, and soon found the packet, exactly as she described it, wrapped up in several sheets of pink tissue-paper. I carried it down, and laid it before my aunt; but at that moment she and Maria were intent upon some delicate operation in their potichomanie; and their hands were gummy, as well as busy,

"Open the packet, Ellen," said Mrs. Ward, scrutinizing her half-completed vase with anything but complacency, and not regarding me at all; "the lectures are all sorted according to their delivery; and the particular subject of each is inscribed on the outside. Read the titles aloud: I will tell you which I want when you come to it."

I did as I was bid, and proceeded to inspect the contents of the bundle I held in my hand. I soon removed the pink envelope, laying it carefully on the table sheet by sheet. "But it is sealed up!" I cried, when I found yet another cover of stiff white paper, carefully folded down, and sealed with my aunt's own crest seal.

"O, is it?" was the half-abstracted reply. Mrs. Ward's faculties, as well as her daughter's, were entirely concentrated on a precious morsel of sticky paper, that would not arrange itself according to orders. "Well, break the seal, then; I don't remember sealing it, though; but a little wax keeps things together,"

Thus instructed, I proceeded to open the packet, and greatly I wondered at the material therein enclosed; it was so strange to write Mr. Graves' prophetical lectures on parchment. But then I knew my aunt's profound appreciation of her late minister's discourses; and ivory tablets clasped with diamonds, and written over in letters of gold, would not have been deemed by her too costly to contain the rather peculiar and very fanciful interpretations of Holy Writ wherewith Mr. Graves was wont to favour the congregation of St. Faith's. The writing on the back of this document was strangely stiff and legal-looking, clearly not Miss Lambert's or Mrs. Ward's. Had my aunt really gone to the expense of having her oracle's sermons endorsed by a lawyer's clerk? I read aloud as soon as I could make it out:--"The Codicil of the Will of John Dudley Ward, Esquire, of Thornycroft Hall, in the parish of Thornycroft-cum-Twistleton, in the county of Sandstone, April 20, 1827."

Had an Armstrong gun been discharged on the lawn--had the ghost of John Dudley Ward himself appeared before us there and then--had Mr. Graves' perversion to Romanism, or Judaism, or Mormonism, been credibly announced, I do not think Mrs. Ward could have been more powerfully affected. As I read rather stumblingly the simple sentence just recorded she gazed at me pith starting, dilated eyes; every vestige of colour fled from her face; her hand trembled; and the unfortunate vase on which so much time and trouble had been expended fell to the ground, and lay there in twenty pieces, disregarded by both ladies; for Maria, on her part, gazing with astonishment and terror at her mother's extraordinary emotion, let fall a quantity of emerald-green paint on the carpet, and stood still, open-mouthed, staring first at me, and then at Mrs. Ward, with a very visible diminution of colouring on her round rosy cheeks.

"Mamma, what is it?--are you ill?" cried poor Maria, her roses still fading as she spoke. No answer; but a deepening of the pallor into a leaden hue of most cadaverous aspect, and short quick gasps, terribly suggestive of angina pectoris, while one quivering hand seemed trying to clutch at something across the table. The keys were on the sideboard, and without a word I flew for brandy, and administered it, neat as it was, in a tea-spoon. The remedy was efficacious: in about a minute Mrs. Ward was able to speak, and to say she had had a spasm at the heart; and presently she rose, and tottered across the room, saying she would go to her own chamber, and lie down till dinner-time. But before she left she drank some more brandy, pouring it out, and taking it with a sort of desperate calmness I had never seen in her before. Then she picked up the codicil, remarking that "there was a mistake," and away she went.

Maria went with her, for she appeared quite unable to mount the stairs and traverse the long corridor without assistance; and I sat still like one in a dream, stupidly contemplating the broken vase, the spilt paint, the open Record, and the sheets of pink paper that lay before me, waved gently to and fro by the summer breeze coming in through the open window. I wondered if my aunt had ever before had a similar attack; and I could not help wondering whether the mention of her father-in-law's name had so distressed her as to bring on an access of some disease of which I was not cognizant. But no; that could not be. A minute's reflection convinced me of the baselessness of such a supposition. Old Mr. Ward's name was freely mentioned among us, when my uncle was not within hearing, in a strain that entirely ran counter to the good old classic proverb, which tells us to say nothing of the dead but what is favourable. And then I knew that for The last two years of his life the old gentleman and his daughter-in-law had been far from friendly; quarrel had succeeded quarrel till they were scarcely on speaking terms; and in his last illness he bad absolutely refused to see her, and desired his son to keep "that woman and her tongue" out of his room.

Finally, however, I roused myself, and picked up the broken ware, and tidied the table, and rang for a servant to attend to the carpet; and then I went to my own chamber, and read German till the dressing-bell rang. I was just ready to go down, when Maria came to tell me that her mamma wished to see me immediately; she was in her dressing-room, and I must go thither at once before the second bell rang.

I went and found Mrs. Ward in her easy-chair, looking somewhat like her usual self again; but there was a slight hesitancy in her speech, and her colour went and came, as she began to address me. The conversation was on this wise:

"Ellen!"

"Yes, aunt."

"Ellen!" A pause; and then again, "Ellen!" and another meek affirmative from my lips.

"Ellen, I sent for you, just to say that I do not wish you to mention to any one the mistake that occurred this morning."

"No, aunt," I returned, not feeling, however, quite positive as to what mistake she alluded to. I suppose my tell-tale face, as usual, revealed my state of mind, for she continued--

"I mean about those papers. How they came in that drawer, I cannot even imagine; only I suppose I did the mischief myself when I was routing before the summer cleaning; both were wrapped in sheets of pink paper, and so I suppose I made the exchange. But I particularly desire, Ellen, that you will never, under any circumstances, mention the subject.; your uncle would be extremely angry with me. Indeed, ho would probably never forgive me if he found out that I had been so careless as to leave important documents given into my keeping in so insecure a place. Your uncle is very particular about family papers; and, of course, you do not wish to make a quarrel between us."

"No, indeed, aunt," I said earnestly; but I marvelled greatly at her tone. Mrs. Ward openly confess herself to be careless, and to me! Mrs. Ward afraid of her husband, to whom she had never been in the slightest subjection since I had had the pleasure of her acquaintance! Mrs. Ward actually condescending to beg me to keep her secret! It was passing strange--more than strange--perfectly mysterious.

However, I promised faithfully that I would never say, unless absolutely questioned--"and then," she said, "I suppose you must speak the truth"--that I had ever seen, or was conscious of the existence of such a document as I had that morning, through her own "unaccountable carelessness," held in my hand. "Promise also," she added, after a little hesitation, "that you will never, however great may be the temptation, allow any one indirectly to become aware of the--of the document being in my possession at all. Promise that no hint, no indiscretion of yours, shall ever lead to questions, which must be answered or evaded--and evasions always lead to suspicions; therefore, you will promise me, Ellen, as solemnly as though you were pledged by an oath, to keep silence."

More and more astonished, I promised, solemnly and sacredly, as she desired; and though no oath was really taken, I felt that before God and man I was pledged to keep her secret, at all risks and at any cost. Ah! why did I give the promise? But then, had I refused, I might have said, why did I not? I knew nothing about codicils, except that they were legal documents, on which the inheritance of property frequently depended, and, of course, the late Mr. Ward's codicil must be extremely important. There was no reason why I should ever tell any one the little occurrence of the morning; after all, it was, as I said, a trifle--a curious thing certainly, but still a trifle; only, what possessed Mrs. Ward to make the matter of so much importance? And why had she turned lead-colour, and gasped for breath?

And so ended this small episode; and as Mrs. Ward regained her looks towards the evening, and everything proceeded as before, I gradually ceased to think about it, and very soon another, and what appeared to me to be an infinitely more important, discovery occupied all my thoughts. But Mr. Graves' prophetical discourses were never mentioned any more, and the moot point between him and his successor was never again discussed in Thornycroft Hall.

It was near the end of' the holidays, and I was looking forward with pain and with pleasure to my return to Casterton--the pain was in the thought of leaving, Julia again for an indefinite period, the pleasure in the anticipation of meeting several dear friends, of renewing my studies, and of treading once more those beauteous dells and glades, and climbing those steep fell-sides that I had come to love almost as much as the hills and vales of my own beloved, long-unseen Battlebarrow. And about this time circumstances began to attract my notice that gave me serious anxiety. Arabella's conduct, though decorous enough in the presence of her elders, was far from satisfactory. She did not attempt to favour me with any more confidences, for which I was thankful, but she became more and more intimate with Lucy, and their long, unseemly confidences were conducted with the strictest regard to secrecy: Lucy frequently going to Arabella's room, after all the house was asleep, and remaining there till the morning. From Julia she was even more estranged than from myself, for Julia's delicacy, child as she was, had been outraged at a very early stage of these clandestine proceedings.

I am not going to tell you the story of poor, silly Arabella'a bread-and-butter love concerns. I do not think the revelation of such foolish, deceitful, vulgar, unmaidenly conduct could do my fair readers in their teens anything but harm. There is a great deal of naughtiness in the world, but I doubt if ever any good comes of making pen-and-ink pictures of it. A broad general statement of the evil is a quite sufficient base whereon to ground a warning. Detail only makes the matter less serious, and gives that sad knowledge which may be quite as well deferred till its painful acquisition becomes inevitable.

I will only say that I became aware that Arabella was deceiving her parents, and going far to ruin her reputation; and at last I made the astounding discovery that she meant to run away with the young man in the pale lavender gloves, for the purpose of becoming his wife. I saw him one night, as he was speaking to Lucy near a side wicket-gate, that led from the shrubbery into the park. He was handsome, in a certain acceptation of the word; he had jet black curling hair, dark eyes, a pretty simpering mouth, and "a love of a moustache, and the dearest, sweetest whiskers," according to Arabella' s partial testimony. He was not dressed in good taste; and I recognized him at once by his pale lavender' gloves and his Albert chain; he carried also a jaunty little cane, which he whisked about in true dandy fashion. I thought he looked like a draper's assistant.

Now, mind, I am not going to undervalue the young men in drapers' shops, or, indeed, in any shops where a lawful calling is followed. I believe, heart and soul, in the dignity of honest labour; and the young man behind the counter, measuring out his yards of ribbon or merino, or weighing his pounds of sugar and tea, or showing off the merits of iron-ware, or hollow-ware, or earthen or china-ware, or any ware in the world, while he faithfully serves his employer to the best of his ability, is as much to be respected--ay, and far more to be respected than the idle young collegian, or the juvenile aristocrat, who persecutes milliners' girls, and gets into debt, and professes to be "bored" with everything beneath the sun, and lives on God's good earth a useless, unprofitable, mischievous cumberer of the ground. Merit makes the man, and the want of it the snob.

"These be truths," at least to my mind.

Nevertheless, I think you will agree with me that there is fitness in all things, and Pope, though he made a few mistakes, was right when he said, "Order is heaven's first law;" and a young, foppish draper's assistant, with an income of thirty pounds a-year, parents whom his gentility refused to acknowledge, and any amount of false jewellery, was not by any means a match for Miss Arabella Ward, of Thornycroft Hall, bred up in all the elegancies and amenities of the upper class of society, and heiress, moreover, to a considerable fortune.

I thought awhile, trying to find out what Marshall Cleaton would have had me do had he been cognizant of existent circumstances; and, finally, I resolved to go to my uncle and tell him what I had found out, and leave him to act as he saw fit. So I went into his study one evening, and said, "Uncle, dear, I want to speak to you."

"What is it, Nellie?" he asked, kindly, drawing me on his knee. "You look troubled, my child."

Out came the naked truth, without any circumlocution whatever. "Uncle, Arabella is going to run away, and I thought you ought to know."

"Bless my heart!" said Mr. Ward, looking very red and white as he spoke; "eh, what's that, Nellie?"

I told him the whole story--which I am not going to tell you--and poor Mr. Ward was overwhelmed; he had never imagined that a daughter of his could so misconduct herself.

"You will not tell aunt?" I asked, timidly.

"Nellie," said my uncle, with a quiet gravity that well became him, "I do not choose to have reserves from my wife; she tries me sometimes with her temper--I may say as much to you, for you are not her child--but I will not begin now to keep secret anything that concerns her, or me, or ours. Want of candour in the marriage state opens the gates to all kinds of miseries. When you have a good husband of your own, Nellie, as I hope you will have one day, be sure and repose in him your fullest confidence. Never, under any pretence, hide anything from him; let there be community of thought, as well as of worldly goods, between you and the man who ought to be your second self. I must tell your aunt; such confidence is her due."

And he did tell her, and dire was the confusion; but Arabella was preserved from her impending fate: and the young man in the lavender gloves was, as I had opined, a draper's assistant living in Hackington, though he pretended to be a gentleman of birth and fortune, which, however, was in futuris and not in esse. Arabella cried herself half dead, and vowed she would never speak to me again as long as she lived, and she hoped I should fall in love with a tinker.

An aspiration probably never to be fulfilled; for, so far, my heart has never been drawn towards an itinerant vendor and mender of pots and kettles.

I went back to Casterton, leaving poor Arabella in dire disgrace. It grieved me very much to think how, in great measure, her misery and her painful position might be laid to my door. And yet it was far better that she should fret over her whiskered hero now than spend a lifetime in deploring the luckless hour when she joined her fate with his. Maria taunted her with being in love with a shopman; and on such occasions she would dry her tears, look important, and say, "Yes, a shopman now, because a cruel fate compels him to an ignoble occupation; but wait awhile, and you will see my Charles taking his place among the proudest in the land."

And one day Maria replied, "I am afraid when that comes to pass he will scarcely condescend to an affiance with Miss Arabella Ward; some beautiful and accomplished peer's daughter will suit him better."

"Ah! you little know the force of true love," sighed Arabella. "Marshall is not the idol of your soul, the beloved one of your heart; he is only the heir of Thornycroft, and as such your betrothed." And Arabella cast a glance of unqualified contempt on her unromantic sister, and then raised her lack-lustre blue eyes heavenward, and looked unutterable things. She felt herself every inch a heroine persecuted for true love's sake.

In the meantime my uncle had made certain arrangements with the Hackington draper, and poor Bella's swain, and his cheap lavender gloves, went off together, a situation being found for him in a distant county, where he was strongly advised to limit his aspirations, and seek another "partner of his soul," as he ecstatically called Arabella, in his own rank of life. But the young man, with a grand air, and a curl of his superb whiskers, replied that "love despised ranks and riches, and 'earts that once 'ad spoken were to be silenced only in the gloomy grave." Here then was the key to Arabella's continual flights of sentiment; her hero was evidently of the exploded Werter school, and the literature in which he indulged, whenever he had the chance, was of the most vapid and sickly character--a fifth-rate sort of sensation novel, well diluted with extreme silliness and high-flown eloquence of very bad style. And for some time he had supplied his lady-love with all her light reading; which was the only reading she ever affected, except upon compulsion.

But it became a serious case; Arabella's swain was not so easily dismissed, and he coolly stated his intention to return to Hackington as soon as she should be of age, and claim her in spite of her "proud and cruel kindred." He knew she would be faithful; for his sake she would "bear the dungeon and its sordid air;" he evidently thought Arabella was going to be shut up in the cellar, and nourished on bread and water. And he could wait, and she could wait till iron bars should be riven asunder, and Love be king and lord of all; for, said Mr. Robinson, with an air of inimitable sentimentality--

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love."

You might have supposed that this young man was in the position of David Copperfield, who says that, when first introduced to his pretty little Dora, he was not merely "in love," as the phrase goes, but so saturated with it that enough love might have been wrung out of him to provide several other men with the usual complement of the tender passion, and he still bountifully supplied. But in this case it proved otherwise; my uncle luckily thought of a plan, which he proceeded at once to carry into execution, and it proved effectual.

"Well, sir," he said at last, "if you are so determined, and if my daughter persists in her blind obstinacy, I suppose I shall have to give in; so, as soon as she is of age--she is a mere child yet, in the schoolroom, and she says her lessons very badly, I am toll--if you like to take her you can; and you must make the lest of a bad bargain, only do net blame me when you are vehemently repenting of your youthful folly."

"I shall never repent, sir," said Mr. Robinson, with a blissful expression of countenance; "she'll be my guardian angel; we shall live like two doves, the world forgetting, and by the world forgot; and when I say, in the poet's exquisite words, 'O! fly from the world, dear Bessie'--that is, Bella--'with me'--I express the sentiments of my inmost 'eart. I ask for nothing but her own fair self."

"That is well," returned Mr. Ward, "but I warn you that my daughter is by no means endowed with the necessary qualifications of a tradesman's wife. She is not quick at anything, and she is especially dull at figures; we do not consider her very good-tempered; then again, she has no notion of housekeeping, save on the most extensive scale: she is very fond of good things, but I dare say she could not make a presentable pudding to save her life; and as you say your income is small, and likely to be so for some years to come, and as she will have no fortune--"

"No fortune, sir?" shrieked the astounded lover. "I thought--I am sure I understood--indeed, Miss Arabella herself told me that the would 'ave an 'andsome fortune when she came of age. And all the world, sir, that is, all the world hereabouts, talks about the heiresses of Thornycroft Hall!" The poor fellow was evidently striving to re-assure himself; his tone and his countenance seemed to be the visible incarnation of a note of exclamation; his slender little body seemed to be twisted into a note of interrogation.

My uncle smiled serenely, and replied, "The world lies, as it frequently does in such cases; perhaps it would be more charitable to say it makes a mistake, for mistaken it is. My eldest daughter has an independent fortune, over which I have no control; the others are entirely dependent on my good will: I can leave them amply provided for, or penniless, according to my own pleasure. And," he continued, with strong emphasis, "should my daughter become your wife, it will be my pleasure to dismiss her for ever to your keeping, without any portion at all. Still, as you are so deeply attached to her, I suppose you will not mind that: love, I know, despises worldly pelf."

But at that moment love, or something that counterfeited its likeness, seemed by no means to despise worldly pelf. Mr. Robinson was evidently in a dilemma. At length he stammered out, "Well, sir, perhaps it isn't quite proper of me to be persuading of a young lady to disobey her parents; and perhaps if she had no money, and I 'ad not much, why, I mightn't be able to make her comfortable. It's easy to see what she's been used to; and perhaps, after a bit, she might go 'ankering after grand rooms, and company, and a kitchen full of servants; and then she mightn't be 'appy, and if she wasn't 'appy I shouldn't be, for I've a feeling 'eart, sir; and so, if you please, we'll say no more about it; and I hope Miss Arabella will meet with some one that's more eligible, in every point of view, than her 'umble and most unhappy friend, yours to command, Charles Robinson."

"That's all right," said my uncle, cordially. " Mr. Robinson, you take a very sensible view of the business; but I must stipulate for your removal from Hackington. Mr. Silke has instructions from me to pay you a quarter's salary in advance, on condition that you leave the town within a week, and I shall be most happy to be responsible for your travelling expenses."

"I'm sure, you're uncommon generous. Can I go first-class, sir?"

Certainly, if you wish it. At any rate, I will pay first-class fare; and if your new engagement should take you to Ireland, or to the north of Scotland, I need not say all hotel expenses will be met, through my lawyer. Good morning, Mr. Robinson: I am glad to find we understand each other at last."

And so ended poor Arabella's love story; but she bad to be closely watched for some time, for, as no one could make her believe that her Charles had pressed his suit purely from mercenary motives, and as she still held to the delusion that he was some great personage under a cloud, there was no saying that she would not set off some fine morning on the same quest as Angelina in Goldsmith's well-known ballad.

After a time, however, she began to recover, and in less than three months was able to laugh a little when Maria remarked that she should think, when Mr. Silke's shop was swept up every morning, the errand-boy who swept it must have wanted a little shovel and a small scuttle to carry away all the H's which Mr. Robinson dropped wherever he went.

Accordingly the disenchanted swain took his departure, making an excellent bargain with Mr. Ward as regarded his travelling expenses, and giving up all Arabella's letters, and a bleared cheap photographic likeness and a lock of her drab-coloured hair, and a small book entitled "Hints on Etiquette," Arabella' s gift. The letters were tied up with green and white satin ribbon, and on the cover of the packet was written--

"O, 'twas not well to sever
Two fond hearts for ever;
I shall see thee never, never,
Lost Arabella."

And into the fire they went, those effusions of tenderness--poetry and ribbon and all--for my uncle thought it best to destroy them unread, and Mrs. Ward, after a little argument, consented to this measure. Probably she thought the perusal of these luckless epistles would only make her more ashamed of her daughter, and, as she said, "she was quite enough ashamed of her as it was; and she could not think how a girl so carefully and religiously brought up could, at the very first opportunity, disgrace herself and plunge her whole family into misery and shame--a shame which the culprit herself seemed in nowise to share. But as yet Mrs. Ward felt not the slightest doubt about the wisdom and excellence of her training system; she never imagined that Arabella's delinquencies were, in the main, traceable to herself, but put it all down to the account of her daughter's innate depravity. Neither had she any reason to congratulate herself respecting Miss Ward. Maria and her mother were singularly like-minded, only that Maria was the more positive, the more bitter, and the more vehement of the two; and the result was incessant guerilla warfare within the walls of Thornycroft Hall. Two such spirits could not coalesce, and no day passed in which Mrs. Ward was not exasperated, and in which Maria did not forget her duty. Between them both, they nearly wore my uncle to death.

Well, I went back to Casterton, and my heart leaped within me when, a little beyond Lancaster, I saw my native hills rising blue and grand against the horizon; and as I came a day or two late, I was met in the hall by nearly all the girls with whom I was at all intimate; and very happy I felt to be settling down again in my old place and resuming my old habits, and feeling as if the turmoils of the last fortnight were something I had been reading or hearing about, rather than actual realities in which I had borne so conspicuous a part.

School duties were recommenced, and again the uneventful weeks glided calmly and peacefully away. And the woods put on their bright autumnal hue, and the Hall gardens were gay with autumn flowers, and then the frost came, and nipped the poor lingering buds with a vengeance. O! it is cold up on that Casterton Fell. A sort of arctic region in the wintertime, only nobody seems much the worse for it.

And weeks passed into months, and the spring returned, and I rose from class to class, and numbered myself now among the "old girls;" which term applied not so much to our age as to the length of time we had been residing as pupils in the house. It was towards the close of the half-year, and we were in a whirl of business, preparing for the Midsummer examinations. I was in excellent spirits, although I was not going to Thornycroft Hall; for I had a reasonable prospect of carrying off the prizes for which I had been competing, and I was enjoying to the utmost the beautiful weather, which had set in early in May. It was evening, and I and a few others similarly disposed were permitted to spend the usual hour of recreation after tea in study. We were all sitting in a corner of the large schoolroom, deeply occupied with books and papers, when one of the junior teachers entered the room, and looking towards our little party, said, "Ellen Threlkeld, you are wanted in the superintendent's parlour."

Of course I obeyed at once; for prompt, unquestioning obedience was the guiding law of the C. D. S., Casterton. The lady-superintendent was standing by the window, with a visiting-card in her hand, and I had made my curtsey and closed the door before she was aware of my presence; then she turned round, with her usual benevolent smile, and said, "My dear, I had a letter several days ago from your friend Mrs. Cleaton, and she informed me that her son would be, ere long, passing through our neighbourhood, and would do himself the pleasure of seeing you, and inquiring personally as to your welfare. This is his card, I think." And she handed it to me. "You will find him in the visitors' parlour."

My heart gave one great throb. I had almost thought I should never see Marshall Cleaton again; for three years had elapsed since our parting in the little inn parlour at Llanglas. And now he was here, and in another minute I should see him "face to face." My childish love for him had never cooled; he was still, and more than ever, the Knight of the Cove, the beau-ideal of all that womanhood holds noblest and most chivalric--my Sir Guyon, my Bayard, my hero of goodness, and cleverness, and romance.

There was no question about my toilet; but my lilac print frock and tucker were clean, and my hair smooth, I knew--at least, as smooth as such curly, tangly stuff could be. Again making my curtsey, and with the card in my hand, I retreated, and traversed the long passage, till I came to the room specially devoted to the reception of visitors. Another moment, and I was in Marshall Cleaton's presence. He sprang up to meet me as I entered the room, and then started back for a moment--only for one moment--as if in extreme surprise. I believe he expected to sec the same pale, shy child, who had clung to him in all troubles--the same little, excitable creature, whose tears he had wiped away, and whose half-breaking heart he had comforted three years before. I believe, too--indeed I know--he meant to kiss me, and fold me in his arms, as soon as I appeared; but beholding, instead of a diminutive child, a tall, womanly maiden, looking, as he said afterwards, quite a grown-up young lady, he discreetly refrained from any such affectionate demonstration, and contented himself with a long, earnest pressure of both my hands, that told how sincerely glad he was to meet me again.

"Well, Nellie," he said, when, having recovered from our initial surprise, we were comfortably seated by the window, "you see I have redeemed my promise, though I have been a long time about it. Did you think I was never coming?"

I thought a little; then I said, "I knew you would come, or in some way see me again, if it were possible, because you said you would; but sometimes I was afraid circumstances that you could not control might render it impossible."

"Well, so far it has been impossible. But, Nellie, you are so altered that I was not quite sure whether you really were the little Maiden of the Cove of our Pen Aber days. I was expecting my little friend, with her pale cheeks, and her timid airs, and lo! enters a young lady, blooming, tall, and--and everything that a young lady in her teens should be. Nellie, how long have you had those roses?"

"Nearly ever since I came here; Mrs. Cleaton brought me, you know, in August, and in October everybody was telling me how stout and well I was looking, and what a colour was coming into my cheeks; and then I began to feel strong, and--and, do not be shocked, Mr. Cleaton--always hungry."

"Indeed, there is no danger of my being shocked; it is a grand thing to have a regular good appetite for simple fare. I suppose your bill of fare here is plain enough."

"Yes," I answered, "I suppose it cannot be much plainer; but it is always good, and plenty of it. The new girls sometimes make complaints, but they soon grow accustomed to our table, and enjoy their meals as heartily as the rests"

"And what have you been learning, Nellie?"

"All sorts of things: plenty of English, and plenty of French, and Latin as far as Caesar. I am going to do Virgil with Miss Philipson in the holidays. No German, I am sorry to say; but I have tried to keep up what I learned with my cousins, and Julia gave me some lessons last Midsummer when I was at Thornycroft. I have done pretty well with my music, too; though, after Julia's playing and singing, mine is not worth hearing. I am afraid I do not get on with drawing; I am trying water-colour landscapes now, I could make nothing of heads. I feel that I could write a good description of a beautiful view like those I see around me every day; I think I could paint in words the shades and colours that are so charming; but with my brush, with my pencil, I am pretty sure to fail."

"Never mind; it is not necessary that a woman should possess every accomplishment. Have you mentioned all your studies?"

"No; there is Italian, but that is irregular. I am not supposed to take lessons; our French governess has lived in Florence, and is very fond of the language, and she is glad to teach me and two or three other girls, just now and then, when we can snatch the time. We do not get on very fast, we have so little leisure; but I am going to read 'I Promessi Sposi,' during the vacation, if I can manage it."

"I know the book very well, it is a favourite of mine: be sure never to read an English translation, though; it loses all its force, and half--ay, more than half its beauty, when rendered in our own language. And what else have you been learning, Nellie?"

"Nothing else, I think, nothing at least that is worth mentioning. We learn to make and mend our own clothes, and we are obliged to be neat and orderly, and extremely respectful and obedient to the governesses."

"Excellent teaching--Ii was going to say 'little lady,' but that will not do now; you are little no longer. Shall I call you Miss Threlkeld?"

"O no, no! Please call me Nellie. If I have grown tall, I am still a child; I am only fifteen."

"Many young ladies of fifteen would consider themselves quite grown up, I assure you: it is best, however, to keep your childhood and your girlhood as long as you can--once passed away, it returns no more. If it please God to spare your life, you may have half a century of womanhood."

"Yes; I am in no hurry to grow up, and I do not want to leave school. I have been very happy hero; people have been very kind to me, and I am learning so much, and hope to learn more; and the place is so beautiful,"

"Nellie"--and his voice deepened, and took a sweeter inflection--"have you learnt the best lesson of all? have you learnt to know Jesus Christ as your Saviour? have you learnt to serve Him as your Master, to honour Him as your King? Can you call yourself a Christian now, dear Nellie?"

The tears rose in my eyes, and my heart misgave me. I had cultivated truth, and meekness, and diligence, as virtues of so much merit, not as Christian graces. I was conscientious, because my pride, my self-respect, bade me eschew the thing that was evil. I took a sort of pleasure in our regular religious exercises, but prayer and reading the Holy Scriptures were to me only a duty, not a delight; as for praise, I knew nothing about it, for only a true Christian can render praise aright. I shook my head sadly, not looking up as I did so.

Then, with my eyes fixed on the far-off purple moors, I heard Marshall say, "Nellie, dear, till your heart is given to God, it is given to evil; till your life is devoted to Him, it is wasted. Dear child, I did so hope that I should find you treading in the only way of peace--following the path your dear father took so long ago; but, Nellie, you must linger no longer. Fifteen years of alienation from God is a long period; from this hour dedicate yourself to Him--give Him your heart, and He will give you such blessing, such peace, and such joy as now you cannot even imagine. The door is open for you to enter in; that is, if you knock, it will be opened without fail. The overflowing cup is ready to be put into your hand, if you will stretch it forth; eternal life is offered you, will you reject it?"

"I have meant so many times to be a Christian," I said, as soon as my choking tears would let me, "and always I have failed--it seems such hard work; besides, I know quite well that there must be a change of heart before one can be a Christian, and mine, though changed in some respects, has never undergone the change that makes one a child of God. What must I do?"

"Only make David's prayer yours:--'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.' Only put yourself in God's hands, saying, 'Lord, here I am, sin-defiled and lost, take me as I am, just as I am; take away all that is displeasing in Thy sight, and give me a heart to love and serve Thee faithfully to my life's end.' You can do this, Nellie, dear?"

"Yes," I said, faintly, and I felt then that I could delay no longer.

And Marshall went on speaking--O, I might fill pages with the record of all that he said; I might tell you how he talked of Jesus Christ, as his Saviour and his Master; how he described the joy of a life devoted to Christ's service; how he enlarged upon the peace, the rest, the unshaken confidence, the bliss unspeakable, of believing in Christ the Lord; how he spoke of the glorious end of mortal existence, the end of trial, and painful toil, and exile from home; the beginning of glory, and eternal calm, the dawn of everlasting day.

Marshall stayed till the sunset lights fell across the lonely heights around us, till one lofty peak shone like gold, amid pale ruby clouds, and above rich purple shades, and then he said, "Ah! Nellie, that is beautiful indeed; that makes one think of the city that has no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it. That glory, celestial as it seems, will quickly fade away; the glory that is prepared for the children of the Kingdom will never grow dim, never change, never give place to clouds and night. For of that city it is written--'There shall be no night there; but none shall enter in, save they which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.'"

Then the superintendent came in, and Marshall bade me adieu, promising, however, to see me again next morning, before he went on his way to Scotland.

The next morning he came accordingly, and brought me a little parcel of books; first, a beautiful Bible, richly bound, with marginal references, having on the fly-leaf these words written, "Ellen Threlkeld, from Marshall Cleaton, June 1, 1847. 'And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely,' Rev. XXII. 17." Then a copy of John Angell James' "Anxious Enquirer," a nice edition of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and the Poems of Tennyson, in two volumes. What treasures they were you may well suppose. Ah! they are treasures now: the well-worn Bible on my table; the little "Anxious Enquirer," in its plain, faded binding, the "Pilgrim's Progress," almost as faded, and the volumes of Tennyson, like dear, familiar friends, in my bookcase. Once more I had had the pleasure of seeing and speaking with Marshall Cleaton; once more there came the pain of parting; when should we meet again?

Once more the quiet of my Casterton life was unbroken. Month succeeded month; seasons glided into each other. Now the sparkling hoar-frost was on the trees, and the fells were like Alpine ranges seen from the valley of Chamouni. Now the tender green was on field and tree, and blossoms were fluttering in the soft air; and pale primroses, and sweet violets, and early hyacinths enamelled the pleasant wood-paths around our home. And now the summer sun glowed in the intense azure of the noonday sky; and our garden was arrayed in all its brilliant beauty; and the streams went flashing and glittering down the rocky ravine, into the calm, sweeping tune, in the green, rich meadow-lands below; and anon came the shortening days--the days of mellow fruits and gorgeous cloudland, and sunset pomp--and all things were sadly, sweetly fair, drooping and fading, and meetening for the rest, and the chill, and the drear darkness of the long, icy winter-tide. And a new generation, as it were, had arisen around me. Not more than four girls remained who had been my contemporaries at the beginning of my school life. Class after class had melted away, and been formed anew, and again was scattered far and wide; teachers had come and held awhile to their work, and then passed out again from those peaceful walls into the busy outer world. Even in the rules themselves little changes had been made; and our course of study was not quite what it had been in the first days of my pupilage. Yet still, the same calm shadows brooded over the fells; and every year the same roses seemed to grow on the grey walls of our front gables; and, at the same hours, the great bell sounded from end to end of the wide rambling pile.

But I was greatly altered. Not only had I outgrown my puny childhood; not only had I acquired rich stores of precious knowledge; not only was I trained and disciplined in outward seething, but the great change, about which Marshall Clenton and I had talked together, had come to pass. I had become a scholar in the school of Christ.

The deep impression of that evening's conversation did not melt away, as former impressions had done. Those words--"None shall enter in but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life," haunted me continually. I read and read again that glorious description of the heavenly Jerusalem, given by John the Beloved, in the closing chapters of the Revelation. I mused on the unutterable blessedness of those who dwell therein--their joy, their cloudless noon, their white raiment, their starry crowns, their palms of glory. I thought of the great multitude gathered before the throne; of the marriage supper of the Lamb; of the everlasting song; and my heart grew faint within me, lest I might never mingle with that blessed throng, never join the eternal chorus of the redeemed. And in an old hymnal of my father's I found that sweet and wondrous canticle of the holy Bernard of Clugny, since become, familiar to most readers, but then scarcely known--"Jerusalem the Golden;" and I read it till I knew every word. And day and night, in the busy round of the classes; in the quiet, dark hours, when my companions were sleeping around me; in the depths of our own green wild woods; on the sandy shore, where we spent the month of July, I was ever repeating to myself, with an aching yearning in my heart--

"They stand, those halls of Zion,
All jubilant with song;
And bright with many an angel,
And all the martyr throng.
The Prince is ever in them,
The light is ever bright,
The pastures of the blessed
Are decked in glorious light.

There is the throne of David,
And there, from care released,
The shout of them that triumph,
The song of them that feast;
And they who, with their Leader₅
Have conquered in the fight,
For ever, and for ever,
Are clad in robes of white.

O sweet and blessed country,
The home of God's elect!
O sweet and blessed country,
That eager hearts expect!
Jesus, in mercy bring us
To that dear land of rest,
Who art, with God the Father
And Spirit, ever blest."

Yes, to my appreciation now it was a country sweet and blessed beyond all conception; "a paradise of joy;" a land, the which to reach one would willingly toil through arid deserts and wade through stormy waters, and even pass, without a sigh, the dark valley of Death itself. But what were all its glories to me, if I might never behold them? What the peace, the bliss, the unending calm, if they might not be mine? And so, without breathing my care into the ear of any mortal creature, I struggled on, sometimes loping, sometimes fearing, sometimes weeping, to think of the sentence of banishment those gracious lips might pronounce against me at the last great day. I would have written to Marshall, but our letters were all left open to inspection, and I shrank from any confidence in those around me. Once or twice I was asked what had come over me, for I cared not at all for our old, pleasant recreations; and even my well-beloved studies had lost their charm. Companions and governesses both marked the change, but little was said about it, and I kept my own counsel, and was silent.

We had a custom at Casterton of repeating hymns, or sacred poetry, at the tea-table on Sunday evening, two girls saying the same piece at the same time, in a sort of duet, which was by no means unpleasant; and occasionally, in the higher classes, we had selections from the very best Christian poets.

It was one Sunday afternoon in the month of September; we came home from church, and walked for some time in the garden, and my heart was bowed down with its weight of inexpressible wretchedness. I went into the house miserable and forlorn, wishing it were bed-time, that I might be alone with my sorrow. Then the tea-bell rang, and we all adjourned to the refectory, or great dining-hall, where all our meals, save supper, were taken; and when we were fairly settled, and the cups passed, and the bread and butter in hand, the usual recitation commenced.

I scarcely listened to the first two hymns or poems; I have no recollection even what they were, and it was not my turn to recite. But presently two young girls in one of the lower classes, whom I scarcely knew except by name aid by sight, began their repetition. I listened first to the measured tone, and the exact time, and the perfect modulation of the two voices; then to the words. The close of every verse was the same--

"O Lamb of God, I come."

And every verse commenced with the same words--"Just as I am." The closing verse was said:-

"Just as I am--of that free love,
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
Here for a season, then above,
O Lamb of God, I come."

And across my wearied mind flashed the thought, why should I not go--just as I am?" Why should I struggle any longer? Why should I wait to "rid my soul of one dark blot," when He, "whose blood can cleanse each spot," says, "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest?" Was I not weary and heavy laden? Was I not tossed about "with many a conflict, many a doubt?" O then, why not respond to the gracious invitation, and cry, from the inmost depths of my soul, "O Lamb of God, I come?" And in one moment the light, as it were, flashed upon me from heaven. I wondered at my blindness, my insensate stupidity. I looked, and all was clear. There was no longer any wall of partition between me and Christ; the clouds were gone, the mists had melted away, and the pure, glorious sunshine shone in all its splendour, chasing away every shadow of the long, dismal night, in which I had lain such a weary while, and flooding my whole soul with welcome and resplendent light. Without one reservation, I could say now, "O Lamb of God, I come."

I went back to the schoolroom strangely happy, and yet not at all excited. I asked the girls who repeated the hymn to lend me their book; and when, with all the eagerness of a junior doing a kindness to a senior they gave it into my hands, I stooped, for they were both little things, and kissed them solemnly and affectionately. They looked surprised, but pleased. It was not often that a girl in one of the upper classes took such kindly notice of those far below her in the school, simply, perhaps, from the fact of her being brought into contact with them but seldom. And I went into my corner, and read the hymn again and again; and still the same calm joy, the same unbroken peace, was in my heart; and when we were taking our places for prayers, one of my class-mates, turning to another girl, said, "Look at Ellen Threlkeld; if it were not Sunday, I should think she had had a letter, bringing her some wonderful good news."

Good news! I had, indeed, had good news; though not of the nature they imagined. I had hidden my sorrow, but I wanted to tell everybody my joy; and that night our hymn of praise seemed to swell with a fuller, richer harmony than ever before; and the benediction at the close of the prayer I could now make my own, indeed.

I had some slight fears lest the morning might find a change ; lest the light should fade away again, and the shadows return. But I need not have entertained any such apprehensions. If there had been ecstasy, it might have passed; but there was only calm trust, simple rest, peace and joy in believing.

And so, in the blessed sunshine of my Father's smile, I went on my way; all things, even the commonest and the meanest, wearing now a new beauty and a fresh dignity in my eyes. I could look now at the "everlasting hills" that girdled us round with their giant arms. I could lift my eyes to the sunset heavens, all glowing with their celestial splendours. I could gaze on the broad, silvery river, bathing the bright-hued woodlands and the old red rocks, and say, with joy unfeigned, "My Father made them all." I could study now with fresh zest and increased earnestness; all minor duties were tinctured with an importance as new as it was delightful; for all things, large and small, were woven, warp and woof, into the Christian life I had vowed henceforth to lead. There was one hymn we often sang at morning prayers, that pleased me exceedingly. It began thus--I dare say you know it well enough:--

"Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go,
My daily labour to pursue;
Thee, only Thee, resolved to know,
In all I think, or speak, or do."

And I think others besides myself must have liked it very much, for we had it so frequently. And so the waves of Time came and went--now rising, now falling, and breaking at last on the quiet shore of Eternity, as they passed away, one by one, into the great illimitable for ever. And at last I remembered that I had almost completed my fifth year at Casterton. I was nearly seventeen, and I began to wonder how much longer I might be permitted to linger within those peaceful walls. My wonder did not last long. Early in April I received a letter from my aunt, telling me that she had already written to Mr. Wilson, to inform him of my removal at the ensuing Midsummer vacation; and she desired me to make any necessary preparations, and pack up all my belongings when the time came, for I should certainly not return to Casterton again. I might take occasional lessons with Julia, for another year or so; but it was high time that my education should be looked upon as finished; and it was thought that I might be useful to Julia, as being her senior by one year; and Miss Latimer was leaving at Midsummer, and they hesitated about having another regular governess for the short time that Julia would require her services. Masters from Hackington would, probably, be employed for a few months, and then the whole family were to go up to London for the season, that Maria and Arabella might be properly introduced, especially the former, whose marriage was now finally fixed for June twelvemonths.

I mused a great deal over this letter, especially over the latter part of it. All at once it struck me that it was rather strange that Marshall and Maria had not been married before. I was old enough now to be fully endued with all womanly instincts, all feminine perceptions on the important subject of love and marriage, and I thought that, if I ever had a lover, I should not like him to be so tardy and indifferent as was Marshall Cleaton. I could not understand how he, with his warm, loving nature, his affectionate disposition, and his chivalric devotion to the gentler sex, could maintain the interesting relations between himself and his betrothed with so much coolness, and so complete an absence of all lover-like demonstrations. But now it was really settled; and the marriage, which I had looked forward to for nearly six years, was to take place. I cannot say the anticipation thereof at all added to my happiness. I had a strange, instinctive conviction that in my cousin Maria's husband I should lose my brother and my friend--my friend, dearer to me now than ever; more honoured, more valued, more constantly remembered since that fair summer evening when he and I talked together in the visitors' parlour.

Again, I was sorry, very sorry, to leave Casterton. I loved the very stones of its grey walls. I loved its long, cold passages, and its stone staircases; its lovely gardens, and the old gardener, Fallowfield. And O! how I loved our beauteous woodland haunts; the rocky dell, where ferns and rare flowers were to be had for the plucking; where the waterfall fell in flashes from level to level; where the birds made sweetest harmony; and where the music of rustling leaves in summer, and deep-toned winds in autumn and winter, rose, and swelled, and died; and swelled again in loudest diapasons, like the fullest waves of organ melody, borne through the vaulted arches of some time-honoured minster of old days. And the fair grey church, ivy-grown and rose-mantled, with its little square battlemented tower, and its familiar exterior; how I loved that, too! and in a few more weeks I must bid them all farewell--it might be for ever. I suppose I have the organ of adhesiveness very largely developed, for I never loved change, and from my childhood to this hour I have clung pertinaciously to the inanimate surroundings of my condition, whatever it might be:--

"For like lichen on the stone,
Ever round each well-known thing,
Still this heart of mine hath grown,
Firm to fix, and close to cling."

Constancy is certainly no virtue of mine, for virtues are not negatives, and I am constant, simply because I could not be inconstant, however I might try. Ah! but it is perilous work in this world for hearts so fashioned. We cannot cling so closely but that the tendrils may be torn away. No clasp on this side the grave can be so firm but it may be unclasped; no nest so sheltered, so dear, but that it may be scattered on the winds, and its inmates parted; no stronghold so impregnable but that the storm-wind may lay it in the dust. And so it must be. "We have no abiding city here;" we cling to our beloved ones, as if they alone were our support, and God "gently untwines our childish hands," and our idols crumble and melt from our fervent clasp, and we are taught that the cross must be borne if the crown would be won. And we nestle, as it seems securely, in our pleasant homes; and around us are all things sweet,. and dear, and fair; and we go in and out among those whom we hold precious, and live in the light of beloved eyes, and in a calm atmosphere of blessed home-joys; and lo! a voice is heard, saying, "Arise! depart! for this is not your rest." And then comes wild sorrow and desolation; and then chastened peace and saintly resignation; and the disciplined heart can say:--

"Thou art my strength, my sheltering vine;
No storms can desolate me now;
For, like a tendril, I will twine
My weakness round the parent bough."

But these were thoughts of after-years; though even then some faint foreshadowing of such experiences were upon me; and I knew that a break in my life was coming. Peacefully its current had flowed on, deepening and widening, but in still waters, since I left Pen Aber, five years before; and now, what the future would be like I could only dimly guess. And as the days quickly glided past, I felt that my little stream must presently quit her quiet, sheltered channel; for once more the rapids were in sight.

But I was spared the pain of lingering farewells; indeed, that pain was very nearly swallowed up in one more bitter, more unexpected, and far harder to beat. It was the middle of May, a beautiful sunny morning, and I was busy with my "leaving clothes," as we used to call the new wardrobe we took away with us upon finally quitting school, when some one came in, and bade me go to the superintendent's parlour. I rose from my place in the class, little thinking that I should never occupy it again. Carelessly I fastened my needle in the garment I was sewing, and left the room, to obey what seemed but an ordinary summons. I tapped at the parlour door, according to custom, and a quiet voice said, "Come in." The lady-superintendent sat at her desk, with the contents of the letter-bag before her. She did not look up as I entered; but she bade me sit down, and then she finished reading the letter she held in her hand. That concluded, she turned to me, and said, "My dear, I am sorry to have to tell you what, I know, will cause you distress in more ways that one. Your expected journey must be anticipated by a few weeks; you are wanted at home."

I glanced at the letter that lay in her lap, and I instantly recognized Julia's handwriting. She, then, was alive and well. My first sick fear was banished. What was it, who was it, that required my immediate presence at Thornycroft Hall?

"You were not aware of your uncle's illness?" returned the lady-superintendent.

"My aunt said in her last letter he was far from well," I returned, trembling in every limb; "but she did not speak of him as seriously indisposed. O, please, ma'am, tell me the worst; is my uncle dead?"

"No, dear child, not dead; but dangerously, hopelessly ill. All the medical attendants concur in one opinion, that he cannot be spared to his family for more than a few weeks, at the utmost. He desired that you should be sent for without delay; and your cousin beseeches me to use all possible dispatch in expediting your departure."

"When can I go?" I asked, hoarsely. Till that moment I did not know how dear to me was my kind, gentle uncle.

"That we must arrange, dear Ellen. Sit down again and be calm; nothing can be gained by agitation. In the first place, I am afraid you cannot possibly reach Thornycroft Hall to-night. It is now eleven; it would be twelve before we could get the shandry from Kirkfitts, and even if you could be ready by then, you could not catch the 1.30 train, and there is no other till 4.30, and that is a slow one; it would be midnight before you reached Hackington."

"Never mind that," I replied; "I could take a carriage from the Railway Hotel; I am not afraid of anything."

"They do not expect you till to-morrow; therefore I think it is a pity you should rouse the family in the middle of the night, and I dare say your aunt would not like you to keep in Hackington. Go, my child, and pack up at once; it you do not like to return to the schoolroom, Catherine Fleming shall collect your books and the other properties in your locker; and Mary Bowes shall attend to that frock that was tried on yesterday. I think I can arrange for you to go to Burton to-night; I have some friends there who will welcome you under their roof, and you must sleep there, and take the earliest train south in the morning. Stay a minute, though; you shall have a cup of coffee before you set to work. Now, my child, be patient, trusting, and calm, as a Christian ought to be; tests like these are given us as proofs of our faith."

My packing was soon done, and then I went down to Kirkfitts Hall to bespeak the shandry from the farmer who lived there. The Wilsons were away, so I could not bid them farewell, or express the gratitude I felt towards my kind friend and pastor, the Rev. William Carus Wilson. When I reached the opening into the woods, the temptation to take one last farewell was irresistible, I descended the steep path, and was soon in the heart of the dell, There it lay in the sweet May sunshine; the rock-springs dripping through the delicate tracery of the trailing branches; the beck foaming over the rocky falls, and chattering and dancing in the more level channels. Years afterwards, when I first read Tennyson's "Brook," those well-known lines--

"For man may cams, and men may go,
But I go on for ever,"

always reminded me of our Casterton beck, as I saw it and heard it, bubbling and glistening in the sunshine that streamed through the budding branches on that fair, balmy afternoon. And there was the shining Lune, winding its way through the rich green meadow-lands of Underlay; and there the "red rocks," on little bits of old red sandstone, of which we small dabblers in geology were so proud. O, how sweet it was! how the birds sang, as if their little hearts were throbbing with gleeful joy! how tenderly green and golden brown were the young uncurled fronds of the springing ferns! how pleasant the breath of the warm soft breeze upon my cheek and brow! and how heavy my heart! how dim with tears my eyes! how sad my forebodings! In the evening I bade adieu to Casterton; I saw its grey walls in the full beams of the declining sun, and knew that, ere the twilight fell, I should be "over the hills and far away." The moors were breezy as ever; the little town of Kirby-Lonsdale as peaceful and as quaint-looking as when, with Mrs. Cleaton at my side, I first trove through it almost five years ago. I slept, as arranged, with some kind, hospitable people at Burton; and, very early in the morning, was on my way to the south. After I lost sight of the fells, and the bay glittering at full tide, my journey became very tedious. I was alone in the carriage, and I took out my Testament and tried to read; but the motion and the weariness of my eyes dazzled my sight, and I could only catch a verse and go on thinking about it, as the train sped through flat fields, and prosy villages, and clay cuttings, and inky towns.

But Hackington was reached at last, and I saw the Thornycroft carriage waiting for me in the station-yard, I asked the servant--more by looks than by words--how his master was; and he answered, as he drew his hand across his eyes, "Mortal bad, miss! he's a-going, miss--he's a-going! the best gentleman as ever wore shoe-leather. Well, he's a-going where the good uns go; that's sure."

Another five miles, and there, in the broad afternoon sunlight, with May-blossoms on the trees, and the fragrant lilacs in full bloom, stood Thornycroft Hall, as peaceful and as smiling as if Death were not standing at the threshold, counting the hours till the Great Master should bid him enter.

At first I thought Thornycroft Hall must be asleep, so quiet and drowsy it seemed in the calm afternoon sunshine. I saw no one at the windows, I heard no stir of servants, and there was no living creature to be seen, except a beautiful peacock, drooping his long tail on the grey sun-dial that occupied the centre of the great lawn. But there was no sign of death about the house; many of the windows were wide open, and the blinds were lowered only on the sunny side of the building; and when I entered the hall--for the front door was wide open--I saw my three cousins coming downstairs to meet me.

Maria looked solemn and important. She was far from well, she said, but her chubbiness and her roses were by no means diminished. Arabella also looked solemn, but her deep gravity did not give me the idea of a profound sorrow. There was something in her usually expressionless face that puzzled me not a little. The change was perhaps for the better, but I could not at all understand it. Julia was pale and sad; her sweet face looked worn and faded, as well it might, for she had been head-nurse for many days and nights, the invalid evincing a decided preference for her gentle, affectionate services. Mrs. Ward was not a good nurse. She was anxious, kind after her fashion, and self-sacrificingly painstaking; but a sick room, even though it was the sick room of her own husband, was clearly not her sphere. Her step was heavy; her movements, even the most unimportant, had an air of bustle; she had not the art of giving to the invalid chamber that air of comfort, and peace, and even elegance, which is, perhaps, after all, more a gift than a cultivated talent. She had fewer perceptions, feminine instincts, than any woman I ever knew. I have found this to be the case, more or less, with all persons of a profoundly suspicious temperament. They torment themselves with chimeras and probabilities, while, in that sixth sense, which is certainly born with some others, they are palpably deficient. They worry themselves and those around them with their fears and whimsical apprehensions of what may be plotting against them; they attach an ulterior motive to every word, and look, and deed, of those whom they justly or unjustly suspect; they imagine themselves to be very wide-awake indeed, and they plume themselves on their shrewdness and alertness, and fancy that no one man impose upon them to any extent. They are under a miserable delusion; they are, of all people, most liable to be cheated. Such habits as theirs are too demonstrative to remain unperceived, even by the dullest; and their little prying ways and their sharp vigilance are as carefully and generally as successfully counteracted as are the ways of a predatory cat, renowned for her unprincipled appropriation of the family cream. And beside all this, I have noticed that they really see far less of what is going on about them than is commonly the case. They seem to have cultivated the coarser perceptions of the mind till the finer instincts are irremediably checked, They discern and cautiously anatomize all outward manifestations, but the under-current is never fathomed by them--they are utterly wanting in true discrimination.

I did not mean to say all this when I began, but I was led to it by remembering how very apparent were the traits I have mentioned in Mrs. Ward's character. She had brought up her children under a system of espionage and rigid inspection, and they had never manifested towards her that confidence and unreserve which is so precious a safeguard for the young, so sweet a privilege for both parent and child: on the contrary, they carefully concealed from her what they would freely have poured into their father's more sympathizing and indulgent ear: and the mother remained in perfect ignorance of the real character and strongest propensities of her daughters. And now, for the first time, taking her place by the sick-bed of her husband, she proved herself utterly disqualified for the station. Her unsubdued tones, her sharp words, her abrupt movements were torture to the invalid. She gave him his medicine at the appointed hour, with scrupulous punctuality; but she jingled the spoon and the glass, and set down the bottle with a clash that would have been scarcely heard, and certainly not heeded, by any one in sound health, but yet was infinitely distressing to nerves strung to their utmost tension through pain and sleeplessness and the unceasing ravages of a mortal disease. She prepared his food with her own hands, and not unskilfully either; but she tormented him with questions as to what he would like, and what he could take, and how it had better be prepared, till he sickened at the thought of the morsel that might have tempted his failing appetite had it been placed before him unexpectedly.

And so it came to pass that by degrees Julia, ever her father's favourite child, became head nurse--that is, all the real work and watching fell to her share, although Mrs. Ward still held herself to be the only responsible authority; and added to fatigue and over-exertion was the deep anxiety she had entertained from the very commencement of her father's illness, and now the bitter grief of knowing that his days were numbered, and that it remained only to alleviate his sufferings, and to smooth with affection's hand his dying pillow. No wonder that poor Julia saluted me with heavy eyes and pallid cheeks, and a face all sadness and dismay.

"I am so glad you are come," said Maria, when we were all in the drawing-room, and I was taking off my gloves and mechanically smoothing and folding them, while I struggled with the tide of emotion that seemed for the first few moments resistless and irrepressible.

"Papa has talked about you for the last fortnight," continued Maria, "and wished us to send for you; but we all thought it a pity to interrupt your studies till it became unavoidable. The last three days, however, he has been so restless, inquiring so frequently if you were summoned, that we felt it quite a relief when we could suppose you were really on the road. You must prepare to be extremely shocked, Ellen--poor papa is sadly altered."

"Sadly indeed," interposed Arabella; "he has been shockingly ill; hut Julia says he is easier now. I should think he must be better; perhaps he will get well again, after all."

"He is more free from pain, but certainly not better," returned Julia, mournfully, and then the large tears rose in her dark eyes, and she sobbed out, "O Ellen, it is so hard to see him dying--my papa, my own dear, dear papa !"

"She's always going on like that," said Arabella, with an air of annoyance; "it's very unkind of her; if we forget our sorrow for a little bit, she reminds us of it the moment she comes among us. I wish she would keep in papa's room, or else be more cheerful when she leaves it."

"She is worn out," I said; "it is easy to see that. Julia, dear, you have been sitting up too much; you must let me take my turn now; I am as strong as possible. Only let me have some tea, please, and then I shall be ready for anything."

Maria gave the necessary orders, while I went to my room, and then she came and joined me in a cup of tea, while Julia returned to her father to announce my arrival, and Arabella wandered away across the lawn with a book in her hand. My aunt was lying down, and had given orders that she was not to be disturbed.

"Is it not possible that my uncle may recover?" I asked. "Surely while there is life there is hope."

"In this case there is none," said Maria, with solemn gravity, but with an air of most perfect composure. "You know what it is?"

"Not exactly; something the matter with the heart, Julia's letter said."

"Yes; it is some peculiar disease of the heart, that is always fatal within a certain time. He has dreadful attacks--spasms, you know, that are most distressing to witness; no one but Julia can stay in the room when they come on; but she seems to have nerve enough for anything. I am sure it would kill me to stand over him as she does, while he struggles for life, and every breath is agony, and just as likely to be the last as not. I am naturally more sensitive than she is, and I cannot--I really cannot bear it. Mamma always comes out of the room crying, and Arabella would be of no use; so it is all very well that Julia is of another temperament."

"I will try to relieve her," I said, quietly; "she looks as if she could bear very little more."

"Well," replied Maria, "she certainly is shockingly pale, and poor mamma is worn to a shadow; and indeed I feel at times so exceedingly unwell that I begin to be alarmed. Ellen, do you happen to know whether heart-disease is hereditary? They say consumption is."

"No," I replied, "I do not know. Are you thinking that it is?"

"Yes," she returned, and for the second time I saw the deep crimson of her cheeks change to ashy paleness. "Yes; I think of nothing else. Perhaps I inherit it. I am sure my heart does not beat right sometimes; and sometimes, I have heard, the first attack is fatal. Dr. Arnold, you know, died very suddenly from this horrible malady; he had no idea his heart was diseased, and the first spasms killed him, as they did his father before him. Ah, Ellen, I think about it till I am so wretched."

I was going to make some reply, when Julia entered the room, and said her papa was awake, and quite ready to see me. "Could I come?"

Of course I could, and she led the way upstairs. But first she took inc into her own little room, and clasped me in her arms, and poured out such a flood of tears as I had scarcely ever seen--they reminded me of that passionate burst of weeping five years before in the little parlour of the inn at Llanglas. Then she grew calmer, and said, "Do not be frightened, dear; I must give way sometimes. I will not go with you to papa; I think he would rather see you alone; and in the meantime I can compose myself. But, Ellen, you must prepare for a terrible change; and you must not let him see that you are startled; the most absolute quietness is requisite--there must not be a tone or a glance that can disturb. I can trust you, though; you have learned to control yourself."

And then, without another word, but with a fervent pressure of the hand, she signed me to go; and I went, and in another minute found myself on the threshold of my uncle's chamber. My heart beat quickly as I entered, and I trembled in every limb; I could only send up one quick, imploring prayer, for calmness and strength, lest any betrayed emotion of mine should harm the beloved sufferer. The room was very large, and in walking to the other end, where the bed stood, I seemed to regain some of my wavering composure--I looked, and trembled no longer.

There lay my uncle, propped up by pillows, the unmistakeable look of death on his pale, worn face, with its sharpened features and its preternaturally bright eyes, but the same sweet smile of kindly welcome which had won my childish heart long, long ago. I feared to see I know not what; I had dreaded to behold the traces of mortal anguish and swift decay; but never had the face I loved so well seemed to me half so sweet, and pure, and placid as now, when it bore so visibly the impress of quickly-coming Death. Pain had left his withering mark on that quiet brow, and every glance spoke of the weakness of last days on earth; but there was no dismay, no regret, no sadness on the solemn, tranquil face--it was the face of one who already had glimpses of that which is within the veil.

"Ellen, my child, my dear child," he said--his voice was feeble and low, but so clear, so calm--"God be thanked you are come! I was afraid I should die without bidding you good-bye; and I wanted very much to say several things to you. I know you love me, Nellie; but you must not fret about me. After all, this Death that we dread so much is but of little account; that is, it is of little account as regards the pain and struggle of dying. But I tell you, my child, I tell you calmly and solemnly, that now, as I stand on the brink of mortal life, I would not, for all the world contained--no, not for its purest joys and its truest happiness-- turn back again, even for a little while. I am very tired, Nellie, and I am going home--I am going to see your father and mother, my dear."

"I kept back the ready tears, and whispered, "Yes, uncle; I wish I were going with you."

"No, no, my child! do not wish that. Life is before you; you must work for God, you must serve the Master. He is your Master, is He not, Nellie?"

I bowed my head; I could not speak. He went on:--

"I thought so; something in your letters told me that you had experienced that great change through which we pass from death unto life. I am so glad, my dear; you must try to influence your cousins. I think, my dear, Julia needs very little to touch her heart. I hope, I trust she is not far from the kingdom of God. You will always be Julia's friend, Nellie?"

"Always, always, dear uncle; she shall stand first with me."

"No; I do not ask that; I hope you will marry, and your husband must be first. I wanted to tell you, child, that your own little money is all safe, and has accumulated ever since you first came to Thornycroft Hall, and I have left you a few hundreds, that, together with your own increased portion, will make your fortune two thousand pounds. It is not much, but the interest of that sum will keep you from anything like destitution or dependency."

"Thank you, thank you, dear uncle; you have been the orphan's friend ever since she needed one; but never mind money matters now--I am afraid for you to talk any more."

"I have a few more things to say, and this evening I am feeling unusually strong and well; the spasms, I believe, will not return for some hours; every attack may be the last. I shall be more composed--it will be better for me if you will listen now to what I wish to say. I told them I wanted to talk with you, as soon as you arrived, and we shall not be interrupted; no one will come till the bell is rung, or till you go away."

I prepared myself to listen. My uncle continued:--"First of all, Nellie, I want to warn you against my besetting sin. A love of ease, or rather a love of taking things easily, has been my ruin; it has marred my whole life, it has dulled my spiritual perceptions, it has kept me from many a god word and work, and it has interfered most seriously, I sometimes fear fatally, with the happiness and welfare of my dear family. Ellen, when I married your aunt I loved her very dearly, indeed I have never ceased to love her; but from the very first I allowed her to rule. I saw her faults of temper in the very earliest days of our union, but I needed the moral courage wherewith I ought to have checked that which I foresaw would sooner or later terminate in irremediable unhappiness. Time passed on, and I found that I had made a mistake; but still I refrained from taking my proper place; it was my duty to have governed my own family according to my convictions, but for the sake of a false peace, that I might enjoy a shallow unstable quiet, I did not interfere. Presently I found it was too late to effect any alteration; that which would have been easy in our early married life became impossible when time and custom had strengthened habits of impatience and arbitrary sway. For years I have ceased to address myself to the conflict, but I have been an unhappy man, and my children have suffered from their unwise training, even more than I feared they would. I have always seen, Nellie, what I ought to have done. God gave me clear mental vision, quick perceptions, and sound judgment; they were the talents He entrusted to my care: I have not made good use of them; I have let them rust; I have been weak, weak, so weak! Do not despise me, Nellie dear, when, in years to come, you look back upon your intercourse with me and mine, and see my weakness, my sinful love of can, in its true light."

"Dear uncle, I shall always love you dearly, dearly; things happened so; I don't think you could have helped it."

"But I ought to have helped it, child. No, there is no excuse; I saw my duty and did it not. I was weak, and weakness is sure to turn to sin; remember that, Nellie. When you were a child, I used to think I saw in your character indications of those very tendencies which have so fatally blighted my life as a useful member of society, a consistent Christian, and a happy man. I am thankful you were removed to Casterton; I think the influences under which you were placed five years ago would have been your ruin. Nellie, have you learned to be strong?"

"Not strong in myself uncle, but I know where to find strength in every emergency."

"That is well; and that is the only strength that will never fail you. And you are young, and evil habits are not so hard to overcome. Ah! my dear, when you see the right thing before you, do it at any cost; never mind any sacrifice, you will be repaid even in this life; do it in Christ's name, in His all-sufficient strength. As for my children, I think I am as well away from them; I never took my proper place, and I could not do it now. They will go their own way; God guide them, and save them from the evil!"

He looked troubled, and I trembled lest the excitement should be too much for him; but I well comprehended how hurtful these unspoken thoughts must have been to one in his critical situation.

Presently he resumed--"And this marriage of Maria's--it troubles me very much. Marshall does not love her as he ought to love the woman he makes his wife. If I had the power I would break it off before I die; but if he do not wed my eldest daughter he forfeits his heirship to Thornycroft Hall. And, you see, as the heir, as Maria's future husband, he has received a handsome allowance for some years past. That, of course, would cease, if the match went off by his own act and will; and really he has nothing else, for the Cleaton property melted away long ago, in one way or another. Marshall's father was moderately rich, but he invested unwisely, and, as the world would say, most unluckily--Spanish bonds, Peruvian mines, and other things alike disappointing and ruinous. I do not believe my sister and her son could muster a hundred a year between them if the Thornycroft moneys were taken away. It is a difficult ease, Nellie."

"Very difficult, uncle; I would not think about it; it will all be 'ordered' somehow."

"I know it, my dear; but I ought to have sought to make arrangements long ago. I saw from the first how unsuited to each other the young people were, and I ought to have tried what I could do. If they marry, no good will come of it. God will not bless a union in which hearts are not united, in which affection has no place."

"But, uncle, there will be some affection. I am sure Maria is very fond of Mr. Cleaton."

"Poor girl, so she is, in her way; but if she were not to marry him I think she would suffer more from mortified pride than from disappointed affection. I once thought all this trouble would be avoided. My father was bent on Thornycroft reverting to the male heir; yet he did not wish to wrong any daughter of mine, so this marriage was arranged; but afterwards, when he took a dislike to my wife--for your aunt and he, my dear, could never agree--he told me that no child of hers should be mistress of Thornycroft Hall if he could help it; and he declared his determination to make a new will, which should constitute Marshall Cleaton my heir, as far as the Thornycroft estates were concerned, without any provisional clause relative to his marriage. Thornycroft was to be his unconditionally, if I left no son; and he might marry whom he pleased, or not at all. And I was rather glad even then; for I could not bear the idea of a contract between two young creatures, one of whom was still almost an infant; and I knew that I should be able to portion my daughters handsomely, even if Thornycroft should, at my death, be entirely alienated from my children. Bat I suppose my father changed his mind, and delayed the matter too long, for he made no fresh will; and when he died the original one, which made Marshall Cleaton my heir, on condition of marrying his eldest cousin on or before her twenty-second birthday, still remained in force. And here we are; and the marriage is fixed for next year. I shall not live to see it, Nellie; but you will, I dare say, and you will see its miserable results."

"Uncle, dear, do not think about these things; perhaps something will happen to prevent it; perhaps Maria may see some one she may prefer to her cousin; or perhaps they may really care for each other, and so the marriage may be a happy one. I would not trouble about it, dear uncle."

"Ah! my child, I trouble now, because I ought to have attended to all these things before; I was for ever putting off the evil day; I could not bear entering upon that which involved disquietude, and perplexity, and altercation, and so I let things take their course. I wish Marshall would come. Maria wrote to him several days ago; but she says he is in Ireland, in the wilds of Connemara; and there are no regular posts, and he has not received her letter. He is a fine young man, a good young man; but I do not think my daughter Maria will make him happy, neither do I think he will make her a suitable husband. However, Nellie, now I have said what has been in my heart so long, and I shall think less about it--indeed, as I can do nothing, I will try to banish it from my mind. And now, my dear, go and see your aunt, and tell Julia I should like my evening draught; and it is a great comfort to me to see you at home, and to see you so grown and improved. God bless you, my dear, and give you strength always to do that which you perceive to be the wisest and best."

Day after day passed, and Mr. Ward, if he were not better, was certainly not worse; and I began to hope that his terrible malady might, perchance, succumb to medical skill, so that, for a little longer at least, he might be spared to us. Even Julia felt something like hope reanimate her spirits, for the spasms were certainly less violent, and recurred at more distant periods of time; and there was certainly some slight revival of appetite, and a decided improvement in tone and vigour. I think we all believed, or tried to believe, that immediate danger was passing away; but my uncle himself was convinced that even a temporary restoration was impossible; and one evening when Julia, on bringing him his nightly cup of arrowroot, said, "I believe we shall have you downstairs again yet, dear papa," he replied, "No, my dear, you will never see me downstairs again--never till I am carried down."

I think about ten days had elapsed since my return from Casterton; and Maria and I were sitting, after an early tea, in the large, sombre-looking dining-room, that had always seemed to me, in my childish days, like the banqueting-room of some grim, ghostly old mansion of past time, where Lady Macbeth or Richard III. might have dined in solemn state and silent remorse. Maria was evidently out of spirits; she lay back in her chair, her netting in a tangle at her feet, her hands clasped together, and her whole air gloomy, if not miserable. I was writing to Catherine Fleming, my bosom friend at Casterton; but my heart was not in the task, and I paused continually to think what I should say next, or to watch the tossing of the trees in the park, for the evening was wet and wild, and it was so chilly that we should have felt the comfort of a bright little fire. I was tired and listless, and wished it were bed-time, for I had been taking the night-watch with Julia, and had, consequently, risen as early as three o'clock that morning, and now it was eight, p.m., or thereabouts.

I laid down the pen, at last, with a determination not to write another line, since I knew Catherine would not thank me for a very stupid, vapid, uninteresting epistle, and I concluded to leave it till I felt brighter and better, and more in letter-writing humour. Maria, who was wearily watching my proceedings, gave a deep, audible sigh, as I closed my blotting-book, and exclaimed, "Ellen, do, for goodness' sake, say something; I feel perfectly wretched. What an evening it is for the close of May! I will have a fire lighted, I think; and only listen to the rain dashing against the windows, and the wind raving round the corners of the house."

"Yes," I said, shivering as I spoke, "it is a gloomy evening; and I really think it has not ceased raining since the morning. Did you see the beautiful laburnum sprays and the young sycamore branches lying about, swept off by the wind?"

"I should not like to be on the water," she said, musingly.

"No, indeed," I replied; "we shall hear of wrecks on the coast after this. I wonder how the sea looks at Pen Aber tonight?"

Maria did not answer. At last she said, "Ellen, can you conceive what is the matter with Marshall? Why does he not write?"

Extremely surprised at the question, I said that I had no idea; only I supposed her letters had not reached him. He would certainly come by express, did he know how earnestly his presence was desired at Thornycroft.

Again there was a silence, and all was still, save the roaring, wailing wind, and the driving rain without. Already it was twilight, and the further end of the large dark room was lost in shadow. Presently Maria broke out with a savageness of tone that reminded me of our old quarrels. "I mean to make a change in these matters. I think Marshall Cleaton ought to be ashamed of himself. But when we are once married, I'll teach him to behave differently. He shall know that it is through his wife that he is heir of Thornycroft Hall. Three letters have I written to him, and not one line in reply."

"That," I returned, "need not distress you, I think, for I know those Galway posts are in nowise to be depended on One of the Irish girls at Casterton, whose home is somewhere near Connemara, frequently receives her letters some days after they are written, and more than once she has lost them entirely."

"That may be; I am willing to find him an excuse in the present emergency," said his betrothed, moodily; "but why is he there at all? Why does he never come near Thornycroft if he can help it? Why does he go roaming about Germany, and Italy, and the Hebrides, and Spain, and Ireland, and everywhere else? I wonder he does not set out to Jerusalem, or Niagara, or Behring's Straits. He has been talking of New York; I dare say he will go when he has caught all the trout and salmon in all the loughs and rivers of Ireland. Just tell me now, truly, what you think of his behaviour; does he conduct himself like a lover?"

"No," I said, hesitatingly. I could not say "Yes," and yet I felt that a negative would only increase her irritation.

"Why do you say so?" she asked, sharply; "what do you know about it?"

"Not much, I suppose; only you asked me, and I could not say that I thought he behaved very affectionately, that is, judging from what you have told me yourself, for, you must remember, I have never seen you together since those old days at Pen Aber, when you were only boy and girl as it were."

"He cannot get off, that is one good thing," said Maria, triumphantly. "Let him be as cool as he likes, I have him fast. He must be my husband or a beggar."

I thought, in any case, Marshall would never be a beggar. If it came to the alternative, I knew he would not shrink from honest, honourable toil of any kind; but I said nothing, and Maria continued--"You see the Cleaton property has somehow been 'mombled away,' as the churchwarden said of the thirty pounds he could not account for; and Marshall literally has nothing of his own, for what little remains of his father's leavings must be left for Aunt Cleaton. I cannot force him to marry me till the fourteenth of June in next year; but I scarcely think he will leave it to the very last day : you know it must be either on or before my twenty-second birthday, or Thornycroft Hall is mine to do what I like with."

"Would you not release him, if he asked you?"

"No," replied Maria, in extreme astonishment, "that I would not. If he does not know what is good for him, I do: he cannot have Thornycroft without me; and as for myself, I do not choose to have Thornycroft without him. There is no escape for him; besides, he could not be so base, so dishonourable, as to trifle with my happiness, to break my heart, to ruin my prospects for life. I know if Marshall were to be faithless it would be the death of me." And Maria put up her handkerchief, and appeared to be giving way to her feelings.

We were still sitting, she in an attitude of despair, I in uncomfortable silence, when some sound without mingled with the bluster of the still angry elements. I looked up, and, driving through the pools of water that made the drive look like a river, and the carriage-ring like a lake, I saw a hackney conveyance coming up to the door. Maria also heard the noise, and sprang up, evidently forgetting the early doom she had been anticipating, and lo! there was the very subject of our conversation himself; there he was, with a sunburnt, unrazored face, in a shaggy coat, helping the driver to dislodge sundry queerly-packed hampers and some outlandish-looking luggage from the roof of the lumbering vehicle which had conveyed him from the Hackington Station. I watched him pay the man, and then I fled upstairs, leaving Maria to meet her recusant lover in any way she chose. An hour after, when I was sitting by my uncle's bedside reading the Bible to him, there came a low tap at the door, and Marshall Cleaton came in.

I suppose it was the consciousness of having discussed him so short a time before that made me feel shy and foolish; for, though I tried to behave like a young lady of finished education should do, I could not speak and look in my own old free, happy, comfortable style. He must have thought the last two years of my Casterton life had failed to improve my manners. But after one moment's greeting, which was grave, but hearty as ever on his part, all his attention was concentrated on my uncle, who, leaning on my shoulder, feebly raised himself, and seemed very glad to see him. The bright, sweet smile that no suffering or weariness could dim was on the pallid face of the invalid, and his hand clasped Marshall's convulsively, while he said, in low, earnest tones, "The only thing I wished for, the only thing I waited for, my boy--to see your face once more. Now I can sing my 'Nuno Dimittis' with a thankful heart. My dear boy, how well you look! Where is Emily--your mother, I mean?"

"I had expected to find her here!" and he looked questioningly at me.

"Did you not know she was unwell?" I said; and then I stopped in dismay, for it was only that day we had heard that Mrs. Cleaton was so seriously indisposed as to render travelling dangerous. Her niece, with whom she was staying in the south of France, had written to my aunt, and said that several letters wrongly addressed from England had just arrived, and that Mrs. Cleaton would set out for Thornycroft the moment that there was any possibility of her doing so. And in the meantime we had said nothing to my uncle about her illness. I felt really frightened at my own stupidity.

But happily my uncle did not take the matter as I feared. He understood my words literally, and evidently had no idea that his sister was seriously ill. She had been delicate for some years, and her journeys were often postponed on account of her health, which seemed more and more precarious, as from time to time she visited Thornycroft, or communicated with her brother.

"I wish I could have seen her," said my uncle, quietly, and yet with no great depth of regret in his tone. "I am so glad, though, she was here last winter. Poor Emily! she was my darling, till she was married. Well, it may not be so very long before she comes to me. I need not bid you to be a good son, Marshall--you have always been that; and if you ever have a daughter of your own, let her be named Emily--it was my mother's name as well as thy sister's, and I wanted Bella to be called Emily, but my wife did not wish it."

Then I made my exit, thinking that my uncle would probably have something to say to Marshall which would be better said and listened to without the presence of a third person. I went to my own room, and sat there thinking of the changes of this life--of the glorious summer evening and of that fair sunny morning on the morrow when I had seen Mrs. Cleaton last. I was a child then--a woman now; then the crimson light was on the fells and the air was calm and soft; now all was darkness without and dreariness within, and the wind wailed sadly among the trees in the park, though the rain had ceased to fall soon after Marshall's arrival. Sad presentiments took hold of me--mournful apprehensions that I could not dispel weighed down my spirit, and I felt as I had seldom felt during my happy pupilage at Casterton, that I was alone in the world. The dreary evening, the quiet hours, the shadow of death that hung over it, Maria's conversation, and my own fatigue, had all tended to my depression. I could not even rejoice in the thought that Marshall Cleaton was under the same roof as myself. I was not even glad to think for some days at least, perhaps for some weeks, we should be in daily, almost hourly intercourse.

I went downstairs. Marshall was still alone with Mr. Ward, and the rest of the family were in the dining-room. The ten o'clock tray was on the table, and Arabella was standing by it, mixing wine and water for anybody who would take it, and allotting to herself a goodly bumper, hot and strong and sweet; then picking out a handful of macaroons and almond biscuits from the heaped-up cake basket, she retired to a distant sofa to enjoy herself. My aunt, with her hand shading her eyes, and her untasted wine and water before her, sat in one of the easy chairs by the fireplace, for Maria had fulfilled her promise, and a cheerful blaze and two brilliant lamps lit up the room, and banished the air of ghostliness which had pervaded it two hours before. Maria herself sat opposite her mother, looking thoughtful, but still, on the whole, satisfied and pleased. Julia had left the room as I entered it. Little was said. My aunt was to sit up with her husband till two o'clock, and then Marshall was to take her place. We wished each other good night, and went to bed.

It seemed to be about five minutes after I lay down--it was really more than an hour--when I heard some one pronounce my name. It was Julia; she stood by my bedside in the full rays of the waning moon, which shone through my window; she only said, in a tone that I could not mistake--"Ellen, come!" She did not wait for me; and I hastily threw on some clothes, and ran to my uncle's room. He was half reclining in Marshall's arms, his wife, with her face buried on the pillow, grasped one hand, Julia knelt and held the other, Maria and Arabella stood in breathless awe at the foot of the bed--beyond were several servants, all in tears.

I rushed to Marshall's side, and cried, "Uncle!" And Marshall said, in the old quiet tones that I knew so well, "Hush! Nellie, hush! it is almost over."

Yes, it was almost over: the deadly spasm was past, the painful contortions had relaxed, and the brow was once more calm, and the features serene. Still the breath came and went in faint little gasps, the grey mild eyes were fixed, and the ashy hue of death was over all the face; fainter and fainter came the failing respirations, the open mouth grew rigid, the hands grew clayey cold, a sob, a deep-drawn sigh, a little cry like a new-born child's first weak wail, and all was still; the master of Thornycroft Hall rested in peace. It was over at last; no more tender care, no more night-watches; my aunt was a widow, her children fatherless, and I, as it were, orphaned again.

Marshall took away my aunt, and her elder daughters followed; but Julia still knelt, clasping the dear hand that would respond to her loving pressure nevermore. I thought she had fainted, but it was not so; her face when I raised it was colourless, but her eyes were open and quite tearless, though her lips were quivering, and she begged me to go away and leave her there. Of course I could not do that, and while I was entreating her to rise and leave the room, at least for awhile, Marshall returned, and, without a word, but with the utmost tenderness, raised her in his arms, and half led, half-carried her from the room. She did not resist, but one look of mute, anguished entreaty told him what her wishes were, and he said, "You shall come back again, darling; but you must come with me now." I lingered a little while longer, and then went to my own room. But there I could not rest, and when I opened the window the cool air of dawn came in fragrant and refreshing; I would go down into the garden and watch the sunrise.

So, making my usual morning toilet, I descended, and, letting myself out by a side door, soon found myself in the most distant part of the flower-garden. Last night's wild wind and rain had left their traces everywhere: the gravel walks were yet damp, and in the pale solemn light I could see countless dewy bells on branch, and spray, and leaf. But the sky now was serene, the stars were fading, and the east was already glowing in the radiance of the coming day. I liked that grave, solemn dawn-twilight; as I walked under the tall Scotch firs which bounded the path I had chosen, it brought to my mind the shadowy gleams I had once seen, long years ago, in the aisles of York Minster. But here was a yet more glorious temple. The red sunlight was soon glancing on the tall pine-trunks, turning them to pillars of ruddy gold, the incense of flowers was on the air, and the light wind went thrilling with a musical murmur through the branches overhead. And above was the magnificent dome of the great blue sky, all dappled with cloud-wreaths of rose and purple and amber, and here and there, on the western horizon, a few paling stars, dying out, as it seemed, in the full glory of the surging light of morn. Only one--the morning star--still shone out clear and lustrous, a silvery lamp shedding its sweet fading beams far over the serene heavens.

Straight to my mind came the well-known words of Montgomery:--

"Thus star by star declines,
Till all are passed away,
As morning high and higher shines
To pure and perfect day;
Nor sink those stars in empty night,
But lose themselves in heaven's own light."

Yes, in heaven's own light he dwelt now, whom we had watched so short a time before, patiently, yet painfully struggling with mortality's last foe. What must the change be! One moment here in weakness, and sorrow, and perchance agony, tears and sobs and mournful glances around the dying bed; the next, strength immortal, joy, the angels' song, and heaven's unclouded sunshine! Strange mystery that we call life, mystery of mysteries that subtle essence of the soul that animates the wondrous mechanism of the body; here to-day mingling itself with our lives, shining out through beloved eyes, thrilling in the touch of dearest hands, and giving to familiar forms their highest beauty and their sweetest grace; to-morrow, to-night even, passed away to unknown realms, far-off it may be, or close at hand, we cannot tell; only, that which was our best-beloved is another, yet the same. There are the quiet brows, the familiar features, the gentle hands; but there is no responsive glance, no sudden smile, no fervent clasp; that which loved, and suffered, and knew grief and joy, is gone-- whither?

We know not where the earth's departed have their dwelling, and little does it matter; for, thank God, one thing we do know: wherever their Master Christ has gone before them, they are they; and with Him, and "in Him," they are safe, and they have entered into rest. Yes, there they are, knowing now as they are known, "face to face" also, with those who passed away before them into the great eternity. For ever with the Lord! It is enough ; why should we seek, why should we care, to know more? One day, even to us who remain, will the veil be withdrawn, the great mystery solved; let us be content to wait for that revelation; any day this earthly shell may be dropped, and the spirit--the life--redeemed and made pure by love Divine, mount up to the undiscovered realm of peace and inconceivable glory.

When I looked again the morning star was gone; its calm light had melted away into the fair sunshine of as bright a May morning as ever dawned; the birds were singing, and shaking the lingering rain-drops from leaf and branch; and from my very feet, as it seemed, rose up a skylark: and ere long its jubilant song rang out clear and loud, from "the privacy of glorious light," in which it was shrouded from my aching gaze. I turned to go into the house, for I began to feel very tired, and turning, I suddenly met Marshall Cleaton, who was come to seek me.

"I have been looking everywhere for you, Ellen," he said, in his usual kind way. "All the rest are gone to bed; you must do so too; you are looking as pale as when I left you at Llanglas, long ago."

I never thought of disobeying Marshall Cleaton, so I made up my mind to go straight to my room, and to go to bed. Silently we walked, side by side, along the south terrace, that led immediately to the little hall-door, through which I had made my egress.

"I am glad they sent for you," he said at last, as we came to the entrance; "my uncle said you were a great comfort to him. I wish I could have been here sooner myself; but I did not even know of my uncle's illness till I came, two days ago, to Oughterard, and there I found a regular budget, and among the rest three letters from Maria, which ought to have been forwarded, only I suppose I did not make those poor Irishmen understand, for their English is of the most incomprehensible sort. My mother, too, will be very much grieved. I am glad to think she was here some time in the winter."

I murmured some kind of assent; I was feeling very tired, and really ill. Marshall took my arm, and placed it in his own, and led me upstairs to the door of my room; then, as we parted, he said, "Try now to go to sleep, and when you are rested and feel bettor, go to poor Julia, and see what you can say to comfort her. The dear child is almost brokenhearted."

Full well I knew that; for her father had been her idol, and alas! my peer darling, this was the beginning of her idols turning to clay, and very, very sharp was the stroke. Still, I believed it was best that the first few hours of bereavement should be spent alone. I knew she would yearn for solitude; I was sure that no voice, not even mine, that she loved best now on earth, would be welcome in that first great anguish and desolation, that is best borne in silence and solitude--God only there to soothe the new-born misery, and to whisper hopes of re-union in the world beyond the grave.

I did as Marshall told me. I lay down, and did not need to try to go to sleep. It is one of youth's privileges--one that we lose as years roll on--to feel so physically wearied with sorrow, that sleep, like our good angel, comes almost unbidden. I dropped asleep as my head touched the pillow. It was past noon when I awoke; and my first thought was of Julia, and I sprang up to dress and go to her as quickly as possible.

For a few days all was darkness and gloom at Thornycroft Hall--darkened windows, closed doors, silence everywhere; then came the funeral, with its sad and solemn pomp; and then the young summer sunshine streamed in once more through open casements, tones were no longer subdued, and, but for the garments of mourning which we had all assumed, the chambers and passages of the house looked very much as they had done before our bereavement came to pass. But for my own black dress, but for Mrs. Ward in her widow's cap, I could scarcely at times have realized the fact of my uncle's death: it seemed as if at any moment he might come in from his bailiff's room, from the park, or from his study, and scat himself in the familiar chair, which still occupied its old position.

And yet I had seen him in his coffin; I had taken a last farewell of the mild sweet face, that had been, in earlier days, almost my sole gleam of sunshine; I had pressed my lips to the marble forehead, and then trembled at its icy coldness; I had seen the awful impress of death on the placid features--death, calm, serene, and beautiful, but death for all that, still, cold, and inexpressibly solemn.

The funeral took place on a brilliant June morning; it was attended by nearly all the gentry of our neighbourhood, and by many clergy, bankers, and persons of consideration from Hackington. There were few relatives to be invited: one remote cousin wrote a letter of condolence, but excused himself from following his kinsman to the grave; Mrs. Cleaton was still confined to her room at Pan; and the only person who actually arrived was an elderly lady, aunt to the late Mr. Ward, and consequently great-aunt to say cousins, and to Marshall Cleaton. This lady, who was called Mrs. Chippendale, had been a widow for nearly forty years--her married life had been of the shortest duration--and she was now about sixty-five years of age. Though I had often heard of "Aunt Isabella," I had never seen her; her visits to Thornycroft Hall had never been paid while I was there. She came now, and everybody treated her with the utmost deference. She was a tall, spare old lady, looking older indeed than she really was. Her features were fine and delicate; she must have been eminently handsome in her day. Her eyes were dark and stern, and seemed to read you through and through; and yet they were not unkind eyes, and one did not feel annoyed or alarmed at her very peculiar habits of scrutiny. Her voice was deep, and of a bass quality, her air commanding, and she was troublesomely deaf--most troublesomely, because sometimes she required screaming at with all one's lungs, and sometimes, when those around her least wished it, she heard anything above a whisper with singular distinctness. A very inconvenient thing is spasmodic deafness, as any one who has lived with a person thus afflicted can testify.

I was astonished to see Mrs. Ward and Maria comporting themselves with so much meekness and submission; but I soon found out that Aunt Isabella was a person to whom every one paid the utmost court and respect. In the first place, she had a large fortune, which was entirely in her own power, to will away as she chose; in the second, she was a woman of singular shrewdness, ability, and discrimination, and much given to speak the truth at all times, and in all places, and in the curtest and most unvarnished style possible. Nobody cared to offend her, or to encounter her disapproval; no one, having excited her just indignation, would ever care to do it again.

I saw at once that she did not like Mrs. Ward, though now she spoke kindly and consolingly; she took little notice of my two elder cousins, but she won my heart by the gentle and sincere sympathy she evinced towards Julia. Suddenly she turned round to the spot where I was sitting, and said, in her very deepest tones, "Who are you?"

Her abrupt address made me feel nervous, and immediately Marshall Cleaton answered for me, "Aunt Isabella, this is Miss Threlkeld, Aunt Ward's niece. You remember the Reverend Edward Threlkeld, of Battlebarrow? This young lady is his daughter."

Marshall spoke loudly and distinctly; but the old lady shook her head, and said impatiently, "Cannot the young woman speak for herself? Girls have generally a tongue, and know how to use it."

So I told her who I was, and then she commenced a sort of catechism--"Do you live here?"

Rather an awkward question, for I had been debating that very afternoon whether I was living in Marshall Cleaton's house or in Miss Ward's. One thing was certain, it was Mrs. Ward's no longer.

I replied that in the vacations, and indeed ever since my father's death, Thornycroft Hall had been my home.

"O!" was the jerked-out response; and then, in a very audible sotte voce, "a poor relation, I suppose." It was one of Mrs. Chippendale's habits, and a very unpleasant one, too, to utter her private reflections loud enough for any one within several yards to hear them. But little was talked about that evening; she said something about my uncle that was meant to be consolatory, but it threw Mrs. Ward into agonies of weeping, and Maria followed suit, and we were all disinclined to converse. She came, I should have said, on the evening before the funeral, and she went with us on the following morning; for all excepting the widow, who desired to be left quite alone, stood round the opened vault, where the ashes of the Ward family had been gathered for several generations. It seemed but yesterday since I had heard the very same words read in the chancel of Battlebarrow Church--"Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

We turned away from that open grave, Marshall leading Maria down the aisle, Arabella and Julia following, and then Mrs. Chippendale and myself; and the crowd that had come to pay the last honours to one so deservedly esteemed and respected slowly dispersed. No one save Dr. Henbury, the family physician, and Mr. Wrenshaw, the family solicitor, returned with us to the hall. When we alighted from the mourning-coaches, the drawing-room windows were thrown wide open, servants were moving busily, though quietly, from room to room, and the sunshine rested upon the early roses as brightly and joyously as though we were coming in from a bridal, instead of a funeral. We found my aunt in the drawing-room, looking very pale and nervous, and strangely altered by her widow's weeds; she bowed to the gentlemen who accompanied us, and bade them be seated; and then, after a short silence, during which Dr. Henbury anxiously contemplated a serious rent in his gloves, and Mr. Wrenshaw poured out and drank a glass of wine, the latter, in a very formal tone, said, "Is it your pleasure, madam, that we proceed to business?" My aunt bowed her acquiescence; and the will, which we were assembled to hear read, was immediately laid on the table. Its appearance made me recall the aspect of that other legal document, which, three years before, I had so inopportunely produced in that very room.

Then the reading began, "This is the last will and testament of me, John Dudley Ward, of Thornycroft Hall, &c., &c." It was short and simple; there was not very much to will, because the will of John Dudley Ward the elder had disposed of the greater part of the Thornycroft estates; but there were certain funds left, whence the fortunes of the younger daughters were to accrue, and these were mentioned, and also my legacy, and two or three trifling bequests to old retainers of the family. Mrs. Ward was amply provided for by her marriage-settlement. Nothing could be simpler or more satisfactory; but when the reading was over, Mr. Wrenshaw cleared his throat, drank another glass of sherry, and showed himself ready to begin again.

"Here is another and still more important document," he said, slowly unfolding something that looked like a good-sized volume in MS. "This is the copy of the will of John Dudley Ward, Esq., senior, and it must be read at this time, and to those persons here assembled." I saw Maria cast her eyes on the ground, and Marshall Cleaton change colour, and I knew what must be coming.

Deliberately enough Mr. Wrenshaw read the second will, which was, however, of the first importance, for thereby was settled the succession of the Thornycroft estates, and the marriage between Marshall and the testator's eldest grand-daughter clearly and succinctly arranged. One of the clauses read thus, "And should my son John Dudley Ward die before the said daughter attain the age of twenty-two, or before she has contracted a marriage with the aforesaid Marshall Ward Cleaton, the said Marshall Ward Cleaton shall, if he be not at such time under nineteen years of age, in the presence of the executors of this my last will and testament, mike solemn declaration whether he will or will not enter into holy matrimony on or before her twenty-second birthday with the eldest daughter, then surviving, of my son and immediate heir, John Dudley Ward. Also I will that, on the day of his marriage, Marshall Ward Cleaton shall assume the name of Ward and the arms of the family of the Wards of Thornycroft; and shall be known thenceforward as Marshall Ward Cleaton Ward of Thornycroft Hall; and to him and to his heirs for ever shall belong the estates, lands, and tenements thereto belonging, as well as all the other properties and moneys above mentioned."

Then followed the alternative, and Maria's position as heiress of Thornycroft was fully explained. There was a dead silence for several minutes; and then Mr. Wrenshaw said, "Mr. Cleaton, you have heard the clause which relates to the business, or rather I should say the form to be gone through this day, in which you are eminently interested; may I trouble you, in the presence of these witnesses, to declare that you intend at fitting time to lead to the altar Miss Maria Ward, to whom, by virtue of the document just read, you are solemnly affianced?"

Marshall rose: had Maria been the chosen one of his heart, his position would have been sufficiently embarrassing; as it was, he felt it to be almost intolerable. "Is it absolutely necessary that at this moment I should declare my intentions?" he asked, gravely.

"I believe it is," returned Mr. Wrenshaw; "but it is a mere matter of form: you have only to make a formal declaration of the engagement subsisting between yourself and your cousin, Miss Ward."

Marshall glanced at Maria; she was sitting very erect, and looking, with a dignified air, straight before her; but I could see that her hands were trembling, and her colour had deepened, as it frequently did when she was under the influence of any strong emotion. "I should prefer speaking first with my cousin alone," replied Marshall, "if Miss Ward will honour me with a few minutes' private conversation. I suppose there cannot be any objection?"

"None whatever, Mr. Cleaton," was Mr. Wrenshaw's answer. "I think being assembled here, however, we ought in this place to await your decision--your affirmation I mean. If you and Miss Ward will step into the drawing-room, we will suspend matters to your return."

Marshall turned to Maria and offered his arm; after a moment's hesitation, as if she were going to speak, she rose and walked with him out of the room. For a quarter of an hour, or rather less, we sat conversing on irrelevant topics. Mrs. Ward buried her face in her handkerchief, she was evidently very much excited; Arabella looked as if she were reading a sensation novel; Julia sat still with downcast eyes and clasped hands, looking as if she cared very little about anything that was going forward. The conversation was sustained chiefly by Mrs. Chippendale and Dr. Henbury. Scarcely a quarter of au hour, I should think--it might have been twelve minutes--had elapsed, and Mr. Wrenshaw was beginning to fidget and to take out his watch, when the door was quickly opened, and Miss Ward, with flushed face and sparkling eyes, swept across the room to the seat at her mother's right hand, which she had occupied during the reading of the wills. In about half a minute she was followed by Marshall Cleaton; he was very pale, but there was a look of firmness and decision on his countenance that spoke of stern, uncompromising resolve. He advanced to the table, and looking straight at Mr. Wrenshaw, pronounced these words:--"In the presence of this company, I here declare that I now withdraw my claim to the hand of my cousin, Maria Ward, and consequently to the heirship of Thornycroft and its estates, and to all the advantages which, as her husband, I should have enjoyed; and I have the less regret in doing this, inasmuch as Miss Ward will enter into immediate possession of that which I here and now relinquish; for I find, by the codicil appended to the will of my grandfather John Dudley Ward, that no portion of the estates, as it was at first intended, is alienated; but that my cousin Maria becomes sole mistress of that which I should have shared with her, had I chosen to fulfil the contract entered into in my earliest childhood. I am assured that happiness would not be the result of our union, and as I cannot as a Christian man, or as a gentleman, marry simply for the sake of temporal advantage, I resign all claim to that which I might have possessed." And, with a grave bow, he took his seat.

There was an awkward silence; I felt as if we were all sitting on the crater of Vesuvius, and preparing for an inevitable eruption: even Julia was roused from her apathy, and Mrs. Chipendale's deafness had not prevented her from hearing all that had been said. Dr. Henbury pitied our situation, and was going to leave, thinking perhaps we should come sooner to an understanding without his presence; but Maria started to her feet, and imperatively bade him be seated. She stood up, in her black crape and Paramatta, her tall, fine figure drawn up to its full height, her colour burning like a stormy sunset, and her eyes flashing with emotion. "Stay!" she said, in that authoritative tone that proclaimed her to be every inch the mistress of Thornycroft Hall; "my cousin has made his speech, and I desire to make mine. I desire to say, before you all, how thoroughly I despise him, how perfectly I appreciate his motives, how gladly I now relinquish the prospect of a union with one so inconstant, so--so stupid, so base!" And she looked full and defiantly into Marshall's face; but I saw that, in order to steady herself; she was obliged to hold the back of Dr. Henbury's chair.

"Maria," said Marshall, in a low voice, "I cannot be called inconstant, for I never spoke to you about love--never pressed you to hasten the time of our marriage."

"Never!" she exclaimed, fiercely; " so to breach of faith you add lying, Marshall Cleaton."

He answered quite quietly, "In those early days, when we first knew our relative position as betrothed from the cradle, I did love you with all cousinly affection. I was young, and did not know but that such love would be sufficient to constitute married happiness. I hoped, too, that as years went on we should assimilate more and more--that the affection I really and truly entertained for you might deepen into a strong, fervent attachment, such as might ere this have justified our marriage. I was disappointed; I found out, as time passed away--you must have found it out also, Maria-- that we were utterly unsuited to each other. I know, and surely you must know, that there can be no earthly misery equal to the misery of a reluctant, ill-assorted union."

Quite right, quite right!" said Mrs. Chippendale, in stentorian bass that contrasted strangely with Marshall's low, mellow tones. "Maria, don't be a fool! If the young man relinquishes you he relinquishes a fortune also, and that which he relinquishes is yours, to do what you choose with, without let or hindrance. Surely you would not care to marry a man who says that he does not love you! If--feeling as he does--he married you to become the possessor of Thornycroft, or even to avoid uncomfortable explanations, I for one should despise him. So would you in your heart. No woman who has a particle of sense loves, or even respects, an unmanly man--a coward; for coward Marshall Cleaton would have been, and liar too, had he, for the sake of what he might gain thereby, or because he had not the courage to break the fetters which the will of another, and perhaps his own youthful inexperience, had imposed, led you to God's altar, and sworn to love and cherish you, as God has commanded men to love their wives. But"--and here she turned to Marshall--"you are to blame that you have suffered matters to proceed to this extremity; you ought to have requested Maria to release you are this."

"I did request my freedom of Miss Ward," returned he; "nearly a year ago I told her that I did not love her as I should wish to love the woman I made my wife, and I besought her to cancel our engagement there and then. Of course I knew the consequences."

"Well," said Mrs. Chippendale, sharply, "if you asked Maria to set you free months ago, how is it that to-day's declaration is required?"

Marshall hesitated; he could not, without impeaching Maria's delicacy, give a truthful answer to his Aunt Isabella's question. The fact was, Maria had absolutely refused to release him, had talked of betrayed affections and blighted happiness, and prophesied her own premature demise, should he persist in his objections.

Mrs. Chippendale turned round abruptly, and placed her hand on her niece's shoulder. "You don't mean to tell me," she said, with a terrible bitterness and scorn in her voice, "that this young man, your betrothed, asked you to set him free, and you refused? Because, if you did, I'm ashamed of you."

"It would have killed me," whimpered Maria; "I should have died."

"Then why didn't you die? Bless me, the world would have rolled on its way well enough without you. Die! I would have died ninety times over, when I was a young woman, rather than have told a man, who didn't love me well enough to marry me, that I couldn't live without him! Ugh! I don't know what girls are made of in the present day; this want of delicacy comes of reading French novels and German romances, I suppose," and she gave us all four a sweeping glance of ineffable disdain, though her look changed as it lighted on Julia's sweet: drooping face, and turning to her, she said, "My pretty birdie, if a young man ever comes to you and says, 'Julia, we cannot make each other happy-- set me free,' don't tell him you will die about it, but say, 'Very well, sir, I am quite agreeable, if you are,' and make him a sweeping curtsey, my dear, like those we made in my young days, and hold up your head, and never let him see you would keep him if you could. There is nothing that exasperates me in a young woman like want of delicacy and want of dignity. And as to dying--sentimental trash! it is not so easy to die of sorrow, I can tell you. People don't die of true love in these days. I really don't believe there is any true love left to die about. Well, now, Marshall Cleaton, you have just got to begin the world for yourself; you need not think of a wife these ten years, and when you do choose one, be quite sure that you have made up your mind before you speak. Half the unhappy marriages in the world are manufactured out of foolish impulses. And as for you, niece Maria, dry your eyes, and remember who you are. If you feel at all sentimental, just read over your bank-book, look at your rent-roll, jingle your sovereigns, rustle your bank-notes, and you will feel charmingly directly. Of course, Miss Ward of Thornycroft Hall may have as many husbands as she pleases; and as the law allows but one--that is, one at a time--she may have her choice; and if she makes a 'Roc's egg' of Marshall Cleaton, the more silly she. Cheer up, child, there are as fine fish in the sea as ever came out of it. If you like, I will find you a superb husband, ready to marry you as soon as decency permits, and to marry Thornycroft Hall too, of course."

"I will not trouble you," replied Maria; "henceforth I renounce man and his inconstancy, his selfishness, and his general want of principle."

Here we were interrupted by Mr. Wrenshaw and Dr. Henbury, who insisted on taking their departure; they were very old friends of the family, but they had probably had enough of domestic debate. Marshall Cleaton had renounced Maria and Thornycroft, and there for them the matter ended. Maria's reproaches, Marshall's vindication, and Mrs. Chippendale's oratory were not intended for them, and they preferred to make their retreat.

When they were gone Maria went into hysterics--real, unmistakeable hysterics. I was very sorry for her, for I knew that she would willingly sacrifice one half her fortune to retain Marshall Cleaton, even as a lover; and I am not sure but that she would have married him on two hundred a-year rather than another man on ten thousand a-year. But that happiness would have been the result I more than doubt: there was no congeniality of tastes, or tempers, or habits; they had scarcely an idea in common, and I knew afterwards that Marshall did not DARE to rush upon his fate, because he would have regarded such a marriage, contracted from interested motives, or from cowardice, or from both, as a dark and deliberate sin, and a stain on his Christian profession.

"Better," he said afterwards to his Aunt Ward--"better a little plain speaking now, whatever it may cost either her or me, than a life-long regret. Better she should be pained now than be wed to one who can never give her all his heart; better I should work twelve hours a-day, for a scanty subsistence, having a free conscience, than that I should be master of Thornycroft Hall, and lose my self-respect, and be sworn to duties I cannot fulfil."

Mrs. Ward said very little; indeed, she manifested, throughout the whole affair, an indifference which made me suspect she had partly anticipated such a contingency. Marshall Cleaton went away that very evening, and for that time we saw no more of him; and Maria, on the fourteenth of June--it was already the third--would be of age, and mistress of the splendid position which was now solely and unconditionally her own.

That evening, when I was shut up in my own room, I began seriously to contemplate my own position. My uncle's death had changed everything, and I was by no means certain that I either could or would remain an inmate of Thornycroft Hall, now that my cousin Maria was its actual mistress. My two thousand pounds would bring me in quite sufficient to live upon, but that I believed I could not touch till I became of age, an event nearly four years in perspective; and in the meantime I was certainly amenable to the authority of my natural guardian, Mrs. Ward. I tried to feel calm and trustful; but the idea of remaining as a guest on Maria's bounty became more and more distasteful as I mused and reflected on my probable future: and, worn out with the excitement of the day, and depressed by surrounding circumstances, I could only sit down on my bed and cry like a child, and long most vehemently for the calm, happy shades of my dear Casterton, where I had only to fulfil certain duties and be happy.

"But then," I thought, or rather I said to myself, "this is childish in the extreme. This is being weak indeed. The sort of life I led there was quite suitable at the time, and the wise training of those past years of quiet rest ought to have qualified me for more active service in the present; but I am a child no longer--I must take my place in the world. I need something more bracing, more stimulating than the pleasant school-life that is over now, and I must not shrink from whatever may betide. And then, do I not call myself a Christian? Is there not One who knows my path--who will lead me in the way I should go and, whether it be smooth or thorny, make all things work together for my good? Yes, I must try to say,

'I do not ask to see the distant scene,
One step's enough for me.'

Why should I fear? Strength according to one's day is promised, and in that strength I may attain to a sure trust and a perfect faith--it will all be 'ordered.' God will show me the way; my path will be made clear, though it be only step by step. I must wait and see what I am to do, and take care that I do not mistake any wilful impulses of my own for indications of God's will;" and then I opened my Bible and read, "For Thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy, I will abide in Thy tabernacle for ever, I will trust in the covert of Thy wings. For Thou, O God! hast heard my vows: Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear Thy name." And so, comforted and strengthened, I lay down, and slept the sound, untroubled sleep of youth, nor did I awake till the housemaid, tapping at my door, warned me that it was time to rise. I found the breakfast-room empty when I went downstairs. Julia had breakfasted in bed ever since her father's death, for grief and the long nursing had worn her to a shadow, and Dr. Henbury had warned us that she required great care, and as much rest as possible. I rang for her tray, arranged it, and proceeded to carry it to her.

She was sitting up in her dressing-gown, with her lovely dark ringlets hanging round her pale, sweet face, her forehead was resting on her thin hand, and her whole aspect evidenced the extreme dejection of her mind. She was sadly changed from other days--from the bright, gay, radiant girl of a few months back. She smiled, however, as I set down her breakfast before her, and she kissed me fervently, and held my hand in her own closely and lingeringly, While I was pouring the cream into her coffee, and trying to persuade her to eat a little cold chicken, she said, "Ellen, I have been thinking over yesterday's events, and wondering what difference they will make to us. You see, we are all in Maria's house; even mamma has no legal right to remain; and though we have all, as it were, a moral claim upon this dear old house as our home, I suppose you see that our position is in all respects entirely changed?"

"I have been thinking so, as regarded myself," I replied. "Of course I know that my aunt's altered situation affects myself; but you and Arabella, as Maria's sisters, need not feel any misgivings for the present. Till Maria marries, of course you will all continue to live together; she cannot live here alone; it is right, as well as expedient, that her mother should reside with her so long as she remains single. For myself, I cannot at all tell what I shall do or where I shall bestow myself; I must leave it--it will all be 'ordered.'"

"Ellen, darling!" said Julia, in her most imploring tones; "promise me one thing."

"What is it, dear?"

"Nay, do not ask; have faith in me, and promise that you will grant my request."

"I will grant it, darling, if I can--if I ought; but I can make no promise till I know what you actually require."

She paused a little, then she said, "Nellie, you know that, now papa is gone, I love you better than anything on earth; my sisters do not understand me; my mother never did; you and Marshall Cleaton have been my best friends, after--after my dear, dear father. From Marshall I must be separated; but if I lose you I think I shall die; and--you do love me, Nellie?"

"Dearly, my cousin! my sister! there is nothing in this world so dear to me as you are; what am I to promise?"

"That you will never leave me till some one with a stronger claim comes to take you from me; that you will not let any insolence of Maria's, any tyranny of mamma's, so act upon your pride--I ought to say upon your self-respect--as to force you to go away in that self-dependent spirit which I am sure is natural to you."

I thought a little; then I said, "Julia, you ask a great deal more than you think; it may be impossible for me to remain with you without forfeiting my own self-respect. There are times when self-dependence and self-guidance become duties."

"Yes," she said, sadly; "I knew you would say so; and, indeed, if there were any one nearer and dearer I would never seek to keep you to myself; I am not so selfish, dear Nellie. All I ask is that you will not, by any act of your own, take such steps as may involve a separation. I scarcely know why I am so importunate; I do want to keep you to myself, till some one comes who must be dearer than I can ever be."

Again I pondered; I remembered my uncle's injunction to take care of Julia; I thought of her love for me, of all her pretty childish winning ways in the old days that were gone, of her fervent girlish attachment, of the clinging fondness she now manifested, and I promised--promised that no act of my own should henceforth sever our paths or our interests. It seemed to me that it was my duty to promise; stronger ties than those which bound me to her I had none, and at that moment it seemed impossible that any such should intervene. My promise might subject me to much that was unpleasant and even painful; but on that account it was not to be refused. Julia was indeed alone in the world: though she had a mother and two sisters, her isolation was nearly as complete as mine; there she sat, faded and fragile and worn, and looking as though very little more suffering would suffice to remove her for ever from a world with which, in all its roughness, and harshness, and mutability, she seemed unequal to cope. So I promised; and though my promise involved me in many troubles and perplexities, I never regretted it; and now I am thankful, very thankful, that I thus pledged myself, at her request.

I went downstairs again, and found Mrs. Ward in her usual place, and Arabella already at work on the good things around her. My aunt looked perfectly awful in her widow's weeds; she was a perfect mass of crape, and her cap was in the old orthodox style, which judged it requisite to encircle the widow's countenance with as many stiff rolls of muslin as could possibly be brought together on one foundation. Her face, of course, wore its gravest and most solemn aspect; and that was but natural, you will say; for she had just lost an excellent husband, after six-and-twenty years of what the world would call happy matrimony. But her bereavement had a singular effect upon her: she was a strange woman, and never took things as other women take them; to hear her talk, one would have supposed that on herself alone had the calamity of widowhood fallen--that she, from all other married women, had been singled out to bear what is doubtless the severest trial which a woman can be called to sustain. She talked unceasingly of God's judgments; she spoke of her heavenly Father as if He had acted the part of an offended Judge, an angry Avenger of the sins and shortcomings of herself and her whole family; she did not know how willingly her husband had laid himself down on that bed, from which he knew he might rise nevermore; she did not guess that as a welcome Friend, not as an enemy, came to him the blessed Angel of Death; she never imagined the weariness, the sadness, the isolation of his life.

His marriage had been a mistake, the result of a youthful impulse; he had wedded one whom he fondly, and O! most blindly hoped would be to him as his own soul. And in the very first weeks of their union, if not before, he made the discovery that his wife and he had nothing, save their mutual interest, in common. And, from year to year, any faint hopes he might ever have entertained of better things faded away. Her temper grew more irritable and suspicious, her character more imperious; he was weak, as he so often said and deplored, and he sank beneath her sway, and lived on wearily and joylessly; humiliated when he reflected how far otherwise it might have been had he been stronger and less impulsive, and without any hope of anything brighter or better, so far as this world was concerned. My uncle was a man of strong and deep affections; he yearned for a kindred spirit, for perfect sympathies, for a union of soul, such as is seldom to be attained on this side the grave; and he met with indifference and repulsion, and an alienation that was complete of its kind, since he could never speak to his wife of much that lay deep in his own heart, he was always incomprehended or misunderstood; and, as years rolled on, he learned that his best policy was silence, and repression of all the finer and more exalted feelings of his nature.

Grim, and dark, and stern, looked Mrs. Ward on the morning after her husband's funeral; sorrowful, too, she looked, and no doubt was, for the ties of more than a quarter of a century cannot be broken up without pain, to minds of even the most ordinary composition. Arabella looked very comfortable: she had an excellent cup of coffee, the liver-wing and the breast of a fine chicken, several slices of artistically-cut ham, a delicate French roll, and an egg in perspective, when the chicken and ham should have disappeared. My aunt reminded me that I was late, and I replied that I had been in Julia's room, and then ensued inquiries respecting her, for Mrs. Ward was really anxious about the failing health of her youngest daughter. And Arabella paused in her breakfast, to remark that she "did not wonder at Julia looking ill, since she was so stupid as to go starving herself to death."

"She wants change of air," said my aunt.

"She wants beef-steak--well-fed tender beef--and nice chops, and plenty of bottled stout, and oysters--only they can't be had at this time of the year--and calves-foot jelly, with plenty of wine in it, and good soups, and lots of things," said Arabella, cutting herself another and another transparent slice of ham, and looking in vain for the merry-thought, which I had carried up on Julia's tray.

"Really, Arabella, you think far too much about the pleasures of the table--really, a love for good meats and drinks may be considered as among the 'lusts of the flesh,' which you have renounced," said Mrs. Ward, sternly.

"I haven't renounced the lusts of the flesh, and I don't mean to," said Arabella, sullenly, and she chipped the shell of her egg as she spoke.

Mrs. Ward looked in angry amazement. "What do you mean?" she inquired. "Did we not in your name, at your baptism, renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh? And greediness is a very sinful lust of the flesh, let me tell you."

"I could not help that," returned Arabella, doggedly; "if people did renounce things in my name, they had no business to, and it's no affair of mine, and I shall take no notice of their promises, good, bad, or indifferent."

Mrs. Ward was thunderstruck: anything so heretical had never been enunciated in her house, or at least in that house, since the days of Mademoiselle Bernay. She was going to say something most conclusive, I doubt not, but I hastened to prevent any further retort by inquiring for Maria, who had not yet made her appearance. I saw that some strange mood had come over Arabella. The days of compelled obedience were at an end, and there was no knowing to what lengths of defiance she might venture, now that she had fairly thrown off the yoke.

"I am sorry to say that Maria is extremely unwell," returned Mrs. Ward; "indeed; after the cruel scene of yesterday, I am only astonished that she is not dangerously ill. There has been some evil influence at work," and my aunt looked keenly at me, and I coloured up as in the old days of childhood, and felt as if I had in some way or other been the cause of Maria's mortification. "Marshall used to be devotedly attached to Maria; his marriage with her was an understood thing, and if there had been no counteracting influence all would have gone well. Maria has some secret enemy, I suspect." And again Mrs. Ward's dark glances shot forth from beneath her widow's cap.

But I was calm again by this time; for, of course, I knew that I verily had had neither part nor lot in the matter. I had seen Marshall but once during my residence at Casterton; and since his return from Ireland we had held very little conversation together, and never had Maria's name been mentioned, save in a casual way.

I looked up, and said quietly that I did not think Mr. Cleaton was a person to submit to exterior influences; whatever he did would be of his own will and deed, nor would he suffer his judgment to be swayed by another.

There was another penetrating glance, and then Mrs. Ward said, "Well, my poor child is unfortunate, so deeply is she attached to this unworthy young man! However, it is better as it is, for with his vacillating disposition, he would never have made her a good husband. I wonder what he will do with himself; for now that he has lost all claim to the Thornycroft estates, he will be as poor as a church mouse. Well, it may do him good to come to poverty; he will find that the world will regard him very differently, now that he is no longer the heir of Thornycroft Hall; plain Marshall Cleaton, having to earn his daily bread, will scarcely be received in the circles he has hitherto frequented under far more brilliant circumstances. I am not vindictive, I hope; but I think it may be for the worthless young man's benefit to find himself in difficulties, and to have to struggle for a decent maintenance; it may bring him to a sense of his sin, and teach him that there is no peace for the ungodly."

I had the good sense to hold my tongue; my first impulse had been to declare that Marshall was neither unworthy nor vacillating nor ungodly, that he would be a gentleman under any circumstances, and that any person ceasing to associate with him on account of his altered position would be so contemptible that the loss of their companionship must be regarded as a gain instead of a deprivation. But I saw at once that I could do Marshall no good, and that I should compromise myself by standing up as his champion; it was hard work to repress the burning words that rose to my lips, but I did repress them, and afterwards I was very glad.

For some days Maria really looked wretchedly ill; she would not stay in her room, although she declared herself unfit to come downstairs; but she lay on the sofa, dreaming away her time, plaiting the fringe of the invalid shawl she wore, and sighing and sometimes wiping away her tears, and then she would rise and go wandering about the garden, and come back, looking wearied and utterly miserable.

But very soon she began to comfort herself with the honours of her new position. Her birthday arrived, and though, of course, there was no celebration of the event, it was generally understood that Miss Ward was henceforth to be regarded as the mistress of Thornycroft Hall.

And she very quickly proved her position. I think it was about a week after her birthday, when one day, Julia, being very unwell, dined in her own room, and some question arose as to the wine it would be proper for her to drink. Now, Julia never drank any wine save claret, and I reminded Maria of the fact, as she was proceeding to pour out a glass of port; and Arabella immediately said, "To be sure, and a glass of the 'thirty-four' claret is the very thing for her. I think I will take a glass or two myself. But there is none up; I will go and tell John that we want some; he knows the bins better than any one."

"Thank you, I will not trouble you," said Maria, with an intonation that would have spoken volumes to any one less dense than poor Arabella; but she merely replied, "O! it is no trouble; I am going out, just to speak about a cucumber; there is a beauty ready to cut, and I really cannot relish my salmon without it. I'll tell John in a minute." And without further ado, she was proceeding to make her exit, when Maria, in a voice of awful emphasis, cried, "Arabella, stay!"

Of course, she stayed and looked stupid, and rather cross, and finding Maria in no hurry to speak, she said, fretfully, "What is it, Maria? I am in a hurry; the gardener will be gone, and I shall not be able to give directions, What is it?"

"Simply that I will not trouble you to give any directions whatever; I am quite competent to the management of my household, and, henceforth, I must beg that you will not interpose your self-arrogated authority. I shall not have any cucumbers cut to-day, neither do I wish for any more claret. Madeira is better for Julia in her weak state; and as for yourself, I think you had better take a little less wine; it is no credit to a girl of nineteen to be a connoisseur in wines; if I might give my opinion, I should say that you could not do better than take the pledge--you know why." And Maria looked significantly at her sister.

Of course, a terrible battle ensued, and I fled away to Julia's room; but when I returned I found, to my amazement, that Mrs. Ward had actually sided with her second daughter; and that Maria, deeply offended, refused to hold any conversation with either mother or sister. This state of things went on for some days; and then, through some inexplicable cause or causes, all her old enmity towards me came back again with redoubled force. The ancient feud was revived; and I could see that she regarded me with an animosity, compared with which the almost forgotten Pen Aber misunderstandings were as nothing. And now I had no Marshall Cleaton to come to the rescue; in all probability he would never set foot in Thornycroft Hall any more. I became very miserable. Maria persecuted me daily and hourly, and inflicted on me all those petty slights and contemptuous annoyances that are so hard to bear, and that women in whom the wormwood and the gall naturally preponderate know so well how to employ, as engines of their wrath and malevolence.

I was beginning to feel that life at Thornycroft Hall was once more unendurable; and, but for Julia, and but for my promise, I should have written to the lady-superintendent of Casterton to beg her to find me a situation as junior teacher in the establishment. O! what a haven of rest and peace seemed to me now that far-away and beloved Casterton!

One morning a letter was brought to me: I thought I knew the writing; it was, and it was not, that of my dear Mrs. Cleaton; it bore the London post-mark. I opened it, and found that it really was from Marshall's mother; but the characters were well-nigh illegible, the lines were crooked, and the style was disjointed. It begged me to come to her, for she was dying, and she yearned to see my face once more.

Maria had been harassing me for an hour past; and when I had read my letter I burst into en agony of tears. Of course, I had to explain, and then Maria said I certainly must not go.

I went to Julia, and she urged me to make instant preparations for my journey; for as to my going or not going there could not be any question about it. It was late in the day before Maria acquiesced in my departure. Mrs. Ward, for once, was my friend; and on the following morning I found myself taking a hurried breakfast before the rest of the family were up.

One passionate embrace from Julia--a promise that I would rejoin her as soon as possible--and the carriage was ready to take me to Hackington; and I reached the station just in time to catch the London train.

The slimmer evening was fading into twilight when, for the first time, I approached the outskirts of the great city, which we so justly regard with pride and complacency, as the metropolis of our free, glorious, well-beloved England. When the train stopped in Euston-square it was already dark, and all was bustle and confusion. I alighted from the carriage, and looked eagerly into the throng of people crowding the platform, hoping, and half-expecting, that among them I should descry the familiar face and form of Marshall Cleaton. But the lamplight was dim, and the porters and newly-arrived passengers were rushing about like, so many lunatics suddenly enfranchised--or so it seemed to me; for that air of determined and individual business, which characterizes London streets and scenes, was altogether new to me--and I failed to recognize any one I knew.

For a moment I felt afraid; then I said to myself, Courage, Ellen Threlkeld! What is there to be afraid of? You are in your own country. These gruff, tearing-about railway officials speak your own language, and will, doubtless, demean themselves with all respect and propriety; remember, a woman that is worth anything must be ready for any emergency. Come, you are no diffident school-girl now, but a young woman who has only herself to depend upon, so far as this world is concerned. So act, be prompt, be prudent."

Accordingly, I seized upon the first porter who came my way, and told him I wanted my luggage. I had seen it put into the van at Hackington; but the train had undergone as many metamorphoses as Ovid chronicles, by the time it stopped in Euston-square, and the van might have disappeared bodily, or set off for Aberdeen or Holyhead, for all I knew. But my friend, with the bright initials on his coat-sleeve, instantly undertook to produce my property; and, understanding that I came direct from Hackington, and that my boxes were duly addressed, set off with the utmost confidence, saying, "Just you stop here, Miss, by this iron pillow, and don't stir till I come back again with your trunks; then I'll put you in a cab straight-away, and you'll be at Kennington presently."

I stood still, obediently enough--what a good thing it is for a woman to be taught obedience in early life!--and, for the first time, I felt what the solitude of a crowd was like; had I been in the great desert I could not have been more isolated from my kind; and then, at the same hour on the evening before, I had had no idea of leaving Thornycroft for some time: London was no more in my mind than Jerusalem or Mecca.

As I stood there, by the iron pillar--or pillow, as my friend called it--some one gently touched my arm. I turned hastily, ready to resent the smallest shadow of impertinence, and there stood Marshall Cleaton.

He looked so pale, and thin, and sorrowful, that my heart died within me. Never before had I seen aught but calmness and brightness in those earnest eyes, and on that broad, frank brow; but now I wondered not at the change, for his mother--and such a mother--wasdying!

"This is kind of you," ho said presently, when we were ready for departure. "I scarcely hoped to find you here; I hardly dared to expect you at all, for I thought Mrs. Ward would object to so long and so sudden a journey. But my dear mother will be so pleased; she is longing to see you. She will hardly know you, though; she will scarcely be able to believe that you really are the puny, pale-faced little girl she took to Casterton five years ago. Are they quite well at Thornycroft?"

"Yes, at least my aunt arid Arabella are quite well," I replied; "Julia is still an invalid--" and I was just on the point of saying that Maria was poorly and under medical advice, when it occurred to me that the less said about Miss Ward the better.

On we drove through interminable streets and squares-- rather quiet now, for it was close upon ten o'clock--and at last we were on Blackfriars Bridge. "We are crossing the Thames now, Ellen," said Marshall; "look out at the lamps quivering on the river; it will make you think of

'One more unfortunate
Gone to her death.'

And now we are on the Surrey side of the water. Kennington is on the Surrey side, you know."

"Is it? And is it different from Kensington?" I asked, innocently.

"Very different," replied Marshall. "Ellen, dear, ours is a very poor home; you must not think of me as the Marshall Cleaton of old days. I am a poor man now, working hard for my daily living."

"I shall think of you just as I used to do," I said, warmly; "the loss of Thornycroft Hall only makes me--" and then I stopped rather awkwardly, for I did not like to say all I felt, and I did not know how far Marshall might like the subject alluded to.

He made no reply; he only pressed my hand as he had never pressed it before, and again we were silent. On we went, by Surrey Chapel, by the far-famed Elephant and Castle, by the place where now stands Mr. Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, by Newington Causeway, and the old parish church of St. Mary's, till we emerged at last at the broad open road leading, I believe, to Kennington Common.

We did not long, however, continue to traverse the main road; we turned up a by-street, and were soon lost in a labyrinth of quiet and respectable, but very modest, terraces, and rows of houses where the thoroughfare seemed to be inconsiderable. At last we stopped before a small house, one of half-a-dozen, forming a dreary-looking, recently-finished terrace, which I shall call North Place. I have often thought since what a dismal, "world's end" sort of territory that North Place really was: Kennington Park just beginning to be formed--plots of ground ready to be let for building, blocks of houses in all stages of erection--"desirable tenements" (?) hastily finished and run up by contract, as "excellent investments," many of them still unoccupied, and a few still wanting those last finishing touches which give an. eight or ten-roomed building the aspect of a habitable dwelling. There was much waste ground, on which heaps of rubbish were thrown down, and where groups of children romped, and shouted, and quarrelled, from early morning till dewy eve. The houses in North Place were exactly alike; each one had a flight of rather imposing steps and an entrance that would have been handsome had there been anything substantial about it; kitchens underground, looking upon a tiny area, a parlour on each side of the narrow passage, a winding, cramped stairway, that creaked alarmingly under the lightest tread, and four small bedrooms on the upper story. Behind these houses lay something called by courtesy a garden; little plots of stones, and rough earth, and rank grass, with here and there an attempt at cultivation, nearly all of them, I remember, tenanted by poultry, in the shape of roosters the most forlorn, and hens that seemed to think the sole end and aim of feminine fowl-life was to scratch and peck with unremitting diligence. The front of North Place commanded a pleasant dead wall, and the back premises of another row of recently-erected houses.

But of this I saw little on the first night of my arrival. Marshall handed me up the flight of steps, and into the house that now called him master. Ah! how different from Thornycroft Hall! how different from that fair and beautiful Treherne, where his early days were passed! The drawing-room into which I was ushered was small, and very scantily furnished; but at a glance I could discern the hand of taste and refinement; and there were preparations for the evening meal, the tea-things being on the table, and the gas burning brightly, and everything in readiness save the urn, which Hannah, Mrs. Cleaton's old servant, proposed bringing up immediately.

But that Mrs. Cleaton was still awake and hoping to see me, I soon discovered; so I begged to be shown to her room as soon as I had taken off my bonnet. Hannah led the way; but just as I was leaving my own chamber, she said, in a low tone, "Miss Threlkeld, ma'am, you must be prepared to see a terrible change in my dear mistress--she is very, very ill, and her sufferings are great, and it can't be long before God takes her away from the pain and sorrow. But, if you please, ma'am, you'll not excite her more than can be helped. We like to keep her quiet, especially at night, when the fever is apt to come on."

I said that I would be as composed as possible, and, thanking Hannah for her caution, I proceeded.

Yes, she was altered; so altered, that for the first few moments I thought I should not have recognized her, had I seen her without previous preparation. Her hair was quite white now, and her face was absolutely colourless; lines of pain were imprinted on the brow and about the mouth, and at the first glance I fancied that all traces of the Mrs. Cleaton I had once known had disappeared, But when she spoke and held out her wasted hand, when she smiled and lifted her soft grey eyes to mine, the old look came back--the look of love and of motherly kindness that had been so dear to me in my sad childish days, and the memory of which had been inexpressibly sweet and precious during the years of separation.

"My child, my dear child!" she said gently, as I bent down towards her. "God has been very good to me; I wanted so much to see you, and to speak with you once more; and he has granted my heart's desire. You will stay and be my daughter to the end, my love; it will not be long, dear; it is only a question of weeks and days; the doctors told me so yesterday; and I feel sure that there is no question at all; I shall not stay longer than a few more days--at least, I think not."

How calmly she spoke, even as if it were some ordinary journey that she had in contemplation! No fear of death overshadowed her; she knew in whom she had believed, and her trust was perfect, and her faith calm and unwavering. We talked a little, and then she bade me wish her "good night," and I went down again to the drawing-room, where Marshall was waiting for me to pour out the tea. How strange it seemed to be sitting there with him, we two alone, and I presiding, as a matter of course, when last night I had not even dreamed of seeing him again for months, it might be years!

"How long can you stay, Ellen?" he asked, after we had sat some time in silence.

"As long as Mrs. Cleaton wants me," I returned.

His face brightened visibly, and he replied, "I am glad--more than glad, I am thankful. Poor old Hannah cannot manage everything, and you will be nurse and companion while I am away."

"Are you away all day?" I asked.

"Yes. I am not an idle gentleman now; I trust I never was that; but I am no longer a gentleman at large, seeking my own pleasure, and doing my own business when and how I like. I leave home very early in the morning, and I do not return till between six and seven at night; I am busy all day in a City counting-house, and it is too far to come for the dinner-hours. It will be such a comfort to me to know you are here, Ellen."

I thought, as I looked at him, that he wan scarcely less changed than his mother. The slight glow of excitement which hurrying to Euston Square might have occasioned had passed away; I was shocked to see how very thin he was, and how pale and worn; it struck me at once that he was not only deeply depressed on account of his mother, but also overwrought. It was no light thing to begin a life of toil, and in some sort servitude, at twenty-six years of age. The longer I watched him the more anxious I became, and when I found out from Hannah that he sometimes sat up with his mother when she was at the worst, I did not wonder at the painful alteration which a few short weeks had effected. As I undressed I could not help thinking it might just be possible that mother and son would not long be separated; and in that moment I knew how desolate the world would be to me should Marshall Cleaton be taken out of it--should the time come when I might never hope to meet him more on this side the grave.

Next morning, when I went downstairs, I found him swallowing a hasty breakfast, and looking more wretchedly ill than even on the preceding evening. He had only time to say, "I leave my mother to you, Nellie," ere he rushed away to catch the next City omnibus.

I fell easily enough into the new and sacred duties it gave me so deep a happiness to assume. Had I really been Mrs. Cleaton's own daughter, she could not have received my poor ministrations with greater satisfaction; and Hannah seemed delighted to install me in my new position, and one day I heard her speaking of me to the milkman as "my young mistress;" and yet, the life that was so dear to me, to all three of us--for I must number the faithful old servant among ourselves--was fast hasting to a conclusion.

The doctor came occasionally and told me of various remedies that sometimes were alleviations in cases similar to his patient's; but he never uttered one word of hope--indeed, he could not, for the only hope that remained was that the closing struggle might not be protracted, and that the hour of rest from agony unspeakable might not be long deferred. Sometimes, however, there were seasons of blessed though partial exemption from pain; and when the exhaustion was not so complete as it frequently was, we held much precious converse, reading and talking together of those things which in the final hours of life are so momentous and so engrossing. But sometimes the things of earth--if a dying mother's solicitude for a darling son's temporal happiness can indeed be regarded in such light--held sway over the tranquil, trusting spirit.

One day she said to me, "Ellen, did not Marshall say something about returning earlier this evening?"

"Yes, mamma," I returned. She had begged me to call her by the precious name of mother, and I did so when we were quite alone--not at other times. "Yes, he wishes to take me for a walk this evening. I have not been out since Sunday. I think we are going on the Common. He has something to tell me--do you know what it is, mamma?"

"I think I do, dearest, but I am not sure. Yes, you must have a walk; you are losing your roses. Hannah will take all care of me, while my children are away. Nellie! I have been thinking this afternoon, what a relief it is to me to know that my dear son is fairly disentangled from those Thornycroft concerns. It was a great mistake of my father's; but all has worked out rightly, you see. I would not have had Maria here, my darling, instead of you; and I would not for worlds that my boy had purchased wealth, and ease, and position, by contracting a union that God would not have blessed."

"Did the loss of Thornycroft trouble you at all, mamma?"

"Well, my dear, I cannot say I contemplated the change in my dear son's position with unmitigated complacency. I scarcely knew at first what he could do; and when he entered upon his present situation, I was very much surprised. He said, however, that he must earn money immediately, and the means presenting themselves rather unexpectedly, he felt it his duty to embrace the offer without delay. He has other views though, and I dare say he will tell you; he would like your sympathy and approbation. Lately, I have felt much more at ease concerning him, God will bless him--my dear good son, who has never given me one hour's sorrow from his cradle till now. God will be with him, and guide him in all his ways, and do for him that which is best, even for this world. Yes! I can leave my greatest earthly treasure in the wise hands of a gracious Father; all will be well for him, and for you too, dear Nellie."

An hour afterwards I came into the room with my bonnet on, and Marshall was standing by his mother's couch; he bent down to kiss her, and she blessed him, as she often did now, and said--"Now go, my son! Nellie is ready, and Marshall, when you come back, be sure to bring--"

What Marshall was to bring with him, I could not catch, for Mrs. Cleaton spoke in a low whisper. The two exchanged a look of deep meaning, and we both said good-bye, and set forth on our walk.

It was a pleasant evening; the slanting sunbeams on the dusty trees and the tops of the houses, the sky dappled here and there with airy, fleecy clouds, and the sound of bells, from over the water at Westminster, falling pleasantly on the ear. We said very little, however, till we were out in what the Kennington folk call "the country," that is, till we had left the high-road, and diverged into lanes, and grassy levels, where the furze bushes were plentiful, and where some wild flowers--ah! how stunted--yet continued to dwell, and where the bramble spread out its purple trailing branches, its crumpled blossoms, and its yet green fruit, to the admiration of rural-minded Londoners.

"This is the country," said Marshall, looking comically, when, after a two miles' rapid walk, we stopped to rest on a pleasant bank, under shadow of a rugged, gnarled, patriarchal oak-tree.

"Indeed!" said I. "Well, compared with all that wilderness of brick and mortar, and smoky streets, which we have left behind us, I suppose it may be called 'country.' But just think of the real country, as you and I know it; just think of those wild woods, and those grand fells round dear old Casterton; just think of the sweeping Lune, and the breezy moors beyond Kirby; just think of the waves dashing and breaking on the Pen Aber shore; just think of the cove, where you and I and Gelert first made acquaintance."

"No, Nellie; I had rather not think of Westmoreland or Wales. It does me no good, situated as I am at present; sometimes, when involuntarily I do begin to think about those lovely scenes, and the pleasant days that are past, such a yearning after my old haunts arises in my heart that I grow rebellious, morbid, foolish--anything and everything but what I ought to be."

"Yes," I answered; "but is it not a blessing to have been permitted to see and to appreciate that which is so purely and intensely beautiful? You would not be without the memory of that fair and pleasant past, surely?"

"No, no, Nellie; you are right; it is an undoubted blessing to be able to recall scenes such as I have witnessed, not only in our own land, but in Alpine regions far away, and in the beauteous Rhine-land. It is I, Nellie, who am in fault; there is a proper and an improper use to be made of everything in the world, even of our sweetest and most hallowed memories, I suppose. But I want to talk to you about myself; I am going to be thoroughly egotistical this evening; I want your advice--your sympathy."

"My sympathy, certainly; but O! Marshall, my advice! what can my advice be worth? I, a girl of seventeen, fresh from school; you, a man of experience and judgment--you, the wise friend, and counsellor of my childhood."

"My dear Nellie, you talk as if I were some sage, hoary paterfamilias. Do I really seem so very much your senior ?"

"Yes, in some things. You were grown up when I was still a child; and I always looked up to you; I always shall, I believe."

Ho looked grave for a minute, then he said, "Well, I have no objection to that, little lady; if man and woman fulfil their mission to each other, fully and perfectly, there is no doubt that the man's part of the compact is to protect, cherish, counsel, and guide; the woman's to trust, to confide, to aid, and to--look up. But your advice I do want, Ellen, and your advice I must have, if you please, Mademoiselle."

"I will do my best, but I think you had better reflect seriously before you act upon it."

"Ah!" he said, merrily, "I shall not act upon it, except it chime in with my own ideas; but we waste time. First of all, tell me what you think of my conduct on the day of your uncle's funeral. Did I, or did I not, according to your judgment, act rightly and justly when I refused your cousin's hand and the Thornycroft inheritance?"

"How can you ask me, Marshall? Of course you were right--thoroughly, unmistakeably right. I could not fancy you doing anything else. It would have been wicked to marry Maria for the sake of the position which her husband will be called to assume. You said you did not love her, and that was enough. It was a pity, though, things went on as they did, so long. I am very sorry for Maria. She liked you as well as she can ever like any one, and if her affections are not crushed, her feelings are hurt, and her pride grievously wounded."

"Ellen, she only liked me; and if I had married her, her liking would soon have become indifference--nay, so opposite are we in our views, in our tastes, in our habits, in our temper and entire temperament, that I firmly believe indifference would ere long have deepened into aversion. I cannot say that on my side it would not, and I did not dare to tempt Providence by placing myself in a position likely to foster all the worst tendencies of my nature, and so unlikely to develop and bring to perfection the germ of that which my dear mother's training and influence had implanted. I could not deliberately devote myself to a union that would have entailed the misery of a lifetime. Had Maria already been my wife, the case would have been far otherwise; then, having taken her for better and for worse, it would have been my positive duty to live only for her, and crushing out, by the help of God, all other likings, to render to her that confidence and respect and tenderness which would have been her due."

"Crushing out all other likings;" what did that mean? Was there, then, some one he preferred to Maria? I did not like the idea, though I knew not why. At that moment it seemed to me that I would infinitely rather see him the husband of Miss Ward, than know that to some one else, of whose existence I had never heard, he had given his affections, and the rich treasury of his true man's heart. Then he went on

"Now we have said enough about the past, let us consider the present and the future. "Shall I tell you what I have planned, or rather what plans seem to be necessary--how things seem likely to be ordered for me?"

"Yes, I should like to hear; and, Marshall, do you remember what you said to me when we were parting years ago--when your mother was taking me to Casterton--'ordered in all things and sure?'"

"I remember now," he replied, turning on me one, of those sweet and sunny glances that reminded me of the old time, when his path was unclouded and his future seemingly bright and fair. "Yes, that is the great comfort; come what may, betide what will, cloud or sunshine, thorn or flower, joy or sadness, 'ordered in all things and sure.' And indeed, Nellie, things have manifestly been ' ordered' for me, in a way that, a month ago, I could not have anticipated. To-day I have arranged to give up my clerkship in the City."

"Because something better is in prospect?"

"Just so; I took up my present position because it seemed placed in my way, and because it was the first chance I had of earning money. But it is late to begin moulding one's self into a man of business; and at my age--it would be so different if I were sixteen, instead of six-and-twenty--at my age, I cannot expect to rise above mere dependency in position, for want of capital."

O, dear! how I longed to lay my two thousand pounds at his feet! but I dared not say a word, and besides, for four years to come, the principal, at least, was altogether out of my reach. He resumed, speaking very quietly and slowly

"Another sphere of action has been opened to me; I have found friends both willing and able to help me, as I am not too proud to be helped. You have heard me speak of Mr. Wentworth."

"Yes, often: and Mrs. Cleaton was talking about him this morning."

"Very well, I am going to become classical tutor to his sons and his nephew. I shall reside at Shire Park, and I shall receive a very liberal salary--much more than I could hope to get by quill-driving, stupid and inexperienced as I am. Also I shall have time for study. I am going to make theology my especial study; can you tell why, dear Nellie?"

"You are going to be a minister! I always thought you ought to be one."

"Did you? I like to hear you say so. Yes, the way seems open, though perhaps a little steep and rugged; and I am resolved, if God will accept me, to devote myself to the sweetest and sublimest service that can be rendered in this world--the faithful ministry of His Word."

I did not speak; I was too glad, too thankful, for it had always seemed to me that, above all the men I had ever seen, Marshall Cleaton was most peculiarly fitted to minister in holy things; at least, he would be in his own proper sphere in the vocation to which I doubted not, and never shall doubt, that his Master especially called him. I knew he would not minister in that section of the Universal Church wherein my dear father had so faithfully ministered, for the Cleatons of Treherne had been Nonconformists from time immemorial; but I had long since ceased to regard any one branch of faith as the Church; and I believed, as my father taught, that "the Church of England" really and truly means the Church of God throughout England, whether her discipline be Congregational or Episcopal, whether her children be admitted to holy baptism in infancy or on their profession of Christian faith, whether they worship by ritual and by set rule, or whether, untrammelled by rite or ceremony, they pour out free prayer and spontaneous thanksgiving to the Giver of all good. All who love the Lord Jesus Christ are members of His Church in this our well-beloved England. Episcopalianism does not, and Congregationalism could not, make the Church of England--that grand old Church which has withstood the beleaguering forces of the world and Satan for so many centuries--that Church founded on the Rock of Ages and built upon the holy hill of Zion--that Church, so wide and so holy, which counts among her ministers John Angel James, Robert Hall, John Wesley, Edward Bickersteth, William Cams Wilson, Henry Venn, Dr. Arnold, and a host of others, whose names are written in unfading splendour in the imperishable records of THE Church.

"And how soon will your ministry begin?" I asked presently.

"Not just yet, I fear, at least not officially; but you know we Nonconformists exercise gifts of praying and preaching before being specially set apart as ministers of the Word; and I shall find something to do in that direction, I doubt not. Mr. Wentworth's pastor is in delicate health, and the cause is too poor to sustain a regular assistant-minister; I dare say I shall help this Mr. Hearn, of whom my friend speaks. Besides, I shall have to keep some terms in Divinity, I suppose; my Oxford degrees will stand me in good stead, of course; still there will be some theological examinations for which I must make due preparation. I shall--if I can manage it--keep terms for awhile at the London University."

"How came you to go to Oxford at all?"

"I hardly know; Mr. Ward wished it; and at that time I had no denominational views whatever. I was no Dissenter, neither was I an Episcopalian; I wished very much to see another phase of religious life, besides that in which I had been brought up; and--and I did not think the Established Church was fairly represented at Thornycroft Hall or by any of Mr. Graves' party."

"And what was the result of your observations?"

"That in all sections of the 'Universal Church there are errors and imperfections; that on earth there can be no perfect Church; that unity may exist even where creeds partially diverge; that uniformity is a myth plausible enough to the imagination, but as dangerous as it is unreal. And, believing thus, I finally resolve to continue to worship God after the manner of my fathers. But do not think I take mere 'sect' for anything more than it is worth. In this life one must be something or nothing; I have ever found that those who profess to belong to no denomination whatever gradually allow themselves to be entangled in worldliness and worldly seeking; and a gradual torpor, sometimes ending in complete paralysis, is sure to steal over their spiritual life and forces. So it is best--it is one's duty to attach one's self to that portion of the Catholic Church which most approves itself to one's judgment and convictions; at the same time holding out the hand of brotherhood to all who call Christ Master, whether within or without the pale of one's own religious community. But I am preaching already, Nellie; there is something else that I have to tell you."

"I like your sermon; but what is it you have to tell me still?"

"What I have already told you is the mere preface to what remains. Ellen, did it never strike you that there might be yet other reasons, not declared, which induced me to resign all pretension to Maria Ward's hand and fortunes?"

"No," I faltered; but my heart misgave me. What else, but that which I began to fear, could those "other likings" mean?

"Nellie, I could not marry Maria Ward because I did not love her, and because we were clearly unsuited to each other; also because I did not wish to owe every temporal good to my wife; but chiefly because I loved another, and had resolved that she, and she only, should be my wife, the partner of my joys and sorrows, my adversity and my prosperity, mine in life and in death."

I was silent, simply because I did not know what to say, and if I had known I could not have said it, for the grey common, and the trees, and the furze bushes were swimming before me, like unreal phantasma of a dream. I knew then what Marshall Cleaton was to me. I had ceased to wish that he was my brother; all at once I knew that my earthly happiness, as one commonly holds it, had fallen into his keeping.

I was roused by his saying, in the gentlest tone, "Ellen." And he moved his position, so that he could see my face, which I had been, for some moments, sedulously turning in another direction. "Ellen, my child, why do you look so pale, and still, and dreamy? Surely you know who it is that I love, and have loved for many a day, though, till within the last few months, I scarcely knew it myself. Ellen, dearest, will you be my wife?"

"Yes." I never dreamed of anything beyond the one simple affirmation, but apparently it quite satisfied Marshall, and he asked for no reiteration of the promise. And so I found my place in a good man's heart, and I was no more alone in the world; the solitude and the sadness of past years were as nothing; come what might now, I should be happy. And even as I sat there, in that quiet deepening twilight, my heart swelled with gratitude, and I thanked God for the great' blessing of a good, generous, manly man's devoted love, a blessing that I felt came direct from Him--the blessing of blessings--the crowning gift of all others, after the one great Gift, for which we must ever render our most fervent praises, our most reverent gratitude.

Afterwards, as we were walking home, Marshall said, "It's not a very splendid lot that I have asked you to share, my Nellie: how shall you like being a poor minister's wife?"

"Must a minister, perforce, be poor?" I asked.

"Where there is no private income, the poor ministers are decidedly in the majority," he answered; "and there will be many trials to contend with. You cannot live to yourself, or, I should say, to your own family, so unreservedly as the generality of women can and should do. If you have poverty to struggle with, you cannot so well hide it; and all your husband's anxieties, and disappointments, and difficulties must be doubly your own."

"I am not afraid of that," I replied: "the worst would be, if people were to say hard, harsh things of you, like those we heard the other day concerning that excellent man, Mr. Seabright."

"And even that, dear, you must learn to bear patiently. When your husband is slandered, misunderstood, and unappreciated, as will surely happen, my Nellie, you must remember that it is written, 'Woe unto you when all men speak well of you;' and rejoice that in that woe your husband is not a partaker. If a minister offend no one, it is a sure sign that he is not faithful. The servant must not expect to fare so much better than his Master, who was so often condemned, and despised, and reviled, and at last betrayed, even by one who ranked as His friend, and forsaken by those who really loved Him. But for all that, Nellie, a minister's life is the one I would lead in preference to any other; for if it have its peculiar trials, it has also its peculiar joys; it has rewards, and encouragements, and honours of which the world dreams not; nay, it has its own high dignity, which surpasses anything that mere statesmanship, or authorship, or exalted rank can confer. The ministry is at once the lowliest and the loftiest calling a man can pursue--servants for Christ's sake, but also ambassadors royal, who will one day share in all the triumphs and honours of their King."

When we reached home Marshall took me straight upstairs to his mother's room, and locking my hand and hers in his, said, "I have brought you back what you desired, dear mamma: here is your veritable own daughter, and my wife that is to be, if God so pleases."

After that evening dear Mrs. Cleaton seemed to have no longer any earthly solicitudes: no shadow of care rested on her pale, gentle face; no anxieties marred the quiet trust of her tranquil soul; and exceeding peace showed itself forth in every tone, and look, and gesture. And now I knew how dearly I loved her; I had loved her ever since she came to visit me in my desolate sorrow at Pen Aber; I had loved her silently, but truly, through all the years of our separation; I had loved her for her sweet words and looks to me in those miserable bygone days, and because she was Marshall's mother; but now she was to me as my very own mother; and intenser love and deeper reverence, I think, I could not have felt even towards her who once held me on her bosom--that young, unknown mother, whose life had silently faded out, while mine was counted only by months and weeks!

How I had yearned for mother-love; how my heart had sickened as other girls talked lovingly of "mamma," and read me portions of letters from home, and anticipated the joy of finding themselves once more in the tender arms that had encircled them in their earliest days; and I had never known the bliss, the rest of a mother's sheltering love! But now I did know it: I had gained a mother only to taste the joy of so exquisite a blessing, and then lose it for ever; but for this my cup of happiness would have been too full, too surpassingly sweet for mortal lips to taste. As it was, that ugly, forlorn North Place had lost to me all the ugliness, all the meanness, which had struck me so painfully on the night of my arrival--the shabby house was my cottage of content, nay, rather it was my palace of delight. Even the waste ground, and the desolate garden-plots, and the gaunt, unfinished "desirable tenements," and the blank dreary prospect had their beauties now; and as I saw them from day to day, and a growing sense of familiarity with all their paltry details came upon me, I rejoiced in them as I had never rejoiced in the grim respectability of Thornycroft Hall, or the bright shore of Pen Aber, or the beautiful haunts of my beloved Casterton. Only the other day I went to look at North Place, and there it was, uglier and drearier than ever, but still with a certain charm of its own, and hallowed by countless sweet and sacred associations; and I loved it still--which absurdity may be accounted for by my preponderating organ of " adhesiveness," which, however, one of my friends tells me, is in this and similar instances "inhabitativeness." I dare say he is right, for I am not well up in the ologies, and the phrenological science of fifteen years ago differs from that of to-day.

The days were shortening fast, and the few poor trees that still kept their habitation in our neighbourhood were rapidly losing their sparse and shrivelled foliage, when one evening, as I sat sewing at Mrs. Cleaton's bedroom window, and watching for Marshall to turn the corner, I saw a carriage drive up to our door. There was luggage on the vehicle, so I supposed that the cabman had made a mistake, and drawn up to the wrong house, since we certainly expected no arrival; and I said so to Mrs. Cleaton, and wondered, with a silly, aimless curiosity, for which of our neighbours the visit was intended. It seemed, however, to be intended for us, for the cabman rang the bell, and proceeded to take down sundry packages and trunks, which were coolly deposited on our doorsteps, and then forth stepped a tall, thin, stately personage, whom I at once recognized as Mrs. Chippendale. She had a squabble with the cabman about his fare. He was insolent and fraudulent, but he was fairly beaten from the field, and forced to make a speedy and inglorious retreat. Senseless man! to try to impose upon a woman whose eyes seemed looking into the next century, and whose mouth shut up with a snap when she had said that which it pleased her to say. Nothing but what was perfectly true and honest and brave was tolerated by Aunt Isabella, and, with such an antagonist, the foolish cabman had not the remotest chance of victory. But then, perhaps, he was not a physiognomist, as people certainly should be who strive to prosper by tricks in trade.

I notified the unexpected arrival to Mrs. Cleaton, and she bade me go downstairs immediately and receive Aunt Isabella. I obeyed, and at the bottom of the stairs I found Mrs. Chippendale making inquiries of Hannah, in a deep, suppressed bass, that sounded not unlike the lowest notes of a trombone, and I heard Hannah reply, as if a whole burden of responsibility were being shifted from her shoulders--"Here's the young mistress, ma'am; here's Miss Threlkeld."

"Ah! Miss Threlkeld?" said Mrs. Chippendale, and she looked at me like a sybil reading the stars--"What are you doing here? I thought I left you with your dear cousin Maria, at Thornycroft Hall."

"Mrs. Cleaton wished me to come here, ma'am, so I came."

"Indeed--let me see!" and she took up my left hand, and, separating the third finger from the rest, looked at it with a strange inquisitiveness I could not misinterpret. "You are not married, I see," she said quietly; "no wedding ring."

Of course I felt extremely hot and uncomfortable, and I wished Marshall would make his appearance. The idea of an unsustained encounter with the redoubtable Aunt Isabella was terrible to contemplate. But if the ring for which Mrs. Chippendale looked was, of course, absent, there was another in its place that could not fail to excite her keenest suspicions. Marshall had given me, as a token of our engagement, a beautiful diamond ring of his mother's--one that I had seen on her finger often at Pen Aber, and which I had heard her say she meant for her son's wife, some day or other. And now, by her express desire, it became mine, though Marshall was, of course, the nominal donor.

"Child," said Mrs. Chippendale, sternly, "that is poor Emily's ring. Why do you wear it?"

"Mrs. Cleaton wishes it," I replied, stiffly enough.

"Humph!" said Mrs. Chippendale in her gruffest bass; why can't you speak the truth, and say that you are engaged to Marshall, and that he put that ring on your finger? Are you engaged to him?"

Now, about the declaration of our engagement we had held very serious debate. Was Mrs. Ward to be told just yet? And we decided that for the present we would say nothing about it to any one; for the time was coming, alas! when I must return to my aunt's guardianship, and, as the betrothed of Marshall Cleaton, it may be imagined what sort of a life I should lead under her protection. Marshall was afraid that Maria might wreak upon me her most terrible vengeance; he was not sure she might not even try to poison me, or do something whereby life, or health, or character might be imperilled. He saw that I must perforce return to my old home; and it seemed to him that to send me there, in the new character which he had caused me to assume, was to consign a dove to an eagle's eyrie. I should be defenceless, they armed with all authority; besides, it was natural enough that Maria should look upon me as her enemy, and treat me accordingly. There was no need to go through the form of asking consent at present; it would be several years before it would be prudent to think of marriage; we must give up all intercourse for the time being, content to sacrifice a feverish happiness for a possible peace.

So you perceive that Aunt Isabella's inquiry was extremely inopportune; and I did not recognize her right to cross-question me on my private affairs. I was fast losing the painful timidity of my earlier days, and ever since I had belonged to Marshall I had felt a sense of dignity and position, as strange and new as it was pleasant to experience. I was not at all afraid of Mrs. Chippendale, when I came to think about it. Why should I be? I did not want her fortune; and what business had she, or any other elderly lady, to pry into my concerns, and ask me leading questions upon the most delicate of subjects? So I replied, very quietly, and with extreme dignity,--

"Really, Mrs. Chippendale, I must decline to answer you; as I am no relation of yours, I cannot suppose you feel any very strong interest in my prospects. I repeat it, that I wear the ring with Mrs. Cleaton's sanction, and by her expressed desire; other explanation I have none to give."

I stood still, expecting the storm to burst in all its fury on my presumptuous head; but the thin lips remained firmly closed, and the dark eyes were lit up by something that looked very much like amusement. In the meantime, I suggested that she should take off her things, and I offered to convoy her upstairs for the purpose. She followed me, still keeping silence, till she had fairly disrobed, and arranged her little crisp grey curls, and her prim cap, and put on her black silk apron and her mittens, which seemed ever new and ever the same. Then she turned round in her usual abrupt fashion, and in a deeper bass than ever said,--

"You are much improved, Miss Ellen Threlkeld; you are a girl of spirit, and I like you all the better for it; but I have no idea of being baffled by a chit like you; I shall ask Marshall himself."

"That, of course, you are at perfect liberty to do, Mrs. Chippendale," I replied, coldly. I was still angry at what appeared to me an unjustifiable intrusion,

"Tut, child; don't be grand!" she answered, patting my head. "You are a proud, stubborn young damsel, but I believe you are a good child for all that. Now take me to poor Emily."

With the usual cautions I led her to Mrs. Cleaton's room; but I was quite unprepared for the scene that followed. With most extreme tenderness, with all the love and pity of warm-hearted womanhood in her dark grave eyes, she bent down over the white prostrate form that lay, now, day after day, in more than infantile feebleness, on that bed front which she might rise nevermore.

"Emily! Emily, darling!" said Mrs. Chippendale, softly. Could those be her tones, so low, so gentle, so full of love and tenderness? "O, Emily! why did you not write to me before, and why did you come here, to this dismal place? I had no idea that you would leave Treherne, my poor, poor Emily. What you must have suffered!"

"Not so much in leaving Treherne," said Mrs. Cleaton, in her weak, sweet voice. "God has been very good to me, Aunt Isabella--very good and kind. He has softened every pang, loosened every tie, smoothed every rugged way, and now I am ready to go; I am waiting his call; every hour I expect the summons."

"Do you suffer much, my poor darling?"

"Yes; sometimes the bodily pain is very hard to bear; no one knows, till one has fully experienced it, what a giant pain is! But I have strength; I know who has appointed me wearisome days and nights, and the child must needs trust her heavenly Father, whose love and tenderness has never yet failed. It will soon be over now, dear aunt; and I shall go and see His face, and serve Him where there is no more weariness and pain. The night is almost over, the morning is at hand."

When Marshall came home ho was not a little surprised to find Mrs. Chippendale sitting by his mother's bedside. He had written to her at the same time Mrs. Cleaton had written to me; but Aunt Isabella had not given a very lucid direction, and she was rather apt to fancy she had given proper information when she really said nothing at all on the subject. Anyhow, Marshall's letter went wandering about, everywhere but in the right place, and it was only several days before, that, through the ingenuity of some rustic Yorkshire postmaster, it had reached its destination.

I am afraid the excitement of Mrs. Chippendale's arrival was too much for our dear invalid; for from that evening she changed rapidly. The last symptoms of her fatal malady disclosed themselves; she ceased to take any nourishment, except an occasional spoonful of liquid; her words were few, and nearly inaudible, and her breathing was irregular and painful. Evidently the last struggle was at hand, and we who loved her best could only pray that it might not be deferred, for her gain would infinitely exceed our loss. Day and night we watched her; hour by hour we tended her; but all in vain was our loving care; scarcely could we soothe that dying couch, scarcely mitigate any pang of that extreme, prolonged suffering; we could only look on in anguish, and love, and intensest pity, and pray that very soon the merciful Angel of Death might come to that sad, still chamber, where we kept our tearful vigil with a mournful sense of our own powerlessness to help and to comfort.

But One was there who can make the martyr's couch of agony a bed of roses--One who never leaves, never forsakes His own in life or in death--the Master whom she had served for nearly thirty years--the King whose sway she had openly acknowledged--the Christ in whom, and through whom, was all her hope and all her joy. And He, faithful to His covenant, came to her aid, and revealed Himself in His fairest and most blessed guise to the departing saint, whose feet almost touched the waves of Jordan. Physical pain and weakness asserted their sway over the poor, fast-dissolving tabernacle, but the soul, ready to spring front the dust and ashes of its clay tenement, was strong and calm, and patiently awaited the signal of dismissal.

It came at last, but first there was a strange return of energy, and she could speak, and hold our hands, and look into our faces, as she had not done for days.

"My daughter," she said to me fondly, after I had been moistening her poor dry lips, "my dear Ellen! I am going away with so much more comfort now that Marshall has your promise. I leave him in your hands; you will make him happy, I know, and he will make you happy also, my darling; so good, so very good a son must needs make the best of husbands. He will be like his father, my dear, I think--my own dear husband, whom I shall see again so soon--so soon!"

Then, after a pause, she continued--"Yes! the long separation is over at last. I thought, when my Edward left me, I too should die; I never thought it possible, even for my boy's sake, that I could live on, year after year, widowed and desolate, with my dearer self no longer at my side, no longer within call; but I knew not what the heart can bear, what strength God can give, and presently, in time, I was content to live on, waiting patiently for the hour of rest, of re-union. And now it is come, and the years--nearly twenty-five long years--seem but a little space. Mercies unspeakable have crowned my life; I have been very happy, but now I am going home, and all is peace; thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gift!"

Mrs. Chippendale aided us in everything--her deafness had disappeared; even her voice was softened in that quiet room; and all the harshness and acerbity of her disposition, or I should say of her manner, were laid aside. She was our companion in sorrow, and I began to love her. But she was troubled; that calm atmosphere of heavenly peace brooded not over her own soul; in her heart, those fair, faint, distant gleams of the coming glory were not reflected. Aunt Isabella was not a Christian, though she believed herself to be one, or rather she tried to convince herself that all was well; and this presence of death, that overawed every one of us, shook her battlements and her strong towers to their foundations. Slowly she had to learn that out of Christ there is no security, no real sense of pardon, no abiding peace, And when her niece spoke to her of the light that was shining on her own dark tombward way, of the Hand that held hers, as her feet neared the cold waters of the boundary stream, of the Friend so mighty, so faithful, and so loving, who would not leave her now, when earthly love was unavailing, she looked scared and apprehensive. Death was to her no Divine messenger--no holy and beautiful angel, to bear her into the presence of the Saviour whom she loved; but rather the King of Terrors, the last enemy, the inexorable grim tyrant, who would tear from her life and all its joys, and in their stead give only the darkness and corruption of the grave. And when Mrs. Cleaton said, "I am almost at my journey's end: are you coming my way, dear Aunt Isabella?" I saw the firm lips tremble, and form the shuddering negative they did not utter; and a sob of anguish convulsed the stately figure.

It was almost midnight when the summons came. So quietly, that for a moment we were not quite certain whether breath still lingered, the spirit passed from its worn-out shell to the eternal world of joy and light--not a struggle, not a pang, only a long, low sigh, and all was over. So that in little more than three months I watched by the deathbed of two who were very dear to me.

The funeral was to take place at Treherne, as Mrs. Cleaton had wished it; she had named certain jewels which she desired to be appropriated to the defrayal of the expenses, which could not, considering all things, be very small; and to rest by her husband had always been the cherished desire of her heart. So matters were finally arranged, and Marshall went down with the beloved dust to the pleasant home of his boyhood, where the father he had never known, and the mother whom he had almost idolized, were to rest together under the shadow of the ancient trees and the "everlasting hills."

"Only for a while," he said, "only for a while, till there shall be new heaven and new earth; till He whom we look for shall appear, bringing with Him those who now sleep in Him--waiting for the resurrection of the body."

I staid in North Place with Mrs. Chippendale, awaiting Marshall's return; then, of course, my work being ended, I must go back to my aunt. They were all at Weston-super-Mare; but ere long they would be in London for the winter. I dreaded the separation that was now close at hand, and I dreaded returning to the old life which had become a perpetual torture before my journey to London; but I longed to see Julia, and I knew that she was counting the days till I should be with her once more.

Marshall came back so pale and so worn, that even Mrs. Chippendale was alarmed, and bade me delay my preparations for departure a day or two longer. I hesitated, but obeyed-- the more so as she announced that to-morrow she had something very particular to lay before us. And by the peculiar clasp of her lips, and the nods of complacency that she kept giving, as she sat silently knitting a huge woollen comforter for Marshall, I guessed that it was something that was very pleasurable to herself at least; but little did I divine the true nature of the proposition she was about to make.

I was looking out some of my things, preparatory to packing, when Mrs. Chippendale called me downstairs. She was sitting in great state by the drawing-room fire, for the evening was wet and chilly, holding before her face an old Chinese hand-screen, and keeping her mouth shut with greater determination than ever. Marshall was standing on the hearth-rug, not in the true and orthodox position of an ordinary specimen of the English species homo, which, as a rule, elevates its coat-tails, and turns its back on the cheering blaze; but with his face buried in his hands, and his elbows planted on the marble chimney-piece. He roused himself, however, when I entered the room, and handed me a chair, and took one for himself; but it went to my heart to see his altered countenance, whence all hope and gladness seemed to have died out; he was, indeed, "as one that mourneth for his mother."

There was silence for several minutes, and then Mrs. Chippendale drew herself up, unclasped her lips, and began:--"Ellen, I have sent for you that you may hear for yourself what I am going to say to Marshall Cleaton. You are to be his wife, you know, and therefore all that concerns him concerns you; and you cannot begin too early to have the same interests, and to avoid reserves of any kind. I would as soon make confidences to a married man as to one who is merely engaged, and it is your right to know all that I have in my mind as regards him--as regards you both."

I murmured something that was meant for thanks. All the while I was wondering, I must confess, whether she was about to declare Marshall her heir; what else could she be going to say that involved so many preparatory remarks? As we three sat there, looking so solemnly, and holding ourselves so unmercifully upright, I thought our impromptu meeting seemed quite as important as that memorable one which had been held in the Thornycroft dining-room on the day of Mr. Ward's funeral. We waited gravely and deferentially for what might come next. Aunt Isabella took a lozenge, and proceeded

"I need scarcely tell you, Marshall, that your conduct, as regards Miss Ward and the Thornycroft estates, has my perfect approbation, and, in my opinion, entitles you to the respect of all who know the merits of the case. Had you completed the engagement in which, from your childhood, you were unfortunately entangled, you would have deserved, you would have ensured, the scorn of the world, and the censure of all right-minded men and women. You are now, I believe, intending to enter upon the ministry; what arrangements are you making to that effect?"

"As I told you, aunt, I have settled to enter Mr. Went-worth's family as tutor to his sons and his nephew, young Mr. Sibthorpe; while there I shall have, I trust, many opportunities of usefulness: Mr. Hearn, the pastor of Shire Magna, has extremely delicate health, his duties exceed his strength, and the cause, being rather poor, cannot afford a regular assistant minister, or, indeed, the frequent supplies who, from time to time,are indispensable. In this way, under Mr. Hearn's guidance,I shall gain experience, and try my powers. Then the salary I am to receive from Mr. Wentworth being most liberal, and my wants few, I hope to economize and keep a term or so at college, as may be necessary to pass the required theological examination."

Mrs. Chippendale groaned. "A salary did you say, nephew Marshall?"

"Yes, aunt, I should certainly not think of giving my time and pains without something like an equivalent."

"O!" and she groaned again, "to think of a Cleaton receiving salary, wages--working for hire, and liable to be dismissed like any common servant! Marshall Cleaton, it must not be, it shall not be--poor Emily's son shall never sink to such a level if I can help it. Now listen to me, and don't be a fool, but take the good that Providence sends you. I honour you for your decision respecting that girl Maria, and Thornycroft Hall; you have acted nobly, and you shall be rewarded."

"Aunt, if you please," and Marshall spoke with some degree of impatience; "we will not discuss that subject any more; my conscience and my inclination went together. I was merely honest and honourable, and there was nothing noble in the matter. I should have been a villain had I married my cousin for the sake of worldly pelf. I did not and could not love her; and, more than that, I had just found out that there was another whom I could love; though I solemnly declare that; if Ellen had been quite out of the question, I should still have made the same renunciation of my cousin's hand and fortune. You will very much oblige me by not referring to the subject again, Aunt Isabella."

"I don't hear a word you say;" Said Mrs. Chippendale, holding her hand behind her ear. "I know you were very honest and honourable, and everything that is noble; but it is not thee of you to praise yourself; But do not interrupt me any more, please. Listen--you shall not go to Shire Hall; Mr. Wentworth may find another tutor, they are as plentiful as blackberries; and Mr. Hearn must look out for some one else to preach to his rustics and be dictated to by his deacons. And you shall return to Oxford at my expense, and study for your theological or divinity examination, or whatever you call it, and as soon as you are ordained you may get married; for though a mere curacy may not bring you in anything worth mentioning, I will take care that you have a sufficient, nay, a handsome income--an income befitting your position as my adopted son, and my heir--for that you shall be Marshall Cleaton. I like you, and I like the girl you have chosen for your wife; so the matter is settled, and if it can be managed--and I know it can, for I have always kept Mrs. Ward in wholesome dread of my displeasure--I mean to take Ellen to live with me, till you have a home in readiness to receive her; and as you have already taken your degree, I should think that will be in about a year from this time."

There was a dead silence in the room; I only heard the evening breeze sweeping wildly round the corner of North Place. At length Marshall spoke--"Dear Aunt Isabella, you are kind, very, very kind; never to my dying day shall I forget your generosity; and you must not think me ungrateful when I say I cannot go back to Oxford. Two years ago I had no fixed denominational views, but now the case is altered, and I cannot go back."

"Denominational views, indeed! Are you a fool, Marshall Cleaton? Are you going to quarrel with your bread and butter for the sake of 'denominational views?' I wish there were no denominations. Now don't be hasty; at Oxford you shall enjoy the income of a gentleman, and your prospects will be as good as need be; but no penny of mine, no, not a farthing, shall go to sustain a Dissenting college. I can't think why the Government allows them; I have no doubt they do a great deal of mischief in the land. Well, you are coming to your senses, I hope, young man?"

"I do not think I have been out of them," replied Marshall, pleasantly. "But, indeed, aunt, grieved as I am to cross you in this matter, I cannot make the change you require. I have fairly examined the subject, and I have come to the conclusion that I can best serve God after the manner of my fathers."

"Tut and nonsense! there are as good men in the Church of England as out of it."

"I know it, aunt--I am sure of it; but in that Church I should NOT be a good man. I should have to declare solemnly that I gave my unfeigned assent and consent to all that was contained in the Book of Common Prayer; and, though I believe much, I do not believe all contained in that book, therefore I am constrained to remain without the pale of the Establishment; for what blessing could I expect on my ministry if I commenced it by the solemn, public declaration of an unmitigated falsehood? I do not for a moment censure those who conscientiously can subscribe; but I should despise myself, if, for the sake of anything, however seemingly desirable or expedient, or however dear, I affirmed that with my lips which in my heart I disallowed."

"Bless the boy! to hear how he talks! Why, do you not think the men who made the Prayer Book knew better than you? Young folks think they know everything now-a-days. In my time we were content to listen to what our elders told us, and take it on trust. Now, you do not mean to say that you absolutely refuse to take orders in the Church of England?"

"I must decline to take orders in the Episcopal Church of England. I have devoted myself to the ministry of the Nonconformist section of the Church of England. But, in so declining, I evince no enmity, no uncharitableness, towards that other section of Conformity. The Church of England, as by law established, numbers among her children, among her pastors, thousands of God's saints; and I find much within her pale which is pure and sublime, and much that is worthy of the imitation of Nonconformists. You must forgive me, aunt Isabella, but I must, I must indeed, serve God with a pure heart; I must minister before Him with clean hands in this as well as in the matter of Thornycroft Hall. I must do that which is right. Do not be angry, aunt; I have no alternative: it would be unchristian, unmanly, to act otherwise."

"How can I help being angry? I hate Dissent; though I must say your father and mother were as good specimens of Christianity as I ever saw. I have seen something of Dissenting ministers; so be waned in time. Only a few--the popular ones--get anything like a living: the rest are at the mercy of their people, who can drive them away and starve them if they like; and they are specially at the mercy of coarse-minded men, who, armed with the petty authority of office, can oppress and insult them in a way that would ensure them a thorough horsewhipping in the world, and among men of business. I hate those creatures called deacons--a sort of perpetual churchwardens, I believe, endowed with plenary powers to legislate, advise, caution, lecture, or insult their pastor at discretion."

And Mrs. Chippendale went on with a tirade I shall not repeat; one would have supposed she had been herself subjected to gross cruelty and insolence from some member of some diaconate. Then she dilated on the miseries of poor ministers, and drew such a picture that I involuntarily imagined myself doing the work of the house, and inking the seams of Marshall's best coat, and unable to do much in the cooking line, because there was so little to be cooked. However, it suddenly flashed across my mind, that my own little fortune would keep us in bread and potatoes, and an occasional joint of meat, to say nothing of puddings, that I felt I could extemporize out of inexpensive materials. So I took heart again, and felt satisfied; and presently Mrs. Chippendale turned to me and said, "Pray how do you like the idea of being a poor minister's wife?"

"Very well," I replied; "but I do not see the necessity for being so very poor."

"Ah, it is all very well to talk: you who have never wanted anything--you who have been used to all the elegances and refinements of life--how shall you like pinching, and screwing, and toiling to make both ends meet, and perhaps not be able to make them meet after all? You will never be able to have a new dress, or a pretty drawing-room, or to go to the sea-side, you know."

"As for that," I answered, "I shall always be able to have a black silk dress, I dare say; you forget that I am a minister's daughter, and have lived among my own compeers so long. Then prints are cheap enough, and so are mousseline de lames. I dare say I can manage to dress very nicely, Aunt Isabella--that will never trouble me; and I will make my drawing-room pretty--I shall not need velvet-pile carpets, and rosewood furniture, and costly knick-knacks to do that; and about the sea-side--well, perhaps we may live there, or very near the coast."

"Ah, it is all very well to look through rose-coloured spectacles; wait a bit, we shall see some day. So this is the upshot of your fine Casterton education--you, the daughter of a clergyman, ready to jump at the first embryo Methodist parson who asks you to marry him. Pray, did they teach Nonconformity at Casterton?"

"No, aunt. My dear Mr. Wilson is a Church clergyman, and we were all the daughters of clergymen; but we were not taught much about denominations. We were taught to believe in the holy Catholic Church. Of course, our training was in accordance with the doctrines and rule of the Church to which we belonged: but love to Christ and devotion to His service were the lessons most constantly and most strenuously imparted. We were taught to believe not in baptismal regeneration, but in being created anew in Christ Jesus. We were told to look upon the ordinances of the Church always as most blessed means of grace, never as themselves a means of salvation. We were taught to love all, and to count all as brethren, who loved and served the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in truth. No; there was no narrowness, no bigotry in our Casterton training. Mr. Carus Wilson is a true and faithful son of the English Church to which he belongs, but he is also a member of the Universal Church, and he would unchurch no man whose faith is pure and Scriptural, and bringing forth good fruits, though he may differ from him on points of discipline and Church government."

"Well, I will say no more but think of your father; what would he say to his daughter's defection?"

Ah, my dear father! and here the light broke in upon me fully and clearly, and my heart was glad. He was gone where creed and rituals are needed no longer, where heart and tongue alike join in the everlasting song. "Sect" is an infirmity of our mortal state; like all other burdens of the flesh it will slip from us as we cross the waves of the stream of Death; in that better world beyond there will be no divisions, no heart-burnings, no rivalries as there are here, even among the best of us. Here are many imperfect churches; there is the one grand, glorious, and perfect Church of the Firstborn--the Church where already are gathered the saints, and prophets, and martyrs of old time--the Church that day by day, and hour by hour, adds to its blessed circle of happy worshippers, whence none depart, and where they see no longer darkly, as in a glass, but "face to face." Once safe, and rejoicing in the courts of heaven, once numbered with the innumerable multitude of the Church Triumphant, how insignificant will seem the contentions, the antagonisms, and the jars of the Church Militant below!

So I said, "My father belongs now to the one perfect, undivided Church; if, as I doubt not, he knows what my path is, and whither it seems tending, he will rejoice to find his child one with him in spirit, and ready to share a lot so blessed--for the lot of a true, faithful minister of Christ, in whatever portion of the one great fold he may minister, must be most blessed."

Then we were silent; the shadows of evening were falling apace, and, in the dickering firelight, I tried to read the countenances of my companions. Marshall was pale, grave, and sad; but I could see that he was quite calm, and firm to his purpose. O, how proud I felt of him! and as I looked again and again at the noble, serene face, with its mingled strength and sweetness, I thanked God once more for His greatest, purest blessing on this side the grave! Hence.. forth, life to me would be very beautiful; I knew that nothing earthly could keep us apart; if circumstances--rather, I should say, if God's will parted us for years, I was sure that, some day, Marshall would claim me as his own; he would be faithful unto death, ay, and after death, for love like his was not for time alone. I was so glad, too, that he was not only so grand and so good, but so bright, so clever, so fond of all that is fairest, and highest, and deepest in the world of intellect, so alive to all the loveliness and sublimities of the world of Nature; so entirely my superior, that I could sit at his feet and learn from him things new and old--lessons of all times and on every theme, but always clear, gentle, pure, and tinged with the glowing fervour of his own mind--the deep spirituality of his own heart! In his hands the simplest truths bore their fullest and widest significance. He could fashion the coarse and common clay into forms of heroic beauty. Not a flower, not a pebble, not a ray of light, but had for him its high similitude, its wondrous teaching; and always, in cloud and in sunshine, there was a grave brightness on his face that shed its peace and its blessedness on all around. And all this treasure of goodness and excellence God had given me. The world would see and acknowledge his rare gifts, his lofty simplicity; friends would appreciate his genius, his piety, his kindness; but I alone should be privileged to share the inner sanctuary of his noble heart; to me, to his wife, would be disclosed the full beauty, the quiet strength, and the indescribable sweetness and tenderness of character that others, however near, however discriminating, could only know in part.

The silence was broken by Mrs. Chippendale rising and stiffly wishing us good-night. The next morning she was cold and ceremonious, and dreadfully deaf. Two days afterwards I was on my way to Weston-super-Mare. Marshall took me as far as Bristol, and then we parted, utterly uncertain when and where we should meet again.

Two whole years passed away, of which I must take only a very brief retrospect. Within sight of the ancient church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Marshall and I bade each other farewell; he returned to Kennington, to wind up his affairs there, previous to taking up his abode at Shire Hall; I proceeded by the next train into Somersetshire, and, ere the evening closed in, found myself once more under my aunt's protection, in a handsome house at Weston-super-Mare. Maria scarcely deigned to notice me at all; Arabella seemed glad to see me again, but, on the whole, comported herself very strangely; Julia welcomed me after her own old fashion, and said that she had missed me every hour, during my absence. Of course, many questions were asked respecting my dear Mrs. Cleaton; and I was obliged to speak freely of many things regarding which I would fain have kept silence; much that I hoped to keep sacred in the innermost recesses of my heart, I was compelled to disclose; for both my aunt and Maria, and even Arabella, by fits and starts, questioned me unmercifully about the little household in North Place, and, above all, about the words and ways of her who had passed away.

It was hard work; but I bore the scrutiny and the pain bravely: I answered every inquiry as quietly as I could, though sometimes I could not repress the hot tears, that welled up unbidden at the mention of that dear name, so lightly spoken. Very little was said about Marshall, and happily the fact of our engagement was never suspected. Of course I kept my own counsel; we had agreed to say nothing, unless absolutely questioned; and then I was to speak the plain truth without hesitation. In the meantime, however, we were to hold no intercourse, even by letter, unless anything of special moment occurred: for, though I was certainly not bound in any way to make a confidante of Mrs. Ward, I was quite as certainly bound to refrain from the pursuance of anything clandestine, while under her roof. The mere fact of my engagement could make no difference to her; but it would have been impossible to correspond openly, or to meet without a secret assignation, and from anything of the sort we mutually shrank. We had faith in each other; we could afford to live on, without word, or glance, or sigh, for we were certain of each other's fealty; and no shadow of doubt, no tremor of passing fear lest haply I might be forgotten, or less beloved, ever crossed my mind.

But there were times when I suffered intensely--times when the long blank silence seemed more than I could bear, when I pictured to myself all kinds of misery, when a terrible fear seized me, that in this world I might never see my dearest friend again. Once I remember--it was when we were in town for the season--this apprehension came suddenly and, as it seemed, causelessly upon me; and I lost faith, and received the unlooked-for terror, the sickening doubt, as a presentiment of that which awaited me. Months had rolled away, and I had heard nothing whatever of Marshall; I knew not if he were living even; and, as I wondered vaguely and sadly when I should next hear his voice and meet his glance, there came upon me the dread of I knew not what. Gradually, however, it defined itself, and I knew what it was that drove the blood from my heart, and seemed to stop my pulses; I thought, how could I tell it was not so? that perchance the silence that seemed to shut me in so long, so unbrokenly, was the silence of death! I thought that perhaps, even as I sat and mused, and looked tenderly on my precious diamond circlet, the widowhood of a long life-time had commenced; Marshall was with his mother, and I was left to mourn my irreparable loss, till, in God's good time, we should meet again, where there are no more partings nor fears. Then I felt that I could bear all things, battle with all things, even consent to see his dear face in the flesh no more, if only I knew that he yet lived on earth--yet toiled for his Master, yet served his generation, as became one endowed with so many gifts and graces. O! how fully I could say:--

"O, live!
And I can let thee go to the world's end;
All precious names--companion, love, spouse, friend--
Seal up in an eternal silence gray,
Like a closed grave till resurrection day:
All sweet remembrances, hopes, dreams, desires,
Heap, as one heaps up sacrificial fires:
Then turning, consecrate by loss, and proud
Of penury--go back into the loud
Tumultuous world again with never a moan,
Save that which whispers still, 'My own, my own:'
Under the same broad sky, whose arch immense
Enfolds us both, like the arm of Providence:
And thus contented, I could live, or die,
With never clasp of hand or meeting eye
On this aide Paradise. While thee I see
Living to God, thou art alive to me!'

At that time, in those hours of "silence gray," I had not read these most exquisite lines; but when, some years later, they came into my hands, they seemed to me my veritable own thoughts, my own deepest feelings, that were thus woven together, in verse whose pathos and beauty my poor small muse could never attain.Thank God, deliverance came; the dungeon doors were thrown back, and the blessed light came in to my poor sorrowful heart, and filled its chill and drear recesses with sudden sunshine, and warmth, and joy. Thank God, who gives and who takes away, who lends us for awhile dearest treasure, and then, that He may prove us, and strengthen us, and make us meet for that purer and higher life, to which we hasten, resumes what in our short-sightedness we thought would abide with us to the end. Thank God, I never had to say, in the closing words of that noble poem*:--

"And I can stand upon the daisy-bed,
The only pillow for thy dearest head,
Then cover up for ever from my sight
My own, my own, my all of earth-delight;
And enter the sea-cave of widowed years
Where far, far off, the trembling gleam appears
Through which thy heavenly image slipped away,
And waits to meet me at the open day.
Only to me, my love, only to me,
This cavern underneath the moaning sea,
This long, long life that I alone must tread,
To whom the living seem most like the dead;--
Thou wilt be sale out on the happy shore:
He who in God lives liveth evermore!"

* "Living." By Miss Muloch.

No, I had not to sustain such mournful experiences; though strange to say, at the very time that I was suffering from the unaccountable presentiment that made me so tremblingly apprehensive, and so completely unhappy, Marshall had a severe and even dangerous illness, and had even told his friend Mr. Ream--of whom you will hear more presently--of our engagement, and received his promise to go to me, wherever I might be, and bring me to his aide, through every difficulty, should it appear probable that his sickness would terminate in death.

One morning, as Julia and I were sitting together in the little room where we were supposed to study German, and paint, and practise, the post arrived. It was not often that I received a letter; some of my Casterton friends continued to write to me, and I had a few, a very few, correspondents with whom I had been on friendly terms for a short time only. I was looking for a letter from Catherine Fleming, and I glanced anxiously at the handwriting on the missive which the servant placed before me. I was not disappointed; there were dear Catherine's familiar characters, and there was the post-mark of the town near which she resided. She was a governess now--for there are poor clergymen in the Established Church as well as out of it, and plenty of them too; witness the "Curates' Aid," and other similar benevolent societies--and Catherine's father, though an incumbent, was of the very poorest, and had been most thankful to avail himself of the inestimable advantages which Casterton presents to educate his six daughters, and, in process of time, settle them as governesses in private families, till sufficient money could be raised by the sisters to enable them to open a school on their own account. The first part of Catherine's letter referred to this prospect, which she was hoping ere long to realize, and she knew that I was deeply interested in all that involved her welfare~ But the Subject of the projected boarding-school having been exhausted, Cathy began on a new and entirely-unexpected topic. This was what she wrote:--"I think the minister who is coming to the chapel in Ormside must be that very Mr. Cleaton who came to see you at Casterton; and he is announced as the Rev. M. W. Cleaton--did you not say his Christian names were Marshall Ward? People say he is very clever, and a most wonderful preacher; he is only just invited to the charge, or the pastorate, or whatever these good Nonconforming people call it, and next Sunday he preaches for the first time as incumbent--no, not incumbent--as minister of the Baptist Church at Ormside. I took a walk with my pupils, and there were placards on the walls about 'recognition services'--what sort of services are they, I wonder?--and Mr. Cleaton's name was printed in large letters. A lady in the neighbourhood told me that he had just written a book on 'Our Christian Faiths,' that had been making a great noise in the religious world; and it was reviewed, she said, in last week's Patriot--the Patriot being, I take it, to these Dissenters what the Record is to us. But I dare say you know all about it, for, if I remember aright, this Mr. Cleaton is a kind of relation or connection of yours--a cousin's cousin, is he not? I suppose I ought to congratulate you on his success, for everybody, I believe, praises the book, as beautifully written, and as being remarkably clear, logical, dispassionate, and, above all, most liberal and Catholic, he takes for his text that grand old clause of the Creed; it is evidently his creed--though a 'schismatic,' as old Mr. Walker calls him:--'I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.'"

Julia was busy with a long letter of her own, and so she did not notice me; otherwise I think my joyful agitation must have betrayed me. I had longed to tell Julia all about my betrothal, for I was secure of her sympathy and fidelity, but Marshall thought it would be best not to burden her with a confidence which could not be shared by any other member of her family. Indeed, he thought it would be wrong to confide to her what she must perforce keep from her mother. Julia was Mrs. Ward's own child, still a young girl on the threshold of life, and under her mother's care and control; and it was not meet that there should be secrets between her and her sole surviving parent. I was only Mrs. Ward's half-niece, and she had said more than once that as soon as I was of age I was at liberty to go where I pleased, and do as I liked. Maria would have bad me turned adrift long ago, and but for my promise to Julia I should certainly have asserted myself and sought another home, wherein she held no rule or authority.

I hastened to my own room overflowing with thankfulness. My soul bad been benumbed in icy regions of perpetual winter; an everlasting snow-line had seemed the horizon of my thoughts; a cold grey sky was over my bead, a barren flinty soil beneath my feet, mists arid spectral shadows on and over all. And now--now I rose as one who has been dead, and is alive again. The winter was past and gone. Spring, with all her buds, and flowers, and tender green, and sunny skies, and woodland songs, was around me once more--nay, it bloomed as it had never bloomed before; and my heart was too full for words. I could only kneel in mute thanksgiving, that lay too deep, and swelled too high, for all but silent praise and happy tears. Afterwards I took up my "Bogatsky," and wrote the date of the year by the side of the text for the day, and these words, "Laus Deo." Whenever I open my well-worn little book--the tried companion of many bright and many sorrowful days--the old emotion of speechless gratitude comes back again, as if it were but yesterday since deliverance came.

By the afternoon post two newspapers arrived for me. I found them in my room when I returned from my walk; they were both alike--two copies of the last week's Patriot, of which Catherine Fleming had spoken. One was directed in a strange hand, but it bore the postmark of a town near Shire Hall, and I knew it came from Marshall; and, that I might be quite certain, the seals which fastened the cover displayed an impression that was quite familiar--one that I had seen many times on a small cornelian seal which used to lie in Mrs. Cleaton's work-basket, and which I always used whenever I despatched letters for her; for the day of adhesive envelopes had, as yet, only dawned, and we were still beholden to that useful commodity which, as the old riddle tells us, "burns to keep a secret," The other paper, strange to say, came from Mrs. Chippendale, It was the first time she had taken any notice of me since our parting at North Place.

I shut myself in with my treasures, and read--you may believe with what avidity--a long and glowing criticism on Marshall's book, which was evidently making a noise in the world. Also, there was a notice of his acceptance of the charge offered him at Ormside, and there was some wonder expressed that so talented and so highly cultivated a mind should be content with so limited a sphere, and with a position that tended rather to obscurity than to advancement of the well-earned fame which must naturally attend so successful an author. Again and again I read those laudatory notices in silent ecstacy; and then I locked up my precious Patriots, the first, I should think, that ever came into that house.

And now I was content; my terrible fear was gone; I knew that Marshall was doing all, and more than all he had anticipated, and perhaps, ere long, he would have a home, which would also be mine--a home where, instead of slights, and rebuffs, and taunts, there would be peace, and brightness, and love. I could bear all Maria's sarcasms now; her withering words and looks ware nothing to me; I was girt about with a panoply of which she knew nothing; I could be calm through all her provocations; I could even afford to pity her, for she had missed the priceless treasure that was mine, all mine. She had lovers young and old, lovers of all temperaments and all conditions, but not one to be compared with Marshall--and I believe she thought so too; poor rich Miss Ward! Rich poor Ellen Threlkeld! I could well afford to be forgiving and forbearing, and even generous.

In the course of a few days a copy of Marshall's book reached me--a special copy--bound, as I soon discovered, on purpose for me. I did not even show it to Julia; I kept it all to myself. I was getting to be a very miser over my precious things. And now I must say a word about Arabella--she had comported herself so very strangely. On my return from Casterton I had thought her improved, but the illusion was quickly dispelled. Certainly, she was more womanly, less inclined to cry over trifles, and she had attained so much self-respect as to be altogether ashamed of the little episode in which Mr. Silke's sentimental shopman played so conspicuous a part. But her habits of self-indulgence were rapidly growing upon her. Mrs. Ward's daughters had, one and all, thrown off the iron yoke of their childhood and early youth, and stood now in very little awe of their mother--the dethroned queen of Thornycroft; so Arabella did as she chose, for as long as she did not interfere with the general rule Maria seemed inclined to tolerate all her eccentricities.

She lived very much in her own room, where she had contrived to accumulate every possible comfort and convenience. Her couch and lounging chair were more luxurious than any others in the house, downy cushions abounded, and warm fleecy mats for the feet were everywhere where feet were likely to tarry. Arabella said always that there was nothing like comfort, and she would take care she had it too. But, alas! comfort is sometimes as coy a thing as sleep; the more it is wooed the further it recedes, and, in spite of all Bella's cozy contrivances, there were times when she was extremely uncomfortable. She often had racking headaches, and not unfrequently violent bilious attacks, which prostrated her for several days; her complexion, which had cleared as she settled into womanhood, again grew dingy and thick; she had a bloated appearance, and at times wore an aspect of extreme heaviness and stupidity. At last a horrible conviction forced itself on my mind. One night, late, I went to her room for some article she had borrowed from me. I knocked at her door several minutes before I obtained any answer; at last I made her understand what I required, and she drew back the bolt and stood before me. I looked at her in profound astonishment. She was in her dressing-gown, with her hair arranged for the night, and she looked perfectly senseless, not to say idiotic.

"Arabella," I cried, "what is it? Are you ill?"

A stupid laugh, half-gurgle, half-leer, was the answer, and presently she stammered out something that I translated into--"I've got a headache, and I am very sleepy." She said--"Vay thleepy."

I advanced further into the room. She tried feebly to push me back, but in the endeavour fell gently herself on one of her soft, delicate, sheep-skin rugs. By the fire was her little round table; on it were two volumes of a sensation novel, a tumbler and a spoon, a hot-water jug, and a bottle of the finest Cognac!

Now I understood it all. I tried to rouse her, but it was with extreme difficulty I got her into bed, just as she was, for I could not call a maid, and subject her to the disgrace of an inevitable exposure. I extinguished the lamp and put on the fire-guard, and left Arabella to her terrible slumber;--she was in an undeniable state of intoxication.

The morning after the discovery of poor Arabella's pitiable weakness, I awoke with a miserable sense of pain and responsibility. How to proceed I scarcely knew; should I disclose the terrible secret to Mrs. Ward? should I take private counsel with Julia? or should I content myself with an earnest remonstrance with the unhappy subject of my anxiety? I concluded that at any rate I would speak very seriously to Arabella herself; before I proceeded in the matter, and while I dressed I thought of many things that I would say, as soon as I could find or make an opportunity.

She did not appear at breakfast-time, she very seldom did; she sent word that her head was aching terribly, and she desired that a cup of very strong tea, and two or three strips of thin toast, "very thin and crisp," might be sent up to her.

"Really," said Mrs. Ward, as the tray was carried up, "we must have some advice for Arabella; I shall have her settling down into a confirmed invalid; she will have chronic liver complaint or something; these bilious headaches are growing upon her."

"Do you wonder?" said Miss Ward, with one of her amiable sneers. "The quantity of rich things Bella manages to consume, and her frequent visits to the pastry-cook's, perfectly account to me for anything she may suffer in the way of biliousness and dyspepsia; she looks to me as if she had yellow-jaundice, only her appetite is unimpaired."

"You are mistaken," replied Mrs. Ward; "your sister's appetite is most irregular and capricious: this morning, for instance, you see she cannot take an egg, or a slice of bacon, and only the day before yesterday she had nothing but a dry biscuit and a little cold brandy-and-water for her dinner."

"Mamma," said Maria, drily, "permit me to give you a word of advice; the less brandy-and-water you administer to Arabella the better; in my opinion she takes a great deal too much of that kind of thing already, and I have a strong suspicion that she takes much more than we have any idea of. Once or twice I have been confounded at the sudden disappearance of wine and spirits, when I felt confident that the servants had had no opportunity of helping themselves. If it occurs again, I shall sift the matter most thoroughly, I am determined."

"Maria!" said Mrs. Ward, angrily, "I will not hear such wicked, slanderous insinuations. Row can you utter a suspicion so derogatory to your sister's character, to her honour, her dignity, her mere respectability?--you cannot possibly know what you are saying."

"Compose yourself, mamma," answered Maria, drily; "I am not going to say any more at present; I would only suggest the propriety of Arabella's becoming at once a member of the Total Abstinence Society. If you are wise, you will urge it upon her."

And here the conversation ended, and I resolved to speak myself to Arabella on the same subject. About noon I went to her room; she had risen, and was sitting over the fire in an untidy morning wrapper, with her hair in a state of great disorder, her cheeks pale and sodden, her eyes heavy, and her nose red at the tip. She looked cross and ashamed when she saw me, but she spoke rather civilly for her, and pushed a chair for my accommodation, and began to talk in a confused style about the novel which still lay on the table. I saw that she had made up her mind to ignore the event of the preceding night, though I doubted whether she retained any clear recollection of the circumstances of the case.

"There are no less than five murders in this book," said Arabella, taking up the volume before her; "five murders, very interesting cases of slow poisoning, and two elopements, and several faithless wives; and everybody gets into a predicament--into the most awful situations you can conceive; but the hero and heroine--they are both of them poisoned, only they get well again somehow--are married at last, and have a castle left them, and ever so much a year. O, it is so exciting and beautifully written! I'll lend it to you, if you like, only you must keep it in your own room, because mamma would just toss it behind the fire if she were to read ten pages of it; there's a tragedy or a dilemma in every chapter."

"Arabella, I should be ashamed to keep such a book in my room; I read a page or two of the second volume the other day, when you left it with our German books in the study. You must know--your instincts ought to tell you--that such stories are unfit for our reading. What has a young girl to do with such shameful wickedness? I wish all such books were burnt, for they can do nothing but harm; their very cleverness and piquancy makes them the wore dangerous. I suppose we must know of the evil that is in the world some day, but let us keep our minds pure as long as we can. What have we to do with poisoning, and elopements, and other things--things that are shame to ns young girls to speak of at all?"

Arabella laughed, "You are such a wretched, stupid prude, Ellen; you are sure to be an old maid; indeed, you are the only one among us who has never had a beau, and I don't wonder at it, Well, if you prefer it, keep your own style; I like my reading to be of the same sort as my food, well-seasoned and relishing. I had enough of namby-pamby stories in my schoolroom days; I am sick of moral and religious tales; I am not going to be a blossom of morality."

"Indeed," I interrupted, "I am afraid that is true. Arabella! I came here for a purpose. I want to talk with you about last night's performance; it must not occur again."

"I don't know what you mean," replied Arabella, doggedly; but her glowing cheeks and brow contradicted her words; she did know what I meant, and resented it accordingly.

"Yes," I continued; "you do know what I mean, Arabella; but if you do not I will tell you. I came here last night, and found you--shall I say it--so stupefied with brandy and water that you were unable to stand or to speak intelligibly. Is it not a horrible thing that a young lady, not yet twenty, should keep spirits in hem own chamber, and indulge in them privately, and to excess?"

"You had no business to come to my room at all," she returned, angrily; and then in a whining apologetic tone--"if you had such dreadful pains in the chest, such spasms as I have, you would be glad to drink brandy, or strychnine, or anything that would give you ease."

"I should imagine the spasms might be prevented. However, it shall be seen to; I shall tell aunt what you say; she was speaking of your health this morning at breakfast-time, and she was thinking of your having medical advice--there must be safer medicines than unlimited doses of alcohol."

Bella burst into tears, and cried piteously: "No, no, Ellen, you must not--indeed, you must not tell mamma. Don't be cruel now; you know I never told tales of you, and I've always taken your part when you've been in trouble. I couldn't help it, indeed I couldn't. I was reading 'The Husband's Revenge,' and I got excited, and I had the most killing pain in my chest; there was something wrong in the dressing of those ducks we had yesterday, and they disagreed with me; and I had twice of soup, too, and that will upset me sometimes, and those tarts a la Josephine were so nice, I ate several more than I meant to, and the crystallized green-gages tempted me, and somehow I felt poorly, and had indigestion; and you know, Ellen, there is nothing like brandy for indigestion."

"You are wrong; brandy may and does correct the evil for the moment, but it lays the foundation of chronic dyspepsia; besides, if you take brandy now habitually, what will become of you as you grow older? If you were sixty-five now, instead of nineteen, there might be less said about it; you might be trusted to take it really and solely as a medicine; but, as it is, I fear you take it too frequently as a beverage; and the more you take the more you will want, and the more frequently your spasms will return; and, Bella dear, you must see how it will end.""I can't do without it," whined poor Arabella. "O, you don't know, Nellie; it is such a comfort, and I feel so happy and careless about everything, when I have had a nice hot glass of wine and water, or brandy and water."

"You will soon want two glasses, Arabella, and presently the two glasses will be insufficient, and you will go on increasing the strength and the number of your glasses, till you become--I must say it--an habitual drunkard. Arabella, you are on the brink of a precipice. I am not sure that it was only one glass last night; every day increases your danger, every hour makes the task of reformation more difficult; you must begin at once; there is no help for it; you must never touch that-that poison!--it poison to you, to thousands of women--you must never touch it again."

"I can't do without it," wailed Arabella; "I get so miserable and sinking, and it brightens me up; and--and--I like it--I love it!--there now!" And she turned upon me with a reckless, defiant air that made me shudder.

"The more reason why you should give it up; you must, you shall give it up. It is of no use your crying, and of still less use your being angry; I offer you the choice of two things--either you take the pledge and keep it, or I give my aunt a full account of all I saw in this room last night."

"What will the pledge make me do?"

"It will require you to renounce all alcoholic liquors as a beverage; you will never take them but under medical authority; wine and spirits you will pledge yourself to refuse, and--"

"What, drink water?" she cried; "I couldn't do it, Ellen; it is cruel of you to ask me."

"You are not confined to water: you can have tea, coffee, cocoa, lemonade, raspberry vinegar--anything you like, that is unfermented."

"But I may have ale and porter at dinner? I would give up the brandy and the wine, if I might have plenty of Guinness's bottled porter. There's nothing like good porter, not too much up; it gives such a relish to your meat. I don't know but what I prefer the best draught porter to bottled; it is not so flatulent. A French roll, a slice of ripe Stilton, and a glass or so of the best porter, is a luncheon fit for a queen."

"Nevertheless, you must give it up, Arabella. While you are so much about porter you are in danger of caring about other intoxicating drinks. Which will you do?--take the pledge honestly, or let me bring the matter before your mother and Maria? and let me tell you Maria suspects you already."

"I suppose I have no choice," she replied sullenly. "I wish you had never come to live with us, you nasty interfering thing; this is the second time you have stepped in and meddled with my concerns."

I knew she referred to the affair of the young man with the Albert chain. I said, "I should think you thank me for the first interference, Arabella; if I had not let your father know your danger, you would probably, now, be the miserable wife of a vulgar, uneducated man, who only sought you for the fortune you were reputed to have. You are very glad now, Arabella, that you are not that young man's wife?"

She made no reply, but sat sullen and silent, twisting her watch-chain, with an occasional vicious jerk, that betrayed the irritability of her mind. I continued, "I tell you what, Bella dear, you shall not sign the pledge alone; I will take it too, and I think I could induce Julia to join us also. It will be easier, and you will look less conspicuous, if there are several in the family who abstain upon principle."

She looked up in profound astonishment, and asked, "What, did you ever get--did you ever drink more than you meant to, and feel queer?"

"No, never; but if it will help you I will do as I say; I drink very little wine now, and spirits never. O, Bella dear, it is a shocking thing for a young girl to drink spirits unless medically administered. I never heard of a girl in our station of life who could do such a thing."

"There are a great many things in the world you never heard of," she replied gloomily. "Well, if it must be so, I will take this precious pledge; though, mind, I will not take it for always; I will take it for a year and a-half, and then, if I am tired of it, as I am quite sure I shall be, I can go back to my old ways again."

"I hope not," was my answer; "I hope, very soon, you will see the danger you have escaped, and be thankful that you were not left to fall irretrievably into the snare. But now about the brandy you have here; let me take it away."

"No, no," she cried, "I cannot sign the horrid thing today; let me enjoy myself while I may; you have upset me so that I feel dreadfully ill and sinking; you cannot think what a pain at the chest I have. I want some brandy now, and I must have it, too; just a wine-glass neat; it will set me to rights in no time."

"No, you shall not have it, Arabella; virtually you take the pledge this moment, or I go straight to Maria, and tell her that her suspicions are most fully verified; she shall know in what state I found you last night."

"But it is medicinal--quite medicinal, I am sure. The pain is dreadful; if I give up the brandy, what can I take instead?"

"You shall have some homeopathic camphor; it will take the pain away; and to-night you had better have a dose of nux vomica. I will fetch the camphor at once from my room if you will give me that bottle of pale brandy."

"I will not give it you," she retorted, fiercely. "I wonder what you would say to me if I went and took away that silly little medicine-case of yours, with its senseless, useless globules? I wonder how you would like to be interfered with?"

I replied quietly, "You are talking very foolishly, Arabella, and all to no purpose, for I will not stir till I have the brandy. If my homeopathic medicines brought disgrace upon me, I should only be too thankful to have them taken out of my reach. Let me have the brandy at once; or must I fetch Maria to settle the matter?"

An agony of tears was the only reply; but at last, with many sobs, and with a glance at me that was half-pitiful, half-furious, she took out her keys, and opened a small chiffoniere, that she had caused to be made for her own special accommodation. I heard the jingling of glass as she drew forth the bottle, and a sudden idea struck me, and I sprang forward, saying--"Forgive me, Arabella; but I must see what you have there."

She was half inclined to dispute the point by the exercise of physical force; but her dread of exposure was too great, and after a minute's hesitation she sullenly gave way, and, throwing herself back in her lounging chair, left me to prosecute my own researches, and capture what I would. I cannot describe what I felt when my cousin's private hoard was thus revealed; sorrow, shame, indignation, and astonishment held swift and successive sway over my startled mind. Was I dreaming, or was it a fact, that my unfortunate cousin had there concealed, as her own private stock, one bottle of best pale brandy, one bottle of London gin, two bottles of old port and one bottle of dark sherry, about half-a-pint of rum shrub, and a small quantity of some foreign spirit or liqueur that I failed to recognize?

"Arabella," I cried, springing up, for I had stooped down to inspect her stores--"O, Arabella! what would your father have said to this? What would your mother say? What would anybody who cared at all for you say?"

She cried on still, and turned away her head, saying, however, rather angrily, "That was what was to serve me for ever so long. I like to have my choice; I do not like to be limited to one kind. Perhaps port suits me to-day and sherry to-morrow, and another day brandy and water; or, if I have a bad cold, just a little rum, with a lump of nice fresh butter dissolved in it. You don't suppose I was going to drink it all up at once? But I dare say you do, for you are about as uncharitable as anybody I ever knew and if that is being Christianlike, I would much rather be a heathen. However, I'll pay you out for this some day, Ellen Threlkeld, or my name is not Arabella Ward. I shall hate you now, just as much as Maria does. I only wish you had never come to live with us; but as you are come, I wish you would go away again and leave me to myself. If I choose to drink brandy till I cannot see, what is that to you? What right have you to interfere?"

"The right," I answered, "which every conscientious person has to interfere and prevent serious mischief and shame and suffering. Some one must interfere. If you resent my proceeding in the matter, I must leave it in the hands of those who I own have the greater right. So, once more, are we to settle the matter between ourselves, or am I to make disclosures to my aunt and to Maria?"

"You must take your own way, I suppose," she returned, sullenly; "and mind, if I die of spasms, as I dare say I shall, and be found dead in my bed some morning--mind, I say, it will be you who have killed me."

"I will take the risk," I answered; and then I proceeded--first ascertaining that the coast was clear--to carry away the hoards of the chiffoniere. Mrs. Ward and Maria were out, and Julia was taking her harp lesson, so I could do as I would without let or hindrance. In five minutes the bottles were empty, and the soil in the little London garden was drinking up their contents. For the present at least the evil was stayed; but I went to my room feeling very unlike a victor in the contest in which I had been forced to engage. I trembled for the future. I saw that Arabella was only checked for the time being. If some remedy were not applied to the root of the appalling evil, what would be the result? Ruin to herself, certainly for this world, and almost certainly for that which was to come. Misery, shame, and disgrace for all who were so fortunate as to be connected with her in any degree. What ought I to do? O, how I longed for Marshall's clear judgment--for his wise counsel!

Well, I could only pray to be guided, that I might do what was right and best. Next day I told Maria that Arabella, Julia, and I (I had spoken to Julia after I left her sister) were going to turn teetotalers, and I asked her to join us. She refused, as I was sure she would do, and stared at Julia and myself as though she thought we were going out of our senses. But presently I think a glimpse of the truth flashed upon her, and she seemed to understand the whole matter. Miss Ward was by no means deficient in perception; she was sometimes endowed with "the sixth sense" to a most alarming degree. She nodded her head sagaciously, and bade us go and finish the business at once.

We did so that very afternoon. The secretary for the temperance society in our district lived not very far away. We went to him--he was a dear, kind old gentleman--communicated our wishes, inscribed our names on his list, and came home triumphantly with three handsome cards, the certificates of our membership with those who promised to abstain henceforth from all intoxicating drinks, as beverages.

Arabella looked at hers as though she longed to tear it into fifty pieces.

As I said, two years passed away from the time of my leaving Kennington, and I saw nothing, and heard but little, of Marshall Cleaton. Arabella's enforced teetotalism became a regular affair, and, with a mingled expression of wrath and misery, she continued to decline, sorely against her will, wine, bitter beer, and French brandy, as they were occasionally offered by persons who, of course, knew nothing of her infirmity, and were not aware of the obligations she had taken upon herself. Julia's studies gradually came to an end, as she entered more and more into society; and Miss Ward having been duly presented, and properly introduced, in certain circles, found herself the cynosure of sundry aspirants, who saw that she was a fine young woman in "the best society," and with a certain style about her that was considered striking, if not quite graceful. Then they knew how well her pockets were lined, and how the broad fat acres of Thornycroft were her own unencumbered and inalienable possessions. And, as I told you, before I diverged to the little history of poor Bella's sad predilections, she had many lovers, and she was kind to all, but encouraged none, so that people began to talk about her as a terrible coquette, and to speculate whether, like the famous Queen Bess, she was not disinclined to share her riches and her power with any king-consort of Thornycroft. Julia, of course, had her admirers: her lovely face, her sweet modest air, and her very handsome little fortune, of course, ensured that; but Julia, as well as her eldest sister, seemed in no hurry to relinquish her freedom; and suitor after suitor was dismissed, till Arabella vowed they both intended to be old maids.

She grumbled, too, a little, at their continued single blessedness, for she thought it would be a nice thing to be released from Maria's rigid sway, and to be the only daughter at home. And one day she said to me, "You see, Ellen, if my sisters were to marry, mamma and I could always have the green brougham to ourselves, and I could have a maid entirely to myself; and I don't quite like the aspect of my room in town; if Maria were away I should have hers; and in many ways I could make myself more comfortable."

No one, I must remark, seemed likely to take the place of the Hackington shopman; and no one, I must tell you, for some time, seemed desirous of entering the lists against Marshall Cleaton. Maria and Julia had all the beaux; Arabella and I had none. At length, however, the old adage, that "it never rains but it pours," was verified in our experience: both Della and I had our suitors, and Maria seemed likely to make her choice at last. We were in town; it was not yet the season; but Miss Ward had some whim that her teeth wanted professional attention, and on that ground we left Thornycroft early in the year, and established ourselves in Gordon Square. Not far off, in Russell Square, lived a family, with whom we speedily became intimate; their name was Devereux, and the household consisted of a widowed mother, one son, famous for his magnificent profile and his skill in boat-racing, and three daughters, who had been out more seasons than the eldest, Miss Ethelinda, cared to think about. I very seldom went out with my aunt and cousins; Mrs. Ward and Maria both sensibly argued that it would be against my future interests to take me into society to which, in my own person, I had no pretensions whatever; and thus I was relieved from what might have proved a very awkward dilemma, for much in which my aunt now bore part was not that in which I, as a Christian woman, could conscientiously participate.

We were frequently at issue as it was; and again and again I felt that, but for my promise to Julia, nothing would keep me under the same roof which sheltered Maria and her mother; and, since the evening when Arabella's pitiable secret became mine, she also nourished against me a stupid and continuous enmity, that very often manifested itself in a way sufficiently annoying. I had no friend but Julia, and for her sake I bore the long misery of those dull interminable years. But still, it could not last for ever--every day must bring us all nearer some change, and to me, situated as I was, almost any change would be for the better.

But about the Devereux, and about Mr. Devereux in particular. One day Maria, Mrs. Ward, and I were alone in the large drawing-room. It was a pouring wet afternoon; the pavements were hopelessly muddy, and the trees in the square garden were black with the drenching rain. Mrs. Ward dozed over her Record; Maria yawned and trifled with some bright-coloured wools and a piece of coarse canvass, and yawned again, till I was fairly infected also. Outside in the miserable weather was an itinerant musician with an ancient barrel-organ, on which he was slowly grinding a funeral-hymn tune, long metre, in a minor key. Anything more doleful, more drowsy, more uninteresting than that wintry afternoon in Gordon Square, I think you cannot well imagine.

"I wish some one would call," said Maria, at length, poking her rug needle into the back of the vicious little Skye terrier that she alternately petted and tormented. In the present instance he resented her unwelcome attentions with an air of thorough canine exasperation. The needle, though blunt, pricked through the long hair, or else it irritated him or disturbed him in the siesta he was taking so comfortably on his own especial rug, for he jumped up, yelled, barked, and snapped at Mrs. Ward's legs, which the deluded little animal evidently believed to be the source of his discomfiture. And of course poor Mrs. Ward started, and wildly waved her Record, and called to me to seize the little wretch, and carry him out of the room. But to this Maria would not consent; she picked up "Rosey"--that was the cross little beast's name--and kissed him and fondled him, and condoled with him on the kick he had received in the first moment of Mrs. Ward's consternation.

Mrs. Ward was angry, very angry; Maria was cool and provoking; and a lively dialogue ensued, and I was thinking of making my escape, when a voice--a pleasant manly voice--was heard on the staircase, and the door was thrown open, and Mr. Devereux ushered in. I was going to say he came in like a dove with an olive branch in its mouth, only I feel that the similitude would not be quite happy, for the Adonis-like, exquisitely-got-up Adolphus Egremont Stanislaus Devereux was much more like a hawk than a dove, and he was not addicted to carrying botanical specimens in his mouth, unless cigars, so frequently called by the initiated "weeds," can be considered in that light. But he restored order in our midst; Maria and her mother comported themselves with decency; the former slid a skein of sky-blue wool over her arm, and the latter folded the Record, which had its highly-respectable exterior slightly ruffled during the disturbance; and Rosey sat in front of the fire and snarled, and gave every now and then short quick little yelps, which were meant for indignant barks, I went on with my crocheting by the window, and saw what I saw.

"Now this really is good of you," said Miss Ward, amiably; "we were all dying of ennui this wet dreary afternoon, and we did not think we had a friend in London who would care to come out and brave the elements on such a day on our behalf; but 'a friend in need is a friend indeed.'"

There was something in Maria's manner that struck me at once, and I felt sure that this young man was another of her countless admirers, and that for some reason she chose to accord to him more favour than was her wont. As I sat and watched the pair, there came upon me one of those sudden presentiments for which none of us can account, but which every now and then visit some of us, and which are in due time accomplished. I felt quite sure that in Maria I beheld the future Mrs. Adolphus Devereux. A long and animated conversation ensued after the first greetings, but it is scarcely worth recording it in these pages, if indeed I could remember it with anything like accuracy. I only recollect one thing quite clearly--Mr. Devereux, referring to the rain which now poured down more determinedly than ever, and to the wind which drove it pelting in the faces of all unlucky foot passengers travelling eastward, quoted that most familiar line of Longfellow, which I suppose we have nearly all quoted on some rainy day or other:--

"The day is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary."

And Miss Ward, with the most charming confidence, said that it was very fine, and quite in Wordsworth's best style. I could not help stealing a glance at Mr. Devereux: his dark blue eyes seemed to be contemplating the bridge of his fine aquiline nose, and a smile, or the apparition of one, was certainly curving the somewhat hard lines of his firmly set mouth. But, of course, he was too well bred to take the slightest notice of a fair lady's blunder. It was well for Maria that Arabella was safely taking her after-lunch nap in her own room, or she would inevitably have come to grief, since the learning of the "Rainy Day" was one of Bella's exploits, and she would certainly have corrected her sister, had she been present, without any ceremony whatever.

Presently Mrs. Ward sent me on an errand, which detained me for some time, and when I returned I found that Mr. Devereux was going to stay and dine with us en famille. And as the evening passed I became more and more convinced of the truth of my first impression--Mr. Devereux was paying the most devoted attentions to Miss Ward; Miss Ward was receiving his attentions with as much encouragement as a belle and an heiress could permit herself to bestow. Mrs. Ward looked on with undisguised complacency.

From that evening we saw Mr. Devereux daily; he came to our house on every pretence, and at all times and seasons. Maria and he met whenever they appeared in public; he brought her bouquets, and Berlin patterns, and new novels, and a silver collar and bells for Rosey, who received the present as an unprecedented gratuitous insult and injury, to be resented to the end of her days. Then the Misses Devereux and my cousins began to practise and to make shopping expeditions together, and Maria and Hortensia, the youngest of the Devereux sisterhood, became inseparable. Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Devereux seemed to have the affairs of Christendom to discuss, for they were never tired of nodding their dowager heads at each other, while the young people were amusing themselves as they thought best; in short, the two families of Ward and Devereux were, in a manner, fused into one, and the Wards were constantly to be found in Russell Square, and the Devereux in Gordon Square.

Of course no one was surprised when the announcement of an engagement between Miss Ward and Mr. Devereux took place. Maria, declaring that society had no longer any charms for her, resolved to return immediately to Thornycroft Hall, and there prepare for her marriage which was to take place, if the settlements could be concluded, in the month of July. Beatrice and Hortensia Devereux were going down with us, and Mr. Devereux himself was to follow in a few days, and remain in the country till after Easter.

Ethelinda Devereux was a very singular young woman; I am afraid she might even be classed in the category of "strong-minded women," so peculiar were her views, and so fearlessly demonstrated her opinions. I soon found out that she did not care much about her brother, and that she did not nourish a very profound affection for his future bride. She took a fancy to me, and pestered me with confidences that were more of a burden than a comfort or an honour.

One day, just before we left town, she came in, and found me quite alone. "Where are the rest?" she inquired, seeing that I was keeping solitary state in the dining-room.

"My aunt and Maria and Mr. Devereux are gone to Richmond," I replied. "Julia is staying a few days with a friend in Langham Place; and Arabella is in bed with a cold."

I might have said she was reading one of her favourite class of novels, sucking fruit lozenges, and occasionally refreshing herself with oranges, tamarinds, jelly, lemonade, and vanilla cream. Such was the bill of fare on which, as an invalid, she had insisted.

"Ah, well!" said Linda--that was what we ordinarily called her--"it is all very well; I don't want to see anybody; I would rather talk with you a little about affairs in general. Now what is your opinion of my dear brother? Speak freely; you need not fear wounding my sisterly feelings. What's the feminine of fraternal, I wonder?--There's no such word as saternal, is there? No? I thought not; but if frater is the Latin for brother, why is not sater good Latin for sister? What do you say--soror? Oh! yes; I remember now. But that is neither here nor there; I want to know what you think of Adolphus?"

"Really," I replied, "I think very little about him. lie is handsome, I suppose, and his position is all that could be desired; and everybody seems to say it is a suitable match."

Miss Devereux made a noise like a suppressed whistle. Presently she resumed.

"Well, I agree with everybody that it is a thoroughly suitable match. It strikes me that my beloved brother and his betrothed are singularly alike, though whether such congeniality of temper and temperament may work well is quite another thing. Dear Adolphus is not what you could call sweetly amiable."

I said nothing, but sewed on diligently. After a moment's pause, Linda went on: "Now, Ellen, I tell you you need not do the demure and the cautious, for I am speaking confidentially to you, and I shall hold in confidence whatever you may choose to say to me. I take you for a girl of sense, and I want to give you to understand--for I have a sort of conscience--that my brother's temper is something truly awful! So hard a tyrant, so thorough an autocrat, so inflexible a master, it would be hard to find. O! he can be savage, brutal, unnatural, if he is crossed! I only know when he is married, and gone out of the house, we shall think the Millennium has begun. I shall sing a Te Deum, or a Paean, or whatever the thing is, the day he takes his departure. Now it strikes me there is nothing angelic about Miss Maria's disposition, and, I fancy, before the honeymoon is at the full, certainly before it wanes, it will be a ease of ' Greek meets Greek.' There now, I have made a clean breast of it. I told Beatrice I would tell you, and I have; and you can make what use you please of the information; only don't, for mercy's sake, say it came from me. Mamma would never forgive me, and Adolphus would certainly poison me, if it were found out that I spoiled the match that they are all glorying in."

"I can make no use of what you tell me," I replied. "If you feel that anything ought to be said, you must say it yourself to Maria, or to Mrs. Ward; but for me to make representations for which I could give no authority would be sheer madness, and altogether in vain. Besides, I may say one thing--my cousin Maria is fully capable of holding her own; she is quite old enough and experienced enough to judge for herself; and as rank and circumstances, and, I believe, character, are unimpeachable, I think Miss Ward may be very safely left to form her own estimate of Mr. Devereux's disposition. I cannot and will not interfere."

"Very well, I don't know but what you are right. Only mark my words, before they have been married a twelvemonth and a day there will be fine diversions at Thornycroft Hall."

The preparations for Miss Ward's wedding went on vigorously; dressmakers had audience every day; a council of milliners perpetually held its sittings; outfit-warehouses sent in their circulars and their terms; and morning, noon, and night there were fresh packages to be opened, new patterns to be inspected, orders to be given, and tradespeople to be worried into strict obedience and punctuality. Hackington was fairly beside itself; for every man, woman, and child in the large ugly town seemed to be perfectly aware of the approaching union of the houses of Ward and Devereux in the coming month of July; and already it was April, and the rain was falling in gracious showers on the tender green of bursting leaves and springing grass, and the wild narcissus bad opened its golden bosom to the shower and to the sunshine, and the lanes were fragrant with the perfume of violets, and hedges white with the timid blossom of the blackthorn; but of all this, the busy denizens of Thornycroft Hall saw little, and perhaps eared less. What had we to do with hyacinths and sloe-blossoms when garlands of flowers fresh from Oxford Street or Regent Street were perpetually demanding our attention? How could we be expected to bestow a glance on shy primroses nestling among their crinkled leaves in some remote field's remotest corner, or to pause to admire the delicate pure bells of the wood-sorrel, when we had to decide between pink wreaths or blue wreaths for the bridesmaids, and to say what flowers should mingle with the indispensable orange-blossoms of the bride's own coronal? O! how heartily tired I was of silks, and gauzes, and ribbons, and feathers, and sprays of flowers that had never glistened with heaven's own dew, or drunk in the balmy zephyrs of the early morning! How I made up my mind to order things very differently when it should be my turn to wear bridal costume; and how I wished the wedding--that is, Maria's wedding--were over and done with, and she and her handsome bridegroom safely en route for Switzerland, where the honeymoon, and two other moons, were to be passed, as became people of fashion and condition, such as the heiress bride, and her Adonis-like Adolphus. So much for the rapidly-approaching nuptials of the young queen-regnant of Thornycroft Hall. It was the last week in April, and one morning, as Julia and I were sitting in the old school-room, Miss Ward came in. She addressed us thus:--

"I want you two girls to drive into Hackington this morning. Mrs. Warley wants two more yards of that white stuff--cashmere or lama--to finish the dressing-gown she is about; and you can get the insertion we shall want, and the Valenciennes lace for the best bodices. And .you might call at Dudley's, and ask them if they can manage that ruby set, or if it must be sent up to town."

"I should have sent it up to town at once," said Julia, looking up from her drawing. "Hackington people cannot be supposed to have much taste."

"Nevertheless," replied Miss Ward, with a princess-like air, "I prefer to patronize the Hackington people; I wish them to hold me in estimation; I wish them to recognize in me the first personage in the neighbourhood; and I shall employ them whenever I think they can serve my turn. But the question now is, how soon are you going?"

Julia looked regretfully at the colours on her palette, and said, "Do you really wish us to go this morning?"

"Certainly; Mrs. Warley is, or soon will be, actually at a stand-still for want of material. I do not choose to go myself and I might as well send a Dutch doll as Arabella. She would not mind bringing me back two yards of scouring flannel or undertakers' dimett, if only she could save herself the smallest amount of trouble. You can take the basket-carriage and the grey ponies. You have no objection to driving them yourself, I know."

"O no," said Julia, "but I cannot drive alone into Hackington."

"Who said you were to drive alone?" retorted Maria, sharply. "Ellen goes with you, of course. Now, do not loiter, but get ready at once. Never mind those silks and wools, Ellen--leave them till you return. Go and put on your bonnet, and make no more delay. I have ordered the carriage out; mind you do not keep the ponies waiting."

And, so saying, Miss Ward took her departure, and Julia and I rose to obey her behests. We both felt a little annoyed at being thus summarily disposed of, when we had arranged to spend a long quiet morning together in the house.

"Well," sighed Julia, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders, "I suppose we must e'en obey our sovereign lady; but really, Ellen, I shall be very glad when all this is over. I don't mind obeying mamma, because she is mamma, you know; but when it comes to one's own sister, only half-a-dozen years older than one's self, it is rather hard to submit with a good grace, I must confess. However, there is no help for it now; but I really feel a very strong reluctance to go driving into Hackington this morning--though why this morning, I cannot exactly say."

O, if she had known all that was to happen in consequence of that morning's drive! O, if I had but dimly guessed all which was to follow, I would never have taken my place at Julia's side, in the little carriage which was generally at her disposal because she managed the ponies so cleverly. I would have gone myself on foot; I would have locked up Julia in her room; I would have done anything, however desperate, rather than have taken that memorable drive into Hackington on that fair smiling April morning.

O, the wonderful chain of events of which one human life is composed! O, the marvellous trivialities that help to make up the sum of our life's history! How strange it is to look back, and behold, step by step, the road we have travelled--to see how a word, a look, a mere circumstance of the moment has altered the whole aspect of affairs! How strange, how mysterious, how unlooked-for are the dealings of Providence; but, in spite all seeming unfitness, all apparent contradictions, how wise, how kind, how unerring!

We were soon ready, Julia and I, and we drove quickly into Hackington. It was a pleasant morning: the dull highroad, and even the mean, smoky streets in the outskirts of the large grimy brick and mortar wilderness yclept Hackington, caught some faint reflection of the spring-tide glory that was filling earth and sky with its pure influence and its tender radiance; and soon we shook off our little ill-humour, and felt rather glad than otherwise that we had not been allowed to spend the sunny hours within four walls, as we had wished and intended. If only we might have turned the ponies' heads in the other direction, and driven out to Winkworth, or Crowland, or Saltleigh, or any other of the villages that lay within the few miles of Thornycroft, quite away from the smoke and bustle of the provincial metropolis whither we were bound! But compulsion and choice being different things, and we wise young women perfectly awake to the folly of quarrelling with circumstances over which we had no control, we resolved to make the best of what lay within our grasp, and enjoy the sunshine and the southern breeze to the utmost. So, ignoring the tall chimneys in the distance--towards which, however, every turn of the wheels was carrying us--and the shabby little single houses, and the squalid children that thronged the pavements after we passed the second turnpike, we spoke of the freshness of the mild April forenoon, and the greenness of the hedges, and we laughed and talked gaily, and felt almost sorry, when, finding ourselves at last in the thronged streets, we were obliged to comport ourselves demurely, and concentrate our attention on the ponies, who seemed not well pleased at the crowd of vehicles and steeds that passed round them in all directions. But Julia bad a firm little hand, and she was a skilful, fearless charioteer; and so, without much difficulty, we made our way to Mr. Silke's shop, where we executed our commissions considerably to our own satisfaction.

It was market day, and Hackington was full of people. Not full like London, in a compact, orderly, thorough business-going sense of fullness, but full, as it always was on Thursdays and Mondays, and Saturdays, of a heterogeneous mass of people loitering and lounging and meandering over the pavements at their own sweet will--some black and unwashed; some hopelessly, pitifully shabby; and some, regardless of expense, elaborately decked out in nearly every colour of the rainbow. You might behold on any fine day at Hackington, and especially between the hours of twelve and three, fair damsels and comely matrons arrayed in this wise: first of all, cunningly-stitched French kid boots and scarlet stockings; secondly, a huge crinoline, showing to the best advantage the ample dimensions of a magenta petticoat; then a dress, like the patriarch's coat of many colours, say blue, green, orange, and a little violet and cerise, with a white stripe, and a chocolate ground; then a gay, plaid shawl, or a bright brown mantle, well fringed, and ornamented with wonderful gimp designs and bugle splendours; then a bonnet, all yellow ribbons outside, and sky-blue flowers inside; and last of all, a delicate mauve parasol, with sea-green tassels. Such was the taste of Hackington, and even the aristocrats differed from the multitude only in the superior quality of their raiment; their lace was real, and their silks were so much more per yard, and their bonnets were said to be direct from Paris--a slander which Paris would have refuted with all her volubility had she only chanced to hear it.

As I said, the Hackington people, instead of "keeping to the right" like civilized creatures, persisted in meandering anyhow along the pavements; their course was as devious as that of a winding stream; and sometimes they ran full tilt against each other, and awkward collisions ensued. But worse than this, the equestrians and the drivers of vehicles were equally lawless in their method of traversing the streets; and a great wonder it was that no more accidents occurred, for in a general way everybody escaped by a hair's breadth, with no greater injury than a thorough fright. On this particular market-day, I think the good people in carts and carriages of every description were more perverse than usual, sad after we had been nearly smothered under a load of hay, and almost capsized by a market-cart turning the corner with characteristic recklessness, I began to feel nervous. Not so Julia; she guided her prancing little steeds with admirable dexterity, and held them firmly in when they were inclined to make a sudden bolt at the sight of a mischievous youth, who shouted and waved a ragged handkerchief under their very noses. Julia was too practised a charioteer, and Frisky and Tricksy knew her hand too well, for any harm to come of the eccentricities of the Hackingtonians.

Nevertheless, I was very glad when we were once more in the outskirts of the town, and the straight, broad high-road to Thornycroft before us. Frisky and Tricksy, notwithstanding their excellent character, and in spite of their long, faithful allegiance to their fair young mistress, were undeniably excited, and tossed their little heads about and flourished their silky manes as if they had a mind to do something to deserve their names. We were about three miles out of Hackington and two from Thornycroft when we reached the railway viaduct, which spanned the road and some marshy meadows on either hand. Our ponies were perfectly used to the puffing of steam-engines and the rattling of heavy trains, therefore we felt no alarm, when, just as we reached the arch under which we were to pass, the express came tearing along at a prodigious speed. Julia tightened the rein to avoid being under the arch while the immense load thundered over; for Frisky and Tricksy had faced the puffing, roaring monster so often that there seemed not the slightest risk in remaining where we were till the line of carriages had passed to the other side of the viaduct. But whether the ponies had been irritated, or stimulated at what they had seen in the town, we could not tell, only they began to demean themselves unwontedly; and before we had time to exchange a word, and while the train was yet overhead, they laid down their ears, strained their necks, and darted away at a terrific speed.

In vain we both tugged at the reins, in vain Julia called to her rampant steeds; on they dashed, madly and blindly, and on we sped at a frightful rate, the hedges and the houses seeming to fly past us with awful significance. For nearly half a mile we flew on thus, till, dizzy and breathless, we both lost our self-command, and were fain to leave the ponies to their own devices. Fleeter and fleeter grew their pace; one or two well-intentioned persons rushed forward to stay, if possible, their course, but failing, only increased their terror, or encouraged their freak, whichever it might be. Clearly we were in frightful danger, only God was over all. I tried to feel calm and to commend my spirit to Him; I tried to grasp Julia's nerveless hand; I thought of Marshall and of the great sorrow that might be awaiting him; I wondered, with a foolish, childish wonder, what he would say when he heard the fate of his long unseen but well-loved Ellen; and then thought and sensation vanished, and in what seemed to me the same moment--it was really after the lapse of ten minutes--I opened my eyes and found myself lying on a grassy bank, with my bonnet and veil removed, my hair streaming with water, and a country-woman slapping my hands vigorously. I sprang up, and shook myself well; nothing was the matter--no bones were broken; I might be a little sore at the elbows, and on one shoulder, but no harm was done. The carriage and the ponies had disappeared--where was Julia?

There she lay, not five yards distant from me, pale and lovely, in the arms of a gentleman whom I had never seen before. Her sweet features were perfectly composed, but deathlike; her beautiful hair was hanging dishevelled around her, and added to the pallor of her appearance. For one moment I thought she was dead, and I rushed to the gentleman who was bending over her with evident solicitude, and laid my hand on his, and looked wildly in his face: speech I had none--I could not put my terrible fear into words.

"Be comforted," said a deep, musical voice; "your sister is only stunned, madam. I hope no serious injury has occurred. See, she stirs! If I had only some smelling-salts or some Eau de Cologne."

But, without any extraneous aid, Julia presently opened her eyes, and looked bewildered at the unwonted situation in which she found herself. With all her native dignity and modesty, she withdrew herself from the arms of the kindly stranger, and in faltering accents thanked him for his support, and declared herself quite ready to walk home at once.

"Indeed, madam, it is not to be thought of," he said, gently.

"Bless us!" cried the countrywoman, "the pair on ye look like ghosts, and you be trembling in every limb, and perhaps your ancles is sprained and your brains congested with the fall--walk, indeed! No, I'll just get up in my cart there, and be at the Hall in no time, and let 'em know what's happened, if the creatures of ponies hasn't told 'em already, by coming to the lodge all in a lather, and the carriage empty."

It seems we had gone right over a considerable heap of stones, left for the mending of the road, and the shock had thrown us both out--happily on the soft turf, and not on the flints and pebbles, that would have bruised and wounded us so sorely; and the ponies, unchecked in their wild career, had gone on their way rejoicing.

"Indeed," continued the stranger gentleman, "I think we must accept this good woman's offer: you certainly must not and cannot talk--will you not sit down?" and he doubled up his plaid and laid it on the ground, so as to afford a cushion to us both. There was an exquisite grace and refinement in all the young man did, Yes, I could not help wondering who he might be--certainly no inhabitant of Hackington. He was wonderfully handsome. Adolphus Devereux might be Adonis-like, but this man was the very type of an Apollo, radiant with physical and intellectual beauty, stately in his port, noble in his air, and singularly refined in tone and movement. I thought, as he threw himself on the grass at our feet, and besought Julia not to distress herself, for she was rather hysterically inclined--that I had never in my life seen--no, never imagined a pair so perfectly beautiful in face and figure as my cousin and this stranger, who seemed to us like some knight of the old chivalric ages.And yet, while I confessed my admiration, I felt a strange doubt stealing over me. There was something wanting in the grand yet radiant face--something that seemed to say our knight was valiant and generous and enthusiastic, but which did not say he was true and stedfast, and, like that renowned model of knighthood, the immortal Bayard, "sans peur et sans reproche;" and the next moment I was upbraiding myself and scolding myself for uncharitable thoughts, for he spoke again so kindly, so sensibly, and his whole conduct was so considerate and so delicate, that I felt he must be a thorough gentleman--no doubt to be believed in and trusted in to the death.

But our position was not quite pleasant; idlers upon the road began to stare unmercifully, and Julia once more insisted on proceeding on foot. She would rather go on at once, she said; she felt quite strong, and we should be sure to meet the carriage and the servants ere long. Yielding to her entreaties, the gentleman offered her his arm, and she was obliged to accept his courtesy, for, in spite of her brave protest, she was trembling all over, and quite as ready to faint as to walk. I felt little inconvenience from my tumble; I could walk very well without assistance.

Julia was right. Very soon we met the Thornycroft carriage, and in it was Mrs. Ward, armed with all sorts of remedies against fainting and hysterics, and Julia was lifted in, and I had taken my seat, and our knight was gravely taking his departure, when Mrs. Ward cried, "Stay, sir, stay! let us have the pleasure of knowing to whose kindness we are indebted. I should wish to express my thanks at some more fitting time--at present I am too anxious about this child," for Julia was again relapsing into ashy paleness.

The gentleman, still hat in hand, glanced at Julia, as she lay like a drooping lily on her mother's bosom; for an instant she met his deep reverential glance, and a tinge of colour revisited her cheek. He replied, "Here is my card, madam; I will do myself the honour of calling upon you to-morrow about this hour."

Another glance at Julia, and a bow of finished courtesy to each one of us, and our knight went on his way. Mrs. Ward immediately examined the card he had left in her hand, and she kindly read it aloud for our benefit--"Mr. Horace Stansfield." Now, Sir William Stansfield we knew very well; he lived about five miles farther on, at his own ancestral seat of Stansfield Hall--a much grander place than Thornycroft Hall, by the way--and we knew that his heir was a nephew, whose name was Horace. So, then, our knight was a sort of neighbour, as it were; and Mrs. Ward continued regarding the card for some time with evident complacency: then she addressed herself to the ascertaining exactly why and when and where the accident had happened. I think she was really thankful for our providential escape. I felt very tired and much shaken for the rest of the day; but next morning I rose in my usual health. Julia, too, was better; but her wrist was a little sprained, and her frame, far more delicate than mine, had evidently received a severe shock.

Nevertheless, at twelve o'clock she was dressed, and comfortably established, with plenty of shawls and cushions, on a sofa in the drawing-room. About one o'clock we were to expect Mr. Horace Stansfield.

It was a beautiful evening in May; the park and gardens were looking their loveliest: birds were carolling sweetly in every tree and bush, and the soft, dreamy music of distant church bells came, every now and then, on the soft, perfume-laden air. I was sitting alone in the old schoolroom, lost in sad and anxious thought. I was tired, heart-sick, and dispirited. Again the months were gliding by, and I heard nothing of Marshall Cleaton. Was this weary, lonely life of mine ever to end? When would there be a change? When should I be free to proclaim to the world the engagement of which I was so proud, and which I dared not yet avow to any living creature? I was almost nineteen now; still, two years before I could feel myself free; must the coming two years pass as wearily, as monotonously, as those which had elapsed since my uncle's death? Would not Maria's marriage make a difference? Once the wife of Adolphus Devereux, Marshall could be of no importance to her. Surely, then, I might venture to confide to my aunt the circumstance of my engagement.

With an anxious and a harassed mind, I thought thus. My head ached with thinking. I began to believe that I had acted unwisely in maintaining the secrecy that had grown so inexpressibly burdensome; better far to have risked everything; to have borne the brunt of my aunt's scorn and anger, and Maria's worst fury, than to have kept silence all these long, weary months, given over to dread and hope deferred, and even protracted suspense. Of course, there is no legislating for generalities. It is very true that circumstances do alter cases; and what may be an imperative duty in one instance, may become a flagrant imprudence in another; still, on the whole, I think I may advise young people, particularly young women, in every station of life, to be perfectly open with the friends to whom they are accountable, as regards all matters pertaining to matrimonial engagements. It saves a world of trouble and anxiety, and relieves one of a very heavy burden. Although Marshall and I had been perfectly honourable--strictly, painfully, miserably honourable--yet, ever and anon, the sense of my secret weighed mc down almost to despair; and, as time wore on, I felt more and more the ever-increasing solicitude, and the ever-recurring misgiving, as to the propriety, as to the right, of my being where I was, under what might, not unjustly, be called "false colours?" Simple Ellen Threlkeld was tolerated at Thornycroft Hall; but bow would its inmates regard the betrothed of one whom they seemed verily to hate, the recreant lover of the heiress and the mistress of the house?

Lost in painful musings, I did not hear a gentle step, indeed the faint rustling of the lilac boughs, and that soft low chime of the distant bells would have prevented me from knowing that any one had entered the room. I started, as a soft little, band came fluttering as it were into mine; and I turned from the open window, and saw Julia kneeling before me, with her dark eyes fixed upon me, and such a strange, happy, conscious light in their tender liquid depths. How beautiful she looked in her simple white evening dress; her rich raven curls floating around her, the deepening bloom on her dimpled cheeks, and the sweet, child-like innocence of her frank, unclouded brow. She raised my hand to her pretty rosy lips, and covered it with kisses.

"What is it, darling?" I asked; for I knew that something had happened that greatly affected her--something that filled her whole soul with joy--that kindled a happy light in her eyes--that curved her sweet mouth with conscious, irrepressible smiles. For a minute she did not answer; she buried her face in my lap, but I could see the glow on her temples, and even on her neck. Presently she said, "O! Nellie dear, can you not guess?" Then without leaving me a moment's space to answer her, "He loves me--he has told me so--he has asked mamma--it is all settled."

"Mr. Stansfield?" I asked, though full well I knew it must be he, and no other, of whom my darling spoke.

"Surely," she answered quickly, lifting her blushing face, and looking proudly into mine, as she spoke. "O, Nellie, you must know--you must have seen. Yes, it is he! Horace!--my Horace now!"

"And you love him, Julia?"

A rapturous smile, and another flush of crimson was answer enough. Yes! it was as I feared; she loved him with all the innocence of a trusting child, and with all the passion and fervour of an ardent woman. I had foreseen this; I had dreaded it; for more and more, as we were brought into continual and most intimate association with Horace Stansfield, I learned to distrust him, and in some sort to shrink away from his fascinations. I knew--I know not how the knowledge came, I sought it not, but rather repelled it--I knew that Horace Stansfield, with his glorious beauty, his rare gifts, his high-bred grace, and his lofty position, was no true man!

"Nellie!" her tone was full of tender reproach, "you do not rejoice with me; I came to you the moment he left me; 'I must go to Nellie,' I said; 'my happiness must be hers; she is more to me than both my sisters.'"

"And your happiness is mine, darling. O! Julia, love, you know that better that I can tell you; but for you long, long ago I should have been away from Thornycroft Hall. But this is all so sudden; it is only one little month since we first saw him. Are you sure, quite sure that he is worthy of you, that he is to be trusted with your deep, true woman's heart?"

"Trusted!" she answered brightly. "Ah, Nellie, how little you know him! trusted? ay, with life, with honour! trusted to the death! Fearlessly, unhesitatingly I trust him with all I have and am--would it were a thousand times more, a thousand times better! Nellie, Nellie! I am so proud that he loves me--he who might have chosen his bride from among the fairest and the loftiest in the land!"

What could I say to her? What had I to say that could possibly be of any avail ? What were my impressions, for I had nothing else to reveal? what were they to hers, to her mother's? for Mrs. Ward had given her full and free consent without one moment's misgiving.

"Nellie!" she said again, and this time there was pain and a little anger in her voice, "you do not like my Horace!"

"Dearest," I replied, "I know so little about him; I have not been falling in love with him, you must remember; you cannot expect me to see him with your partial eyes. But for your sake I will try to love him, to think highly of him."

"Then you do not think highly of him now?" she said hastily, drawing back a little and loosing my hands, which she had held tightly clasped in hers all this time.

"Julia, dear, do not be so vexed. Remember five weeks ago I had never seen, never heard of Mr. Stansfield; and you know I seldom care for people till I know them very well. Perhaps there is a little suspiciousness in my nature, hut I cannot help it; at any rate, I cannot form hasty friendships, or give my affections or my esteem suddenly. If it is my fault, dear Julia, you must bear with me."

"What have you against Mr. Stansfield?"

"Nothing, Julia. I know so little about him. Of his antecedents, his former life, I am entirely ignorant. Of course, ho has explained everything to you."

"Nellie, dear, I do think you are going crazy. What is there to be explained? If he were a nameless adventurer, if ho were some one of whose connections we knew nothing at all, it might be prudent to require explanations. But being who he is--the nephew and acknowledged heir of our old neighbour, dear papa's old friend, Sir William Stansfield, the brother-in-law of that good and philanthropic Lord Towerscliffe--being, I say, who and what he is, there is actually nothing to be explained."

"Not as regards his individuality, certainly; but Julia dear, marriage is something so important, so solemn, so sacred, so great a blessing, or so direful a misfortune, that it seems to me that there are many other things to be ascertained beyond the mere accident of birth and position. I should not like to marry any man with whose former life I was quite unacquainted, of whose character I had had no experience, and of whose peculiar tendencies I must necessarily know very little."

"Now, Ellen, I really shall lose all patience; you talk like a prudish old maid of nine-and-thirty--not at all like a young girl of nineteen. If all the world were as suspicious and cautious as you, there would be almost an end of marrying and giving in marriage."

"At any rate, there would not be so many miserable, unfortunate marriages. It is good to look before you leap: marriage is for life, and the best part of it, where there is a true marriage, for eternity."

"And ours will he a true marriage," cried Julia, eagerly; "we shall be one in heart and soul; ours will be no mere outward union, do not think it, Ellen."

"God grant it may be all you desire!" I replied. "But, Julia, one thing more: your Horace--is he a Christian?"

"Not what you would call a Christian, Nellie; he is a very good man, I am sure; he is not like you, nor like papa, nor like Marshall Cleaton--there are very few, I think, of that sort of Christian."

"What sort, dearest?"

"O, you know, Nellie, the sort that insists upon being 'born again;' the sort that counts nothing you can do of any avail, and yet holds it an inalienable duty to do everything that can be done; the sort that talks about faith, and trust, and 'finding peace,' and all that sort of thing--you know quite well what I mean."

"Yes, I know," I replied; "you have well described a Christian; but, my dear Julia, there is no other sort. Christians may, and do, differ on many minor points: but on those you have named there must be unanimity. There are some things which must be believed, if one would be a Christian at all."

Julia sighed: "Yes, yes. I know, Nellie, I know I am not a Christian. I should like to be one; I meant to be one long ago. There is something Marshall Cleaton said to me that I have never forgotten, though I was little more than a child when he said it. I do know and believe that none can enter the kingdom of heaven except those who are born again; and presently, when I am married, perhaps, I will try and seek that peace which, the Bible says, passeth all understanding, and Horace will help me, and perhaps we shall help one another in the right way, and all will be well."

"But, my darling, is it well to put off so momentous a business for any earthly consideration? Why not speak to Mr. Stansfield immediately--why not tell him your anxieties at once? Believe me, dearest, nothing in which true religion is involved can mar your happiness. You will love your Horace all the better if you love him as a Christian; indeed, it seems to me that in the loves of worldly people there must be a sad incompleteness, a vague dread, a desire for something further and stronger--something that cannot fail, that cannot delude, that will stand always, under all circumstances, and over which Death itself has no power."

"I do not understand," she said, rather wearily. "Nellie, dear, you and I live in different worlds. But do not look so disturbed; I really will be a Christian some day--as soon as ever all this--what shall I call it?--this excitement is over, I will set about it."

"One word, Julia. There have been thousands who have put off that business to a more convenient season, and the time has never come. There has always been something to occupy the mind and claim the attention, fill at length the very wish to become a Christian has died away, or grown so faint, that it is easily put aside for any trifle, or any frivolous pretext, such as Satan loves to invent, when he would fain keep to himself the souls over which he has held sway so long. And life is so uncertain--you and I, dear, are the last who should count upon length of days, for how narrow an escape we had a little while ago--the very morning when we first met your Horace. But surely you are not to be married yet?"

"Mamma thinks it had better be at the same time as Maria's; it will all be one trouble, she says, and Maria does not object. I thought she would. And Horace will not hear of a prolonged engagement; as he says, what is there to wait for?"

"For a better knowledge of each other, I should think. However, dear, you know best; but I cannot help wishing you knew a little more of this gentleman--a little more of his early life; he is nearly thirty, you know. What has he been doing for the last ten years, ever since he came to man's estate?"

Julia burst into a silvery laugh, in which, however, there was a little ring of vexation. "Nellie, now, you dear, stupid, long-headed old maid! Why, what do you suppose he has been doing? Studying at Oxford, like other young men; and, like other young men, boating, and riding, and giving and going to wine-parties, and hunting a little, and perhaps playing at billiards now and then. And when college-days were over, travelling abroad, going up the Rhine, crossing the St. Bernard, gliding up and down the canals of Venice, floating on the blue waters of the Bay of Naples, and exploring the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Very much what your paragon, Marshall Cleaton's life has been, I should say. By the way, Nellie, I wonder where that cousin of ours is just now?"

"Some months ago I heard of his being called to a charge somewhere in Yorkshire; and we saw his book, you know. I have heard nothing of him since."

"Do you know, Nellie, I used to think if Marshall did not marry Maria he would marry you--he was so fond of you at Pen Aber; and since--when dear papa died, I felt sure he cared very much about you; and then you must have seen so much of him when you were at Kennington. But I was wrong, you see."

Then came upon me a strong inclination to open my heart there and then to Julia. I had kept silence so long that I felt the oppression of secrecy to be growing nearly intolerable. She would understand me now that her own faith was pledged; and since she was to be married so soon things were altered, and I thought I might confide to her that which I had determined at any cost to divulge as soon as Miss Ward had become Mrs. Devereux. The words trembled on my lips. I was choosing what I should say by way of making a beginning, when Arabella came into the room. She scowled at me, as she generally did. I was convinced that she hated me with the whole force of her feeble nature; but she sat down near us and began to converse--for her--pleasantly enough. I must tell you that she had visibly improved in health and in appearance since "taking the pledge," and the spasms came now but very rarely, and were generally accompanied by severe attacks of persistent sulkiness.

"We were talking about Marshall Cleaton," said Julia, presently. "How odd it seems, after knowing his every movement for so many years, to be in entire ignorance of his whereabouts."

I thought Arabella glanced at me with a rather singular expression; but it might be only my own guilty conscience, which needed no accuser. Again I resolved to keep my secret very little longer; come what might, my engagement should be known. But Arabella said, very quietly, "I have heard something about him; he is going to be married."

"Why, when did you hear it?" asked Julia, in surprise.

"I heard it in the village one day," returned Bella, "but I really forget who said it. He was going to marry a young lady of his own congregation. I did not hear her name; some farmer's daughter, I dare say; or, perhaps, some shabby morning-governess; quite good enough for a country Dissenting minister's wife."

I felt very vexed, and very angry at Arabella's contemptuous tone, but I said nothing; and the shades of evening were friendly, and allowed me to look as I pleased. After a while, we all rose and went our separate ways. Not for one moment did I distrust Marshall. I knew it was only silly gossip to which I had listened. I was as certain of his truth as of his goodness; nevertheless, I wished heartily that Arabella had not said it. The bare idea, however untrue, however unfounded, of Marshall belonging to any one else, gave me exquisite pain. I could not bear that his name and another's should be associated, however groundless--as, of course, I knew it was--might be the report. And all night long I dreamed, and awoke, and thought about the nameless young lady at Ormside.

And so the bustle of preparation was doubled, and Mr. Stansfield was with us every day, and all day long; and certainly I was obliged to confess that, with one important reservation, he seemed to be everything we could desire, and certainly far superior to Mr. Devereux. I never heard a man talk more delightfully. He knew everything, or, at least, something about everything. What he knew he could dilate upon with singular force and lucidity; what he had seen he could describe in the most graphic and striking terms. He seemed passionately fond of music, and of the fine arts; his scientific knowledge was evidently as profound as it was extensive; and his love of the beautiful, especially in the world of nature, was excessive and unfeigned. For hours I could listen to him, as he related his Alpine experiences, his Venetian day-dreams; as he recounted the events of his Sicilian tour, his Spanish adventures, his rambles in the Black Forest, and his pleasant yachtings in the Grecian Archipelago, where the blue waves washed the purple hills, and the olive groves and the myrtle dells hid in their dreamy depths some fair relic of the past, some beauteous ruin of the old classic days, whose memory lives on evermore in the sweet pages of ancient song.

And listening to him, I--all of us--were fairly bewitched. What wonder that Julia's tender little heart clung to him more fondly than ever? And he, on his part, seemed all that the most devoted lover could be; he watched her every word, and tone, and glance. He seemed to live but in her presence, and every one agreed that a fairer specimen of courtship had never been known since those Arcadian days when people married, not for money or for position, but for true love's sake. In many ways Mrs. Ward must have been contented; indeed I think she was. But speaking of her reminds me that I ought to say how very much the last two years had altered her, so that she was by no means the Mrs. Ward of my childish days.

People said she had never overgot the loss of her husband; and indeed the changes I have mentioned dated precisely from the period of his death. She was often depressed and nervous, and seemed to me to live in perpetual dread of some possible and terrible catastrophe; hut then her position was by no means an enviable one. Maria was every inch mistress of Thornycroft--she ruled with absolute sway; and her mother knew that her will was and must be paramount. It must have been very hard for Mrs. Ward thus to succumb to her own child; it would have been hard and unnatural for any mother, however meek and besotted, but doubly hard, trebly galling to one who, like my aunt, had been used to carry all before her, and who had ruled her children in their earlier days with a rod of iron, and had bound them with fetters grievous to be borne, rather than restrained with them the silken bands of love. Of course the time of reaction was come, and she knew it. Not one of her children now owned her authority; she had more deference from me in one week than from all her three daughters combined in a month. I used to think she saw now the sad mistakes into which she had fallen. I fancied that in her painful musings she deplored her own want of judgment or self-government, or whatever it might be, that had caused her to pursue so unwise a course of training with her children. Perhaps, too, she regretted her kind, mild husband, who had certainly loved her through continuous and indescribable provocations. She had been less than human had it not been so.

And again, the religious tone of the household had altogether vanished. Mrs. Ward no longer studied the prophecies, or read long chapters in Jeremiah and Ezekiel at family prayers, for the family altar was broken down and deserted, and the large bell summoned us no longer to mingle our devotions morning and evening at the footstool of Divine mercy. The strict Sabbatarianism of our childhood was replaced by a carelessness and a licence that was more painful and more ungenerous than the semi-Jewish yoke of bondage such as we had writhed under in earlier days. Neither substantially or formally was God honoured by us as a family--our family religion seemed to have died out with my uncle's death.

One strange thing happened about this time: Maria was more insolent than usual, and grossly insulted her mother--I forget what about; and Mrs. Ward, losing all command over herself told her undutiful daughter, in very plain terms, what she thought of her conduct, and finished up by a threat of speedy revenge.

Maria only mocked and sneered, and at last Mrs. Ward said--she was white with passion and trembling in every limb--"You will do it! you will have it! Try me a little more, and you shall see what lies in my power! You think yourself absolute mistress of Thornycroft; but I could turn you out--yes, turn you out, and place you on a level with your sisters! Yes, you will see, you most wicked and unnatural girl--all this will be visited upon you."

Maria certainly thought her mother was raving, and I thought so too; but afterwards I remembered her words, and interpreted them after another fashion.

July came with its wealth of flowers and its long, warm sunny days, and with it came the bridals of my two cousins. I believe I felt something like an overtasked milliner's apprentice towards the end of the season: I was, as we rather exaggeratingly say, "tired to death," and I often threw myself on the bed at night, too wearied to undress, till I had first taken a little rest. But I could have borne it patiently had the bodily fatigue been all; the truth was, my mind was more overtaxed than my body, and every successive day added to the burden under which I was all but sinking. As the time wore on, and the eventful day drew near, I was more and more convinced of the truth of what had at first appeared to be the unwarrantable suspicion I entertained of Mr. Stansfield. So far I believed in him, I think that at that moment he loved--if selfish passion like his can be dignified with the sacred name of love--he loved Julia most fondly and fervently; her wonderful beauty had taken him captive, and he was at her feet; her innocence, her lovely voice, and her extraordinary musical talents, all tended further to his complete and most willing subjugation, and she seemed to occupy all his thoughts, to fill all his affections, and to satisfy even his most fastidious and exacting requirements. Young, beautiful, sweet-tempered, accomplished, rich, and most loving--what more could be desired in his future bride? I must do him the justice to say that I believe he fell himself to be a very fortunate man, and that, in spite of Miss Ward's heiress-ship, he was never for a moment tempted to wish himself in the position of Mr. Devereux.

Still I felt that on Horace Stansfield no dependence could be placed; he was so clearly a creature of impulse, so undisciplined, so wanting in stability and self-control. What he passionately worshipped to-day, he might cast away as valueless to-morrow. What seemed necessary to his actual existence one month, might have glided out of mind and memory the next. I knew all this, and trembled; but no word of warning would Julia hear. Horace was her hero, as well as her lover; he could do no wrong, make no mistake, say and feel nothing but just that which he ought to say and feel. In the eyes of the lady of his love, he was faultless--a veritable Bayard of the nineteenth century.

It was only a few days before the double wedding, that we were all invited to dine at Stansfield Hall. I was half inclined to stay at home, but Julia would not hear of it, and begged me, as a particular favour to herself, to join the party. So I went, and enjoyed myself indifferently. It was quite a family party. There were only two persons there, I think, who were not in some way related to the Stansfields, or to the Wards, and we were perfectly at our ease, and quite inclined to dispense with the ceremony and state, which, on the whole, was generally rather oppressive at Stansfield Hall.

In the evening we strolled about the gardens in pairs; the lovers, of course, went roaming off by themselves, and we saw them no more till just before the evening dews drove us into the house. I fell to the lot of a certain Miss Burdett, an elderly young lady, with the figure and aspect of five-and-thirty in the costume of sweet sixteen. Why she selected me I cannot tell, but she drew my arm within hers, and while Sir William, and Mrs. Ward, and the Dowager Lady Towerscliffe, and another grave matron, were discussing the beauties of a splendid "Norfolk Island pine," in the grand conservatory, she said, in her lisping, girlish way, "Come, Miss Threlkeld, let you and I go on; let us have a chat, while these scientific people are squabbling over their Araucarias. Have you seen the new ribbon border below the croquet-ground?"

Having duly admired the brilliancy of the ribbon-border, which was in its full beauty, we picked up two of the mallets which were lying about, and began carelessly driving the balls through the hoops, and Miss Burdett asked the inevitable question--"Are you fond of croquet?"

"Yes, I was fond of it, I thought it a charming out-door game"--croquet, I must tell you, was scarcely known then, only a few people knew about it. Presently Miss Burdett remarked--"The first time I ever played was at Weathersfield about this time last year, Mr. Stansfield was there, and his then lady-love--the beautiful Miss Macartney. What a flirt Horace has been! he is a sort of cousin of mine, you know, and I could write quite a nice little biography of his various affairs. I am so glad he is going to settle down at last; marriage is what he wants he has been so thoroughly in the habit of roving from flower to flower, and the silly flowers have been so much in the habit of sunning themselves in his presence, and exhaling for him their sweetest fragrance, that I really thought he never would pluck one for himself, and be content to wear it through life. A regular lady-killer is my fascinating cousin, Horace Stansfield."

I felt very hot. The style of conversation was what I particularly disliked, and yet I felt a feverish interest in anything she might say about Julia's future husband. Finding I made no rejoinder, she went on--"I do not mean that there is any real harm in Horace, only he never knows his own mind six months together. He cannot help it--it is his infirmity! But then, being so thoroughly a creature of impulse, and being so entirely accustomed to obey the dictates of impulse, he sometimes does things that really are very reprehensible. I think Sir William is heartily glad that at last there is a pretty sure prospect of his marriage with a lady so perfectly suitable and unexceptionable. I know his dear nephew has been to him a source of ever-recurring anxiety."

"Do you mean," I asked gravely, "that Mr. Stansfield is really an unprincipled person?"

"Well," said Miss Burdett, meditatively, "I really do not know what to say to that. You should not ask such leading questions, Miss Threlkeld. An unprincipled person means a cheat, a rogue, an unscrupulous adventurer, I should say. Now my cousin Horace is not that. I never heard of him getting into a money serape, and he is always perfectly honourable and generous; but I must say"--and she spoke with great deliberation--"I do not think he would deny himself anything, or refrain from any course simply because he knew it to be wrong. My opinion is, that if he really had any strong temptation to break the sixth, seventh, or eighth commandments, he would break them without hesitation, just, you see, because it is his way--his regular stereotyped fashion--to do exactly that to which he is prompted by his inclinations, or fancies, or passions, or what not. I think, on the whole, his nature is refined and open; I think he does not often feel tempted to what may be called wickedness, for his fine taste and his fastidious temperament are a safeguard in this respect--and--and I dare say, when he is married, all these little tendencies that we must deplore will correct themselves. With so beautiful a wife as that lovely little Julia, he will surely be content, and Sir William will find in him quite an exemplary, stay-at-home nephew and heir."

"You make me very uncomfortable," I said; "what you say cannot fail to fill me with apprehensions for my cousin's happiness."

"O, pray do not disquiet yourself;" she replied, nonchalantly; "when all is said and done Mr. Stansfield has but one fault."

"And that is instability?"

" Ye--es! instability, if you like. What he worships today he slights to-morrow; he was always so from a boy; his school friendships were always of the same complexion--passionate and brief. But that is no reason why he should change to his wife, you know."

"Have you ever known him as deeply in love as he seems to he at present?"

Miss Burdett burst out laughing. "What a droll creature you are!--what remarkably straightforward questions you put! But to give you an honest answer, I have seen Horace Stansfield over head and ears in love, as people say, more times than I can count; but I have never known him en the eve of marriage as ha is now, with the settlements ready for signing, and the arrangements all complete. One thing-- there is a certain Mrs. Malcolm, with whom Horace had better have nothing to do; if there is any danger to be apprehended, it lies in that quarter--you understand?"

"No, I do not."

"Is it possible that you are so unsophisticated, or are you playing at interesting innocence?"

I turned away proudly, for her words, and still more her tone, offended me. Whatever might be the faults of our Thornycroft system, lightness, unbecoming levity, was not one of them. She looked earnestly at me, while she pulled a handful of Nemophila to pieces; at last she said, "You really are a very strange girl, you do your governess credit. That Miss Latimer must quote you as her model pupil."

"I am not Miss Latimer's pupil," I replied, coldly; "I was educated at Casterton,"

"Casterton! O! the Clergy Daughters' School. How did you survive it? Were you there long?"

"Five years."

"Good gracious! to think of any human being vegetating in such a corner of the earth for five whole years! What did you do?"

"Lived there very happily, and studied, and learned to love my home dearly--for my home it was. I have abundant cause to be thankful for my Casterton training--so kind, and so wise!"

And while I spoke, my thoughts wandered far away from Stansfield Hall, far away from that beautifully-kept croquet-ground, far away from my garrulous companion, to that beloved shelter of earlier days. Ah! my dear old Casterton! how I longed to be a girl again, roaming your wild green-woods, climbing your solemn falls, going in and out according to rule, as I had done so long and so happily! How fair I thought it must look now, that fair gem of the lovely banks of Luna! But the girls would be away, for it was holiday-time, and the house would be given up to whitewashars and cleaners; nevertheless, I wished to be there, away from all the care, and anxiety, and isolation that seemed gathering around me. Only two years had passed since I bade farewell to my beloved school-home. I left Casterton in sorrow, it is true, and with the shadow of a great dread upon me; still, I left it with buoyant heart, and a simple confidence in all things that were, and that might be. Now, all was changed: I felt care-laden and weary; the world seemed to me a strange, unsatisfactory place, and the people therein, for the most part, actors and actresses in the great drama of life. A sense of unreality pursued me constantly; an overpowering anxiety, either for myself or for others, perpetually oppressed me; I was beginning to feel very old.

I had written--yes, I had resolved to overcome every scruple, and write to Marshall, telling him of the marriages about to be celebrated, and telling him, too, though playfully, of the story I had heard from Arabella. I had, of course, posted my letter myself, and there seemed no doubt of its safe delivery; and yet answer I had received none. It was passing strange; I did not for a moment doubt my dearest friend, nevertheless I felt very weary and dispirited, and far sadder than if I had never relieved my mind by that long-deferred communication.

After a little while several other persons came on to the croquet-ground, and a game was proposed. I was not inclined to play, and I stood aside, watching the others, and concluding that I would repeat to Mrs. Ward all that Miss Burdett had communicated. That it would make any difference I could scarcely hope; still I should have relieved my own mind, and the sole responsibility would no longer be mine. Of course Julia and her lover were partners in the game. How innocently lovely she looked--how ingenuous was the expression of her sweet face--and how her whole countenance brightened, whoa for a moment Horace stood by her side, and whispered some tender little nothing in her ear! She loved him so truly, so entirely--she gave him all the wealth of her pure, fervent young love. And he--what was he giving her? I almost loathed him as he stood there with his grand statuesque face, and his fine manly figure, as he bent over her with a grace and tenderness peculiarly his own. How many more trusting hearts had he won?--into how many more willing ears had he poured his honeyed vows?--over how many fair young forms had he hovered as if there and there alone were the shrine of his affections?

Miss Burdett was not playing, and presently she crossed the lawn and came and stood by me again. "Why that grave face, dear Miss Threlkeld?" she said more kindly than she had yet spoken. "I see you are watching Horace with suspicious eyes. Do not let what I have said disturb you. Dear me, when you are a few years older you will cease to wonder at any specimen of masculine mutability. You know the old song--

'Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.'

And believe me, Miss Threlkeld, it is true!--true as the Bible!" She spoke with indescribable bitterness. Poor Miss Burdett! she had tasted the gall and wormwood of life's cup, and she had known no purer draught; she had never drunk of the waters whose healing stream infuses sweetness even into the bitterest portion that human lips are called to drain. Clearly she spoke from sad, woeful experience. Again she went on:--"Men like Horace Stansfield, my dear, are born to break the hearts of fond, simple women; it's their mission, I suppose. The best way is to steel your heart, if you can, and love moderately, wisely, and not too well. Either resolve to live unmarried, or else take the first eligible parti who offers, and marry at once, and do your duty, and be content to be absorbed in society, or in your household concerns, or in your children, if you have any. After all, I am not certain that the Reformation acted wisely in sweeping away all those old convents and monasteries. In the shade of a cloister many a world-wearied heart has found peace and rest."

"Never," I exclaimed, vehemently. "The world-weariness, the aching, the corroding care is in one's own heart; and it would go with us into the cloister as surely as into the ball-room or the home circle. We must find our peace in God through Christ; our rest must be in Him, or it will be no peace, no rest--only a mere show of temporary quiet, lacking all sense of repose. There is no rest till the soul is safely anchored on the Rock of Ages."

Speaking thus, my own drooping faith was strengthened: I seemed, as it were, to feel afresh the foundations of my trust, and I felt that, come what might, I had found my everlasting Rest; let the deluge sweep on over all that was fair and bright, let my hope be "removed like a tree," let the sunlight of my life fade away, leaving me only the impenetrable dull grey canopy of clouds driven in the chill eastern wind, and I could still rejoice--I could still look up and say, "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."

It was a heavenly ray of comfort that gleamed in upon me then, for my own anxieties, and my companion's bitter revelations, had chilled my very heart; it was as if an unseen Hand were stretched out to uphold me and strengthen me on my way, and give me faith and teach me patience, and assure me that "all was well." And I needed that strength; for Miss Burdett had something else to say, that touched me far more keenly than anything she had yet uttered. She looked her astonishment at what she conceived to be my religious enthusiasm; but she made no reply, and, after a minute's pause, pursued her subject:--

"After all, you know, Miss Threlkeld, Horace is no worse than that Mr. Cleaton, who was to have married Miss Ward. He carried on his engagement year after year, and then refused to marry her at last. It must have been a bitter mortification to one so proud as she--a bitter, bitter pill, I am sure."

"The cases are very different," I said, trying to speak calmly and indifferently; "the engagement to which you refer was not formed spontaneously by Mr. Cleaton himself, and he would have freed himself at any cost long before, had not Miss Ward"--and then I paused, for it suddenly struck me that I ought not to explain family affairs, even for the justification of my own dear friend.

"Ah, well," she said, "it was an awkward business; but the young man was certainly a very silly young man thus to quarrel with his own bread and butter. I saw him a fortnight ago with the young lady who is about to become his wife."

For one moment the croquet-ground and its flowery borders and the gay figures with their bails and their mallets fairly swam before me; it was well that Miss Burdett's head was turned away, her attention called in another direction to a disputed ball, which, Arabella said, ought to be in one place, while Maria affirmed the contrary. Arabella had been cheating as usual; she always moved the balls to suit her own purposes by standing over them and covering them with her skirts, while she shy pushed them about with her feet. Before Miss Burdett looked again, I had steadied myself sufficiently to listen with all outward composure.

"I do not think his family are aware of his approaching marriage," I said, as carelessly as possible; "perhaps it is only gossip, for you know common report has such nimble feet; and an unmarried clergyman is always an object of speculation; his name is sure to be coupled with that of every single lady to whom he shows the most trifling mark of courtesy. But you say yon saw Mr. Cleaton?"

"Yes. I was at Elversdale Park, and Ormside is only three or four miles distant; and there was a young lady in the house who knew Mr. Cleaton very well; she came from Mr. Wentworth's of Shire Hall, where the young man, at one time, resided as tutor. There was a Mr. Ream, a minister, their mutual friend, and from him she learned the fact of Mr. Cleaton's engagement--it's my impression she wanted him herself--and this Mr. Hearn was visiting Mr. Cleaton at Ormside, at the very time I refer to, a fortnight ago. I fancy he came down for the wedding."

"Who is the lady?"

"I have not the remotest idea; I never heard her name even. I saw her, though--a poor, sickly-looking creature, pretty enough if she were not so thin and delicate-looking; much older than Mr. Cleaton, I should say; at any rate she must be over thirty. She looked to me like a person with a spinal complaint. I dare say she is wonderfully good, and all that. She had a patient, worn sort of an expression, and yet she seemed very happy, as of course she had reason to be."

"Was she walking with Mr. Cleaton?"

"No; driving in a little low phaeton. They were just setting off, and he was settling her with cushions and rugs, as if she had been the Queen. She had splendid black hair, such rich thick braids, and the sweetest dark eyes--they made me think of doves' eyes, they were so soft and mild; such a pity she has that sickly complexion, and looks so old! But he seemed quite devoted--a most chivalric lover, I should say. So he has not communicated with the Wards on this matter?"

"No, not that I know of. Why should he?"

"Why, indeed? He can be nothing to the Wards now, you know. But let us go in; it feels chilly, and you look very pale. How hoarse you are; I am afraid you have taken a sudden chill."

"A sudden chill" Yes, indeed, my heart was chilled, as if a blast from the regions of the everlasting snows had swept over me. And yet I could not, would not believe one word of Miss Burdett's story. Had I so little faith in my dearest friend as to give credence to that which would prove him to be false, fickle, and altogether unworthy?

Still, that pale lady, with the braids of black hair and the dove-like eyes!--I did not like to think of her driving out with Marshall, waited upon by him with lover-like assiduity, and I--I only knowing by chance, as it were, that he yet lived and prospered! And my letter!--the days were passing into weeks, and it remained unanswered; the commonest courtesy, I thought, the merest acquaintance, might have demanded one little line by way of reply.

Yes, reason as I might, it was altogether a very miserable affair; and I began to think that the most painful certainty would be easier to bear than this wearing, torturing, interminable suspense.

It was over at last, the bustle of preparation, the ceremony, the breakfast, the speeches and the leave-taking. It was all over, and the brides and their bridegrooms were on their way to the Continent; Maria and her husband to Paris and Brussels, and Mr. Stansfield and Julia for an extended tour through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Mrs. Ward, Arabella, and I were to live in London; all the necessary arrangements were made, and in a fortnight's time we were to leave Thornycroft Hall, and establish ourselves in Gordon Square, for at least the remainder of the year.

On the evening of the wedding-day I was too tired to think, but when the morrow came, and there was no particular demand on my well-nigh exhausted energies, I sat alone and gave myself up to reflection. What should I do? Julia was married now, and needed me no longer--the promise I had given her had been fulfilled, and I was free to quit my present position whenever I pleased. But then, with the prospect of freedom died away the yearning to escape. Miss Ward had been my tyrant, my persecutor, my scornful foe, and she was gone, and I was to live under her roof and her domination no longer; I could bear with my aunt's tempers and whims--her superior age involved a certain submission, and for the last twelve months, while she had been sinking into a state of despondency herself, she had been much kinder to me, and more considerate in every way. Somehow I felt sorry for her; she was no longer the bustling and imperious dame, whose will was law, and whose lightest word and glance were an imperative command. With her kind but too easy and consequently contemned husband, her day of power had passed away. Not only had Maria arrogated to herself the entire government of the establishment, and spoken invariably of "my house, my domestics, my carriages," but she had seemed to invite her sisters to throw off their mother's rule, and to proclaim their own independency, save where she herself was concerned. Arabella took the cue with astonishing quickness, and she soon succeeded in establishing herself on the most independent footing, so far as regarded her mother. Julia, though always gentle and docile, fell instinctively into the same ways. The three girls bad never loved their mother, so that now there was nothing to influence their feelings towards her, or to compel that respect and obedience which is every mother's due, so long as her children remain under the same roof with herself.

Yes, I was very sorry for Mrs. Ward. What she must have suffered from Maria's haughty and unnatural sway, no one can imagine; then to find herself defied by the heavy, sullen Arabella, and to feel that she had lost all influence with her youngest daughter, who might well have remained a child at her mother's feet, up to the time of her marriage, had that mother been otherwise than what she was! It must all have been most galling, most wretched, most intolerable! Ah! mothers--mothers with young daughters around you, daughters in their early teens, and daughters of yet tenderer age--if you would have from them, as they spring to woman-hood, that respect, that deference, that reverential honour, which is your right, sow now the seeds of love and tenderness, that in time to come you may gather the ripe fruit and be satisfied. Do not rule for the mere sake of ruling--do not hamper your child with petty and arbitrary instructions; never repel confidence--let your child feel that, err as she may, there is yet one sacred, inviolable spot on earth, where she may pour her repentant tears--her mother's bosom. If that sanctuary be closed, or if the trembler, entering in, find harsh censure, satire, and keen reproach, then, indeed, may she turn away in despair, believing herself forsaken of men and stricken by heaven itself. The mother whose wise gentle sway wins her daughters' deepest affections will find, when her children have reached mature age, that obedience will still be gladly rendered, and respect cherished, as one of the dearest instincts of nature.

I sometimes wondered how Mrs. Ward bore up as well as she did; a tithe of what she had endured of late from Maria, or even from Arabella, would in time past have thrown her into a state of excitement to be relieved only by violent and interminable hysterics; but the misery depicted on her face, the nervous dread, the hopeless depression she so frequently manifested, were enough to touch a far harder heart than mine. In a sort of way I could not help clinging to her, though love her as yet I did not, and respect her I certainly could not.

I was no longer afraid of her. Though from time to time her old suspicious fancies sprang up annoyingly enough, they did not irritate and distress me as of old. I could bear with her--I could even make excuses for her, and I regarded her with unmingled and unfeigned compassion--why, therefore, should I go away? Arabella certainly could be, and was, eminently disagreeable; she never forgave me for the abduction of her beloved cognac; and the pledge I had forced upon her rankled in her mind as a poisoned arrow might have festered in her flesh. Now that Maria was gone, I knew that her old habits would be resumed, and the pledge flung to the winds. She said that she hated me; but her open clumsy hatred, and her half-witted petty schemes of vengeance, gave me very little trouble, and certainly no apprehension. Left alone with her and her mother, I meant to be perfectly candid with the latter, and let her know the miserable danger to which her unfortunate daughter was liable. Also, I wished to explain to my aunt my true position with Marshall Cleaton, but now, when I felt that the time for reserve was over, when I no longer regarded Mrs. Ward as the natural enemy of Marshall's betrothed, my way was hedged up with fresh difficulties. Strive as I might to smile at the reports which had reached me, and indeed all of us; struggle as I would against doubt and fear, and a creeping sense of desertion, I could not help feeling a wretched uncertainty whether the engagement stood or not. How could I tell my aunt that I was engaged to Marshall, when she had heard and believed that her nephew was on the eve of marriage with some other person whom she had never seen. If--O! that I should breathe that if ever so faintly and secretly--if Marshall were unfaithful, I would rather bear the misery silently; I had rather hide his fault from other eyes. No one, save Mrs. Chippendale, knew what had been between us--had been!" was it come to that?--and she was far away, and seldom wrote, and though she had been, as a matter of course, invited to the wedding, had declined on the score of advancing years and increasing infirmity. And what no one knew, no one, I resolved, should know, if indeed the horrible dread that would keep stealing over me should haply be realised. If it should--what a monstrous supposition!--what an unworthy and disloyal want of trust!

But so I resolved, and you will see how vain those resolutions were. We sit and plan and scheme, little dreaming of what is even on the way to confound us, and scatter to the winds all that we have arranged, as we blindly fancy, with so much wisdom and so much determination. Well is it for us all that a hand of perfect wisdom guides the helm, else how often, how sadly should we make shipwreck of ourselves on the sharp, unmapped rocks of that which we call "circumstance." I was still sitting in my own room, musing and resolving, when my aunt came in and asked me to help her with some packing that she wanted finished out of the way. Hurrying down stairs a day or two before the wedding, she had slipped down a few steps and hurt her back, not severely, but quite enough to render a stooping position very painful and nearly impossible. I was to go to her room, and fill several boxes under her direction. I followed her immediately, glad to be occupied and to be relieved from the pressure of my own thoughts. The boxes stood in the middle of the room, and piles of all sorts of property were waiting for transfer and judicious arrangement. I set to work at once with right good will, and soon made a considerable clearance of all that had covered the chairs, the floor, and the sofa when I first entered; and my aunt seemed pleased and talked kindly, and even asked me if I would not for once take a glass of wine, as I looked so pale and tired. I thanked her, and said "No," and on we went with the packing, which, as it included all Mrs. Ward's personal belongings, was pretty extensive.

At last among other things, chiefly old books and yellow MSS., slipped out what seemed to me to be the identical document in its pink covering, the production of which had caused so much consternation five years before. I know now, however, it was not the same, but the packet of sermons, which had so strangely been displaced; but at the moment I doubted not but that I beheld once more the codicil which had been treated with so much carelessness and disrespect. Involuntarily I glanced at my aunt, and our eyes met. We were both thinking of the same thing, and for a moment I held the packet in my hand, with my regards rivetted on the fast-fading pink wrapper, as if it could tell me all that I certainly wanted to know. For it struck me that my aunt's distress on that morning was altogether unaccountable. I really could not believe that she was afraid of her carelessness, only her, carelessness being detected by her easy-going husband. Then why did she keep the codicil at all in that peculiar fashion? It had been read, and it had done its work on that memorable day of Mr. Ward's funeral, when the two wills and the codicil in question had been duly read and discussed. Altogether it was a mystery, a very perplexing mystery; and I looked up again to see Mrs. Ward sinking back in her chair in all but a fainting state.

I brought her water, but she seemed still overpowered, and gasped out something about sal-volatile. I found the sal-volatile and administered it, and then she said she was better, and, with her hand pressed to her side, burst into a fit of vehement weeping. "Don't go away," she sobbed out as she saw me looking towards the door, for I was thinking of summoning some one to my aid; "don't leave me, and don't ring. I shall be better directly; it's the hot day and the fatigue, and leaving Thornycroft."

After a little while she grew more composed, and she lay down on the sofa; and as I was settling the cushions she said, "I am a poor thing now, Ellen--a poor thing that nobody cares for! My husband who loved me is gone, my children despise me, and, in my declining days, I am driven out of the house where I came a young bride eight-and-twenty years ago. It is hard--very hard, leaving this house. If Maria had had a particle of natural feeling in her bosom, she would at least have paid me the compliment of asking me to remain--I should have been in no one's way; she would have taken care herself that I never interfered about a stick or a straw; I should only have wanted these two rooms--not much, I think, for a daughter to yield to her own mother in this great house, where I was once sole mistress! If Marshall had succeeded, I know, O I know he would have been good to me. Why did he not marry Maria? But I don't wonder; I only wonder that any man who is not a thorough idiot should venture upon such a vixen. Well, I fancy she has found her match at last But it is hard, very hard, to go away: no wonder that I am thoroughly upset!"

And again her tears broke forth, and she sobbed violently. I stooped down and kissed her, essaying my utmost to comfort her in what must have been a very sore trial. I forgot all the severity from which I had once suffered so much; I pitied her intensely, and at that moment--pity being, as we all know, akin to love--I really regarded her with affection. I think she saw the sympathy in my face, for she stopped crying and said, "You are a good girl, Ellen--a very good girl. I never thought you would have turned out so well, so much better than my own children. I am glad you went to Casterton, they understood you there--they made you what you are, and I am glad of it. I suppose I judged you rather too harshly when you were a child, but let bygones be bygones; you are the best girl now, and I acknowledge it. And mind and keep good and innocent, Ellen; never do a thing that you know to be downright wrong. Once do something very wrong, and you are in a net, and evil begets evil, and you are hopelessly miserable. If ever you are tempted, remember what I say; don't argue your conscience down; keep to the right path--it is always the safest, and it is best in the end."

And here her voice died away in hysterical weeping, and incoherent lamentation; and very sorry I felt for her, for most thorough must have been the prostration of pride and spirit which could have induced that strong will so to relax its tension, as to disclose so much and so freely its own weakness and enervation. What she meant by her strenuous warning against doing anything "very wrong," I could not guess: her whole behaviour was sufficiently puzzling, and I could only account for it by supposing that she was entirely broken down under the immediate prospect of leaving Thornycroft Hall. After awhile, however, she dozed, and presently woke up in a state of tolerable composure. Dinner was announced, but, being both busy, and not very hungry, we desired the servant to bring us some cold meat on a tray, and we made such a repast as our appetites prompted, and once more addressed ourselves to the interminable packing, which Mrs. Ward's indisposition had certainly retarded.

The cool evening shadows were beginning to fall aslant the lawn, and I was thinking of finishing up the package on which I was engaged, and going out into the garden for a quiet stroll, when some one rapped energetically at the door. "Come in," said my aunt; we both knew the rap that was not a rap, but a thump, or a thud, or anything else that might have been a charge from a small battering-ram cased in cotton-wool. The door opened, and Arabella came in, with our local paper, the Hackington Gazette, published always on market day, in her hand.

She appeared to be in a state of unwonted excitement; there was actually a bright colour on her fat cheeks, her dull blue eyes were sparkling with some scarcely-repressed agitation, and her whole aspect was that of a person who brings marvellous tidings, and tidings too, of a most satisfactory nature, if one might judge from her triumphant expression, her look of unconcealed exultation, and her evident delight in something or other which had lately come to pass. My first idea was that, the pledge being broken, cognac had resumed its sway. My aunt was evidently puzzled and annoyed at her daughter's singular manifestations of rejoicing.

But cognac had nothing, or very little, to do with my cousin's proceedings; she was quite collected, though in a state of strange excitement. "Here," she cried, in such a taunting tone, "I've brought you the paper, Ellen. Here is news for you!"

"Do let Ellen alone," said my aunt, crossly; "let her finish what she is about. She has been helping me all the afternoon like a good girl, and now she is tired, and does not care about bits of Hackington gossip, as you do."

Arabella gave a sort of grunt. "She will care, though, I am sure; I wish I were as sure of a million of money. It's no Hackington gossip, though it happens to be in the Hackington Gazette. Look there!"

There was positively something terrible in her voice and look; if she had been about to slay me on the spot, hatred, revenge, and malignant triumph could not have been more conspicuous in every glance, and tone, and gesture. I rose from my knees, and took the paper in hand, half-curious and half-scared, as she pointed to something in one particular column. It was the announcement of Marshall Cleaton's marriage! Yes, there it was, in undeniable black and white--married at Prestworth, the town near Ormside, to Emily, fourth daughter of Edward Oakley, Esq.! I remember reading the words again and again without being able to take in their full sense. I remember a loud, maniacal laugh from Arabella, and an exclamation of inquiry from my aunt, as she came up to where I was standing, and looked over my shoulder to see what it was; and I remember nothing more, for I sank at her feet in a state of complete insensibility. When I recovered consciousness it was dark; the windows were open, and the candles were flaring in the cool night breeze; I was alone with my aunt, and she was watching me with a tender solicitude I had never seen in her before. "Poor child! poor child!" she said, softly, over and over again, as I lay with closed eyes, but perfectly cognizant of all that was passing around me.

At last I tried to sit up, said she raised me gently, and asked me how I felt. And then came the full tide of recollection, and I remembered what had happened, and why I was lying there. "Do not let Arabella come again," were my first words. I felt that if I saw those pale blue eyes gleaming with satisfied malice any more that night I should go mad. My aunt replied by going to the door and locking it; then she locked the dressing-room door, and came back to rue. "Poor child!" she said again; "so you cared for this Marshall Cleaton, who seems born to make the women of my family miserable? Arabella says you were engaged to him; is it true?"

"It is true," I replied; "but how Arabella knew it I cannot imagine. I am pretty sure I have never betrayed myself; and I never told any one, not even Julia, for I felt that if I kept my secret from you, I ought to keep it from every one else. No one knew but Mrs. Chippendale."

"Why did you not tell me?" asked my aunt. I was amazed at her gentleness. I had no idea that she had so much sympathy in her whole nature. Before I could reply she went on: "I need not ask you, though, why you kept your secret so jealously. If Maria had known how you were situated, her conduct to you would have been unendurable. I think she would have paused at nothing save actual violence; and I am sorry to say, that if I had known it two years ago, I should have felt quite differently from what I do at present. But tell me all about it if you can."

So I told her the whole story, very much as I have told it in these pages; and it was a relief to tell it, as I had never hoped to tell it, to the only person who had any right of authority over me. At last she suggested that I should go to bed; and she went with me to my room, for I was still feeble and tottering, and I was afraid Arabella might waylay me and drive me wild with her dreadful laugh and her cruel triumph.

When my aunt bade me good night she said: "I am very sorry, my dear, but I hope you will not let yourself fret; this young man is not what you supposed him to be; he has acted unworthily, and does not deserve the best affections of any woman. I did think him sincere--always I thought him perfectly sincere; there was something noble, you know, in his giving up Thornycroft Hall; much as it vexed me, I felt a secret respect for him. But now I feel we have all been deceived--you, poor child, more than any one. Forget him, Ellen; I will try to make you as happy as I can; we will never talk about him, and I will make Arabella behave herself. There, don't look so wretched; it is all for the best, you know; you believe that. Good night."

I only waited till I heard her door shut at the other end of the corridor, to jump out of bed and lock myself in, and throw open the window, and let in the sweet, cool, night-air. The room was sultry, stifling; I could not breathe in it. Then I thought--"All for the best!" Yes, it must be all for the best! But, O! the misery, the void, the darkness that seemed gathering around me! It was dreadful to lose all the sweet hopes that had been woven into my life for the last two years. It was dreadful to look forward to the loneliness, the dreariness of days to come; but it was more dreadful to feel that I had lost, not only my lover--I think I could have borne that--but the friend whom I honoured above all others on earth. Yes, I had lost Marshall, for ever, and for ever. lie had fallen from his high estate; he had not kept faith; he had not even regarded honour. Could it be? O! could it be? It seemed incredible-impossible! But there it was--the announcement of his marriage. He might have chosen some other means of conveying to me the truth which it was necessary I should know; he might have let me know, ere he became the husband of another woman, that his feelings were changed, his affection transferred, his love for me a dream of youth, and nothing more.

I could say, with mournful significance:--

"And I, methinks, can let all dear sights go,
Fond duties melt away like April's snow,
And sweet, sweet hopes that took a life to weave,
Vanish like gossamers of autumn eve.
Nay, sometimes seems it, I could even bear
To lay down, humbly, this love-crown I wear,
Steal from my palace helpless, hopeless, poor,
And see another queen it at the door,
If only that the king had done no wrong,--
If this my palace, where I dwelt so long,
Were not defiled by falsehood entering in;
There is no loss but change, no death but sin,
No parting save the slow, corrupting pain
Of murdered faith, that never lives again."

O, Marshall, Marshall! how could you be false and faithless? How could you change, and never own that change till the whole world must, perforce, know it?

Well said one of the greatest of modern writers:--"The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone. Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world seems but a dim reflection, itself a broader shadow. We look forward into the coming lonely night; the soul withdraws into itself; then stars arise, and the night is holy."

The day came at last for our removal, and we left Thornycroft Hall for Gordon Square. Poor Mrs. Ward grew sadder and sadder as the hour drew nigh. She went from room to room, with clasped hands and mournful tread; she paced the garden walks, and rambled on the lawn, and strolled up and down the great avenue, in uncontrollable and undisguised distress. Once, following her into the drawing-room, I heard her say, "O if I had known! if I had but known!"

She was very kind to me, and seemed to like to have me always with her; and she interfered whenever Arabella tried to give me pain. That was very often; for my amiable cousin exulted in what she called "my disappointment," and was continually asking me how I relished being crossed in love? and referring to her own romantic episode, wherein had figured that never-to-be-forgotten Albert chain, and those much-admired pale lavender gloves. "Well!" she said, on one occasion, when her mother was absent, "it is my turn now; twice you have served me out, and now I am able to pay you back again. It was as good as veal-patties and champagne to see your white face when you read the marriage. I told you, when you took away my little drop of brandy, that I kept for spasms, and made me sign that horrid thing of a pledge, that I would be even with you some day, and you see I have kept my word."

"Arabella," I said, as quietly as I could, "understand, once for all, that this is a subject on which I will not converse. Your malice is both wicked and foolish--most foolish; for you know quite well I have never done you any injury. I prevented you from eloping with a low-bred adventurer, and I tried to save you from a still more terrible degradation; and, after all, you only showed me what, sooner or later, I must have seen in some other way. You had nothing to do with my trial; you only cruelly and maliciously rejoiced in it."

"Ah! but I was the first to bring you the news," she said, smacking her lips, as if she relished the very recollection of it. "That little paragraph and your white scared face were nuts to me--ah! as good as cob-nuts and filberts, and a glass of that splendid sherry, that Maria never would have up except on company days. Yes, I enjoyed your misery, and 1 enjoy it now, for I know you are very miserable, although you go about so quietly, working like a housemaid, and trying to curry favour with mamma. I hate you, Ellen Threlkeld. I never hated anybody so much except Maria, and I am glad that Marshall Cleaton has jilted you, and left you to be the old maid you are cut out for."

I replied by walking out of the room. I saw no reason why I should stay to be insulted and tortured with her coarse taunts and cruel triumph, and I began to wonder whether I could bear to live in the same house with her; and to speculate upon her probable chances of marrying. Alas! the suitor who had been smitten either with her or with her fortune had, after all, retreated in dismay. He had seen her dine, and he had heard her railing at one of the servants, and I suppose he thought that no amount of income could atone for a wife whose tongue and palate seemed to be kept in such very lively order. At any rate, the young man retired, and Arabella gave it out that she had refused him.

London was dusty and dreary enough, as it always is in August, when one naturally yearns for sea breezes and mountain rambles. We speedily established our small household, and everything proceeded with a regularity that was rapidly growing into an oppressive monotony. We drove out every day, we read, and we worked; nothing seemed to vary the routine of employments save the arrival of letters from the Continent, or an occasional call from some one, who, like ourselves, chanced to be in town when all the world was out of it. Ah! those close, dreary squares, and those dull, hot streets--O, the glaring, dusty parks, and the roar and bustle of that wearisome Oxford Street! And the weather grew almost unbearable. Old Nabobs chuckled, and said it was like Calcutta. People were reported as dying of sun-strokes, stray dogs suggested hydrophobia, and penny ices were greatly in demand.

Day after day we hoped for some decrease in the temperature, and every morning we tried to persuade ourselves that a cooler breeze was springing up, while every noon we declared it was hotter than ever, and every evening found us languid and depressed, and thankful that for a few hours at least there would be no more sunshine. I began to be seriously unwell; for some days I struggled with the weakness and lassitude that overpowered me, but in vain. I had no appetite; I could not sleep; and at last my aunt insisted on sending for medical advice. Change of air, of course, was the specific; and so it was decided that we should go at once to the coast, and stay there till the end of September. It only remained to settle where we should go. Arabella wished for Brighton, because there were good shops there, and you might have your table as well supplied as in London.

One Saturday--it was the last we were to spend in London for some weeks--my aunt asked me if I would go with her into Goldington-crescent to inquire about the character of a youth who wished to be engaged as our servant. At first, I begged to be excused, for the slightest exertion was painful, and that afternoon I was feeling unusually languid and feverish. "I would rather stay here, aunt, if you please," I replied.

"But, my dear," was her sensible answer, "a little fresh air will do you good, and the distance is not sufficient to fatigue you, I thought the walk would be beneficial to us both, and therefore I did not order the brougham. I think you had better rouse yourself; besides, I want your company, I cannot endure walking in London alone, and Arabella, I suppose, is asleep as usual, and would not go under any persuasion."

"Very well, I will go," I replied, I am afraid somewhat ungraciously. O, what a burden everything in the world appeared to me--changing my shoes, taking out my parasol, and tying my bonnet, seemed to me as tiring as a whole hard day's work used to be in the old happy time! The string of my bonnet gave way, and I sat down nerveless and half-hysterical, wishing I had not been asked to go out. It was cruel to disturb me, I thought, and then I scolded myself, and wondered stupidly if I really could be my very own self. with all my strength, and energy, and good sense gone from me! "And is this being a Christian? Is this adorning my profession?" I said to myself, while the large tears streamed down my pallid cheeks. "Because God has taken from me my first and dearest earthly treasure, am I to quarrel with His Providence? Am I to reject, like a peevish child, all other sources of comfort, of blessing, of happiness? O! I am very weak, very sinful. Perhaps this trial has come to show me myself--to let me see and feel what a poor creature I am--how vain, how blind, how wilful, how everything that I thought I was not! Ah, it is easy to say, 'Thy will be done,' when one still sits under the shadow of one's gourd; but when the gourd is cut down, then t seems so natural to be angry."

I was roused by my aunt calling out that she was ready, and I rose and went down. She was right; the air did revive me, and I felt far less fatigued than I had fancied I should be; nevertheless, I was not sorry in returning to pause for a moment while waiting to cross Euston-road, then the New-road, near St. Pancras Church, An omnibus horse had fallen down dead, I think, and the passengers were alighting and a crowd collecting from all quarters. Several vehicles came up, and stayed also, so that quite a little barrier was erected, and the traffic for the moment suspended. My aunt was inquiring of a policeman if any one was hurt, when I saw a cab coming down Seymour-street, and evidently bound for the blocked-up New-road. It stopped, of course, exactly facing us; in it sat a gentleman and a lady--Marshall Cleaton and, doubtless, his wife! I stood rivetted to the spot, careless whether he saw me or not; only intent on taking a long farewell of that face that had been to me for seven long years the day-star of my youthful dreams, the earthly sunshine of my every thought. And I wanted, too, to see that other face--the face of her for whom I had been forgotten. I looked; it was fully turned towards me; a sweet, sweet face--placid and holy and lovely as that of a pictured saint. Yes--that was the face Miss Burdett had described, though she had not half appreciated its pale, spiritual beauty!

Slowly skirting the crowd, the cab drove on, and then I grasped my aunt's arm, lest I should fall, and entreated her to come home at once. She too had seen her nephew and his bride, and without a word she led me on till we stood before our own door. She said nothing till she had removed my bonnet and given me some water; then she kissed me tenderly and bade me be comforted, in tones of sympathy that I could hardly believe were hers. Could this indeed be the harsh, hard, imperious tyrant of my childish days? Ah! how good it was of God to send me this unexpected comfort when I so greatly needed it.

Later in the evening she said, "I am glad we are going away on Tuesday, that we may not run the chance of meeting him again. I am so sorry, dear, that I pressed you to go out this afternoon."

"Do not be sorry," I said, "I am glad to have seen him once more; and I am glad that I have seen her; I can say God bless her, now; I could not before. It has done me good, aunt, I mean to try to be stronger. God will help me, I know; He does not will than any of His creatures should be content to lie still in hopeless abandonment of sorrow; I can bear it better, now that I have seen him and her; I can better think of him as her husband, who must be to me now as a dear friend already dead. But there is one thing, aunt--you must help me."

"I will help you in any way that I can, be sure, Nellie; I should like to see him, and give him a piece of my mind, and tell him that you scorn him."

"That would not be true."

"I wish you could marry that young Graham. One word, one look, and he would be at your feet again--that would show Marshall--"

"Hush! please, aunt. I cannot marry any one; I must keep faith, even if he have broken it. No one can ever take his place, no one! If he were really dead, no one else would ever be to me what he has been; and it is all the same to me now as if he had died."

"Not quite, my dear. But what is it you wish me to do for you?"

"To return this to him ;" and I drew out my precious circlet of diamonds; ah! they flashed and sparkled still like living light, but where was the love of which they were once the pledge? "I want him to have this; I have no right to it now; and it is too valuable to send in any ordinary way."

"I will do it for you, my dear," replied my aunt, after a moment's pause; "I will do it to-morrow."

"To-morrow is Sunday, aunt."

"Yes, I know. Look here, he is advertised to preach in some place or other to-morrow evening." It was in a well-known chapel close to Oxford-street. "I will go to the service, and afterwards ask to see him, and place it in his hand."

"I do not quite like that, aunt; on Sunday evening, too."

"There is no other way, my dear. I will make no comment; I promise you I will not say a word; I will only give him the ring; he will understand."

And so, rather reluctantly, I left her to do as she said; and next evening she took my ring and came home without it.

"Shall I tell you about it?" she asked.

"Yes, tell me exactly what you did; you saw him?"

"I did. Well, to begin at the beginning, the chapel was crowded to suffocation, the aisles and the pulpit-stairs were crammed; it was most oppressive. Marshall took the entire service; and I must say I never heard better prayers; certainly I never heard such a sermon. It was wonderful! so forcible, so eloquent, so powerful! that vast multitude scarcely breathed, so earnest were they to catch every word; I even forgot my errand while I listened. Ah! Ellen, how could a man who could preach such a sermon act so unworthily? At last it was over, and the congregation began to disperse; I watched him retire to the vestry, and then I made my way to the door, through which I had seen him pass, and rapped gently. An elderly gentleman answered me; I said, I wished to speak for one moment to Mr. Cleaton. He bade me enter, and there, with quite a little crowd around him, I saw Marshall, looking very pale and weary. He started up, for he recognized me at once; his astonishment was evident, but he seemed glad to see me, and he advanced with outstretched hands. I simply placed the little parcel in his right hand, and said, 'From my niece, Miss Threlkeld, Mr. Cleaton;' and, before he could ask a question, I slipped out again into the chapel, and mingled with the crowd. I saw, however, that he coloured extremely at the mention of your name. That is all."

"Thank you, dear aunt. Now it is all over. I must never think of Marshall as a living friend any more. Did you see--his wife?"

"No; but in so great a crowd she might easily have escaped my notice. There was no lady, though, in the vestry. I should think she was not present."

And that night I went to bed feeling that all was indeed over now. The dream of my youth had passed away. My life was not to be that which I had fondly pictured; but I was more content, more willing to take up the lot assigned me, more cheerful in the prospect of work, that I must certainly find somewhere or other, if I did not mean to grow into a peevish, fretful old maid. The month we were to spend at Scarborough I would give up entirely to health, for I began to perceive how strong is the influence which the physical state exercises over the mental and spiritual life; how mind and matter constantly act and re-act upon one another, and I felt that one of my first duties was to get well and strong again as fast as I could. I was not a very romantic young lady, you perceive; I never so much as thought of comfortably resigning myself to die of a broken heart. I knew that I could be never more that which I had been, but I hoped that in process of time the keenness of the wound would be healed, and, though the scar and some pain might remain to my latest existence, I should yet be heart-whole and happy, and able and willing to do good service in my Master's vineyard. But that time was not yet; the blow was still fresh, the suffering still intense. O, how much faith and patience one needs in order to be able to say in sincerity, and under the most trying dispensations, "It is well!"

The next day was a busy one, but my aunt would not allow me to exert myself at all; and feeling really very ill, I was glad to rest quietly in my room all the morning. We dined early, and then Mrs. Ward went out, leaving me comfortably established on the sofa in the front drawing-room. I was completely in invalid trim, for I still wore my morning-gown, and my aunt had thoughtfully provided me with books, and placed a beautiful bunch of grapes within my reach; the blinds were lowered, the square was as quiet as a country lane, and I fancied I could go to sleep.

So I fell asleep, and dreamed that I had dreamed that Marshall was married, and I thought that he came back to me, and I sat with him on the Pen Aber shore, and all was bright and calm again; and then I awoke with a violent start, for the drawing-room door was opened, and the servant announced--"Mr. Cleaton!"

My first feeling was a throb of joy at seeing him and hearing his voice once more, but the next moment I longed to escape, and should have tried to do so, had I felt able to walk across the room; the next I was in Marshall's arms, and he was murmuring, "My Ellen, my Ellen! what has made you so ill, my love?"

I essayed no answer, I could not; I felt so faint and weak that I began to think I might die there and then: it would be very sweet to see him to the last, and hear his voice, and it would be no harm to love him again just for a few minutes--the last on earth!

"Ellen!" he said presently, "what is the meaning of all this? I wrote to you again and again, and received no answer; last night your aunt came like an accusing spirit, and gave me back in your name your ring of betrothal! What has happened, Nellie dear?"

Then with one mighty effort I pronounced the words--"Are you married?"

"Married, Ellen?--what can you mean? What has been told to you? Who has come between us? O! Ellen, I should have had faith in you, whatever might have been affirmed; I did not look for this at your hands."

"Forgive me, Marshall, I could not help it! I was told you were engaged to some lady at Ormside, but I never believed it. I told you of the report in my letter."

"Yes, and I laughed at the idea; I wrote back to you immediately, telling you that the only single lady to whom I paid attention was Miss Beaumont, a dear old Christian in her eightieth year, unable to leave her room from infirmity. I proposed that we should keep our engagement secret only till Miss Ward was married; and then I saw no reason why you should not come to me at once; I am quite rich enough to set up a wife of my own. That letter you never answered."

"I never received it, Marshall"

"Indeed! but that is strange; I directed it quite fairly to Thornycroft Hall; there could be no mistake; if there had been, the letter would have been returned to me through the Dead Letter Office. But I wrote again, and yet again."

"I have not had one letter from you; my own I thought unanswered; then a lady, whom I met at Stansfield Park, spoke of your approaching marriage; Mr. Hearn was in some sort, through another person, her authority, and she described the lady, for she told me she had seen her with you. Lastly, came the announcement of your marriage in the Hackington Gazette--how could I doubt?"

"The announcement of my marriage? Who on earth did they marry me to? Since I parted from you, Ellen, I have never even offered my arm to any woman, save Mrs. Hearn--John Hearn's wife, you know?"

"Did you drive through Euston Square on Saturday with Mrs. Hearn?"

"Yes, I did. She is the sweetest soul alive after you, Nellie; but she is a sad invalid. The Hearns have lately become rich people, and John Hearn is trying every means for his wife's benefit; she has been under hydropathic treatment in Yorkshire--that brought them to Ormside, and I dare say it was Mrs. Hearn your friend saw with me, for I drove her out several times; and now she is in London for the advice of some eminent physician. But still they could not marry me in the public papers to her, seeing that John Hearn is alive and prospering."

"You were married to Emily, fourth daughter of Edward Oakley, Esq."

"Emily!--Oakley!--I never heard of such a person; the Editor of the Hackington Gazette must be raving. Of Prestworth, did you say? I do not believe there is anybody of the name of Oakley in or near the town. Nellie! some one did it for mischief."

"I begin to think so. Never mind, since it is all a mistake; it will be all right now."

"But I do mind, Nellie. I will know who has been taking liberties with my name; and above all I will know who has my letters--three letters, duly addressed to Thornycroft Hall could not successively miscarry. They must have been delivered and withheld; but I will sift the matter to the bottom. Is there anyone you at all suspect, my dear? Your aunt; it is quite in her way to withhold correspondence, if it so please her?"

"No, not my aunt; she is altered, she is most kind; she had nothing to do with it. But Arabella; could she have had a hand in the mischief? Only I do not think she is clever enough."

At that moment, some one noiselessly entered the room; Marshall's arm was round me, and I would have withdrawn at the entrance of a third person; but he only held me more tightly, and whispered, "No, Nellie! the whole world shall know now that you are mine."

It was Arabella herself, come down to grumble at the tea being delayed, when she had dined so early; and, as she affirmed, with so little appetite, and "not a bit of relish."

I wish I could describe to you the appearance of Arabella's face, as she came forward and recognized, and was greeted by, her cousin. Astonishment was not exactly the prevailing expression thereon depicted; it was something more, though surprise, and that in an excessive degree, was clearly discernible; but her whole countenance seemed instantly flaming with passion, not unmingled with something that might have been taken for extreme dismay, approaching to consternation. "Marshall," was all she said, as she suffered her hand to remain in his, and looked stupidly yet angrily in his face, "what makes you come here?"

"Not a very graceful welcome after a two years' separation," he said, good-humouredly. "Well, I came here to pay my respects to you all, but chiefly to see Ellen, who has been serving me rather badly lately. You know she has promised to be my wife, and some very foolish, I should rather say some very wicked person, has been playing her a practical joke, and persuading her that I am married to some young woman, of whose existence I never even heard."

I was going to say Arabella turned pale at this address, but that would not be strictly true; I scarcely know how to specify the extraordinary colour to which she turned, for it was neither green nor yellow, but a pallid union of the two. Marshall always affirmed that she turned green. Finding that he waited for her to say something, she gasped out, hoarsely, "You are not married, then?"

"You know I am not, Arabella," he replied, gravely; and there was so much meaning in his tone that she started and moved uneasily.

"How should I know you are not married?" returned Arabella, sullenly; "you have kept all your matters to yourself, and never consulted us about anything; and if people are reported to be engaged, and then go and put their marriage in the public papers, who is to know that it means nothing?"

"Those who fabricated the report of the marriage and caused it to be inserted in the Hackington Gazette must have known very well that they were giving currency to an unmitigated falsehood," said Marshall, with a sternness I had never seen in him before. "Arabella, if you had anything to do with that little transaction, I think you had better tell me all about it."

"I anything to do with it!" she cried, with a semblance of huge indignation. "How dare you come here to insult me in my own home? What do I care about your marriage? I don't care who is your wife, so that it's not me. (Arabella could never learn in what circumstances the objective case was objectionable.) You may marry a score of wives if you choose, as many as Bluebeard if you will; only don't trouble me about it, or think I concern myself with matters I despise."

"With my marriage I never will trouble you, Arabella," returned Marshall, still cold and firm in his speech and looks; "that is not the point we are discussing; it is my alleged marriage about which I intend to inquire, and concerning which I will be satisfied."

All this time Bella's colour was coming and going; now she flushed--not red, but a sort of dull purple--and now the deeper hue faded, and she became again of that sickly greenish tint I have before referred to. Her mouth, too, worked almost convulsively, and she kept interlacing her fingers, and separating them again, with a violence that threatened some muscular injury. "Very well," she replied to Marshall's last assurance, " satisfy yourself then, if you can: I am sure I have no objections; but I shall be obliged to you if you will not speak to me in that tone, and I do not like being stared at."

But still Marshall looked her steadily in the face. I must say his gaze--stern, fixed, and inquisitorial--was enough to have dismayed a more courageous nature than poor Bella's.

There was something in the expression of his dark eyes before which she fairly quailed, and I saw that she was holding fast by the back of a chair, in order to steady herself.

"Sit down," said Marshall, presently, with a gentler inflection in his voice; and he handed her a chair as politely as if we were all on the very best of terms. "Sit down, Arabella, and tell us all about it; let us bring this painful affair to a conclusion."

"I have nothing to tell," she replied, as she sank half breathlessly into the seat offered her; but her looks belied her words. I had not a doubt now as to her guilt; her confusion, her tremor, and her evident terror convicted her, as far as any circumstantial evidence could convict any one; but still, in her clumsy way, she persisted in her obstinate denial.

"What did you mean," I said, "when, before we left Thornycroft Hall, you told me 'it was your turn now, and you were glad to serve me out?'"

She made no answer, but presently she began to cry, quite in her old, childish fashion, wailing, and sobbing, and rubbing her eyes with her handkerchief till they were as red as though they were in a stage of inflammation suggesting ophthalmia.

"You had better tell me the truth at once," resumed Marshall, quietly--"I am determined to know all about it, and if you do not tell me, I shall go at once to Hackington and see the editor of the Gazette, and make him give up his authority. Then I shall visit the Thornycroft postmaster, and inquire about those three letters I wrote to your cousin Ellen, but which she never received. If there I can obtain no satisfactory information, I shall apply to head quarters, and the London authorities will interfere, and the whole thing become public. I wish to avoid this, Arabella, but if you persist in denying all knowledge of this most unfortunate affair, you leave me no alternative; for trace the guilty party or parties, and find my letters, I will! Do you know that if the post-office authorities make this business their own, they will examine the Thornycroft postman, and all your aunt's servants, and certainly prosecute the person who has detained the letters? If I once apply to them, the matter is no longer under my own control; there can be no question of compromise; for not myself, but the servants of the Crown, will, in her Majesty's name, take the direction of the whole affair, and, willing or not willing, I should conceive they are bound to proceed to extremities."

Arabella fairly shook with sobs, terror, and irrepressible anger, which flamed out, notwithstanding her consternation. "It is all that Ellen, that wretched Ellen!" she cried. "If she had not made me hate her, I should never have thought of such a thing; but I had vowed to serve her out, and I thought I could do it nicely through you."

"How did you know of the relation subsisting between myself and Ellen? Who told you of our engagement? No one, save Aunt Isabella and my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Ream, knew anything about it. What made you suppose that I had it in my power to affect your cousin's happiness?"

"What was to hinder Aunt Isabella from telling me?" she replied, gloomily. "You say yourself she knew, and I always fancied you liked Ellen, and Ellen used to go about every now and then as if she had her head full of something that she told to no one."

"That will not do, Arabella! Aunt Chippendale would never have selected you as her confidante to the exclusion of the rest of your family. Now, do not trifle any longer, I beg of you; be candid, and avoid prevarication: let us terminate this distressing scene as speedily as possible."

"If it is distressing, Why do you do it? It's a great shame that I should be treated so! Let me go; I want to be quiet in my own room. I am very ill, and I shall be having spasms directly."

"Then we will send for the doctor. At present, however, you must tell us the truth, for if you do not, We--or rather I--shall find it out for myself, and then you know the consequence."

"Well; I did put the marriage in the Gazette. I knew Ellen would never believe it if I did not. I made John drive me into Hackington one day. I really wanted to do some shopping, and told him to wait with the carriage at Mrs. Lambert's, the wool shop, where I had to pay a bill for Hortensia Devereux; and then I slipped round the corner, up King Edward's Passage, and got quickly into High Street, and I went into the office and gave the man the paper with--that written upon it, and he bowed and said it should be attended to."

"Did he know you?"

"I should think he did; I have seen him many times before. He used to come to our church very often, and besides he used to be a friend of--a friend of mine, who has left Hackington."

We supposed she referred to that ever-recurring hero of the Albert chain, but we did not inquire. Then Marshall said--

"And who was the lady to whom you were so good as to marry me? I never to my knowledge saw Miss Emily Oakley; I am quite--quite sure I never heard of her before."

"There is no such person," said Arabella, bluntly. "I wanted a name, so I just looked in a novel and found one; and I thought I had better put Prestworth, because that is the nearest town to Ormside. But I am not going to tell you any more; you know now I did it, and you need not ask me any more questions."

"Excuse me, there are a few more things I must inquire into--the letters! Where are they, Arabella?"

"They are safe enough," she replied, quite angrily. "Dear, how you do torment one! I will give them to Ellen presently." And she darted at me a glance of bitter malice and dislike.

"How came you to take them?" I inquired.

"Well, if you must be so curious," she replied, "I saw the letters on the breakfast-table one morning, and turning them over, and looking at the postmarks, and all that, you know, I spied Marshall's writing on a letter directed to you; of course I knew it well enough, I had seen it often enough before in the old days, when he was courting Maria; and the thought came into my head that I would. plague you and keep the letter--and I did, you know."

"Did you read it?"

She twisted her fingers for some moments in silence, till Marshall said, "You need not reply; your silence is a sufficient affirmative. And the second letter, and the third; I suppose they also fell into your hands?"

"Yes," she said, crying again; "when I saw the second letter, I was afraid you would say something about the first; and you--did you know--you asked Ellen why she did not answer your question?--and you begged her to write immediately. And then I kept watch, lest another letter should come and spoil all; and so I got the third--the last you wrote--just before Maria and Julia were married. I will go and get them now; they are locked up in my room."

"Stay one moment," said Marshall.

But as he spoke my aunt entered the room. She was so confounded at Marshall's appearance, and at Arabella's tear-glazed, frightened physiognomy that it was some little time before we could make her understand what had taken place. She was extremely shocked, of course, and Arabella had to undergo a second examination, far more searching and rigid than that to which we had subjected her,

It was, perhaps, quite as well that it was so, for, by means of my aunt's interrogations, we learned many little circumstances of which we should otherwise have remained ignorant. It appeared that, in some mysterious way, Arabella had actually, of her own unaided sagacity, divined somewhat of the position in which Marshall and I stood regarding each other. She was uncertain whether there existed any engagement between us; but she more than suspected an attachment on my part. Perhaps, trusting to her general obtusity, I had been less cautious with her than with the others. She had seen me reading Marshall's book, and in her presence I had not thought it worth while to maintain so much indifference and composure as would have been the case had my aunt, or Maria, or even Julia been there. So, at a venture, she spoke of a pretended rumour of Marshall's engagement to a young lady at Ormside, and, by a strange coincidence, Miss Burdett soon after confirmed the report, and so unwittingly encouraged Arabella to proceed in her amiable designs on my happiness. What Miss Burdett said to me that evening on the croquet-ground at Stansfield Park, she afterwards repeated to my aunt and her two elder daughters, when she, with the dowager Lady Towerscliffe, came one morning to pay us a visit. Her evidence was so circumstantial that neither Mrs. Ward nor Maria at all doubted the authenticity of the story; but Arabella, who already had two of Marshall's letters in her possession, had wit enough to see that the engagement to which Mr. Hearn alluded referred to myself; and she knew pretty well that all the rest of the tale was mere gossips' chatter, and nothing more. She knew, too, that Mrs. Ream was at Ormside--Marshall had said so much about her in one of his letters--and she felt persuaded that the pale, dark-eyed lady whom Miss Burdett had seen in the carriage with Marshall was the identical person of whom he made such special mention in the latter of the two letters then in her own possession.

But all things favoured her unprincipled designs, and she brought them to a climax by inserting the fabricated marriage in the Hackington Gazette, and then taking care that I should see it without loss of time. Then her spiteful little intrigue naturally terminated; she had convinced me of Marshall's falsehood, and made me thoroughly unhappy; and she triumphed, and went on her way rejoicing, though, at the same time, I think, when she reflected on the perilous game she had been playing, she trembled at her own audacity, being sure that time would reveal the fraud that had been perpetrated, and perhaps discover the author of the mischief. Such speedy detection, however, she had in nowise contemplated.

"What could induce you to act so wickedly?" said Mrs. Ward, when her cross-examination was fairly over. "How you dared do such things I cannot imagine; and what Ellen had done to provoke your hatred and vengeance I cannot conceive,"

"Ellen knows why I hated her, and why I always shall hate her," replied Arabella, sturdily. "She knew how I suffered from those cruel spasms, and she took away the only thing that gave me relief, and made me take that horrid pledge. But I have broken it now, and I will tear up the pledge-ticket into fifty pieces. I am of age, and no one has a right to control me, and no one shall, either! Thank heaven, I have an independent income, and can do as I like, at last."

"I do not understand," said Mrs. Ward. "What does she mean by a pledge-ticket? Surely she has not been pawning or pledging, though really I begin to think she is capable of anything!" She had gone to her own room now to fetch my letters, which, for some reason or other, she had not ventured to destroy, although she had not hesitated to open them, and make herself mistress of their contents.

"No," I replied, "she has not been pawning anything, though she may come to that eventually, if she persists in the course she has already begun. It is her pledge-card to which she refers; the card or ticket of membership which she received when she took the pledge of 'total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors.' I told you, aunt, the other day, why I insisted upon her taking it, and why, for example's sake, I took it myself. She has broken it now, she says, and indeed I knew she had done so several weeks ago."

My aunt groaned; she covered her face with her hands, and rocked herself to and fro, like one in intense pain. Presently she said--"O, Marshall, what have I done--what have I done, that all my children should turn out so badly? Maria's conduct to me is so unnatural, that it is sure to be visited tenfold on her own head; but that is poor comfort for a mother! I was so proud of Maria, I loved her far more than my other children, and now see how she despises me! I sometimes think she hates me, and would be glad--or, at least, would not care--if I died! And Arabella--can anything be worse than her conduct? She, too, sets me at defiance, and her habits are such as to threaten to bring disgrace on us all! She has no principle, she speaks and acts without the slightest reference to conscience--if, indeed she has a conscience, which sometimes I doubt Julia has given me the least trouble, but she never loved me; she idolized her father; a look, a glance of his was law; but she only obeyed me from fear, or from habit, or because her father instructed her that she was to honour her mother as well as her father. O, why is all this? Never were children more strictly brought up; I watched them night and day; I never let them keep any secrets from me; I trained them in the strictest observance of religious duties, and now, now what is the issue? Tell me, Marshall--you are a minister, and you ought to know something of parental obligations--how is it that I toiled in vain? Why are not my children the joy and comfort of my widowhood and my declining years?"

"Dear aunt," replied Marshall, "it would answer no good purpose to discuss past errors; they are now for the most part irretrievable. Perhaps, in the training of your family, you relied too much upon your own strength, your own wisdom. Perhaps you took not due counsel of the Lord; perhaps you made one rule for all, whereas your three daughters, being of widely diverse dispositions, must have needed each a separate mode of treatment. But, whatever your mistake might have been, it is useless now to dilate upon it. May God comfort you, and strengthen you in your sore trial, for well can believe that

'Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child.'

If you have not sufficiently trusted in God in the days that are past, trust now, fully and unreservedly, and pray without ceasing. He has the hearts of all your children at his disposal; if your authority is gone, if your influence has ceased, the privilege of prayer is still left to you, and a mother's prayers!--who shall limit their prevailing efficacy at a throne of grace?"

"Not my prayers, Marshall--not mine," sighed poor Mrs. Ward. "Once I thought myself a Christian, and I said hard things of your mother, and of many others who did not follow the rule of life which I believed to be right and consistent. If people did not see as I saw, I did not trust in their piety. I was a bigot, a devotee, after my own fashion. I am afraid I was a Pharisee, though all the while I called myself a miserable sinner, and in my private devotions I heaped upon myself the most opprobrious and humiliating epithets! I said that I was a vile sinner--a lost sheep--a rebel--a wretch--an ingrate--a worm--a leper; but I was proud of my self-abnegation and of my voluntary humility! I was proud when I thought of my church-going, my Bible-reading, my opposition to worldly pleasures--or to what I chose to call such--my strict discipline at home, my blameless reputation abroad; and prouder still that with all this I could confess myself a sinful and miserable creature! Yes! I hugged my self-abasement; but I was sincere--indeed I was sincere; though perhaps, Ellen, you who saw me and heard me day by day may scarcely be able to believe it. And then my husband-- my good, pious husband--I thought so slightingly of his religion because he did not uphold me in all my extravagant views; because he differed from me on some points of doctrine, I could hardly concede to him the title of Christian! Yet never lived one whose life and conversation more fully glorified God than your uncle, Marshall. His only fault was the weakness which led him to yield to my imperious spirit and arbitrary temper the authority which should have been his own. Now he is gone, I know his goodness; his dying hours showed me how strong was his faith, and on how firm a foundation--even the Rock itself--he had planted his hope of eternal life."

Marshall and I both strove to comfort her, for she wept unrestrainedly; but at last, in answer to something he said relative to the promises, she exclaimed, "Hush! I cannot bear it; there is no promise for me. I am not a Christian now. I suppose I never was one; I deceived myself; my intense self-appreciation deceived me. No! do not talk of repentance. I do repent, but I have a great sin upon my conscience. When I upbraided Arabella for her treachery I felt that I was worse--far worse; for I sinned against light which she has never enjoyed. Hush! say no more, Marshall. Have pity on me, for I am very--very miserable!"

We were interrupted by Arabella's return. She threw down my letters on the table, saying, "I wish I had never touched the stupid things. But I said I would be revenged upon Ellen, and I have kept my word. You are all right now; but your pale cheeks and your thin hands show what you have been going through. If you have made me suffer, I have made you suffer, too; and I am glad of it."

Her look of malicious exultation made me shudder; and Marshall said, in a stern tone, "Be quiet, Arabella! Do you not know the spirit you thus cherish is deadly wickedness? Have you never been taught that--more than any other sins--enmity, revenge, and implacable hatred shut you out from God? With such vindictive feelings in your poor breast you can never pray."

"Do not talk religion to me!" she said, fiercely. "I had enough of that in my childhood, and now I will have none of it. Yes; you may look shocked; but I am no worse than Maria, only I say out what is in my mind. She mocks at religion, too, only more politely; and she likes her glass of wine, too! I could tell tales, if it were of any use; but she is guarded--O, so guarded!--and no one suspects her. But here is my pledge-ticket do you see it?"

Of course we did; she held it in both hands.

"Very well! then look there. Behold the fruit of your unwelcome interference, Miss Threlkeld!"

She deliberately tore it in halves, then doubled each half and again tore it across; then taking up each quarter in turn, she ripped, and pulled, and tore, till the card was reduced to the tiniest fragments imaginable. Last of all, she gathered them up, and going out on the balcony scattered them to the winds, and I saw the white atoms fluttering and floating round the corner of our own square and down Woburn Square; and Marshall affirmed that two hours afterwards in going home he recognized relics of the violated pledge on the opposite side of Russell Square, as far down as Montague Place.

We delayed our journey to Scarborough a few days, and then Marshall escorted us thither, saw us safely settled in eligible apartments, and left us to go about his own business at Ormside. But before we quitted London he introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Hearn; and I learned to love them and look upon them as near and dear friends. John Hearn, as Marshall always called him, was about forty, or perhaps a little more, an earnest Christian pastor of eminent scholarship and strong literary tastes, and having withal a grisly, mane-like beard, that gave him the appearance of an intellectual and amiable lion. As for his wife, she was like the "Elizabeth" of Jean Ingelow's exquisite poem:

"A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath,"

only her name was not Elizabeth, but Mary, and so the rhyme was deficient. I do not mean that she was one of those amiable, constitutionally gentle beings, who are usually designated "sweet," which is often only another term for insipid. She was something more than merely sweet. Her temperament was naturally enthusiastic, her attachments deep and strong; but she was very gentle, very patient, very calm, and strikingly unselfish. For years she had been a confirmed invalid; for years she bad struggled with a sadly insufficient income; for years she had longed for what seemed the unattainable luxury of ministering to the temporal wants of the poorest of her husband's flock. But now the day of prosperity had dawned; nay, it had arisen in all its brightness; for, to his extreme astonishment, John Hearn found himself suddenly and unanimously called to a pastorate in the vicinity of London, where his income would be multiplied six-fold; and while he and his wife were still debating the question of removal, and concluding that, for the sake of the children, they were not justified in declining the offer, another and still greater surprise came upon them. A very distant relation--or rather, connexion--died, and left all his property--a very handsome property, too--to his dear (so-called) cousin, John Ream, and his heirs for ever. 'Whereupon the good pastor and his gentle wife resolved to abide where they were, among the people with whom they had been associated for upwards of fourteen years. That village, Mrs. Hearn told me, had been their home so long, and all her children had been born there, and she knew every house, every cottage, and almost every face; and notwithstanding all her physical suffering, and all the difficulties with which she had been called to struggle, she had been very happy, and nothing but a sense of duty would ever have led her to contemplate a change. But, I am very sorry to say, Mr. Hearn's altered circumstances bad an effect on his people which was perhaps more natural than praiseworthy. Straightway he became a very great man. It was amazing how much depth they discovered in his sermons, how they enjoyed his eloquence, how they appreciated his earnestness, how they proclaimed far and wide his super-excellent qualities as a pastor, a private Christian, a friend, &c., &c.--after he became the happy possessor of a clear income of fifteen hundred pounds per annum!

More amazing still, they immediately consulted on the expediency of raising his salary!--being a Nonconformist myself; I am ashamed to say what it was before; one does not care to talk about the defects of one's own household to all the world, you know;--and they chanted his praises all over the country when he gracefully but firmly declined any further addition to his income. Then it came into their heads to enlarge the chapel, though the propriety of making alterations had been mooted only a few months before, and pooh-poohed accordingly. But it was done; for that fifteen hundred a-year had so increased John Hearn's popularity that his own people rallied around him bravely, and came forward with their subscriptions quite handsomely; his congregation rapidly increased, and many families who had attended the parish church all their lives found out that the Nonconformist minister was infinitely superior to their own clergyman, who always raced through the prayers as if for a wager, and read his sermons out of a battered, rusty-black MS. case right under his nose! So they took pews at the chapel, and the little building was really uncomfortably small; and then there was a talk about a new organ, the old one, which had been voted quite good enough a year before, being constitutionally asthmatic and given to much wheezing and gasping for breath, and even to breaking down altogether if the organist were at all unreasonable in his demands on its lungs. The wonder was that it had not actually given up the ghost, and long ago departed such life as it had, up in that queer little singing gallery, where the village maidens screamed each one louder than the other, and the senior deacon's son led a very peculiar and original tenor, and somebody growled a bass that might have been taken for the expiring efforts of an agonized and venerable male individual of the bovine race. But it was all to be remedied now; and it was suggested that, as Mr. Hearn had a very musical ear, and as Mrs. Hearn was reported to have been an accomplished pianiste in the days of her youth, the choir should be in future entirely under their control, and they should make such alterations and regulations as approved themselves to their judgment--a judgment now so sound and unquestionable, that it bordered on the infallible. Now do not suppose that I am holding up Mr. Hearn's flock to ridicule--that is, to any special ridicule. I am afraid that their case is not by any means peculiar; I am afraid that we are all sadly given to worship wealth--I mean as a people; for of course there are thousands among us who can and do estimate us by what they believe to be our real intrinsic worth, and not by the establishment we keep up, or by the vast amount of income-tax we are reluctantly compelled to pay to Her Majesty's Government. Still it is without doubt one of the great and increasing sins of the age, this money-worship, which estimates a man, not at his true moral or intellectual worth, but at his £ s. d. account at the bankers; and the British nation, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, glories in its golden idol, which it has set up on 'Change, in the market-place, on the social hearth, and, alas! in the sanctuary itself! And at the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, or without any music at all, old and young, rich and poor, the Church and the world, Nonconformists and Episcopalians, are all equally ready to fall down and worship it, lest they fall under the malediction of that arbitrary and mysterious thing commonly known as "society." For to be under the ban of "society" is to some people almost as bad as being cast into a fiery furnace seven times heated. So once more I remark that I do not think that Mr. Ream's flock were any worse than other people. You must know that it requires a great amount of moral courage to criticise the sermons of a pastor with an independent income of fifteen hundred a-year; but if from that comfortable little aura you deduct fourteen hundred, it is perfectly easy, and even highly agreeable, to pick out of a whole discourse, otherwise commendable enough, the one or two little bits which have given offence!

Ah! there is a deep moral in Hood's witty poem of "Miss Kilmansegg and her precious leg"--

"The very metal of merit they told,
And praised her for being as 'good as gold.'
Till she grew like a peacock haughty;
Of money they talked the whole day round,
And weighed desert, like grapes, by the pound,
Till she had an idea, from the very sound,
That people with nought--were naughty!"

And yet this gold that we wish to grasp, and hug so closely when attained, cannot go with us when this life is ended; we heap up riches, and know not who will scatter them--as scattered they surely will be, some day or other--and the riches that we might lay up in heaven, the treasures that we might save there for ever and for ever, how little do they occupy our minds! Let us strive to care less for the wealth that must perish, that may not oven last as long as we do; and let us set a higher value on those true riches that decrease not with the spending, nor melt away when most we require them for our need. Great wealth may be a blessing, a great and wondrous blessing. It often is, thank God; for there are many who use their gold as men who must give account of their stewardship; but it is too frequently a terrible curse, that hardens the heart, and makes this world so fair and pleasant, that the world to come is not willingly remembered, and its joys are unthought of, or seem only like the unsubstantial glories of a dream that will fade away and be forgotten. I never meant to say so much when I began to write about my new friends the Hearns; neither did I in those early days of our intimacy learn so much about them; I knew only that they had succeeded to a handsome fortune, and that Mr. Hearn was taking a long holiday because his chapel was half pulled down, preparatory to being built up again on an extended scale, and in a style of great architectural splendour.

And now I return to Scarborough. Before Marshall left us it was settled that our marriage should take place very early in the spring, for my aunt one day said to her nephew--"I think, though I am loth to lose Ellen, that the sooner you take charge of her the better; then there will be no more danger of mistakes, or of mischievous interference; and, to my mind, a pastor without a wife is only half a pastor, and perhaps something less."

To which sentiment Marshall heartily responded, declaring that he had already said as much thrice over in those very letters which Arabella had detained so long, and that nothing remained but to fix the day, and get ready as speedily as might be convenient.

Nothing of any account happened during our sea-side sojourn, except the return of Mr. and Mrs. Devereux from their bridal tour; but as they went straight to Thornycroft Hall, and we heard nothing of them till they were fairly established there, their arrival did not very much concern us. Only my aunt, whose spirits had considerably revived ever since Marshall's sudden appearance in Gordon Square, became again exceedingly depressed, and took to shutting herself up in her room, from which she emerged like a person who had been undergoing secret and severe penance for some terrible unconfessed transgression. And again she sighed in that seal-like fashion, which brought back, as it were, the days of my childhood, when first r found myself an inmate of Thornycroft Hall; and again I speculated whether it might not be possible that in some remote period of her existence she really had committed some crime which weighed very heavily on her conscience, and marred her peace of mind. She was still very kind to me, and she would talk to me by the hour of Maria's unnatural conduct, and Arabella's degrading tendencies, and beg me to take warning by her example, if I ever had any children of my own. And then she would reiterate her wonder at her non-success and again and again declare that she had never failed in her duty as a mother, asking me if I could ever in one single instance charge her with neglect? Had she not always kept us in due subjection? Had she not studiously kept books of fiction out of our reach? And here was Arabella spending her whole time in the perusal of the lowest order of sensation novels! Had we not been trained to implicit obedience, and checked whenever we manifested the slightest inclination to propound an opinion of our own? Had we not been taught order, humility, and reverence to our elders? What was lacking, for lacking there must be something, or else the goodly structure of our education would not have crumbled to pieces the moment the scaffolding of schoolroom authority was withdrawn?

"You are the only one, Ellen, who does not grieve me," said my aunt to me one day, when she had concluded a long Jeremiad on her daughters' iniquities and shortcomings, "and you were not under my control as your cousins were. To begin, I never saw you till you were turned ten years old, and a very strange and tiresome little thing I thought you. I am not so certain now, that your father was altogether so foolish as I deemed him then. And in two years' time you went away from me to Casterton, where I sent you to be tamed."

"And they did tame me, aunt."

"How did they do it, child? I am sure I tried my best with you, but I only seemed to stir up all the evil that was in you. What did they do with you?"

"Nothing in particular. I took my place among the other girls with the understanding that I had a character to support. So long as I did nothing to forfeit the respect of my teachers, I was treated as an honourable person. I was trusted, my word was never doubted, and I was soon made to perceive that I, as one of a large association, was in some sort held responsible for the well-being of the whole. The power of influence was strongly impressed on us all; it was carefully shown to us that we could not do evil and hurt ourselves alone; and the privilege of setting a good example was one to which we were all incited to aspire. Above all things, we were quite sure that, if we obeyed the rules and conscientiously attended to our duties, we should meet with the approbation of those who were set over us."

"And you were not sure with me? Speak out, child, and do not be afraid; it is too late now to remedy the evil, but I should like to know where the mischief lay."

"No, aunt; since you permit me to speak freely, we were not sure. Your censure or your praise depended so much on the state of your own mind and feelings; and then you frequently attributed to us, but especially to me, ulterior motives of which we were entirely innocent. I will speak only for myself; you always suspected me of doing or saying, and sometimes even of thinking, that which would have covered me with shame had the suspicion been correct, till at last I began to be accustomed to suspicion, and to think it mattered very little whether I did right or wrong, since in nine cases out of ten I was sure to meet with an unjust accusation; and I believe when I left Pen Aber my moral sensibilities were seriously injured, and my perceptions of good and evil blunted. But I do think, aunt, the great harm was that we were afraid of you."

"Afraid! well I suppose you were; but why afraid? I never beat you or starved you; your utmost punishment was a box on the ears. Perhaps you had that a little too often--I do not say you had not. What were you afraid of, Ellen? Tell me honestly."

"I am afraid now, aunt, you will laugh at me when I tell you. I was very much afraid of what you called 'a good talking to.' I used on such occasions to come out of your room, feeling as if I were fit only for the hulks or the gallows; but my great fear was--your looks. I was dreadfully afraid of your eyes, and at one time I could not meet them without colouring violently, and feeling as if I must have been doing something very wicked, if I could only remember it."

"Do I ever look so terrible now, Ellen?"

"No, aunt; you seem to trust me now, and you do not look me through and through, as if you were exploring every corner of my brain, and searching into the recesses of my heart. But, do you know, the force of habit is so strong, that when I hear your foot on the stairs, or your rap at the door, my first impulse, if I am lying down or idling a little, is to start up, and pretend to be busy about something or other; and if I am reading a book a trifle lighter than "Locke on the Understanding," or "Barnes on the Gospels," to push it into my pocket, or hide it away, and snatch up the first piece of needlework that comes to hand? Of course I know now that there is no occasion for anything of the kind; but the old habit is strong, and I can scarcely believe that I shall escape reprimand when you come in, and find me in the lounging chair, with a book instead of a needle and thread in my hand."

"And was that what you used to do as a child? Did you all do it?"

"Yes; all of us. I was very much shocked when I first came to live with you; for in my own house I had been so trained, that deceit seemed as impossible a sin as murder. I had nothing to hide from my father; there was no temptation to conceal anything from him, for he appeared to enter into all my pursuits and pleasures as heartily as though he were a child himself; only I can see now, how, by pleasant chats and little remarks, he raised the tone of my childish mind, and cultivated my intellect, and refined my tastes; and how, in and through all things, the simplest as well as the profoundest, there was a golden thread of pure and exalted piety. My father seldom set himself directly to talk to me on religious subjects; but all that he said, and did, and taught, was so imbued with the spirit of Christianity, that his whole life may be said to have been not merely religious, but religion itself."

"I do not quite understand; my brother Edward used not to be much given to religious discourse; he was an excellent theologian, I know, but in private conversation one could scarcely perceive it. I used to fancy that as a clergyman he was sadly secular in his talk."

"Yes; but every secular subject was by him so treated that one could not for a moment doubt his convictions on the highest truths. You know what a naturalist he was--how he loved to collect flowers and ferns, and insects. No one ever could suppose that he indulged in these pursuits from a mere scientific furore, and nothing more. He was one of those who recognize the prints of a Father's hand on every leaf, and petal, and stone, and butterfly's wing. 'My Father made them all,' was his never-failing text; but from that joyful recognition of Almighty power and goodness he preached both to himself and others countless sermons on the wondrous beauty, the perfect finish, the marvellous adaptation of that Divine Father's work, scattered abroad with lavish hand, over all the face of Nature. And all things natural were to him types, so to speak, of things spiritual; the unfolding of a bud, the pomp of sunset skies, the first spring blossoms, the sunshine and the rain, the grandeur of the mountains, the fading of the flowers, the autumnal glory of the woods, were one and all to him emblems of the higher and better life. They had for him teachings deep and holy. I do not think anything was to him so mean or so common that he could not draw from it some lessons instinct with Heaven's own purity and brightness. His every-day life in all its bearings was one continuous sacrament."

"You must have found it a great change when you came to live with us; my ideas of religious training were so very unlike your father's. But about books--did your father let you read any you liked?"

"I think not; no, I am sure he did not, for once or twice, when books were lent to me by people in the town, he told me they were not quite suitable, and he sent them back to their owners. He always knew what books I read; I think I never should have thought of reading a book of any kind unless I had first shown it to him. I do not remember that he ever made a rule to this effect, but from the very first I seemed to understand that my library must be under his supervision."

"But he let you read tale-books?"

"O yes! one could not expect a child of ten to devote herself solely to history or biography. But it was not every kind of tale-book that I was permitted to read; nor was I allowed to make what we call 'fiction' my sole study; for my father used to tell me that the mind was like the body, and throve the better for varieties of food. I remember once having read three of Mrs. Sherwood's stories in succession, and a fourth volume being offered me, I was going, with great avidity, to commence its perusal forthwith, when my father interfered. 'Suppose,' he said, 'I were to give you cheesecakes, and fruit, and cowslip-wine at every meal, and take away the bread-and-milk, and vegetables, and meat, and plain puddings, that are your common diet, do you think it would be good for you?'

"'No,' I answered. I could see at once that it would be very bad; cheesecakes and fruit and wine for breakfast and dinner and supper would soon make me ill.

"'Still, I allow you to eat cheesecakes occasionally, and I like you to have a little fruit every day, and now and then you have a glass of cowslip wine.'

"'Yes,' I replied; 'but if I had cowslip wine instead of water and milk and tea, I should soon be tipsy.'

"'Do you not think your mind may get tipsy too?'

"I thought a little, and settled that it might.

"'Yes,' continued my father, 'I think it very likely that your mind might become very tipsy indeed if you read only exciting stories, and nothing else; and just as cakes and fruit might satisfy your appetite and please your palate, but would not certainly strengthen your constitution, or give you healthy muscle, or bone, or flesh, so light reading, however good of its kind, can never of itself make your mind strong, or your judgment clear, or add much to such stores of knowledge as I am anxious you should possess. So understand, I do not want you to nourish your mind on books of travels, and memoirs, and histories alone, any more than I want to make you eat beef and mutton and potatoes at every meal; but neither do I want you to read story-books so exclusively as to make you lose your appetite for more solid literature. When you are a little older you shall have a plan for your reading; you shall have a certain time for what we call light reading, and a certain time for the heavier books. There are some books, chiefly of the novel species, that I should never wish you to read; they would poison your mind, and they might slay your soul; just as some kinds of food might injure your health, and even shorten your life. As you grow up, your own instincts will tell you when books of this description come under your notice; shun them as you would shun a dish that you know to be poisoned.'"

My aunt was commenting on what I had told her, and wishing she had consulted her brother about the training of her own family, when Arabella came in from the library, or rather from a library, for she patronized a miserable little establishment, to which few, if any, visitors cared to subscribe. Her hands were full of books--old, dirty, disreputable-looking volumes.

"What have you there, Arabella?" asked her mother.

"The last volume of 'The Midnight Marriage,' and the last of 'The Spectral Bride,' and the two first volumes of 'Seduction,'" replied Arabella, coolly.

"Arabella," said my aunt, gravely, "I am sorry to displease you, but you cannot read those books in my house. You are, as you say, of age, and I have no legal authority over you; I cannot make you obey me, but I will be mistress of my own house, and in it I will have neither wine, spirits, nor immoral books such as these. Ellen, ring the bell, and John shall take them back again immediately; and then, Bella, we will go to the library, and try to find some novels that you may read, without injury to yourself or disgrace to me."

Towards the middle of October we returned to town, and my aunt immediately commenced the most vigorous preparations for my marriage. She seemed determined that I should have the most complete trousseau that money could furnish, and she bought and bought, and cut out, and gave orders, and kept her own maid and the housemaid so incessantly sewing on my behalf that I began to think it would be quite impossible to wear out all my new clothes within the term of my natural life; and I was rather afraid that when Marshall saw my luggage he would conclude that he had married a woman and her wardrobe; for where the wardrobe, both that in actual wear and that in reserve, could be bestowed in so modest a dwelling as I supposed I should inhabit, I could not imagines Then the house linen--all that, my aunt insisted on persistently, and she forbade Marshall, on pain of her everlasting displeasure, to buy a single duster, or a yard of towelling; and she, accustomed to the well-filled linen-chests of Thornycroft Hall, and quite unaccustomed to the simple ways of country pastors, insisted on providing such a stock as I suppose few country pastors' wives are burdened with. As week after week passed, and the piles in the spare-room accumulated, I could scarcely believe my own eyes; were they indeed all mine, those heaps of table-cloths, and dinner-napkins, and sheets, and pillow-cases, &c., &c., &c.? As I counted up the pillow-cases after marking them, I thought involuntarily of that nice fellow "Traddles," in Dickens's "David Copperfield," who, in contemplation of furnishing, bought a flower-stand and a tiny table; but dreaded the heavy furniture and the household linen as something ruinous, especially instancing the pillow-cases and the candle-boxes as being of the class that "mount up." Though, why pillow-cases should be worse items than table-napery or chamber-linen in general, I could not conceive; and what Mr. and Mrs. Traddles wanted with more than one candle-box at a time I am still at a loss to conjecture. But here was I, lucky creature, with pillow-cases, and bolster-cases too, and everything else that goes to fill a highly-respectable linen-chest, provided for me, and all of the best quality, and in the greatest profusion.

I told my aunt one day that t began to be quite distressed at the expenses she was incurring on my behalf, but she bade me be quiet, and remember that she was taking care of Marshall as well as of myself. "Did you know," She continued, "you will be very poor, so that it will be a good thing not to want any more house linen for the next five-and-twenty years, and not to have to buy any more under-clothing for yourself. You cannot tell what expenses may be coming on you; young people think that if they have enough to begin housekeeping with, that in quite sufficient; the chances are you will want more motley every year you hire; and poor ministers of every denomination, curates, and that kind, you know, never have less than from fourteen to eighteen children!"

"But, do you knew, aunt," I said, "I do not think we shall be so very poor. There is Marshall's own little property, of course--very little certainly, but still something; then his ministerial stipend, which is not very large, I confess; and then, the interest of my £2,000, which dear uncle and you have so kindly kept intact to this hour, and all these added together will make about £270 a-year; and if we cannot make ourselves comfortable on that we ought to be ashamed. Why, the Hearns had to do with less than half that sum, and they had five children! Even in a pecuniary sense, aunt, I think I am making quite as good a marriage as my father's daughter has a right to expect--and, after all, it is not money that makes the happiness."

"Certainly not," returned my aunt, with a heavy sigh; "but the want of necessary means is sometimes a very heavy trial. I do wish Marshall had more; I wish he had gone into the Church of England, and then one might have bought him a living perhaps. One can do nothing of that sort for a Dissenting minister."

"Happily, no, aunt. My father always had a great horror of that sale of 'livings,' as they are called. I would not have Marshall anything but what he is. Never fear; we shall do."

"Yes, I hope so; but, you see, things are so different with Marshall from what they might have been; if he had married Maria he would have had all that this Mr. Devereux now has. I wish--"

"Now, please, aunt, do not say you wish he had married Maria; for you cannot expect my sympathy. I am very glad he did not."

"So am I, child, now; for I cannot help loving Marshall, and I always respected him, even when he was a mere schoolboy. Maria would never have made him happy, and he had no love for her, not even a very strong cousinly regard. I saw that long before the engagement was broken off; I suspected it even at Pen Aber, where for the first time Marshall appeared in the character of lover. No! all things considered, I am not sorry that Marshall did not sacrifice himself. I was very angry at the time; but I see things so differently now. But I am very--very sorry that--"

"That what, aunt?"

"Nothing--nothing! O! Ellen, the past makes me very unhappy. If my children have disappointed me, I deserve it all. I deserve everything--and more than everything--that has come upon me!"

And again came over my aunt's face that strange cloud which of late had so often perplexed me. Such a look of hopeless misery--such a weary, saddened aspect--so much remorse--so much regret! I could not doubt but that some painful secret weighed heavily on her mind. There was something which had been done--and done nefariously-- which, now, it was too late to undo. Whatever it might be it evidently embittered her whole life.

The winter passed quietly away, and, on the whole, I was very happy; far happier than I had been even in the first days of our betrothal, which were sadly clouded by the hopeless state of Mrs. Cleaton. We stayed at home very much, and we took to reading aloud part of every day; and my aunt subscribed to Mudie's, and took care to have plenty of good and interesting works; and we asked Arabella to join us, and, after a little demur, she consented to do so, and actually brought down a banner-screen she had been working for the last three years, and settled herself to listen to the tale I was about to commence.

It was "Emilia Wyndham," which I had read before, but which my aunt and my cousin had never seen; and Arabella--who, at first, yawned and grumbled at such "wishy-washy conversation" as the first chapter gave us--became, in spite of herself, deeply interested, and extremely disgusted with the ill-tempered, selfish father, and the unnatural uncle. The next morning, she inquired, after breakfast, at what time we should be ready to begin the book again. That day, I asked her to take her turn in reading, and she acquiesced very graciously; and her interest grew to fascination, and she wanted to carry the volume off to her own room, when it was time to dress for dinner. But my aunt interfered, and said that it must be finished as it had been begun, for the benefit of the entire party! And so it was; and Arabella said she had never enjoyed a book so much in her life; and the banner-screen came very near completion.

It was finished a few days after, for she had become almost as much interested in her work as in the troubles and trials of the Danbys; but when quite completed and exultingly displayed, it was discovered that part of the grounding was sadly faded, while that newly achieved was of the most brilliant hue; also the gilt beads, worked in while I was yet learning my lessons in the school-room at Casterton, were much tarnished, and presented a strange contrast to those lately used; altogether the banner-screen looked patchworky, and would only have sold by candlelight, had it been exposed for sale in any charitable fancy-fair. But I overheard Arabella saying to her mamma's maid, "It doesn't look well after all, you see; this old grounding is dirty as well as faded, and these beads are quite black; it is not worth making up; mamma would never have it in any of the rooms, I know."

"La! Miss Ward!" said the abigail; "why not have it made up for your own room? You're always a-wanting a screen; you keep such fires, and you sit so close to them."

"No," returned Arabella; "I do not choose to disfigure my room with anything that is not as handsome as it might be. I tell you what I will do with it--I will give it to Miss Threlkeld; it shall be my wedding present; it will do very well for her. She is only going to marry a poor Dissenting minister, you know; Mr. Cleaton is nobody now. They will be glad to get any sort of a banner-screen, I dare say; though I am not sure that people in their position require such things at all. I wonder if they will have a drawing-room!"

"La! yes, Miss Ward; to be sure they will. Why, look at the lots of things your ma goes and buys for Miss Threlkeld. Every pretty and useful article as missis sees, it's my belief she buys It for her."

Arabella grunted, and said no more but of course I felt very much obliged to her for the gift she so generously contemplated.

And now the first signs of spring were apparent, even in the London squares. People had snowdrops and crocuses in their verandahs; hyacinths bloomed within doors; primulae cytisus and forward azaleas made our front drawing-room quite gay, and the days were visibly lengthening at both ends. We were to be married on the 20th of March, and now it was the last week in February, and we were busy accordingly. My aunt had indeed been most generous, most kind, most considerate--whether I should ever want any more dresses seemed at least problematical. But everything was in keeping with the position I was to occupy; good in texture, as good as money could buy, but neat, simple, and serviceable. Of course the embroidered gauzes, and the delicate flounced silks, which had made so great a show in my married cousin's wonderful trousseaux, would have been quite out of keeping in the quiet little home awaiting me over the Yorkshire hills. A minister's wife does not want, and ought not to want, to array herself in finery that one only looks for in ball-rooms, and opera-boxes, and fashionable promenades. I meant to help my husband in his work, to look after the schools, and visit the sick, and make myself generally useful in the peculiar provinces which, as pastor's wife, would naturally fall to my share. And how inconsistent it would be to go trailing my fashionable furbelowed dresses over quarried floors, or squeezing my voluminous skirts up steep, narrow stair-ways, or warning my Sunday classes against a love of finery, whilst I displayed on my own head as many artificial flowers as would have clothed a poor child, or fed a starving family for several days, could they only be turned into their actual value as current coin of the realm. So I had fine, soft, French merinos, pretty grey alpacas, several rich silks not too gay, and very simply made, and abundance of choice prints, and neat but elegant muslins ready for summer wear, and others equally nice and good; but all was quiet, without being dull--for I did not confine myself to greys, and drabs, and browns, since I imagine colours were made for our use--at discretion. All was suitable, and becoming my position as a Christian gentlewoman, and the wife of a Christian minister.

It came to the last day in February, and the wedding-dress was being made, and all my tablecloths were hemmed, and the banner-screen was gone to be made up, though no direct hint as to its destination had I yet received. I made up my mind to accept it, for I was still endeavouring to conciliate Arabella. I think the extreme violence of her enmity towards me had expended itself in her revenge, and finally effervesced in the destruction of the unfortunate pledge-card, for she seemed quite inclined to tolerate me, and only insulted and tried to provoke me on very rare and unfrequent occasions. We were all three lingering over a late luncheon when the post came in. There was the letter I had expected from Marshall, and another of foreign appearance, which I knew very well to be from Julia. She had written to me constantly during the two first months of her marriage, telling me of her extreme happiness, and of Horace's increasing devotion, describing to me the glorious scenery through which she had been travelling, and longing for my presence as for the only thing left for her to wish. Then the correspondence slackened, but still I heard at regular intervals, and I fancied--it might be only fancy--that she was not quite so blissfully content as she had been a few weeks before. But during the depth of the winter she never wrote at all, and from the beginning of December till the end of January we knew nothing of her movements, and only supposed that, according to arrangement, Mr. and Mrs. Stansfield had taken up their residence in Rome.

Then came a short, constrained letter, speaking only of the gay society with which they were surrounded; but not a word about her husband, not a word about the extreme felicity on which she had commented so fully and so freely in the early weeks of her married life. The very handwriting seemed changed; it was weak and slovenly; to my mind it seemed to indicate weariness and disappointment in the writer. Again a month had elapsed, and now I opened my letter. It ran thus:--

"Dear, dearest Ellen--I am in great grief, and very ill: will you not come to me? Since October I have been the most wretched creature on the face of the earth. I never meant to let you or anyone in the world know, I meant to keep say wretchedness in my own heart, for how can a wife speak evil of her own husband? and I thought him so good, so noble, so grand I--I worshipped him, and wondered how it was that I should be singled out from all other women, to be his chosen one, his bride! You warned me, Nellie--you warned me; and I was vexed with you--I was angry, because I saw you did not trust him. But you were right, he is not to be trusted. Nellie, did you ever gather a choice flower and wear it in your bosom, and prize it above all other flowers for a little time--only a little time? And then, ere it withered, because you were tired of it, or because you saw another blossom still fairer in your eyes, cast away the one you had plucked before, leaving it to die unheeded and uncared-for? No! Nellie; I believe you would not so serve even a poor senseless flower, that cannot grieve or suffer; but this is what my husband has been doing for the last ten years. All, all has been told me; I was not the first to yield to his fascinations, his pathway through life seems strewn with broken hearts and blighted names, for he does not know what honour and truth are. I will tell you more when you come, Nellie, for you will come--will you not, dear, for the sake of your own deserted Julia, for the sake of my own dear, dead father? I am so ill, sometimes I think I am dying; and, indeed, if only I were a Christian, I would rather die. Why should I care to live; all is hollow, empty, false! Better--ten thousand times--be truly widowed than be left as I am, a deceived, betrayed, forsaken creature; for he is gone, Ellen. Yes! my husband has left me now for four weeks, and not till yesterday did I learn where he was, or why he went. O! what have I done that such misery should come upon me? If I were not so ill and weak, I would come home at once; but something tells me I shall never, never see England again. O! come at once, Nellie; I want you. I want you, as I never wanted you before, as I never thought I should want any one, save the one being who was to be to me my world, my second self. I shall count the hours till I think you can arrive." Then followed some instructions respecting the journey, and the letter closed.

As I read, I felt myself grow pale and cold; my hands trembled, and my thoughts were confused. It was like a bad dream, in which one struggles to awake. And yet I could not be surprised; it was only what I had feared might come to pass, though not so soon; O! not so soon! Had not I been told that Horace Stansfield never knew his own mind six months together; that he was a creature of impulse, and always accustomed to obey the dictates of impulse without the slightest regard to duty or principle? That he never refrained from any course simply because he knew it to be wrong. That if be had any strong inclination to commit the blackest of crimes, he would commit them without much, if any, hesitation.

Yes, all this I bad been told by one whom, as I afterwards found, knew him most thoroughly. All this I had disclosed to my aunt, and some of it had been repeated to Julia; but she had refused to listen, and she had run away in a passion of tears and anger. Poor child! she was in the bands of an arch-deceiver.

My aunt, who had watched my countenance, now entreated to be told what was the matter; and without a word, for I could not speak, I gave her the letter. As she read, her tears flowed, and her consternation was extreme; and even Arabella laid down her knife and fork, and seemed lost in painful musing.

"Ah!" said my aunt, at last, with inexpressible melancholy and bitterness: "Ah! you see she does not turn to her mother--she says no word about me; she does not ask me to come to her! But no wonder, no wonder! I deserve it."

"Of course I must go, aunt?"

"How can you, child, when you are to be married on Tuesday fortnight? What would Marshall say? You could not go to Italy and come back again in less than three weeks."

"No; I suppose the wedding would have to be put off, for it would not be merely going there and back; Julia is ill, you see, and it is impossible to say how long I might be detained; I should not return without her."

"And are you willing to postpone your marriage?"

"It is a most unlucky thing to put off a wedding day," said Arabella, in a solemn voice; "the probability is, that if you are not married on the 20th, you will never be married at all."

"I must risk it, however," I replied. "I know very well that, if Marshall were here, he would say 'Go!' How can I possibly refuse Julia when she turns to me in this miserable extremity?"

"Suppose," said Mrs. Ward, "we were to hasten the marriage, and then you could take the journey as your wedding tour. You had better write to Marshall by this post."

"I will do so; but, aunt, what you propose cannot be. Marshall could not leave his congregation again for any length of time; he purposed being absent two Sundays only. I shall wait only till I have his answer to set out."

"But you cannot travel by yourself, Ellen. Marshall will never permit it; neither will I. If only Julia had said one word about me--if only she had seemed to glance at me for one little mite of comfort, I would have gone with you. But as it is, I cannot go; I feel sure she does not desire my presence."

I thought that very probable; and, considering the old regime of Thornycroft Hall, and Julia's dread of her mother, and her ignorance of the singular change which the last few months had effected in Mrs. Ward's character and manner, it was not natural that she should turn for sympathy to that source which had always, though unwittingly, repelled her from the days of her earliest childhood.

But here was a question of serious difficulty. If Mrs. Ward could not, or would not, accompany me, who else would be likely to take a journey on my account? Suddenly a thought struck me. "If I could take West with me, aunt, that would do."

"Yes, it would. I will go and talk to her at once. Write your letter while I am away."

West, I must tell you, was an old servant, who had nursed Maria and the baby-boys before her; then she had married the head gardener, and gone to live at the lodge, and, her husband dying shortly before the commencement of my uncle's illness, she had returned to the hall as a sort of supernumerary upper-servant; and now, in our new London establishment, acted as housekeeper and confidential domestic. She was a clever, robust woman of fifty-five, very kind and motherly, and of extremely respectable appearance. If she would consent to take the journey, I was sure we could manage very well; for I was no helpless, fine young lady, afraid to travel a dozen miles in a public conveyance without male protection. And Mrs. West was "a woman of faculty," and always knew what she was about, and seemed equal to any emergency.

She did consent right willingly, and so that difficulty was removed. As soon as possible I had a letter from Marshall. It was not in human nature not to be sadly disappointed; but he bade me go, only I was not to stay one day longer than was absolutely necessary; and if I were detained beyond the month, he would, if able, come himself to escort us home. So now I had only to prepare for my journey, and we puzzled over Murray and Bradshaw till we were fairly stupefied.

The unfinished wedding-dress was carefully folded away, and all my new things were stowed in drawers and cupboards, while my old travelling trunk, that had seen Casterton and Kennington, was brought out and hastily packed, for we were to start from London Bridge early next morning.

And, as I locked my trunk, and proceeded to fill my travelling-bag, I felt again like one in a miserable dream, hoping that he dreams, and longing to awake, and find he has disquieted himself about that which never really existed. Once or twice I wondered whether now Marshall had not the stronger claim; but always when I mused thus I seemed to hear again my uncle's dying words--"You will always be Julia's friend, Nellie?" And once more I saw the pale, calm face, with its mild grey eyes, and its sweet smile, and I remembered all the kindness and goodness I had received from that dear uncle from the day I first saw him to the last hour of his life. And I had promised that I would be Julia's friend; and now the time was come, at any self-sacrifice, to redeem the pledge.

And the morning came, cold, wild, and sleety; and my aunt accompanied us to London Bridge, where we were to find the steamer which in a few hours would carry us over to France. We were to make our way immediately to Marseilles, and then again take steamer to Genoa, where we knew we should find a vessel for the port of Civita Vecchia.

For several weeks after my arrival Julia improved, and I began to hope that Dr. Leonardo was mistaken, and that she would be restored to us for some years at least, if not for the ordinary term of life. Ah! I knew nothing of the delusive character of her most fatal malady; I did not then know how consumption to the very last deceives its victims; and so I could hope in the renewed energy of her tone, in her brief seasons of recovered spirits, and even in the soft crimson flush which sometimes dyed her hollow cheeks, and gave to her large dark eyes, a lustre most unnatural, but beautiful to behold. We did not remain in Rome; Julia had taken a dislike to the place, and fancied, besides, that she would be better in another air; so early in April we left the Eternal City, with its ancient palaces and fallen glories, for a small village a little beyond Naples. She bore the journey very well, and was only moderately fatigued, and seemed pleased and even delighted with the situation of the Villa Terrassina, where we had taken up our abode. Before us lay the beautiful Bay of Naples, with its "blue isles and snowy mountains." We could see

"the deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple sea-weeds strown,
And see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown."

And the great city itself, fair and proud, was there in "the purple noon's transparent light;" and there, nearer at hand, were the olive groves, and the thickets of myrtle, and the groups of waving ilex; and there, Vesuvius itself, with the smiling gardens and vineyards at its base, reposing as securely as if that grey, smoking crater on the heights above had never sent forth its showers of ashes and its awful streams of liquid fire, scattering death and desolation in their course. And when evening came, and the ruddy glow at the summit of the mountain was clearly discernible, we marvelled yet more at the temerity of those who built up their homes and planted their vineyards on that fair but treacherous soil. Never before had I realized what "living on a volcano" was like; I knew now, and I thought, too, how many of us were living in the self-same, nay, in more awful peril than these Italians, who might gather in many a vintage, and spend many a year securely in their flower-wreathed homes, ere the terrible lava and the earthquake should warn them of the impending catastrophe, and drive them from their pleasant bowers, or sweep them swiftly away to inevitable death. Ah! who has not at some time or other planted a vineyard because of the genial air and the fruitful soil, regardless of the fiery gulfs that yawned below, and of the note of warning that in the end must come desolation and destruction? All who build on this world's crumbling foundations build on a mere crusted abyss, into whose fearful depths they may be at any time irremediably plunged. Let worldlings and materialists say what they will, let them strive as they may to convince themselves of the reality of that which, after all, they uneasily apprehend to be unreal and untrue, no happiness either for this life or the next can abide, save that which is built on the One Foundation, the Rock immovable and immutable from all eternity.

Towards the end of the month Julia's health again rapidly declined, her nights were restless, her pulse was quick and uneven, her cough incessant, and her whole system relaxed and languid. I proposed sending for Mrs. Ward.

"No, no!" she replied; "I cannot have mamma here. Even her sympathy would drive me wild; she would ask me innumerable questions, and she would say dreadful things about Horace. I could not bear that: though I am nothing to him now, I have not ceased to love him; he is my own husband through everything, and if you have shown me one kindness more appreciable than another, Ellen, it is that you have never tortured me with any expression of your opinion concerning him. I know what that opinion must be; still, you have had the delicacy to withhold it. No, I cannot send for mamma."

"But, dearest, you do not know how much your mamma is altered. I can hardly describe to you the kindness, the tender consideration I received from her when I was almost broken-hearted at the idea of Marshall's unworthiness. My own mother could not have soothed and comforted me with more loving gentleness. Poor aunt sees the mistakes of her earlier years: she confessed her errors, and that is much, very much. She would hasten to you, the moment you expressed the slightest desire to see her."

"But, Ellen, I really do not care about seeing her. In childhood and in youth I never could turn to her for sympathy, and now it is too late."

"But she is your mother, Julia. Duty ought to draw you towards her, even if inclination do not."

"I do not see that. I cannot shake off the old habit, the old instinct that makes me wishful to shield from her observation all that most nearly concerns me. She never understood me; she never understood one of her children. When I was a little child I would have loved her dearly if she would have let me; but her harshness, her caprice, her temper, her tyranny, all estranged me. She repelled my affection in days gone by; she has no right to it now."

"O Julia! O my darling! if the little one that God will soon send you should one day speak so of its mother, could you bear it?"

"No, no!" and she melted into tears. "No, when I think of my baby my heart grows tender towards my mother; there must have been a time when she felt as I do now, about the little life that would spring from her own. Poor mamma, and you say she is very sorry and very unhappy; but, if she wished to come to me, would she not propose it herself?"

"If you had mentioned her name in your letter, if you had breathed one word that evinced a yearning for her care and her sympathy, she would have accompanied me. That her children are alienated is now one of her greatest griefs. Think, Julia, if, twenty years hence, your little child, grown up to manhood or womanhood, should come to regard you with indifference and almost aversion--if your son should despise you, or your daughter shrink from you?"

"Don't, don't, Nellie! But I shall never live to train my child; if I might, it should love me dearly, it should, from the very first dawn of perception, look upon me as its most loving and its wisest friend, for I would enter into all its little troubles and all its little joys; I would never frighten it with harsh words; I would never repel it with grave, sour looks; my mother's mistakes should not be rehearsed by her daughter. Above all, I would never train it as I was trained, to deceit and falsehood."

"Then you will let me write to aunt?"

"Do you really very much wish it, Nellie?"

"Very much! I wish it for many reasons, Julia; who so fit as your mother to be with you now? You need something more than sympathy and tender nursing, you need the wisdom and experience which I have not. Your Neapolitan nurse seems, in her way, to be a sensible, kind-hearted woman, but no one, in such circumstances, can be like a mother--a mother, too, who is longing to be of service to her child, who needs but a word to fly to her side."

"Then say the word; I suppose it is right; the letter can go to-morrow."

Ah, to-morrow! How lightly we say the word, knowing not what of good or evil it may bring forth. The morrow came with its warmth and loveliness, and its wealth of sunshine and flowers, but Julia lay white and unconscious on her bed, with, as it seemed, scarce an hour between her and the coming eternity. The little one that she had so yearned to fold in her empty weary arms had scarcely breathed the air of this lower world; and there it lay, a tiny gathered bud, never to expand on earth, but transplanted at once to a purer atmosphere and a fairer clime, where flowers never wither, where, under the shadow of the Tree of Life itself, the tenderest blossoms are nurtured into perennial bloom and beauty. Happy little one! taken at once from the evil to come, "a lamb untasked, untried," gathered into the safe fold of the Heavenly Shepherd; called from the verge of the battle-field to wear the victor's crown; snatched from the untried road, from the burden, the toil, and the heat of the day, to enter into rest; even the rest of Christ's own redeemed.

He fought the fight for thee,
He won the victory,
And thou art sanctified."

Happy, thrice happy little babe, with thy one short hour of earth's dole and pain, and thy eternity of bliss, unspeakable and unchanging.

But for her, the young mother, whose life seemed ebbing away--like a broken lily she lay on that fair April morning, her dark eyes closed, it might be to open no more on the things of time, the long black lashes sweeping the poor faded cheek that was nearly as white as the pillow it pressed, and the pale lips still and mute, as though Death himself had placed on them his final signet. Could it be that she would awake no more from that trance-like rest, that was half sleep, half insensibility and exhaustion? Could it be that her little span of probation was over--that already earthly life for her was over and done--that the sands of mortal existence were at their last swift ebb--the silver cord half-loosed, and the golden bowl half-shattered, and ready to mingle with the dust below. It was agony to think so, and yet hope seemed vain; I could only pray, "O my God! not yet, not yet! Take her not away, till she has found peace in Thee; till she has seen Thy smile and heard Thy voice, saying, 'Daughter, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.'"

And my petition was heard and answered; Julia did not, as we feared, and as her physicians expected, die immediately after the birth of her little daughter; for some days she lingered as it were on the confines of either world, and then she suddenly revived, and it appeared likely that for the present the imminent danger was over. "Is there hope?" I asked of the chief physician, when he told me that all apprehensions of immediate dissolution might be dismissed. He shook his head emphatically, and replied, "No, a few weeks at the utmost must terminate the Signora's suffering. Her malady is incurable; it is what you English call consumption, decline--your island, with all its blessings, has this great bane. She came here with the seeds of disease in her constitution, they were already springing into vitality; and our soft, genial clime may prolong yet a little longer, but cannot save her life." But, so far as human skill and science could foreknow, a few weeks yet remained. O, incalculable blessing! Surely now, my darling would turn from her idols of clay, to seek her peace in Him, in whom alone the sin-sick, world-wearied soul can find safe repose.

Mrs. Ward quickly responded to my call, but, for several days after her arrival, Julia was so very ill, and her life so clearly hanging upon so slight a thread, that it was deemed only prudent to delay their meeting. For days only the Neapolitan nurse, West, and myself were allowed to enter the room. At length, however, there was a decided change for the better, and the mother and daughter met, and Julia, at the first glance, melted towards her only surviving parent, and seemed content to find her last earthly resting-place on the bosom that had received her in her earliest infancy. That one hour of maternity had shown her the indissoluble tie between mother and child. That little faint cry that greeted her raptured ears, and thrilled all her sinking pulses ere she lapsed into the long death-like trance that had alarmed us so much, awakened within her that mysterious instinct of love unspeakable that mothers only know. And with that strange new-born mother-love came also the yearning for her who, years ago, had held her a helpless tiny baby in her circling arms; and the very name of mother became sweet and sacred. What if they had misapprehended each other so long? What if both had erred, and been alienated? They were mother and child still, and nothing could destroy that most holy and tender relationship.

And so Julia Stansfield wept almost happy tears on her mother's bosom, and from that hour her mother scarcely left her side; she watched over her day and night, half jealous even of my care and love, which the dear girl still clung to, and prized so well. But for the end, ever impending and so near at hand, it would have been a season of great peace and rest; and hour by hour that dread moment was noiselessly borne towards us, and we knew that in a little, a very little time, all would be over, and only lifeless clay remain to us of our once beautiful, gay, light-hearted Julia.

One evening, as Mrs. Ward and I sat at work, watching the graceful, bird-like skiffs on the blue bay, with the sunshine glistening on their snowy sails, that, like white wings, spread over the azure waters, and the smiling gardens and vineyards at the foot of the treacherous mountains, and the fairy islets afar off, Julia said to me,--

"Nellie, come here; you must write to my husband, and bid him come back. I must see him again! I cannot die till I have seen his face once more! if you direct to Syracuse, it will be sure to find him."

Of course I would write without fail, but I did not tell her that twice already I had written to Horace Stansfield, giving full particulars of his wife's hopeless state, and informing him of the birth of his child, and no answer had I received to either communication. My promise seemed to soothe her, and then she asked me to read to her.

"What shall I read?" I asked, with my hand on the Bible that lay beside me.

"Anything," she replied, languidly; "you know best what will suit me. Nellie, I wish I had hearkened to you months and months ago. Ah! if I had not left the most important matters till now! I thought, if ever I knew that I was dying, it would be so very easy to turn to God--so simple a thing to become a Christian, and dismiss one's fears at once and for ever. But ah! no, it is difficult--very difficult! What shall I do? Must I Be lost?"

Ah! the agony of her trembling tones--the wild, sad glance of her still lovely eyes. Never before, I think, had I quite realized the terrible danger, the suicidal folly, the utter madness of putting off to the last the great, the awfully great question of one's eternal salvation! The poor frail body racked with pain and sinking under its weakness; the mind, perhaps, weak and wandering--the soul dismayed at the gathering and palpable darkness--how can the failing heart find comfort?--how the shrinking spirit struggle with the doubts, the temptations, and the anguish that circle round the couch of the expiring sinner?

Now!--now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation! Only now--to-day--this hour--this moment!--the next may be too late! Never again may Jesus say to you, who read these pages--"Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden." Never again may His blessed Spirit strive with you. Never again may the Divine call, the gracious invitation be sounded in your ears: "Come now, and let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

God says: "To-day, if ye will hear my voice, harden not your heart." A little further on, in the same holy page, we read of some of whom He swore, in His wrath, that they should not enter into His rest.

To that rest they had been called, nay, they had been allured--the way had been made plain--help and strength and guidance had been proffered--but all in vain! all in vain! They did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of His counsel or of His ways they loved the world and its vanities; they followed idols, and said, "After them will we go." And so, at last, the gracious Spirit ceased to strive with them, and they entered never into that blessed rest that remaineth for the people of God--for the children of the kingdom--who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

To all of you, who are not at peace, not at rest, this rest, this peace is offered--rest in Christ! peace with God! That rest includes all others: rest from the sense of guilt--rest from earthly weariness and perplexity--rest in the awful hour of nature's dissolution--and rest at last in the world beyond the gave, where the dead in Christ cease from their labours, and in His presence find their fulness of joy and their pleasure for evermore. Peace with God is all that one really needs; it takes in all else. It means blessing, both spiritual and temporal; it means all good for this life, and for that which is to come--all comfort, all happiness, all glory, now and eternally.

But to return to my story:--I thought one moment, and then I began to read the eighth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, "that blessed no-condemnation chapter," as a departed saint once called it. Julia listened quietly till I had read the last verse, and then, opening her mournful, dark eyes, she looked up wistfully, and repeated--

"'Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Nellie, how I wish I knew what it is to be in Christ Jesus!"

"It is quite simple, dearest. Just take the mercy, the pardon that is offered; you have nothing to give in return. Christ asks nothing, it is a free pardon, an unpurchased mercy; you can have it without money and without price. Like the Israelites of old, who were bidden to look to the brazen serpent; you have only to look to Christ and live for evermore."

"It seems so small a thing, to look--to take."

"The greatest thing in the world, if you look in faith believing that the sight of the Sacrifice can take all your sins away."

"But I have known God's truth so long; ever since I was a little child I knew quite well the plan of salvation. I knew that I was a lost and fallen sinner, that in Christ alone could I find pardon and peace; and I meant to go to Him some day--to go to Him and say, 'Lord, here is my heart; cleanse it from all its sin; make it the habitation of Thy Holy Spirit, and teach me to live to Thy glory.' But I put it off till a more convenient season; day after day, a voice within said, now is the time, now Christ says, 'My daughter, give me thy heart.' But still I tarried.

"How oft my guardian angel gently cried,
'Soul, from thy casement look, and thou shalt see
How He persists to knock and wait for thee;'
And O! how often to that voice of sorrow,
'To-morrow we will open,' I replied,
And when the morrow came, I answered still--To-morrow."

"But now will you hear to-day, this very hour? Christ calls you once more; He cannot let you die eternally; His arms are stretched out towards you; His voice entreats you--'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand; he that believeth on the Son hash everlasting life.'"

"I do believe, Nellie; but that does not help me. I believe that Jesus Christ died for sinners, and that lie is able and willing to save all who come to Him, but I cannot feel that He died for me--for me, as an individual."

"Then you believe only with the intellect, and not with the heart. Have you asked Christ to give you peace?"

"O, yes, but a thousand times He has spoken to me and I have disregarded Him, and now is it wonderful that He should turn a deaf ear to my prayer?"

"If lie did so it would be truly marvellous; but it is not so, it cannot be so; you have but to cling to Him, to hold fast to His cross, for He never spurned any, and at the foot of His cross none ever perished. Do you not remember the prodigal, who, having wasted all, returned to his father, saying, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Did the father keep him long without, or say that he was too deeply offended? No; he saw him a long way off, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. So our Heavenly Father sees afar off all who are coming to Him in sincerity and humility of heart, and He waits to be gracious, to bring back that which was lost, and to heal that which was sick and wounded even unto death."

And then I told her something of my own experience, how long I had sought to build up a righteousness of my own, how I had tried to do something to attain to some fancied standard, to make myself worthy of Christ's regard, till that ever blessed Sabbath evening when I heard those words--

"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come."

"Just say that hymn all through," she said, faintly. "If I ever come at all, it must be 'just as I am,' weak, defiled, ungrateful, and miserable." When I had finished she repeated twice or thrice, in a whisper--

"Thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down.

We had been alone during this conversation, but now my aunt returned and we talked no more; indeed, Julia was too much exhausted for farther converse, so I continued reading hymns from a MS. book of my own, in which I had copied such as specially pleased me. Among them was this of McCheyne--

"When this passing world is done,
When has sunk you radiant sun,
When I stand with Christ on high,
Looking o'er life's history,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.

"When I stand before the throne,
Dressed in beauty not my own;
When I see Thee as Thou art,
Love thee with unsinning hearse
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.

"Now on earth, as through a glass,
Darkly let Thy glory pass;
Make forgiveness feel so sweet,
Make Thy Spirit's help so meet,
E'en on earth, Lord, make me know
Something of the debt I owe."

An hour after, when I was leaving Julia for the night, she took my hand and said, "They who are forgiven most should love most, is it not so? I shall take that for my prayer--'Make me know something of the debt I owe.'"

"Yes," I said, "we must be content 'to owe' throughout eternity; but it is sweet to owe all to One whom we love with undivided heart."

"I suppose so," she replied, and again and again I heard her murmuring to herself, "how much I owe! how much I owe!"

Several days passed away; my letter to Horace Stansfield had been written and posted, and we were beginning to hope for the possibility of an answer. Meanwhile, Julia slowly but decidedly declined, and it soon became evident that, if her recreant husband returned not speedily, he would never in this world meet the wife whom he had so basely and cruelly deserted. I think it was on the fourth day after the despatch of my letter that Mrs. Ward came to me, as I sat in my own room writing to Marshall, to say that Julia wanted to talk with me a little, while she herself went to take a walk on the rock-terraces immediately below the villa.

I found Julia lying very quietly on her couch, which was placed near the open window, for the heat was oppressive, and the breath of flowers from the shaded balcony and the cool breezes from the bay were most grateful to the poor, wasted invalid. She smiled as I entered, and bade me bring my chair close to her sofa, for she had something particular to tell me. But first she raised herself and looked out on the beautiful bay and the fair city with its marble walls, and the olive-woods and the cypresses and ilexes on the slopes near at hand. It was very fair, till serenely reposing beneath a cloudless sky, in the clear southern air, and steeped in the brilliant sunshine--earth and sky, sea and mountain, seemed joining in one exultant jubilee on that exquisite May morning beneath that glorious Italian heaven.

"Is it not lovely?" she said, calmly. "Nellie, is your own dear 'North Countrie' half as fair as this?"

"It is so different," I said, "that one cannot fairly institute a comparison. Certainly, my mountain-land can never boast of this pure, transparent atmosphere, nor of these floods of sunshine; we have no orange-groves and myrtle-bowers, no rustling olive-woods, no grape-gatherings; but we have 'the everlasting hills,' stedfast, solemn, and kingly; we have our own flashing, sweeping streams, our deep wooded ravines, our flowery vales; and last, but not least, our purple and golden mists, that etherealize and spiritualize our mountain scenery, and give to it a strange, celestial beauty, conceivable only by those who have witnessed it, and appreciable only by those who, like myself, have lived under the shadow of those lofty heights through winter snow and summer sunshine."

"So many times," she continued, "since we came here, both before my dear baby was born and since, I have looked out on that blue, flashing sea, and repeated to myself those lines of Shelley's--poor, tempest-tossed Shelley!"

"What lines?" I asked. "I know nothing of Shelley, save his 'Ode to the Skylark;' I like that; it is exquisite poetry; its rhythm reminds one of the music of winds and waves and deep-toned bells. Still, I like Wordsworth's 'Skylark' better:

'Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.'

"Kindred points, indeed," she returned quietly. "It will be so sweet for you, Nellie, to have an earthly home, that will be to you a type of that better and eternal home, towards which you are travelling day by day, But the lines that I spoke of had nothing to do with home and its sweet rest; they were just what Shelley felt, I know--poor Shelley. Some one showed me the spot where Byron and Trelawney burned his remains, by the Gulf of Spezzia, according to the funeral customs of antiquity. They poured frankincense and wine on the pile, you know; and for leagues round people watched that strange, beautiful fire rising up into the quiet, purple night. And that makes one think of poor 'L. E. L.' It is she who says so touchingly,

'So kindles on the funeral-pyre,
The flame by perfume shed:
How few remember that sweet fire
Is rising o'er the dead!
And clouds grow crimson with the glow
Of the poor human dust below.'

Nellie, how is it that these sons and daughters of song-- these beings gifted with souls so lofty, genius so unquestionable, hearts so tender and so passionate, should, while they make such melody for the world, suffer themselves so much and so intense a misery? How is it that they live a life of loneliness and regret, and die prematurely and mournfully--I had almost said hopelessly?"

"Genius, like beauty, is a precious gift, but a far more perilous gift than mere external loveliness. I think, dear, that any great gift, if it be not sanctified, improved for the benefit of others, for the glory of God, must become a curse instead of a blessing, and bring not joy but sorrow to its possessor. Genius--generally, if not always, allied to the finer nature and the noblest types of humanity--only makes the heart more sensitive, the spirit more enthusiastic, the power of loving and hating, of rejoicing and suffering more intense; and if that heart, that nature, that spirit so endowed, have its portion only in this world, it is sure to be tortured with a sense of failure, and loss, and bitter disappointment. Julia, every day that I live shows me the utter impossibility of anything deserving the name of happiness, when the soul is not at peace with God, and united to Christ in living, indissoluble bonds."

"O! you are right," she returned. "Tell every one that I found it so! All the wealth and rank and beauty in the world, nay, all the love that is not sanctified by the higher and better love, only dazzles for a little while, and tempts one to fill one's hands with seeming gold that turns to dross in the grasping! That poor Shelley and poor Byron and others, they were unhappy, restless, and what the world calls ill-fated, because they were not Christians. But I am so rambling all this time. I have never repeated to you the lines that I have said to myself at least a hundred times since we came to Villa Terrasina--

'Yet now despair itself is mild,
E'en as the winds and waters are,
I could lie down like a tired child
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.'

Yes! I have said those lines to myself more times than I can count; and when I was too ill to raise my head, or to open my eyes, I used to fancy I heard the waves rising and falling like the mingled music of a lullaby and a requiem. And I used to feel them too."

There was an emphasis on the last words that told me how thoroughly she was speaking in the past tense. "And you do not feel them now?" I asked anxiously.

"No, no!" she cried fervently, her whole face lighting up, and the glow coming back with a strange, sad beauty to her faded cheek. "No, Nellie, that was what I wanted to tell you; all those feelings that were of the earth, earthy, are gone; I know now something, but not all, of how much I owe! Soon I shall know the full sum of that wondrous debt."

"Thank God thank God! How did it all come? How did you find peace?"

"I cannot tell; it came as soon as ever I felt I had nothing wherewith to meet my Lord's requirements. As soon as over I felt that I could not pay one iota of the mighty debt, as soon as ever I saw myself quite helpless and forlorn, as soon as ever I could say, 'Just as I am, O Lamb of God, I come to Thee,' the darkness rolled away, the mists, the doubts, the fears all vanished, and I saw Jesus. Yes, Nellie; I saw Him in all His love, in all His beauty, in all His omnipotence; and I knew Him for my Saviour, my Lord, and my King! It was in the night, or rather the early morning, for such lovely pale-pink clouds were floating round the promontory yonder, and there was a streak of rosy light straight across the bay; mamma was fast asleep, and I was glad, for I wanted to be quite alone--and yet not alone, for I felt then that I was a child in my Father's arms, and I fancied, too, that dear papa must be near me, rejoicing over my joy, my new-born happiness; for you know there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. And if the angels, the unfallen, are glad, why not the redeemed, the saints departed, who know better than angel or archangel the sinner's lost estate and the Saviour's marvellous love? And I could have cried out, had I any strength--

"Just as I am--thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down,
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone
O Lamb of God, I come."

But Christ can hear the unuttered sigh, and the mute thanksgiving, as well as the anthems of the white-robed throng around the throne; 'we have not an High Priest who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities.' Ah, Nellie dear; are you not glad? You and I are one now, as we never were before."

"Yes, darling, and one for ever. There is no true parting between those who are one in Christ. O, the incalculable gain, even here on earth, of being united to Christ in a living faith; nothing can really separate us from each other; for if death cannot separate us from Christ, how can it separate those who are joined to Him, and in Him with each other? Death has no power, or only a limited power, over the believer; he may change, but he cannot destroy the 'communion of saints.'"

"And now," said Mrs. Stansfield, feebly folding her poor thin fingers, "now, Nellie, I can die; it is so good of God to take such a poor, weak creature as I am safe home at once. I am just like a bird with a broken wing, that can never fly any more; I am forgiven; I am taken into Christ's Church; I shall not be left alone to traverse the dark valley of the shadow of death. All is well. Only, Nellie, if it were God's will, I would live just a little longer to see my husband. I have no bitterness now in my heart towards him; I forgive him fully and freely, even as I have been forgiven; but I want to see him, to speak to him, to tell him of his great danger, of the end that must come sooner or later. Perhaps he will listen to one who is standing between two worlds, one who would spend her last breath in prayer for him. Nellie, when do you think he will come?"

"Nay, dear, how can I tell? Perhaps he is not at Syracuse, and the letter may have to be sent hither and thither before it reaches him."

"I must be patient," she said, wistfully; "it is all the sorrow I have now. But he must come soon, if he and I are to clasp hands on this side the grave, for if he delay, there is one approaching who tarries for no man; a very, very little longer, Nellie, and I shall be at rest."

"What if you were to send a special messenger to him, Julia? It is so long since you heard of him, that it is quite possible he is not in the island at all; you said there was some mention of Malta?"

"Yes, but that was before this journey was projected, he and I were to go there together. But Nellie, that is a good idea; why did it never strike us before? Of course, I can send a messenger; the only difficulty will be to find a trustworthy person; you see, we know nobody hero."

"Agneta, your nurse, will be sure to tell us of some one in whom we may confide. I think she is faithful and sincere."

"I think so too; we will ask her; there is no time to be lost."

I went at once to Agneta and told her what I wanted. I explained that Mr. Stansfield had evidently left Syracuse, as we received no answers to the letters we despatched to him; and that it was imperative that he should be at once found and communicated with, since he probably was unaware of the Signora's danger, and certainly could have no idea--if our letters really had miscarried--that he would return too late, if he came not immediately and with the greatest speed. Agneta at once proposed her daughter's husband; "for," said she, "he may be trusted to the end of the world. What he has to do he does well and quickly, and he never gives up; he is just the man for the Signora's errand! Ever since he was a boy, people have called him Damiano il Buono; and that was why I gave him my eldest child, my Benedetta, who is good too, and very beautiful, and so religious! she has a shrine for the Madonna in her little cottage down there at Gaetina; and she dresses it every morning with the fairest flowers and the finest lace she can afford; and every evening she lights before it two waxen tapers that have been blessed by the Frati of the convent on the heights yonder. O! she is a good, pious girl, my Benedetta, and worthy of her husband the good Damiano."

Next morning Damiano came up, and professed himself willing to undertake the task; so I instructed him as to how he should proceed on his mission, and towards evening he departed, promising me that he would not see my face again till he brought tidings of the Signore or accompanied him back to Villa Terrasina. Julia seemed soothed and contented when her messenger was fairly on his way; and even Agneta's frequent assurances that her excellent Damiano would certainly bring back the Signore very quickly, seemed to add to her comfort. And Benedetta came up, a sweet, blooming young thing: she was almost as lovely as Julia had been in her best days, and deeply interested in the young wife, the beautiful, rich English Signora, who was dying, with her husband far away, and whose little bambina had gone before her to heaven. And Benedetta told me that she would light an extra taper every evening before her shrine, and say a prayer to the Madonna for her husband's speedy success and for the soul of the Signore.

I thanked her heartily, but begged her not to light the taper, and to say her prayer to God, because it would be of no use if uttered to the Madonna, since she, being dead hundred of years ago, could not hear her, or in any way help her. Poor Benedetta looked terribly shocked, for she had not remembered that I was a heretic; and it struck her that the Signora, being a heretic also, must certainly be lost. She would pray for our conversion, she said; she would make "a retreat" during her husband's absence for the express purpose.

Again I thanked her, and I tried to speak to her of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I spoke of Him as the only Saviour, the one Mediator between God and man, and she listened with interest. I have ever found, in conversing with devout Roman Catholics, especially those of other countries, where Romanism is the religion of the masses, that it is far better to speak simply of Christ, in whom they do in a limited sense believe; to talk of His love, of the free pardon He offers, and of the blessed influences of His Holy Spirit, than to begin to attack their prejudices and assail those dogmas which from their earliest infancy they have been trained to follow as truths most sacred, most venerable, and most heavenly. Some people, if they want to convert from error to truth, immediately begin pulling don falsehood. This seldom answers, for who likes to have his house tumbling about his cars when no other is provided for him? Better proclaim the truth, purely, simply, reverentially, and prayerfully; and if God bless the word spoken in His name the work is done, for where truth takes root, and prospers, and bears fruit, falsehood must perforce wither and fade away. Benedetta listened admiringly, and even assentingly, to many things I said, but the idea of the One Mediator was evidently as new as it was startling. She shook her head, she was puzzled, for she, poor soul, had been taught to trust in many mediators, many saviours; but still she received the notion, and afterwards, when we wont away, I gave her my Italian Testament, Diodati's translation. Whether she ever read the blessed Word to her soul's salvation I shall never know till the day when all things shall be revealed.

Nearly a week glided away, and we heard nothing of Horace Stansfield, nothing from Damiano, and even Agneta began to grow uneasy. She knew the good Damiano would not fail; sooner or later he would return, and with him the English Signore; but if it were not very, very soon, it would be too late to see "la povera Signora Giuglia." And we all knew this; and at times the longing of the poor dying wife became agony; and, supported on the cushions, she would watch, till her strength failed her, the white, winding road, which led up from the city to Villa Terrasina; and every dark speck in the far distance became an object of interest; and she gazed and gazed till a nearer approach told her aching eyes that was not the figure she yearned so fervently to behold. Every day found her weaker and more worn; every evening she lay back on her pillows more languidly--a very little longer, and the strife would be over.

At last we had to lift her like a little child; if we clasped her hand her feeble fingers could not return the pressure; and her voice was sunk to the merest whisper. A heavenly calm possessed her; peace was in the soul and en her pallid brow. She had found her rest; and, safely anchored on the Rock of Ages, nothing could shake her stedfast faith. One only anxiety oppressed her, one only earthly desire--the desire to see her husband. And suns arose and set, the mountains grew ruddy in the glowing cast morning after morning, and floods of crimson light flushed the bay, and the fair city and the vineyards, evening after evening,--and still no news from Syracuse, no letter, no return of our messenger. She suffered much now, our poor darling; but it seemed as if she could not die till she had seen him, around whom, in spite of all coldness, and desertion, and wrong, her young affections were so passionately entwined.

One night--it was growing late, and the moon, nearly at the fall, was high in the purple heaven--she sent me out on the balcony to gaze once more down the dim white line that showed the road, and see if anything moved thereon, if haply any one were coming towards the villa--any one who might be the bearer of tidings, any one who might be the long lookedfor Horace himself! There I stood, gazing out on the matchless beauty of an Italian night, the silvery moonlight flooding sea and shore, temple and tower and vineyard; but my heart was sore and very heavy. I had my own blessing, it was true, my beloved friend in whom I might now for ever trust, but he was far away, and in that hour I felt as if I needed his visible presence to comfort me. What a solitary world it seemed--how pale, how sad a thing this mortal life of ours, that on the threshold gives such fair promise of brightness and joy. I looked back, and saw Julia as I had first seen her, a lovely child rushing to her father's arms after a brief season of separation; then I recalled that brilliant Midsummer day when Marshall first came among us at Pen Aber, and I, a shy, pale little thing, came creeping downstairs to find my cousin, that in her company I might make my appearance in the dining-room. And again, I saw her in her white frock, with her curling tresses, and the beauteous rose-tints en lip and cheek, an exquisite picture of childhood in its fairest, most attractive guise. And again, a weeping girl by her father's dying bed. And once more, in her bridal array, the loveliest bride, to my partial thinking, that ever wore the virginal crown of snowy orange-blossoms. And now--new faded, drooping, dying! but, thank God, leaving this brief life with all its cares and pains for the life immortal, which Christ has purchased for all who hear His voice and do His will in love.

No! There was no Horace within sight; no sign of the trusty Damiano; and far off was the vine-clad cottage where poor, kind Benedetta put up her prayers to her whom she was blasphemously taught to regard as the Queen of Heaven. Verily, any one living in a Popish country, and being at the same time familiar with classical lore, cannot fail to discern the most striking similarity between the Romanist's Virgin Queen of Heaven, and the beneficent, mild-eyed Hera, or Juno, of mythologic legends! In that hour of sadness and dismay, my soul was indeed disquieted within me; the world seemed a place of so much sorrow and bitter disappointment, and life itself so grey, so mutable, so like the vapour that riseth and assumeth an uncertain shape, and then vanisheth away! Even thoughts of Marshall did not dispel the gloom that encompassed me; even the pleasant vision of the happy home awaiting me among the Yorkshire hills could not turn the twilight of my heart into sunshine. I knelt against the lattice-work of the wide balcony, where passion-flowers and jasmine and noisette roses were all wreathed together in beautiful fragrant intricacy, and prayed earnestly, almost as it were in an agony, that my darling might have the one wish of her gentle heart fulfilled, ore she parted in peace from the trials of this lower existence. Again and again I made my petitions, and lingered so long that the moon had traversed a wide space of the clear azure heavens ere I turned from the silvery sea and the leafy woodlands, to go back to my watch in the chamber of sickness.

Another morning! and new life was ebbing fast; a few more hours, and all would be over! My darling lay placidly on the pillows, for suffering was over; and the change that comes but once on mortal lineaments had already fallen on her sweet, faded face. The grey tints of death were there, the breath was short and uneven, the brow was damp, and the mouth had fallen into that sad, peculiar expression which is the precursor of quickly-coming dissolution. She seemed content now to go without a last farewell of that face that evidently haunted her to the last; and when she saw me once looking intently down the dusty road, she said, "Never mind, love! He will not come; but it is best, for it is God's will. Tell him I blessed him, and forgave him all the sorrow he ever caused me. Tell him he was my dear husband to the last; and, O, Nellie! tell him that he must meet me in yonder happy world where I am going! My baby is there--my little lovely baby, that is his as well as mine--and I must have my husband, too. You will always pray for him, Nellie, till he comes to the truth, and Marshall will pray, too; for Nellie, Nellie! I must have my dear husband in heaven!"

The day wore on, and still she lay generally motionless and silent, now and then looking up and smiling at her mother, or at myself! and once she said, "Mamma, dear mamma, once more tell me that you forgive me for all my naughtiness to you?"

But Mrs. Ward could only weep and sob out, "It is I, my child, that need forgiveness."

"Take me in your arms, mamma, and let Ellen sit on the other side, and hold my hand, and say some precious words to me--some of Christ's own words. Is it growing dark? Everything, even your faces, seem dim!" No, it was not dark; the sunlight of early evening was slanting gloriously over mountain, sea, and shore; but her sweet eyes were fast closing on the sunshine, and likewise on the shadows of earth.

Another hour, and then I heard a bustle in the house, and my heart beat, and I looked at my aunt inquiringly. She too, was nervous; but we had net time to exchange more than a meaning glance before Agneta came gently in, and Julia, hearing her voice, said, "He is come--bring him at once! I am going! Thank and reward Damiano!" And Horace came and took her in his arms, and kissed her, and she tried to smile and to speak to him, but we could only hear her whisper, "My husband, my dear husband!" And then, without a struggle, her happy spirit passed away. She that we loved was borne away by the angels, and on the bed we had watched so long lay the beautiful, lifeless form, that would meet our fond embrace never more till the Resurrection morning.

We laid the mortal remains of our lost darling in the Protestant burying-ground at Rome; she had often spoken of its romantic terraces mounting up and up, till the last reached the base of the old Roman tomb, known as the pyramid of Caius Cestius, built of pure Carrara marble, but now black with the lapse of centuries, and clad in part with ancient ivy, which has forced its roots and its twisted stems into the crevices of the ancient masonry. She had often talked of her walks there during the past winter, for winter in that genial southern clime wears all the brightness and loveliness of our own fairest days of spring; she had described the old majestic pile of the Roman, the massive walls and battlements of the venerable city, the walks under the trees, with thousands of flowers springing up on every side, and the graves of her own countrymen, poor Shelley and his "Cor Cordium," and poor crushed Keats, whose piteous moan is graven on his tomb-stone. So there we laid her in the highest inclosure--meet resting-place for her who had been so fair and sweet a flower, so early blighted, and withered by the cold breath of neglect and disappointment, so early bone away from this flinty soil of ours to that better laud where there is no more change and no more death!

We were very glad to bid Horace Stansfield farewell. For Julia's sake we strove to speak to him gently; and indeed on his own account we had not the heart to reproach him with the ruin he had wrought, for his wild abandonment of grief, his passionate self-accusation, was terrible to behold. When in his arms rested only the lifeless form of his long-neglected wife, when the young head, like a closed flower, drooped so heavily on his bosom, he would not, could not believe that he had come too late; that nevermore would that sweet silvery voice be heard by him--nevermore those gentle eyes seek his with love and tenderness in every glance--nevermore be lifted to the fair Italian skies, that innocent face, with its childlike, blossom-like beauty. Then, when at last the awful truth slowly forced itself upon him, when the fixed lines of death gradually impressed themselves on the still, worn features, he flung himself on the ground, and grovelled there like one whose spirit would humble itself lower than the very dust. Afterwards he shut himself up, and refused to take the slightest part in the necessary arrangements; and when the time came to set off for Rome he emerged from his chamber pale, haggard, and emaciated--a perfect wreck of his former self.

It appeared, from the information we received from Damiano, that Mr. Stansfield and his party, a giddy, frivolous, pleasure-seeking set, if viewed in the most charitable aspect, had left Syracuse very early in March; then they had visited the sites of the ancient Hybla, Enna, and Camarina, and had finally gone to Malta, where they remained some time, enjoying themselves freely in the society of the dissipated English of the place, till Mrs. Malcolm, and a friend of hers, bold, careless, and unscrupulous as herself, were seized with a sudden desire to see the Pyramids and the Desert; and, the design being imparted to the others, they eagerly adopted the scheme with all that alacrity so prevalent among people who, living only for idle pleasure, are constantly seeking some fresh excitement, or some new sensation whereby they may kill time, and while away to their satisfaction the passing hour.

So to Alexandria they went; and thence to Cairo, and down the Nile as far as the world-renowned island of Philoe, and there they were hunted down by the indefatigable Damiano, who seemed endowed with supernatural energies, since he travelled night and day, till he found that which he sought, and delivered his message, and brought back his man, "da galantuomo," as Benedetta proudly said when she came up to Villa Terrasina to bid us farewell on the morning of our departure for Rome. Good little Italian wife, whom I shall never see again! May God's Holy Spirit chase away from her tender and pious heart the shadows of error and superstition, and pour into the depths of her soul that clear and heavenly light, which cometh from Him, and from Him alone!

The night before our leaving Rome I went with West to the Coliseum; it was the one thing she particularly and earnestly desired to see before returning to England. Some of the Italian servants accompanied us, and followed us through the innumerable galleries, at a respectful distance. The moon had just overtopped the edge of the majestic ruin when we arrived, and for some time we paced the wide arena, and watched the shadows deepen, as the queen of night mounted higher and higher, and the last flush of sunset faded away in the beauteous west. I must not stay to describe the scene and the hour: others, with abler pen, have travelled thither before me, to whose glowing pages I can have nothing to add.

And yet I must just say how grand were those broken arches in the dim, uncertain light; how rich the foliage and the brushwood overshadowing the ruined flights of stairs, the shattered battlements, and the time-worn, massive stones. There, where once sat the haughty patricians of the old empire around their imperial ruler--there, where were grouped together, in cruel, eager, excited delight, the oppressed plebeians of that day--there, where the fallen gladiator was "butchered to make a Roman holiday;" and where, in later times, Christian blood was poured out in streams--bloomed the fairest wild flowers, the tenderest ferns and mosses, the loveliest wreaths and festoons, of gay and delicate blossoms, such as deck our choicest parterres. And there, at the very mouth of the dark den, whence the wild beast was let loose on his hapless victims, flourished the olive, the myrtle, and the fig-tree; and where once the Orsini and the Colonnas displayed their rival grandeur, the tall, dark cypress rose up, sad, funereal, and silent; and the vast arena itself, where they whose memories are held in everlasting veneration--the martyrs of the early Church--poured out their blood a willing sacrifice for the pure faith they have bequeathed to us, was one vast lawn of softest verdure and fragrant flowers.

We were resting on a fallen fragment in the arena, after we had explored as far us we dared, when it occurred to me to ask West who had told her so much about the Coliseum--for she was wonderfully well up in its history, and had manifested so very strong a desire to visit it again--she had seen it once in broad daylight--before she quitted, in all probability for ever, the imperial city of the Caesars.

"It was hearing my old master talk about it so often," she replied; "and he had drawings of the ruins, which are very like I find, now that I see them for myself; and he used to tell me tales about the thousands of captives and slaves who were forced to fight here, to make pleasure for their fierce conquerors and masters; and he told me how the first Christians were brought here in multitudes to combat, not with men, but with lions, and leopards, and bears, and tigers! O, those must have been awful times, Miss Threlkeld; it must have been a brave man in those days who dared to call himself a Christian!"

"And so it was my uncle who told you all this?" I said, feeling deeply interested; "I know he was here in his youth, before he married my aunt."

"No, Miss Threlkeld, it was not Mr. John (as I never could help calling him to his dying day, bless him); it was Mr. Ward himself, the old squire who died when Mrs. Devereux--Miss Maria that was--was a little thing, not over a year old. I was very much with the old squire, for my mother and my father before me had both served the family; and Mr. Ward seemed fond of me, and many's the night I've sat up with him when he was so ill we thought every hour must be the last."

"Was he much like my uncle, West?"

"No, Miss Threlkeld, I can't say he was; he was a far finer, grander-made man, and he had a spirit of his own that Mr. John never had. He was very much rejoiced when his son married; but somehow he took a dislike to his daughter-in-law, from the very first moment he saw her. And she saw it and resented it, and I must say she never went the way to make him take to her, and at last they got almost to open war--it was daggers drawn between them, as we say; and I believe he hated her like poison, and it's the marvel of marvels to my mind how the Thornycroft estates got left to Mrs. Devereux. For many and many a time, when old master was savage--for Mrs. John did exasperate him, I must say--he used to vow that baby-girl, meaning Miss Maria, should never inherit, no, nor any daughter of hers--for he was bitter against Mrs. Ward, and for her sake he had a grudge against the innocent child, and the babes that were yet unborn. And one day he said to me, 'Susan, I mean to make another will; I want you to nurse me up well for a day or two, that I may get a little strength to do all I want to.'"

"And did he make another will? Ah, no, I need not ask, for the original will stands."

"No, Miss Threlkeld; he thought it over, and came to the conclusion to let the will alone. He said he would add a codicil, that would do the work; and he did add it, for I saw him write it with these very eyes; and more than that, I witnessed it, and so did Mrs. Binks that was housekeeper then. She died just one month after her master, I recollect."

"Do you know what was in the codicil?"

"Not exactly: I know that it left the estates to Mr. Marshall Cleaton, his daughter's only child; and that his son's daughters were only to have certain fortunes, which he said would be quite enough for private gentlewomen. He seemed contented when it was done. He did it all himself; for he hated lawyers and doctors always, and some kinds of parsons too, especially the kind that Mrs. Ward was so fond of. He wrote it on parchment, in that queer, stiff, upright sort of hand, that lawyers always use; and when he had quite finished it he made me come and look at it, and say if it could have looked a bit more business-like if there had been ten lawyers and their clerks busy about it? And I said, 'No. It looked for all the world as if the Lord Chancellor himself had executed it--it was so proper and legal-like;' and Mr. Ward was pleased, and said I was a sensible girl, and I was to say nothing about it--that is, nothing about the codicil, and I never have to this day."

"What do you suppose became of it?"

"I am sure I cannot say, Miss Threlkeld; but I should suppose he changed his mind and destroyed it. He was very fond of your uncle, you see; and perhaps he did not like to vex him, though he would have punished his wife. Anyways, I know the codicil was put in master's desk that stood by his bedside, and just before he died he told his son to take his keys from under his pillow; and, at a proper time, Mr. John opened the desk, where important documents were sure to be, and found the will with one codicil appended to it, but not the codicil that I had witnessed only three weeks before. I know if it had been there, it would have been produced and acted upon, for Mr. John was that upright and honourable, that he would have done the thing he ought, even if the doing it had been to cut off his own hand."

"That he would," I replied heartily. "I am quite sure that my dear uncle would have done right at any cost; the codicil must, as you say, have been destroyed, for the one which was read on the day of the funeral after the two wills--my uncle's and his father's--was quite of another complexion; it only confirmed Maria's position as sole heiress, in case Mr. Cleaton should refuse to become her husband; for, in the first instance, I know the estates were left to a distant relative, and a double portion of money to Miss Ward, in case the gentleman declined to fulfil the contract."

"Yes, ma'am; Mr. Ward was always for making changes in his will after the little boys died. He was very anxious the estates should go in the male line; yet I could plainly see his affection for his son made him hesitate before he fixed it finally. I make no doubt he burnt that codicil; there was always a fire in his room, and he sat up in his chair till the very last, and used to go pottering about and doing for himself when you would have thought he was too sick to lift a finger. He never could bear to be thought weak and feeble and dependent-like; he was that proud he never gage in till a few hours before he died. Some men have that terrible pride, you know, Miss Threlkeld; they can't bear to be treated as invalids."

"I almost wonder, West, you did not think of speaking to my uncle about the missing codicil; I think he ought to have known such a document had existed."

"Well, ma'am, I often thought so too, and I did wish I hadn't the sole responsibility on my hands; for nobody knew of it but me and Binks; and she only knew it was some sort of a will she had witnessed: I was the only person who really knew what it would have done if it had been forthcoming after old master's death. But you see, I thought it would fall very hard upon Mr. John, to find his own inheritance left away from his own children, if so be that he never had another son born to him; and I thought it best to be silent, for, after all, it was no matter of mine. And I never told a mortal creature except my husband, and he says:--'I tell thee what, Sue, thee 'dst best keep thy own counsel, and say nothing about it; it might make mischief in the family--perhaps throw the estates some day into Chancery, and when a thing gets into Chancery it never gets out again; and it all goes to pay the expenses, and nobody gets anything at last. So keep thy secret, Sue.' And I did, Miss Threlkeld; and what made me talk about it to-night of all nights, and in the Coliseum of Rome, where I never thought to stand, of all places in the world--I'm sure I can't tell. I suppose it was just Providence--though, when a thing is gone and done with long ago, I don't see why Providence should trouble about it."

I was silent, for many strange thoughts were crowding in upon my mind; thinking how it would have been if that codicil had not been destroyed. For if the estates had been left unconditionally, to Marshall, there would have been, in all probability, no engagement between him and Maria, and then he might never have come to Pen Aber, and I should never have got into disgrace behind the grotto, and never, perhaps, have been a pupil at the dear old C. D. S., Casterton; the whole current of my own life would probably have been wholly different from what it was, if the codicil, which West had witnessed, had survived to play its part in the settlement of the Thornycroft affairs. I might never have had the opportunity of meeting Marshall, in which case I should certainly never have been his betrothed wife. O! what a mysterious chain is that which links together the separate and seemingly diverse circumstances of our life! Some apparent trifle that scarcely seems to concern us at all, influences all our future existence, and controls our fate; at the time we scarcely regard it, and perhaps know nothing about it; but looking back in after years we find that it swayed our course, and was interwoven with our destinies inextricably and abidingly. Well for us is it that a wiser, firmer Hand than ours weaves together into one harmonious whole the diverse films and threads of circumstance. Well for us if we could always trust the love that has numbered the very hairs of our head, that has brought us so far on our pilgrim way, and will certainly guide and strengthen and bless us to the last.

We had risen to go, when West once more reverted to the departed codicil. "Ah, well! Miss Threlkeld, how time flies; it seems only yesterday that I saw that stiff writing of the old squire's. Deary me, I can see it now! It said--'The codicil of the will of John Dudley Ward, Esquire, of Thornycroft Hall, in the parish of Thornycroft-cum-Twisleton, in the county of Sandstone, April 20, 1827."

Where had I seen those words before? Surely I had read them somewhere or other, exactly as West had repeated them! Suddenly a flash of light visited my mind, and I remembered where I had seen them, and how, and the consequences of my reading them aloud years ago in the dining-room at Thornycroft. I understood it all now; the mystery that had perplexed me was a mystery no longer. All at once I knew that the codicil had never been burnt, that it had been left as the last will and testament of John Dudley Ward, the elder, and that it had, in some inexplicable way, fallen into my aunt's bands, and she had been tempted to withhold it. Here then was the key that solved so many doubts. Here then was the answer to many an enigma. Here was the reason why my aunt had exacted from me so solemn a promise of silence respecting her possession of the document I had taken up under the supposition of its being a MS. copy of Mr. Graves' Prophetical Lectures. Here, too, war the meaning revealed of her threat to Maria, that she could turn her out of Thornycroft Hall whenever she chose; and here was the secret of her strong interest in Marshall's fortunes, and her regret for his comparative poverty, and in some sort, of her lavish expenditure on my behalf, since all that was mine would inevitably conduce to his benefit! Here, too, was the explanation of all Mrs. Ward's mysterious depression, of her allusions to some great fault committed by herself, of her remorse, her self-accusations, her deprecation of all praise either from Marshall or from myself.

"West," I said, as we drove home, "I have been thinking over what you have told me about that missing codicil, and I have come to the conclusion that your husband was right; it had better not be mentioned. You have kept the secret so long, you had better keep it still."

"Surely, Miss Threlkeld," was her answer, "I never thought of doing otherwise. As I said, what made me so talkative to-night I cannot tell; but I knew, ma'am, you were to be trusted, and it concerns your own family."

It did, indeed, concern my own family, for it concerned him who would soon be to me more than father, mother, brother, and sister. I could have no doubt but that Maria Devereux now held the inheritance which was Marshall's by law; the inheritance which her father as well as her grandfather had wished to descend unconditionally to him; the inheritance which I knew Mrs. Ward now sorely repented of having alienated from its rightful owner, for the sake of a daughter who did not even evince the most ordinary tokens of filial respect.

And again I recalled her solemn adjuration, her deep anxiety lest any indiscretion of mine should lead to the suspicion of such a document being in my possession; and I could remember her very words:--"Promise that you will never, however great the temptation, allow any one indirectly to become aware of the document being in my possession at all; promise that no hint, no indiscretion of yours, shall ever lead to questions that must be answered or evaded--and evasions always lead to suspicions. Therefore, you will promise me, Ellen, as solemnly as though you were pledged by an oath, to keep silence." And I had promised, as I told you before; I had promised most sacredly that her desire should be respected; and I had felt then, and ever since, that I was pledged to keep her secret at any cost to myself.

Ah! why did I give that promise? Now I felt what it might cost me; for when Marshall was my husband how hard it would be to keep a secret from him; to have a mystery in which he was so deeply concerned; to feel always that I possessed a knowledge which he had every right to share, yet which I dared not, on account of my solemnly pledged word, impart to him. Little had I guessed how deep was the import of that which I had so rashly promised.

When I reached the Palazzo del Sarti once more, I found my aunt and Ross, who was to return with us to her own country, still busied with packing and final preparations. When she saw me, she chided me for being so late, for we were to set out for Florence early next morning, and proceed to Venice, and through the Tyrol and Germany to England.

"But what is the matter?" she asked presently, looking up, and seeing me lost in meditation. "You look so strange, Ellen! It was not right to go to the Coliseum so late, and so unwell and nervous as you have been ever since we left Naples. Have you seen a spectre?"

Alas! I had seen a spectre, one that would haunt me for many and many a day; one whose visitations were most unwelcome. How I wished--as we all vainly, foolishly wish such and such things had never been--that West had still preserved the secret she had so faithfully kept for so many years! How I wished I were still in ignorance respecting the true history of that unfortunate codicil! Had my own fate been quite unconnected with that of Marshall Cleaton, I should have confessed to my aunt all that I had learned, and urged her to make restitution at any cost; but now, to plead for Marshall was to plead for myself; I could not seek his prosperity and fail to include my own. My situation was perplexing in the extreme, and the difficulties of the case seemed every moment to increase in complication. But the worst of all was that I, as Marshall's wife, must always keep this terrible secret, and never by any hint or information suffer him to guess its nature. That he would soon discover the existence of a mystery I was perfectly certain. Marshall read the minds of most people with whom he was intimately associated; and mine had always been open to him as the daylight; he had seemed to divine my every thought and sentiment from the days when we first met in the cove at Pen Aber; how, then, could I hope to keep him in ignorance of that which I was compelled to conceal? And when he knew that his wife, with whom he had not the shadow of a reserve, had a secret of her own, which she sedulously guarded from him, would he not be justly displeased--worse, far worse, pained?

Ought I not, then, to beseech my aunt to liberate me from the promise she had extorted from me, a mere child, who could never suspect the importance of the pledge she gave? But then, what a difficult thing for Marshall--to know that he was the rightful owner of the estate to which he had been heir so long! ought he, or ought he not, under the circumstances, to assert his claim? I could not tell; the more I thought the more bewildered I became. Then I remembered my uncle's words, when I entreated him not to tell his wife of Arabella's projected elopement. "Want of candour in the marriage state opens the gate to all kinds of miseries. When you have a good husband of your own, Nellie, be sure and repose in him your fullest confidence. Never, under any pretence, hide anything from him; let there be community of thought as well as of worldly goods between you and the man who ought to be your second self." What ought I to do?

And a voice seemed to answer me, "Cast your care on the Lord; disclose to Him your perplexity; show Him your difficulty. Ask counsel of the Lord; ask His guidance, His help; commit your way to Him, and wait and see what is His will concerning you. Be calm, be patient; do nothing, say nothing impulsively; only trust in God. Yes, cast your burden upon Him, and He will sustain you; for such is the promise of His own gracious Word."

Early next morning we left the Eternal City; and, glancing back as we crossed the desolate Campagna, we saw, in the fair June sunlight, its temples and towers--grey and majestic, magnificent ruins of an imperishable past; and there, also, against the hoary, battlemented walls, the ancient tomb of Caius Cestius; and there--but hidden from our tearful gaze--the grave where we had left the precious form that needed no more our tenderness and care. Last of all, the melancholy song of a peasant girl, sitting among the desolate tombs of that barren, lonely Campagna:--

"Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non e piu come era prima."

"Rome! Rome! thou are no more as thou hast been."

I need not dwell upon our journey home, which was performed without the slightest accident or adventure. I need not dwell on the celebrities of Florence the Fair, or its classic Arno, with its Della Cruscan memories; or on our reminiscences of Bologna the Fat, so famous for its lap-dogs and its sausages; or on our impressions of Ferrara, so silent, so solitary, like a recluse in a vast and solemn wilderness. Neither need I write about Venice, that "glorious city in the Sea," where the salt waves ever ebb and flow, and where the cry of. the gondolier is heard as in the time of Tasso. Venice, that "eldest child of Liberty," that maiden city, bright and free, who, "when she took unto herself a mate," espoused the everlasting sea! The sight of her campaniles, her marble palaces, her ducal halls, and her incomparable cathedral of San Marco, brought back to my mind with a strange and pensive vividness those dreary days of my childhood, when, exiled from the family circle, I had endeavoured to interest myself with that wonderful History of the Greek Empire, with its episodes of the Venetians--the ancient rulers of this self-same beautiful Venice, along whose silent canals and on whose bright lagoons I now found myself floating day by day. How well I remembered the story of Faliero Dodoni, that Doge of long centuries past, and the narration of the miseries of that unlucky Baldwin de Courtenai! It seemed but a little time since I sat solitary and wretched, striving to while away the dull hours, with the pages of that most erudite volume! And now, I could say as well as Byron, "I stood at Venice on the Bridge of Sighs;" now I had seen the Rialto, and the Piazza di San Marco, and the church which the same saint claims as his own special property, and about which Ruskin raves and descants so eloquently in his wondrous, mystical "Sea Stories of Venice;" and I had watched the sun set on the distant Alps, while the broad lagoon burned and heaved in the crimson radiance, and the hills of Arqua rose like purple pyramids against a heaven of gold; and far away, "a wilderness of misty precipices" gleamed and faded the dim recesses of Cadore.

Yes, I am very glad I saw Venice and the Adriatic; and glad, too, that I traversed the beautiful Tyrol, that I saw the tomb of Petrarch at Arqua, that I seem to know by heart the romantic Pass of Selvio. It is pleasant now to recall memories of Saltzburg, and Munich, and of Augsburg, so famous for its venerable Confession; and I like to think of Albert Durer's monument, in the Nuremburg cemetery, with its simple "Emigravit, 1528." And, above all, to think of that marvel of architecture, the Cathedral of Cologne, so vast, so shadowy, so sublime, with its arches within arches, its graceful columns; its lights and shades, all coloured by the rich tinting of its splendid windows; and its waves of sound--chant and anthem and hymn, rising and falling in grand billowy harmony, and flooding aisle and nave and clerestory--alas! must I for truth's sake add?--and gaudy, tinselled shrine! But I said I would not write about my homeward journey, and here am I "doing that same," as a little Irish friend of mine would call it; so I will just tell you that on the first of August we landed at Folkestone, and found ourselves once more on English ground; and in a few hours we were again in the familiar London streets. And I think all our hearts warmed (mine did, I know) at the sight of our own Thames, and of the great dome of St. Paul's, rising in all its majesty against a deep-blue sky, which sadly lacked, however, that pure transparency, to which for so many months I had been accustomed. Never mind, it was my own Protestant St. Paul's, the mother-church of my own metropolis; and as such I loved it better and venerated it more than the mighty St. Peter's, on the banks of the turbid Tiber, or that miracle of Gothic architecture, the unfinished cathedral, in the city of the "seventy-two distinct and separate stenches."

A little longer, and there was Euston Square, and the caryatides of St. Pancras Church; and in another minute we were at our own door, and Arabella, in an elaborate toilet of crape and bugles, was ready to receive us. I think she was really glad to welcome us back, for she had been staying at Thornycroft Hall, with Mr. and Mrs. Adolphus Devereux, and the sisters had quarrelled violently, and Bella had returned home in high dudgeon, and soon discovered that keeping solitary state in Gordon Square was not quite so agreeable as she had anticipated. And when we spoke of Julia, she was visibly affected; and her eyes were really swimming with tears, when her mother gave her several little trinkets that her lost sister had desired to he conveyed to her, as affectionate memorials of one whom she would never see again.

But when we came down into the drawing-room, after changing our travelling-gear for something a little less dusty, she had quite recovered her equanimity, and began imploring us to sit down and discuss the good things she had considerately provided for our delectation. "Now, Ellen!" she cried; "do put away those cards and letters; just everybody has called, or written, and you will be an hour over them! I chose those chickens myself, and there are salmon steaks under that cover; and those are lamb-cutlets sautéd in the French fashion. How did you like the living abroad?"

"Not particularly well; but having West and Ross at our disposal, we managed to make our table wear a very English aspect, for we generally dined in private. The fruit, of course, was delicious, and so plentiful!"

"Ah! yes, so I have always heard; but I should not care much about that if the joints and the entrées were not to my mind. They had an excellent cook at Thornycroft Hall, I must say."

"Indeed!"

And then there was a dead silence, and Arabella discussed the salmon-steaks with right good-will, till suddenly she laid down her fork, and said, "When are you going to be married, Ellen?"

"Really, Arabella, I have not decided. All in good time I dare say."

"If you take my advice, you will never be married at all. I have nearly made up my own mind to a single life. I don't believe in conjugal felicity--not I." She said this with a certain grave sententiousness that was perfectly inimitable. I could not restrain a smile. She saw it, and continued:--"O! it is all very well to laugh; but you will not laugh in twelve months' time, when Marshall worries your life out of you, and makes you wish you were in your grave; and perhaps beats you every now and then."

"Really, Arabella, this is too ridiculous. Clergymen of every denomination are supposed to refrain from wife-beating, and we will hope Marshall may not be worse than his brethren. Have you been reading the police reports lately?"

"No; but I have been at Thornycroft Hall. O ma! O Ellen! Maria and Adolphus do quarrel most awfully. You never heard anything like it. He has caught a Tartar, and she has caught a Turk. I believe it will end in his giving her a good sound beating. He did shake her the other day; she was so horribly provoking."

"What do they quarrel about?" asked Mrs. Ward.

"About everything! the question more readily answered, if you come to specialities, would be, what do they not quarrel about? Whatever one wishes the other will not tolerate; whatever one likes the other hates; whatever one praises the other sneers at; and then, she is always telling him that she is the reigning power at Thornycroft, and she will be obeyed, and he is only the nominal master, because she has allowed him to become her husband. All the servants know how they quarrel, and all the village, too; it's quite scandalous."

Mrs. Ward sighed, and looked distressed; meanwhile Bella went on--

"And there is Horace Stansfield acting worse even than Adolphus Devereux, and that without any provocation. If you are wise, Ellen, you will keep as you are; you are your own mistress now, but if you marry Marshall, or any one, there is no knowing how you may be put upon. For my part, I will have nothing to do with a sex that seems created only to lord it over women, and make them miserable. I have no idea of putting myself in the power of a master."

And so Arabella rattled on, till my aunt and I were glad to make good our retreat to our own rooms; but next day we had a visit from Mrs. Devereux and her eldest daughter, and we found that the violent dissensions between Maria and her husband had been in no wise exaggerated. Mrs. Devereux affected to be extremely scandalized, and to deplore Maria's unhappy temper, and her perfect inability to control it; and then Mrs. Ward found fault with her son-in-law; so the two dowagers were sadly inclined to come to words, and parted at last with a frigid civility, that augured a breach of the peace before very long; and once, when Lady Towerscliffe called, we found, from a few guarded sentences, that every one was blaming Maria, and pitying her husband, as an unfortunate young man, who was never allowed to assert his own opinion, or to have his own way, on any pretence whatever. Clearly Miss Ward's marriage was a mistake, and she was making herself the talk of the neighbourhood, by her unbridled licence of tongue, and her independent mode of action.

But I was soon to be relieved from what was fast becoming an intolerable nuisance. Arabella was always relating stories of Adolphus' sullen obstinacy, and Maria's aggravating temper. Mrs. Devereux and her daughters, having left town, wrote incessantly, and besought Mrs. Ward to interfere, for reports were said to be current that really affected the respectability of both families, and whenever we were alone my poor aunt failed not to lament her terrible want of success in the training of her children, who one and all seemed to have grown up to womanhood to be her sorrow, and it might be her shame. I was not much longer to remain in Gordon Square; for Marshall wrote, earnestly desiring me to name the earliest day for our long-deferred wedding, and Mrs. Ward, who also received a letter from him bearing on the same topic, determined that there should be no further delay than was absolutely necessary.

I pleaded our recent bereavement, but my aunt would not allow me to defer the marriage on that account, and one evening, when we had been discussing the point, she took my hand, and said, "Ellen, life is so uncertain, and everything in this world so changeful, that I cannot think it right for any one to postpone her own and another's happiness without some most cogent reason. While our dear Julia lived you did well to devote yourself to her, and I am grateful to you that, for her sake, you were willing to put aside your own schemes and arrangements, that you might be her nurse, and the comfort of her poor broken heart. She too, dear child, often spoke to me of your goodness to her, and fully appreciated the sacrifice you had made on her account, but she earnestly hoped no deference to mere conventional proprieties would lead you to put off your marriage for months because of her decease. Nothing, she said, would minister more to her content than the certain knowledge that you would become Marshall's wife as soon as you returned home; and she implored me to use my influence with you, if I saw that you were at all inclined to delay your happiness out of an imaginary respect to her memory. Besides, Nellie dear, there is Marshall himself to be considered. Months ago he quitted his lodgings and established himself in his own house; everything is ready for your reception, and I am afraid the whole ménage will suffer, and give you work to undo, as well as to do, if you leave your husband and your mutual belongings to the care of an incompetent maid-of-nil-work. You are putting Marshall to serious inconvenience by delaying your marriage to Christmas--and as for next spring, it is not to be thought of! I do not see why the 10th of September--that is the day Marshall asks for, should not be decided on at once. Everything is ready, there are only the necessary legal preliminaries to be observed, and we can make our arrangements immediately, if only you will be reasonable."

And so it was settled that on the 10th I should cease to be Ellen Threlkeld; and once more the preparations that had been so sadly suspended were revived, and the days glided quickly by, and it came to the evening before the bridal, and Marshall, whom I had not seen for nearly twelve months, arrived from Yorkshire. Till then, I had felt like a person in a dream, but now things began to assume a very life-like aspect, and seemed real and substantial enough. We had left the consideration of our wedding tour till now, thinking it better to discuss the matter verbally than by letter. Marshall could only leave his pulpit for three Sundays.

"I had intended to take you for a short Continental trip," he said, when the subject was named; "but now that you have been abroad so long you will not probably care to cross the channel again at present. What do you say to your own beloved country, the English lakes, and Battlebarrow?"

"O, Marshall! Battlebarrow! Nothing could be more delightful! to see my dear old home again, and the church and my father's grave, and some of my old friends, and with you too! No plan could possibly give me so much pleasure. O, thank you."

Our wedding was really a quiet one; no one was invited save the Hearns and their eldest daughter, a bonnie little maiden of fourteen, and my dear old Casterton friend, Catherine Fleming. But I felt as if others who needed no bidding were there with their unseen sympathy and their unheard blessings;--my own beloved father and my young unknown mother, my kind uncle, dear Mrs. Cleaton, and our lost and lovely one whom we had left behind us in that fairest of all earthly resting-places for the precious worn-out garments that the soul has laid aside. It was strange; but on my wedding morning my thoughts turned pensively to the past, rather than joyfully to the present, or trustfully to the future; those departed ones now bidden from mortal sight seemed strangely but sweetly present as I walked up the aisle on John Hearn's arm, and presently stood side by side with Marshall, listening to the familiar tones that had been my sweetest music ever since the day I first heard them in the Pen Aber cove, as they uttered the words that bound us together, while life should last.

It was soon over, and we drove quietly back to Gordon Square, and after the luncheon, which was by courtesy called breakfast, Mr. Hearn fervently asked God's blessing on our union; and then the carriage was at the door, and farewells commenced. My aunt wept unrestrainedly; I knew that in forwarding my marriage she was anticipating her own sorrowful isolation, but I never knew till the moment of my departure with how deep and true an affection she had come to regard me, and I had no idea how much, during the year that had passed, I had learned to love her. How little had I once thought that a time could ever come when it would be pain to me to part from Mrs. Ward! Yes, pain and grief, although Marshall was at my side, and his hand in mine; and although I knew that in him, ere long, I should find more than an equivalent for every broken tie, whether caused by death or distance.

We had been married a fortnight, when one evening we found ourselves descending the hill that leads into the valley in which Battlebarrow lies. There it was; the old minster-like church, the white rose-wreathed vicarage under its stately sycamores, the grey, lichen-grown stones in the churchyard, the "Priest's Croft," as we called the meadow which belonged to the vicar, the sweeping river, and the arched bridge, over which lay our way into the town. There it was, so little altered; just as I remembered it in my happy childish days, just as I had seen it in my dreams many and many a time since that chill November morning, when I had left it, as I feared, for evermore. We drew up before the "King's Head" Inn, whence I had taken my departure ten years before; mine hostess came out, and a swarm of servants, and in a moment I recognized the identical "Boots" and ostler, who had ministered to my comfort, on what seemed to me then and long afterwards, the most inauspicious morning of my life. "Boots," who had assured me that "Battlebarrow wouldn't look nohow without me," had grown rather elderly and corpulent, and he evidently had no idea that the tall blooming young lady handed from the chaise, by a gentleman who was certainly her husband, could be the veritable little, pale, puny, orphan child, who had been carried away "into the south" years ago.

We were taken to the best parlour, which I knew so well, with its large bow-window looking out on the beautiful garden that sloped down to the river, and beyond that to the castle-woods, clothing the steep rocky ascent, and finally to the turrets of the old keep, grey and ivy-grown, and crumbling with the lapse of ages; for though the castle itself was kept in excellent repair, the donjon-tower, or keep, had long ago been abandoned to decay, and left to become the habitation of owls and mice, "and other fallow deer," including a ghost of the thirteenth century, who sometimes lived at home in the keep, and sometimes disported himself in the cloisters, when the wind swept down from the mountains, and the river raged in its rocky bed, and the night was wild and profoundly dark. And then to look out in the moonlight, and see the familiar forms of the hills, and the white winding road, which my childish feet had so often trodden, and to hear the church clock striking the hour and the quarters, in just the same notes as it had struck them when I lived within ken of its old weather-stained face, close beneath the battlements of the low square tower, that had some peculiar archeological interest of its own.

We had not given any one notice of our visit; and next morning--having asked a few questions of our buxon motherly hostess, whom I remembered a slim young matron, very proud of her first baby--we set off for the castle. We were shown into Mrs. Jackson's own parlour, and really nothing seemed changed since last I had seen it through my tears in the candle-light of the early morning. There were the self-same china ornaments on the' high chimney-piece, the same volumes of the Ladies' Magazine, and the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe; the same plate-basket, into which I had often counted the spoons and forks, and what seemed to be the same lazy, well-to-do, tortoiseshell cat, basking on the window-seat in the warm and pleasant sunshine. Presently Mrs. Jackson herself came in, very courteous, but stately, as became my lord's housekeeper and long-trusted servant; her best cap assumed in a hurry, and her best black silk apron tied on to hide the deficiencies of a somewhat unstudied toilet.

The dear old soul curtsied and peered at its through her gold rimmed spectacles, and was evidently so much at a loss, and so much afraid of committing some solecism against good breeding by making a mistake, that I hastened to say--"You do not seem to remember me, Mrs. Jackson."

"Indeed, ma'am, you have the advantage of me," she replied; "but of late my memory has failed me sadly. Is it"--and she stopped, some vague clouds of remembrance evidently floating over her mind--some dim, undefined reminiscences, awakened more by my voice than by my face.

"Have you forgotten little Ellen Threlkeld, to whom you were so kind many years ago? Little Ellen whom you kissed and fondled in this very room, when she was going away into the south to her own relatives, to be brought up?"

"Miss Ellen! Miss Threlkeld! You don't say so! To be sure! Where could my old eyes have been? Ah! I see now; you've your father's own face, my dear, and no mistake. Sit you down on the rocking-chair, and tell me all about everything."

And the good creature dashed down her spectacles and wiped her eyes, and presently recovering herself, looked doubtfully at Marshall, whose presence, I think, she felt rather inclined to resent.

"And now I must introduce my husband to you," I said, when I had been hugged and kissed and cried over to her heart's content.

"Your husband? O, Miss Ellen, you've gone and got married, and never told me!"

But, contemplating Marshall more closely, It think she saw something in his countenance that mollified the disapprobation with which she was quite inclined to receive him, for she turned towards him a brighter aspect; and when two hours later we took our leave, she drew me aside, and told me that now she should look at my father's monument on Sundays without a sigh, for she was sure that if he were living he would have chosen for me the very husband who had providentially fallen to my lot.

"Where was Deborah?" was one of my questions--good, kind Deborah, whose crooked sixpence I had in my pocket at that moment. Well, Deborah had married young Mr. Suett, the butcher, and they were doing very well in a shop near the cloisters, and Deborah had three children, and people did say she spoiled them so much, it was positive wickedness. She would be rejoiced to see me if I would honour her by looking in.

"And Lazarus?" Ah! Lazarus was in the grave in reality now; the new ways of the Rev. Octavius Longman and the gas and sundry alterations, which made the clerk's post nearly a sinecure, had fashed him to death; and Mrs. Atkinson had married again, and was reported to keep her new lord in a most dreadful state of fear and subjection.

That evening we obtained the keys from the new clerk, and paid a visit to the church. Alas! it was sadly altered, though I suppose some of the alterations might be classed as improvements. The organ had been repaired and newly eased, and the agonized angel and the stupid, apathetic angel and the ill-favoured angel were all gone; all the cherished dust of other days had been swept away, and the organ-pipes shone in all the pristine pride and glory of untarnished gilding. And the half-decayed altar-screen? That had disappeared, and so had the pulpit and reading-desk, which were replaced by more modern contrivances. But the white marble slab to the memory of the Rev. Edward Threlkeld and Ellen his wife was still unchanged; and I stood before it no longer a sad, hopeless, solitary child, but a happy woman, over whose early years God had watched, whose steps He had directed, whose sorrows He had soothed, whose soul He had brought out of bondage and darkness into the liberty and light which is theirs who trust in His name and believe on Him through Jesus Christ their Lord and Saviour.

Yes, God had been very, very good to me. He had taught me in His own way; He had been my Shield, my Refuge, and my Salvation, the Father of the fatherless child, whom a dying parent, strong in faith and hope, had committed to Him. And now all earthly blessings were crowned with this one rich blessing of a good man's deepest, fondest affection.

From my Father's kind hand I wished to receive the husband in whom I knew I might place unbounded confidence and perfect trust--the partner of all my joys and sorrows, my head and master on earth, my helper in all difficulties, my solace in all griefs, my other and dearer self now, henceforth, and for ever.

We lingered in Battlebarrow a whole week, to my own intense satisfaction, and to the great delight of Mrs. Jackson and a host of inferior friends; and we parted with the understanding that Mrs. Jackson was to spend a fortnight with us, at Ormside, in the spring, and that we were, if possible, to visit Battlebarrow every year, if only for a few days. And then, before we went home, I begged Marshall to take me to Casterton, that I might see once more those beautiful and beloved shades, through which I had loved so much to wander, whose cool, green recesses had often haunted me quite painfully as I traversed the dusty roads and flat prosy fields about Thornycroft, or walked the squares of London. The dear old place--the second home of my childhood--how fair it looked, nestling under the solemn Fell, half shrouded by the rich woodlands, now putting on their glorious robes of autumnal splendour! How crystal-like the meandering Lune, now gliding placidly through the rich green lawn meadows of Underlay, and now thundering over the huge rocks and boulders beneath the tall arches of the bridge that leads into Kirby Lonsdale. But, best of all, there was my benefactor and friend, my second father, the Rev, W. Carus Wilson, heartily welcoming one of his countless family, who, for a few brief hours, came back to the peaceful, holy home of her girlhood, with her heart full of love and gratitude for all the blessings, all the kindnesses that had been showered upon her within those venerated walls. Even then his health was rapidly declining, and he was no longer a regular occupant of his beautiful home, on the cliffs of the Lune. I think he never again paid more than a passing visit to his beloved Casterton. As years passed on we heard of him as active in other fields of Christian labour, as "the Soldier's Friend," the sustainer of all that was calculated to elevate and benefit his fellow-men, and to conduce to the glory of the Master whom he served -with singular energy, even to the last. I never saw him again--I never shall on this side the grave; for, as most of you are aware, this good man, this devoted servant of Christ, went to his rest in 1860, after much suffering and protracted illness. And now thousands rise up and call him blessed; and his memory is fragrant in all the churches of this land, and held in affectionate respect by many who never set foot on English soil. Now his mortal remains repose, with others near and dear to him, beneath the shade of the beautiful little grey church, built by himself, at the head of the Casterton glen; and his own stedfast hills encircle his peaceful dust; and his own sweeping Lune goes murmuring and rushing on "for ever and for ever" beneath the cliffs on whose beauteous heights he once lived to God, and now sleeps in Jesus.

When we had said good-bye to Casterton we turned our faces homewards; and on the bright afternoon of a most glorious autumnal day we came in sight of the village, or rather hamlet, of Ormside, where my new duties awaited me. Very fair was the country around Ormside; only a little less picturesque than that we had just left. There were hills of tolerable elevation, purple, undulating moors, wild, tangled ravines, flashing streams, waterfalls, and one large brook, that was really a tributary branch of an important river several miles further south.

"Only half-a-mile more," said Marshall, as we followed the circuitous road that skirted the pine-clad base of the hill; "and then, little lady"--he had given me the old name again--"then you will see your home. How you will like it after Thornycroft Hall, and Gordon Square, and Italian villas and palaces, remains to be seen."

"I expect to like it just a little better than I liked the dear white vicarage at Battlebarrow. You know, Marshall, I was never born to splendours or luxuries; such as I have enjoyed have fallen to my lot through the kindness of friends; and the quiet little home you have ready for me--my nest, as you call it--will, I am certain, be all that I can wish."

"There it is, then, only you cannot see more than one gable and a stack of chimneys, for the trees. Look, near that conical-shaped hill, with something like a ruin on the top."

"I see; and is that your church?"

"You ambitious little goose! No! Are you looking out for a cathedral, my lady bishopess? Do you expect a tall spire and antique buttresses and gargoyles and--

Storied windows richly light,
Casting a dim religious light?'

Because, if you do, you had better moderate your expectations--simple elegance and commodious neatness is all we can boast, my dear. That building beyond the trees there is the parish church, and a very grand old minster-like place it is, with altar-tombs, and crusaders' monuments, and quaint corbels, and mouldy aisles to your heart's content"

"And the minister?"

"Well, my dear, we will not talk about him; he does not like me, and he does not like the Evangelical brethren of his own communion, at Prestworth yonder. Your dear Mr. Wilson would be in his eyes almost as black a sheep as I am. But there are people enough to fill my church and his also, there is abundant work for him and for me: we need not quarrel."

Another minute and we were in the middle of Ormside, on the village-green, where many loiterers of both sexes were congregated, and some of them, being my husband's people, greeted us respectfully, and several set off in different directions, anxious, I doubt not, to spread the news of their minister's return, and the arrival of the new wife, whose appearance, Marshall solemnly assured me, they were awaiting with the greatest interest and an inextinguishable curiosity.

A few yards further on, just beyond the busy part of the village, where the road took a sudden turn, the carriage stopped, and we were at home; and I looked up at my home, and then at Marshall, in mute delight. I had expected a small compact brick or stone house, probably in a row, or, at the best, semi-detached, with a little plot of grass and a narrow flower-border in front, by way of garden. And I thought I should be ushered into a narrow passage by way of hall, and led into a fifteen-feet square drawing-room, everything else being conformable thereunto. And, lo! my house was a large, rambling, delightfully quaint-looking cottage. It stood in a perfect wilderness of flowers, and its walls were wreathed with late roses, jasmine, and Virginia creeper, the latter just beginning to assume its glowing autumnal dyes. All around stretched the pleasant greensward, diversified with flower-beds, still thronged with the brightest denizens of this peculiarly bright and golden autumn. Tall dahlias, of every hue and of rare perfection; China asters, that must have been longing to exhibit themselves at the Horticultural Show; bright scarlet and intensely blue salvias; pink and white and purple verbenas; gorgeous "Tom Thumb" geraniums; flaming spires of the magnificent gladiolus; azure lobelia, and fragrant heliotrope, and others, past all enumeration, almost dazzled my senses with their rich, proud array of luxuriant beauty. As for mignonette--my darling, as well as the Frenchman's--it ran wild everywhere, a perfect weed in that glorious perfumy old garden, the like of which I have never seen to this day. Nor was it rich only in flowers: fruit was there in rare abundance--golden pippins, and ruddy Blenheims and Ribstons, and northern-greens, and sober russets, and rosy-checked pomes, clustering profusely amid the already changed and thinning foliage. And a vast jargonelle laden with its juicy produce completely covered one end of the house; "and down there," said Marshall, pointing to a rustic summer-arbour, "there is a large old gnarled tree covered with winter pears, and there is another behind my study of a kind that the people hereabouts call 'nectar berries'--a sort of beurré, I suppose. Come, let us have one look at the kitchen garden and the orchard before it gets dark: you can see the house by candlelight."

Such a kitchen garden! I told Marshall that if I ever fell short of money I should take a cartload of vegetables and drive off to Prestworth, and sell them in the market-hall. There was not much now, certainly; but I could see what had been, and what would he again, when the season of peas and beans and vegetable marrows came once more. The gooseberry and currant bushes, my husband assured me, had been laden; and when I asked him what he had done with the produce, he said he had eaten as much as one man could. possibly consume, and given away to any one who would take it, and told Aggy, his factotum, to preserve the rest. The wide, well-kept strawberry-beds were enough to make one long for Midsummer to come round again, and the raspberry canes whispered promises of the most alluring nature. Plums and damsons were literally dropping from the over-laden trees, and a few peaches and apricots--few in comparison with the other fruits--completed the array.

"And there," said Marshall again, "is my potato plot. I shall have a grand bury against the frost sets in. And that is the orchard; but the frees there are old, and only two or three bear anything like a decent show of fruit. Never mind, we have abundance as it is; you must make the orchard your drying-ground. And under that south wall, where the apricots and nectarines are, you will find the bees. I always thought a parson's wife ought to keep bees. There is a vinery down yonder, but I am not going to keep it up; it will cost too much money, little lady. Ah! the celery--did you ever see finer rows? And look at that mountain-ash, with its coral berries; they are glorious in the radiance of the setting sun! And see! there are plenty of lilac bushes and laburnum, and pink and white hawthorn, and flowering barberry, and gueldres roses for the spring. Now, isn't it the perfection of a garden, my Nellie?"

"It is like a garden of old romance. I never saw one half so beautiful, half so wealthy. It only wants a mossy sundial and a peacock to be the realm of poetry itself."

"A sun-dial there is on the western lawn, mossy enough, and crumbling with age; and if you fancy a peacock I will try to get you one. Fie upon you! little lady, for liking anything so gaudy, and vain, and mincing, and brainless as the self-applauding bird who says--

"Ye meaner fowl, give place;
I am all splendour, dignity, and grace!'"

"Who is made to say so by Cowper, who wanted the poor peacock to point his moral and adorn his tale. I do like peacocks, because of their glorious plumage; only I wish their voices were a little more musical. I count it quite a mark of superior mind in these steam-driving, go-ahead days of hard utilitarianism to be able honestly to admire anything that is made for ornament alone."

"Are you going to abuse the age, Nellie? It has its faults, but I think it is a grand, healthy, vigorous age, such as the world has never seen before.

'Fly happy, happy sails, and bear the press,
Fly happy with the mission of the Cross;
Knit land to land, and, blowing heavenward,
With silks and fruits and spices clear of toll
Enrich the markets of the golden year!'"

"My dear Marshall, if you begin with Tennyson there is no knowing where you will end; and I am tired, and should like some tea, if there is any to be had."

"To be sure," said my husband, laughing. "Nellie, I suspect I am the most inattentive bridegroom that ever wedded the lady of' his Jove. You were tired an hour ago, and here am I marching you up and down these walks as if you were in want of a stroll to give you an appetite. Let us go into the house. I dare say Aggy has been reconnoitring from the windows; she is on thorns to see her new mistress. Aggy, you know, is cook, and housemaid, and parlour-maid, and everything else that you may require; but there is a little girl, taken from our schools, who is learning to be a servant, for Mrs. Hearn thought the house too large to be left to one sole domestic's dusting and scrubbing energies. Little Meggie is a bright, quick, docile child, I fancy; but you will see whether she promises to be worth the labour of training; of course, you will please yourself about keeping her."

By this time we were entering the house, which I cannot better describe than by saying that it was worthy to stand in such a garden. The rooms were large and old-fashioned, having plenty of windows, and abundance of closets and cupboards. The ceilings were low, certainly, but one looks for that in a cottage; however, what was wanting in height was made out in width and breadth. I went up to my room to take off my things: I had encountered Aggy in the hail, and told her to bring me up some warm water; and lot my toilet-table was set in all proper style, and everything laid out that I could possibly require! The room, too, was most tastefully arranged; and, strange to say, in complete accordance with my own habits. Aggy must be a witch! How could she know that I liked the towels folded in that peculiar, old-maidish fashion? That I disposed my dressing-table in that rather unusual style? That I liked so and so, and so and so, and had followed my likings ever since I had a room of my own wherein I was privileged to do that which pleased me? Really everything was arranged exactly as I should have done it myself next morning, had not some kind fairy prompted Aggy to anticipate all that I could possibly have effected!

Tap-tap at my door! Of course I said "Come in," for equally of course it was Aggy with the jug of hot water. What was my astonishment to behold Ross, with her irreproachable lady's-maid-air, instead of the square, sturdy daleswoman, to whom I had been giving the credit of so much tact and neatness, and even elegance and miraculous forethought! "I hope you are quite well, ma'am, and not too much fatigued," was Ross's smiling welcome, and she stood ready to officiate, as if she had presided at my toilet from time immemorial. "Thank you, Ross, I am very well, and only a little tired, but terribly dusty. But, Ross, how came you here?"

"Well, ma'am, Mrs. Ward sent me, and I was very willing to come: she thought, ma'am, it would be difficult for you to find a personal attendant in these parts; and I'm sure, Mrs. Cleaton, ma'am, there's no lady living I would sooner serve than yourself, if it were only for the sake of my late dear lady that's under the sods of a foreign land! And please, ma'am, I'll put my hand to anything; I'm not particular; and I'll servo you faithfully, ma'am."

"I am sure of that, Ross; but I never thought of keeping my own maid. What made Mrs. Ward think of sending you, I wonder! However, we will talk it over to-morrow; Mr. Cleaton will be waiting tea now."

And Ross, having taken possession of my travelling gear, and asked for my keys that she might unpack, went away. Going downstairs, I found tea all ready in the drawing-room; and my husband, leading me to my place, said, "There, Mrs. Cleaton, take the head of your own table; that is where I have been wishing to see you for years past."

When we had finished tea, I told him about Ross, and he looked half serious and half amused at my evident perplexity. "Well, Nellie," he said, when I had finished my speech, "it is very clear that Mrs. Ward is determined you shall be a grand lady. Ormside will look at Ross, my dear, only one degree less curiously than it will look at you: it will not know what to make of the species; for I am pretty sure there is not another lady's-maid in all the village. I suppose you may find the article at Hawesdale Hall, five miles away, or perhaps in the aristocratic suburb of Prestworth--no nearer, certainly."

"But, Marshall, she must not stay! We cannot afford it: who ever heard of such a thing as a village pastor's wife keeping her own maid? The thing is preposterous; I can do admirably with Aggy and the little girl you spoke about."

"There is a heap of letters in that card-basket, perhaps you will find one from our aunt that will explain matters a little."

He was right; there was a long epistle from Mrs. Ward, and principally about Ross. She could not bear, she said, absolutely to dismiss one who bad been about dear Julia, neither did she like the idea of Marshall's wife being without a personal attendant; and, therefore, she begged I would take her, and make her my factotum, for she would be very useful to me in many ways; and as for the extra expense, she would be delighted to take it upon herself; for, of course, with our little income, she could not for a moment think of increasing our expenditure to a fraction's amount.

Marshall looked very grave. "My dear," he said, after a minute's contemplative silence, "this is very good of Aunt Ward, and I thoroughly appreciate her kindness; but I cannot let her pay my servant's wages. I must live within my income and liquidate my expenses. If I truly needed aid, I trust I should not be too proud to receive it; but I feel that I cannot be under obligations to any one for mere luxuries, which are after all unnecessary, and not in accordance with my position in society."

"That is exactly what I feel, Marshall. I perceived at once how inconsistent an appendage a lady's-maid would be to a Dissenting minister's wife with a moderate income. What shall we do with poor Ross?"

"For the present, my dear, if you do not object, we will keep her; we will do nothing hastily, and it would hurt Mrs. Ward and seriously annoy Ross, if we immediately sent her back, like a parcel of unsuitable goods. If you cannot find her sufficient work, I can supply her with some sort of occupation, I dare say; she can take a sawing-class in the girl's day-school for one thing; if, as she says, she is really willing to be made generally useful,I will write to Aunt Ward myself to-morrow."

And there the matter ended. But I understood the whole affair in a very different light from that in which Marshall had viewed it. This was another of poor Mrs. Ward's attempts at secret restitution; she was doing everything in her power to make up to my husband, so far as in her lay, for the inheritance of which she had deprived him. It was not I, her niece, the late Miss Threlkeld, who ought to have a lady's-maid; it was the wife of Marshall Cleaton, who was entitled, if her husband had his rights, to the privilege, if privilege it be, of commanding special and personal attention, and of maintaining a whole staff of servants besides. Again, how I wished I had never listened to West's story in the Coliseum! O, if only I might tell Marshall! It was miserable, horrible to have a secret which must be kept from him; and he laid bare his whole heart to me without one shadow of reservation. Lost in thought, I leaned back in my chair, silent and sad. Marshall roused me, at length, by saying, "Nellie, what is the matter? My dear, do you know you are looking quite doleful? indeed, I could fancy you were fretting over some unspoken care. What is it, little lady?"

I looked up, and coloured furiously under the loving, yet penetrating glance of those dear, kind eyes, and, for the moment, I felt myself the guiltiest creature in our Riding of Yorkshire. Then, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, I burst into tears, and sobbed like the little Ellen Threlkeld of old time. He was at my side in a moment, and his arms were round me, as he said, "Nellie! Nellie, my precious one! crying to-night--our first night in our own dear home. Nay, but you will be ill, I cannot have such violent weeping. Is anything really grieving you, or are you only overtired? Speak, Nellie."

With the old instinct of obedience, coupled with the impulses of new duty, I struggled hard for composure. At length I said, "Marshall, I have a secret, and that makes me unhappy."

"You do not mean that you have a secret from me?"

"Yes, from you. If I might tell you, I should not care; but I may not, I have promised solemnly."

He looked very grave. "Was it wise, Nellie, to promise to keep a secret from your husband? You might have guessed it would become an intolerable burden thus locked up in the recesses of your own bosom."

"O, you mistake," I said, eagerly; "it was long before there was any question about my being your wife. I involuntarily became possessed of an important secret, though, at the time, I had no idea of its importance. I was but a child; it is more than six years ago; but a solemn promise was extracted from me that never, under any circumstances, or through any temptation, would I reveal it or lead to its revelation to another person. I shall be happier now I have told you that I have such a secret; but you will perceive I must not tell it to you."

"Will you never be justified in telling it?"

"Yes. If I should outlive another person who is many years older than myself, I may break the silence I have kept so long; but I must say no more now; I pledged my word that no hint of mine should ever lead to its disclosure. Please do not let us talk about it any further."

"We will not, my Nellie. I am glad you have said so much, but we will not refer to it again. Forget it, my dear wife, if you can; I am sorry that any one should have burdened you with so serious an obligation; but I trust you entirely, and you may rest assured that I have not the slightest desire--save perhaps from a little pardonable curiosity which my sex shares in common with your own--to penetrate your mystery. Come, wipe away your tears. I cannot have our first evening at home spoilt, and I want to hear the tone of the piano; it is sure to be a good one, since it is Mrs. Ward's gift. I think she called it her wedding-present; she ought to have said one of them, for truly her gifts are legion."

So soothed, I dried my eyes and went to the pianoforte, which was really a most excellent instrument; and no more was said about the hidden source of my uneasiness. But when all was dark and still, I thought again how strange a thing it was that I, Marshall's own wife, should possess a knowledge which, if revealed, would restore him to the position which, for six-and-twenty years, he had been taught to anticipate. If he knew what it was that I was pledged so sedulously to conceal, would he thus calmly acquiesce in my continued silence even towards himself? It was very good of him to be so generous as to trust mc so entirely, and his calm, unbroken slumber showed how entirely his mind was at rest, how undisturbed by the little episode of the evening, which was even now causing me so much disquietude and defrauding me of my accustomed repose.

Again, the case became involved in bewildering perplexities, and again I tried to leave it in God's hands, and to beseech His guidance in whatever direction the tide of circumstances might turn. It was almost dawn before I fell into a sound and peaceful sleep.

Very soon I was quite at home in my pleasant cottage, which I presently found had been christened "Cove Cottage," in memory of our first meeting in the dear old cove, on the Pen Aber shore; and very soon too I was introduced to my new duties, and began to feel as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be visiting sick people, and keeping club accounts, and chiding naughty children, and praising good ones. I presently discovered that I was the secretary to several associations, and that I was expected to preside at various meetings for replenishing the missionary basket, and sewing for the poor, and to hold myself responsible for the general working of the girls' Sunday and day schools--all of which I took to kindly, and liked very well; and perhaps--yes, I am sure, that I rather enjoyed the dignity of my new position and took the initiative with hearty good will.

But one day I received a sudden check. I was passing by our church and looked in to see who was there. No one was there save the pew-opener's wife, very busy with her mops and brushes. O, please, ma'am, she cried," as soon as she saw me, "I was bid to ask you when the mothers' meeting would begin--the poor mothers are very anxious to meet their lady again, and they listened last Sunday to hear if it would be given out."

"The mothers' meeting?" I said, interrogatively: "who is their lady?"

"You, ma'am, of course. The mothers wouldn't think of having no other lady than their pastor's wife. Mrs. Metcalf, our last good lady, was very much blessed in her work."

I took my way home meditatively. I lead a mother's meeting! The thing was absurd: what did I know about mothers' duties and responsibilities and sorrows and cares, and how could I talk about that which I had never experienced? Must I go and lay down the law to a party of women, all older than myself--I, a girl of twenty--just because I was the pastor's wife? Arrived at home, I found Marshall performing hilariously on the pianoforte. Whenever he was very much wearied with study, he came out of the library, and relieved his brain by playing Handel's music, either "The Harmonious Blacksmith" or the "Water Piece," and occasionally "The Hailstone Chorus."

"Well, my dear bishopess, where have you been?" he said, facing round, as I entered the room. "I hope you have not been far; I want you to go out with me this afternoon."

"O, Marshall! I am so dismayed: there must be a mothers' meeting soon, and you never told me--what am I to do?"

"I will give out the notice, my dear, on Sunday; only choose your day and the hour. You had better have it in the lecture-room--so many will be sure to attend the first time, out of curiosity."

"But, Marshall, need there be a mothers meeting at all?"

"Certainly there must; the poor mothers here are used to it, and expect it accordingly. They bothered me about it two years ago, and I got Mrs. Stone, our senior deacon's wife, to take it, but somehow she never got hold of the women's hearts. Then, when Mrs. Hearn was here, I put her in office, and she managed delightfully. The mothers regularly fell in love with her, and I really believe they would have liked to oust me in John Hearn's favour, simply that they might retain his wife among them. When she went away, they gave her an elaborate anti-macassar and a Rippon's Hymn-book, by way of testimonial; and Mary Dent, who used to be the terror of the neighbourhood, and sometimes the disgrace of her sex, made quite a touching speech at the tea-meeting they got up, in order to bid farewell to Mrs. Hearn, with all due honour. O, yes, Nellie love, you must have a mothers' meeting."

"What in the world can I say to them? I know literally nothing about the management of children--I have never lived among them in my life."

"Never mind, begin to talk, and it will all come naturally. Women take to children as ducks do to water. Speak to them on the importance of early training, show them that the rule of love is infinitely better than the yoke of fear, Only begin, and you will go on fast enough."

"I will write to Mrs. Hearn, that will be the best way. r think the idea of coming after her disheartens me more than anything else. Her very face would make the women listen and feel." And I did write, and dear Mrs. Hearn sympathized with my distress, and gave me so much valuable advice that if I had room, I would favour you, my readers, with some of it. But this history of mine ought long ago to have come to a conclusion; so I will proceed with my story, and refrain from introducing any irrelevant matter. I will only say that on a given day I met the poor mothers, and tried to talk to them simply and lovingly, and then they told me their own troubles and difficulties, and I became interested in the home circle of each one of these my poorer sisters, and, from that first day I had no further misgivings, and we met fortnightly ever after, and always had plenty to discuss and plenty to say, and the mothers and I were drawn together by the silken cords of kindly Christian sympathy.

Our beautiful autumn faded into winter, and Christmas came and went, and already the snowdrops were springing up from the dark earth, when we were favoured with an unexpected visitor. I was sitting in the dining-room one morning, very busy with my sewing, and thinking who I had down on my list for visiting that forenoon, when a carriage stopped at our little gate, tolerably laden with luggage; somebody very infirm alighted, and, leaning on the driver's arm, came slowly up the gravel walk. The somebody was a lady in black, guiltless of crinoline, and wearing on her head a huge bonnet of the coal-scuttle pattern in one hand she grasped a corpulent green umbrella, with a bone handle like the beak of a bird of prey. I sprang up, and went to the windows Could it be--could it indeed be she whom I thought we had irremediably offended? Another moment, and my doubts were at an end: I hastened to open the hall-door and welcome Mrs. Chippendale.

Not one word, however, could I extract from her till every trunk and package was safely deposited in the hail, and by that time Marshall, who was deep in his Sunday morning's sermon, had emerged from his study his astonishment exceeded my own.

"Well, nephew Marshall," said the old lady at last, when we had her in my cozy rocking-chair in the drawing-room, "so you and that child have got married! She doesn't look quite such a chit as she did when you began making love to her at Kennington; but she is not exactly what one would expect in a clergyman's wife; she ought to be older."

"She is growing older every day, aunt," returned Marshall, as confidentially as if he were imparting some wondrous piece of information.

"Indeed!" said Aunt Isabella, sharply, when she at length managed to catch his meaning; "I am glad to hear that; for there are some people who remain children to the end of their days. Well, now, what do you suppose brings me here?"

"You come to see us, I hope, aunt," replied Marshall. It is an unexpected pleasure, but no less a pleasure for its surprise. We are very happy to see you, and we shall keep you as long as we can."

Nothing more was said then of the object of Aunt Isabella's visit; but I hastened to order a fire in the spare bedroom, and to make all possible arrangements for her comfort. As I moved about and gave my directions, I saw that she was watching me, and scrutinizing everything about her with all the keenness imaginable; and though she said little, and pretended to hear nothing, I felt sure she was forming her own conclusions respecting my simplest words and actions. I felt rather uncomfortable and slightly displeased; but then it was Aunt Isabella, and she was always peculiar, and always seemed privileged to do as she liked, and speak her mind, when other people would have met with a rebuff.

In the evening she and I were sitting alone in the drawing-room, and she testified her desire to converse by folding up her knitting and informing me that her hearing was wonderfully good. She commenced thus:--

"I am getting a very old woman, niece Ellen, a very old woman; and changes have come upon me, and I am not so strong as I used to be; but, first of all, I want to know whether Marshall makes you a good husband?"

"Of course he does," I replied, with something like indignation; "even if he loved me less, so good and noble-minded a man must needs make me very happy."

She nodded her head complacently. "That's right, my dear; always stand up for your husband. I have been so strangely situated lately, that a little conjugal praise sounds quite novel; I began to think, only my own brief experience contradicted the notion, that husband and wife, after the honeymoon was fairly over, became like cat and dog--natural enemies."

"A very shocking notion, aunt! I am glad to think it is quite unfounded."

"Not so unfounded as you innocently imagine; if you had been where I have been lately, you would have a different tale to tell."

I saw she wished me to make inquiries, so I said, "And where have you been, Aunt Isabella?"

"I have been to Thornycroft Hall; I have been staying with Mr. and Mrs. Adolphus Devereux, my dear. I would rather live in a hornet's nest than in their house; they never meet but they quarrel, they never speak but they insult or incense each other; and every mortal thing the one does is meant to aggravate and torment the other. And Maria has a baby, you know--an ugly, screaming, cross, miserable little bundle of humanity. There is not a servant about the place who was there in your uncle's time; then there is not a poor person in the village who does not pity or despise the grand folks at the Hall. I was glad to get away, I can tell you. But I have quite a history for you, only I should like your husband to hear it at the same time; go and fetch him. What does he shut himself up for?"

"It is Friday night, aunt, and he is not ready for Sunday. I make it a rule never to allow him to be disturbed."

"Tut, nonsense! Let him preach an old sermon next Sunday; it is only what hundreds of his betters do. Go and tell him I wish to converse with him."

I went and delivered my message, and Marshall felt that he had better resign himself to his fate; so, with a regretful glance at his books and papers, and his clear little fire, and his well-trimmed lamp, he followed me into the drawing-room.

"Well, aunt," he said, seating himself near Mrs. Chippendale, "I have obeyed your summons, Ellen tells me you have something to say to me."

"I have a good deal to say to you both; so please put that paper-knife down, you fidget me twisting and twirling it about so foolishly; and don't speak so loud, I am not at all deaf to-night, and I can hear you in your natural voice, First of all, let me tell you I have been losing my money; I am going to retrench."

"Indeed!" said Marshall, kindly; "I am sorry for that, aunt. Is it irrecoverably gone?"

"Gone like last year's dead leaves; like the smoke going up the chimney there."

"I hope it was not much?"

"Never mind how much; I do not care to name the sum, but it was enough to make me give up housekeeping, and determine to go Into lodgings. I must make my expenditure meet my income, you know, nephew Marshall. I suppose you teach your people here to keep out of debt. Well, I thought it would look badly if I went among strangers, having great-nieces and great-nephews of my own; so I thought I would go to Thornycroft Hall, and see how the land lay there, and if there was any likelihood of my being able to spend the remainder of my days in peace under that roof which had often sheltered me very happily in the time of my brother, and also in the time of his son, my dear nephew, John Ward. I need not tell you that, going unexpectedly, I found them all sixes and sevens, and Maria was in one of her tantrums, and not on speaking terms with her husband; and both she and Adolphus had their own story to tell, and their own complaints to make, and I was fairly wearied to death with their wranglings and altercations, and their confidences to myself. And sometimes Adolphus stormed and swore; he thought I couldn't hear; and Maria went into hysterics, and he shook her out of them; and once, when she would not be shaken quiet, he picked her up, gave her a sound cuff on the side of her head, and carried her off into her own dressing-room and what he did with her there I cannot say, only I heard a frightful uproar, and presently he came out and looked the door behind him, and, without seeming in the least put about, took up the Times, and smoked his cigar and drank his pale sherry till he fell asleep. Ah! Miss Maria has found her match. But he must be awfully strong to gather up such an armful, and carry it upstairs screaming and struggling."

"I do not wonder you objected to so tempestuous an atmosphere," said Marshall, drily.

"Tempestuous, indeed, it was! One continuous domestic thunderstorm! But they behaved very well to me, and made a grand fuss with me, till I told them what I wanted--a home, a cheap home, with some of my relations, because I had lost my money. Then they changed countenance pretty quickly; husband and wife for once were united in their sentiments, and Maria told me, with unstudied plainness, that I could not stay with them; 'married people were better left to themselves,' &c., &c.; and in a few days, being tired of the cold shoulder, I bade a long farewell to Thornycroft Hall, and went up to London, and surprised them in Gordon Square, as I surprised you this morning."

"Aunt Ward would not show you the cold shoulder, I think?"

"No; I cannot say she did. She is very much altered far the better; yet still, she and I differ on nearly every point. Somehow we always manage to provoke each other; it is as much my fault as hers; and I felt, before I had been in the house two hours, that we could never agree to put our horses together. As for Arabella, she is past all criticism; she ought to have been born in the lower ranks, that she might have followed her vocation--cooking! You know she is going to be married?"

"No, indeed! We heard something about a probable engagement; but she has had fancies of that kind so often, we thought nothing of it. Is this a real bonâ fide affair?"

"Certainly. They will be married in May, I believe; and a most suitable match it will be, They fell in love at the dinner-table. The gentleman was struck with the sense and piquancy of the lady's remarks touching the cooking of several delicate dishes, of which they mutually partook. She was charmed with his nice palate in the matter of wines, and his appreciation of certain favourite plats of her own, Over their coffee they became confidential, and they parted sworn friends. Next day he called and lunched in Gordon Square, and he was lost in admiration of his charmer's devotion to the noble art of gastronomy. By the end of the week be proposed, and was accepted."

"Who ever is he?"

"In the first place, he is nearly fifty years of age. He is a Mr. Kitchener; a relation, I dare say, of the celebrated Dr. Kitchener, who wrote that charming book, 'The Cook's Oracle.' He is rich, and said to be good-tempered. Also he seems to understand the science of making himself luxuriously comfortable. It is quite a case of 'Kindred spirits,' I assure you.,'

"A case of kindred stomachs, I am afraid," returned Marshall. "I should really like to see Arabella with her elderly beau; I wonder if we shall be asked to the wedding?"

"I dare say you will; she is on excellent terms with all the world at present. The other morning I stumbled upon them in the little drawing-room; he was giving her a kiss, and, of course, I felt de trop; but with the most charming simplicity he informed me that she was as sweet as--not summer roses--'as sweet as young spring chickens with white sauce and early asparagus;' and she said he was a 'dear old goose,' to which I wickedly added, 'stuffed with sage and onions.' Ah, yes! they are very much in love; but I was tired of it, and came away. And now the question is, whether you and your wife will take me in?"

"If you want a home, Aunt Isabella, you shall have it under my roof, and we will make you as comfortable as we can; only let me warn you, we shall have to set up a nursery establishment in the autumn, and Cove Cottage is not so large as Thornycroft Hall, and you might be inconvenienced. You found Maria's baby a nuisance?"

"Yes, because it howled so. It cried when it was washed and dressed, and ~When it was undressed; and when it wanted food, and when it had taken food; and when it awoke, though it very seldom went to sleep; in fact, it scarcely ever stopped crying. They said it had the stomach-ache, and they were going to give it something they call 'Daffy's' when I came away. Stomach-ache! I should think it had every ache that flesh is heir to, yelling and screaming all day and all night in that fashion--horrible little creature!"

"Poor little thing!" I said, compassionately; "it must be ill and badly managed. Is Maria much in the nursery?"

"No, indeed! I don't believe she cares a bit about the child; she says it is ugly and ill-tempered, just like its father. I told her it might inherit the ill-temper from both sides; but Adolphus is not ugly; for he is physically handsome, except when he is in a passion, or in the sulks. But come, now, I want to settle with you; I will give you forty pounds a-year for my lodging, board, and washing--not a penny more. You will not lose by me; I think I shall not cost you more than that; but you will gain nothing, and have all the trouble into the bargain. Will you take me un those terms?"

We said we would; though I, for my part, was by no means enchanted with this unforeseen addition to our family. But then Mrs. Chippendale had been very fond of Mrs. Cleaton, and very kind to her in her last illness, and she would have acted generously towards Marshall had not his conscientious scruples interfered to prevent it; and now she was poor, and evidently breaking up; and I could see that she was nervous and anxious, notwithstanding her strenuous efforts to appear as brusque and cavalier as usual. She was much altered since we had parted at Kennington--considerably shrunken and wasted, and her tall form was bowed, and her dark eyes far less bright and penetrating. Doubtless the trouble of losing her property had weighed heavily upon her, though she affected to make light of it, and refused to enter into any particulars of her loss. She was just the woman to fret quietly and deeply, and try all the while to wear an unconcerned countenance, and to talk as if she had not a care in the world. It seemed hard that now, in her old age, when infirmities were visibly pressing upon her, she should be compelled to give up her own handsomely-appointed establishment and seek refuge under the roof of strangers, or by the hearth of such of her own kin as could be persuaded to take her into their family circle. Looking at her in this light, and remembering her as she bent over dear Mrs. Cleaton, saying, so softly, so tenderly--"Emily, Emily, darling!" I could do nothing but take her into my heart, and promise to be to her as a daughters

And so the matter was arranged, and Aunt Isabella sent for some few articles of furniture, and other items of property left behind in her old neighbourhood, and became our regular inmate. She interfered with us very little, sitting much in her own room, but seeming interested in our affairs, and pleased to be consulted whenever she joined us downstairs. And all through the summer, though she was evidently getting weaker, she appeared to enjoy herself exceedingly, roaming about our beautiful garden, or sitting in the orchard, with her interminable knitting, or talking to the old women who came up to the cottage from day to day, on some little pretence of business. She always went to our church in the morning; and I soon found that Marshall's prayers and sermons were making a deep impression on her mind. There was a silent but decided change in her outward life; and after awhile she began to converse on religious subjects, and we could see that her views were quite altered, and her estimate of her own goodness and virtues greatly altered, if not altogether swept away. In August my little boy was born, and I was afraid that now would be the season of trial, for Mrs. Chippendale's aversion to babies, and especially boy babies, pressed heavily on my mind. I need not have given myself the slightest concern. She took to the little fellow the first moment she saw him sleeping on my arm, when he was about two hours old, and from that moment she fancied him her especial charge. To watch by his cradle, to hold him in her trembling arms, to sing to him in a thin, quavering voice that had been a fine full soprano thirty years ago, seemed to be the especial joy of her life; and when, a few weeks after his birth, he became for a short time ailing and uneasy, her anxiety manifested itself in a hundred ways. She would have had us call in all the medical science of the neighbourhood; and one morning, before daybreak, when father, mother, and baby were all sweetly and soundly asleep, she came to my room, apologizing most humbly for awaking us, on the plea that she could not rest without knowing whether the dear child were worse, for she had dreamed of seeing him in a fit. How proud and pleased she was when we had him registered as "Edward Marshall Chippendale Cleaton."

Towards the middle of the winter Aunt Isabella was seized with acute bronchitis. The weather was piercingly cold, and her constitution evidently broken up. Our medical man said, from the first, there was scarcely a possibility of her recovery. She seemed to understand this herself, and began to talk like one who is going soon on a long journey. The mists of a lifetime had rolled away, and the light of the Gospel shone out clearly, fully, and continually on her soul. Since she had been with us, she said, she had been very happy--happier than she had ever been before; but she was quite ready and willing to depart, and be with Christ, which is far better. She thanked me for all my kindness, and she blessed Marshall, and told, hint hew much she now rejoiced that he had stood firm under the temptation she had herself spread for his feet. "For," she said, "if you had sacrificed one scruple of conscience to worldly gain, to temporal advantage, I could not have received your teaching as I have done, to my soul's salvation. When I heard your first sermon, I said, this man speaks that, and that only, which in his heart of hearts he believes; God is with him; what he says must be of God."

And then she told us that she had left us all her property,. for we should make a good use of it, and spend it as they who, must give account to the Creator. We both exclaimed--for we thought all was lost save about sixty pounds a-year; but she informed us that it was only a few hundreds that had passed from her control, and she had taken advantage of this slight misfortune to speak of "a loss," and try which of her friends or kinsfolk would receive her, under the supposition of her reduced circumstances. The great mass of her fortune remained intact, and it was to be ours. She had left it all to her dear adopted children, Marshall Ward Cleaton, Ellen his wife, and their heirs for ever, with her love and her blessing.

Aunt Isabella lingered on till the days began visibly to lengthen, and then very quietly--in her sleep, we believe--she passed away. We buried her under the south wall of our own church. She had chosen her own resting-place; and Marshall read over her sleeping dust the beautiful burial-service of the Church to which she belonged, and to which she was faithful to the last. I laid upon her grave the first snowdrops of our garden.

And now I ceased to trouble myself any more about the diverted inheritance of Thornycroft Hall. Poor Aunt Isabella's fortune was very much more than we had anticipated, and we suddenly found ourselves quite rich people; so that the wrong Marshall had suffered, and to which, in spite of every rational argument, I could not help feeling myself in some sort accessory, became of far less consequence, for he now possessed sufficient to purchase Thornycroft itself, had it been for sale, and had we cared to make much change in our style of living.

When all the requisite legal business had been gone through, and we were quietly in possession of that which had so unexpectedly fallen to our share, Marshall and I had a serious conversation on the subject of our future course.

"What do you wish, Nellie?" he said to me in the twilight of one sweet May evening, as we sat together on a rustic seat beneath the shadow of our own thickly-blossomed apple-trees. "How should you like to become mistress of Templebury? I saw in to-day's papers that it is in the market."

Templebury was a beautiful little estate about five miles from Ormside, further up among the hills, luxuriantly wooded, and well watered by several fine streams.

"I like Templebury very well," I replied, "but I like Cove Cottage better: however, I am willing to make any change that you may think proper."

"Well, so far as residence is concerned, I do not see why there should be any change at all, if you are content. I can buy Cove Cottage; I know its owner is willing to part with it to a liberal purchaser; and we can make any alterations that seem desirable. Should you like that, my Nellie?"

"Should I not? It would be delightful to have this dear little nest for our very own; I would rather have it than ten Templeburys. With the expenditure of less than half it would take to buy another estate, this might be made the most perfect little place in the world."

"Shall I tell you what I have in my mind? I find I can purchase the two meadows at the back of our orchard, and the land beyond as far as the brook: if that were added to the house and grounds, we should have quite a landed estate of our own. Then, as regards the cottage itself, we might enlarge it by building a wing in exactly the same style, only loftier--I must confess to aspirations after ceilings that I cannot touch with my uplifted hand--and you would like a greenhouse, Nellie, and the stables might be restored to working order. Altogether, I see no reason why we should not remain here, and improve the place; besides, it is so convenient far the church and the schools."

"Yes, and Templebury would be so very far away. But do you still intend to exercise your ministry as a regular pastor?"

"My dear Nellie, is it possible you think I might be induced to lay down that which I claim as my dearest privilege, my highest honour? O no!--I love my work too well. I did not take it up as a mere trade by which I might live, and cannot resign it because I need no longer exert myself in any way for the acquisition of worldly pelf. There is great truth in the Episcopalian dogma or axiom, 'Once a clergyman, always a clergyman'--though the meaning is far deeper than they who propagate it possibly imagine. Once having consecrated one's self to the service of the ministry--once having pledged one's self iii the sight of God and man to exercise the sacred functions of pastor and preacher--there is no drawing back while life and strength remain. It is not the mere laying on of hands, whether those hands be imposed by prelatical bishops or by pastoral bishops, like John Hearn and myself that commits a man unconditionally to his ministerial functions: it is the covenant which has been sealed in his own soul betwixt that soul and God; the vows he has taken upon himself, which none but God has witnessed, and of which the public profession by ordination was but the mere outward visible sign and form, that binds him to a life-long consecration to the work which in God's name and for Christ's dear sake he has pledged himself to do. How beautiful, how thrilling are those lines of Keble's!--

'Ye who your Lord's commission bear
His way of mercy to prepare,--
Angels He calls ye: be your strife
To lead on earth an angel's life.

Think not of rest: though dreams be sweet,
Start up and ply your heavenward feet.
Is not God's oath upon your head,
Ne'er to sink back on slothful bed,
Never again your loins untie,
Nor let your torches waste and die,
Till, when the shadows thickest fall,
Ye hear your Master's midnight call?'

So you see, Nellie, J have no choice: I am pledged, vowed to the service of the sanctuary; I am a sworn soldier of my King, and I dare not--would not for worlds turn deserter. So long as life lasts, and health remains, I must go forth bearing the banners of the blessed Cross, proclaiming, like the great inspired preacher of old time, 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself; not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."

"Shall you resign the stipend you have hitherto received? You do not need it now."

"By no means; that would be an injustice to the church under my charge, an injustice to whomsoever may come after me. The next pastor in this place will probably be as poor, or, perhaps, poorer than I was when I came here several years ago; my people can well afford a certain sum, and they ought to pay it cheerfully, as, indeed, they do; but if for any lapse of time they were not called to support or to contribute to the support of their minister, they would be likely to fall into bad habits and feel unwilling to exert themselves in a pecuniary sense, when once more it became their duty and their responsibility."

"You are quite right; only may not people think you avaricious, if they know that, rich as you are, you still continue to receive your original stipend?"

"They have no right to think it; under any circumstances the labourer is worthy of his hire. They will hardly think so when they see that I expend upon the cause that which I take from them, quadrupled at the least? You agreed with me, Nellie, about devoting a goodly portion of our income to the furtherance of God's cause in this village? If we buy this estate instead of Templebury, we can very well afford to begin the new schools we were talking of, and we may think about the almshouses for decayed members of our own church."

"Ah, yes! all that you have planned seems those wise and good in my eyes. And, Marshall, you must let me have my own little pet fancy."

"What is that, dearest? uniform for the girls of the upper day school?"

"No; but we must have that too. It is a memorial window I want, in the south transept, behind our pew--you know for whom?"

"My dear child, I don't know whether Nonconfomists patronize memorial windows. What kind of design do you want?"

"Simply an arabesque pattern--nothing of figures, of course; they might be a stumbling-block to the weaker brethren--and a scroll with these words, 'How much owest thou unto my Lord?'"

"I understand; there can be no objection to that. That window shall be your special gift, and I will have another for Aunt Isabella. But I mean the almshouses to bear her flame: she could not have a nobler monument."

And so the question of our leaving Cove Cottage was disposed of, and several years of happy toil and calm enjoyment succeeded, and my boy grew and prospered, and a little daughter was given to us, whom we call "Emily." How well I remember hearing my uncle on the last evening of his life say to Marshall--"If ever you have a daughter of your own, let her be named Emily!" And how little could I then imagine that it was I who should be the mother of Marshall's children! Our house now scarcely deserved its same, it had far outgrown its cottage nomenclature, but we held to it for all that. The projected wing was achieved; the meadow-land, a fine rich pasturage, was our own; and I had my greenhouse. Marshall was blessed in his work; he had some trials, it is true, but, on the whole, his hands were greatly strengthened, and he went on his way rejoicing. Our people loved and trusted us, and I often said no lot on earth was comparable to that of a village pastor's wife.

At last the still current of our life was troubled; and it happened in this wise. One morning we received a letter from Adolphus Devereux, summoning us both in great haste to Thornycroft Hall. Mrs. Ward was there, and in apparently dying circumstances, and wished us to be sent for. As soon as it was possible we responded to her request, and the evening of the same day found us at Thornycroft once more. Dr. Henbury and Mr. Wrenshaw were both there; and we were given to understand that Mrs. Ward had been making her will.

Both Maria and her husband greeted us with a show of respect, and certain demonstrations of welcome. I had not seen her since her wedding morning; she and Marshall had never met since that memorable day of the reading of the two wills. My aunt was indeed extremely ill, and it seemed but too probable that her malady was about to terminate fatally; poor thing, she was sadly changed, and was looking very old and haggard and worn, Her joy at seeing me was intense; she folded me in her arms and wept over me as a mother over her long absent child, I asked her why she had never complied with our repeated and most urgent request that she would come and see us at Ormside.

She answered convulsively, "Dear child, I could not! I could not face your husband! To-morrow you will know all; and then, O Ellen, you will hate and despise me!"

"No, I shall not; I know now what you are intending to do; I have known your secret for years, and I have known, too, how bitter a price you were paying for the fault you committed long years ago, and how you longed, but did not dare to repair your error."

"You guessed by the codicil you once found?"

"Yes, and by something Mrs. West told me at Rome; she witnessed the codicil, it seems."

"Yes! and you have kept the secret all this time, although your husband was the person injured by my guilty fraud?"

"I had promised you solemnly, and I could not go back; and seeing that my husband's fortunes were my own, I felt I could not plead with you to make restitution; and since Aunt Chippendale's death we have been almost too wealthy."

"Ah, I was thankful that Aunt Isabella disposed of her fortune as she did; she little knew the relief it would ho to my mind to know you and Marshall were her heirs. But even that did not alter the fact of my own wicked deception, and now I must tell the truth; I cannot die with this terrible sin on my conscience. Mr. Wrenshaw already has my instructions."

Of course, I did not leave my husband to learn what was awaiting him from other lips than mine. I told him the whole story that night, from beginning to end, Great was his astonishment, and for a few minutes he seemed thoughtful and perplexed; then he begged me to leave him alone; and I did so, and I saw him no more till we met in the drawing-room just before bedtime.

When we were shut up in our room for the night, he began: "Nellie, I have been thinking over the wonderful story I have heard, and I have been praying over it too, and asking for guidance; and I have taken my resolution, subject, of course, to your approval."

"You will restore Thornycroft Hall to its present owners?" I said.

"Not exactly: but if I did so, what would you say?"

"I think I should say you were right! On my own account I could not have a wish for more than I already enjoy. But our children, Marshall, have we any right to deprive them of an inheritance, which legally devolves to them, as things are at present?"

"I cannot feel, Nellie, that I have a moral claim on the Thornycroft estates; it seems to me that, in all fairness and equity, Maria really is her father's lawful successor. The property was only left unconditionally to mc, because my grandfather was so violently irritated against Mrs. Ward, that he could not bring himself to name one of her children as his heir. By all our English laws of primogeniture Maria has the better claim. If I took what is now offered me, I should be violating my conscience, and our children would be none the better for wealth, paid for at the price of their father's peace of mind. We have enough and to spare, my Nellie! we are very, very happy in our dear home, among our own people, under the shadow of our own hills, are we not, my sweet wife? I, for my part, am fully content; I wish for nothing further, save a heart more filled with praise and gratitude for the countless joys and blessings of my most happy lot. Let them keep what they have long called their own; let them never know what our claim might have been. Let poor aunt's shame be buried in loving hearts; let her own children never know her sin--her mistake!"

"I do not quite understand! How can they help knowing!"

"Very easily! I will see my aunt the first thing to-morrow mornings I will say to her in effect what I have said to you. I will assure her that if she persist in her intention of making public restitution, it will be in vain, since I shall immediately give back that which, till to-night, I never dreamed was my own; and Maria may well be spared any further humiliation at my hands. Her pride and, perhaps, her feelings, suffered sufficiently when I renounced her and the estates together. Why should she be subjected to the further pain of knowing that she holds her property and her position solely through what the world would call my generosity?' It must not be. Mr. Wrenshaw will keep our secret, if I ask him. He is a generous as well as an upright man; and when I have put that unlucky codicil in the fire there will be no chance of any further disturbance. You agree to all this, my wife?"

Agree to it? I thought I had been proud of my husband before: but now?--words of mine can never express how in my soul, I honoured his lofty rectitude, his pure unselfishness, his calm rejection of that which the world commonly holds in such esteem. I could not speak; I could Only throw my arms around his neck and weep for joy, because he was so very good, so truly great, so noble, and yet so pure-hearted, so simple, and single-minded, that he never dreamed of taking any credit to himself for the sacrifice he was going to make. It seemed to him then and ever afterwards the most natural thing in the world to act as he did.

And his last words that night were, "And then, Nellie, how could we have left Ormside?--our dear people whom we love, and who love us--our schools--our friends? O, it was not to be thought of!"

Next morning Marshall sought an early interview with Mrs. Ward, and, after the lapse of an hour I was sent for. I found my aunt sobbing on my husband's shoulder; he was trying to soothe her, and in his hand ho held the unfortunate codicil. "Come here, Nellie," he said cheerfully, "and support your aunt, while I put this troublesome thing in the fire."

In another minute it was crackling and curling up in the fierce heat; another, and nothing remained to tell how Marshall had been the undoubted heir of Thornycroft Hall. It was all over. Mr. Wrenshaw promised to keep silence, as the codicil was really destroyed; but I think he looked upon my dear husband as something more than mortal. Such an action, he said, was unprecedented in his experience; and the more he thought about it the more he wondered, and the more he revered the man who was not to be tempted by that bait, which the world, and even the Church, too generally swallows without a misgiving--wealth and position.

Mrs. Ward, released from her long burden of care and remorse, did not die. As her mind became calmer, her strength returned; and at the end of a month we had the pleasure of taking her back with us to Cove Cottage, and introducing her to our little ones by the title of "grandmamma!" She was so charmed with Ormside, so happy in our quiet, yet busy country life, that she determined before the summer was over to take up her abode in our neighbourhood. We wished her to reside with us, but she very sensibly declined. There was a pretty house near us to he let, and that she took, and we saw her daily, and sometimes hourly; but still she had her own home, and we had ours. It was perhaps best. She had her little peculiarities still, and in some cases, where the children were concerned, we might have clashed. As it was, we were united in the strongest affection. A more painstaking, devoted grandmamma never gave herself up to be tyrannized over by darling little tyrants; and once when a great trial, a terrible dread, came upon me, I know not what I should have done without her.

This trial was nothing less than the dangerous and protracted illness of my dear husband. For many weeks we could only weep, and pray, and trust, and hope against hope. The strong man was brought down to infantile weakness; the vigorous mind was enfeebled by acute suffering, and fevered tossings to and fro, through painful nights and weary days; and at one time it seemed impossible that he could recover; and I, who had clung, with a sort of agonized desperation, to the little shred of hope the doctors half hesitatingly held forth, could only cry, "Father, give me strength to say, 'Thy will be done." Then, when all human means had been tried in vain; when medical skill declared itself baffled, and devoted. love felt that its long watches and unwearied tendings soon must cease--there came a change, a blessed change, unexpected, marvellous, little short of miraculous. The Lord heard the prayer of the breaking heart, and the husband and father was given back to those to whom he could scarcely be too dear; the pastor was restored to his flock, the labourer to his work in the vineyard; and he who had been on the grave's brink could say, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord hath chastened me sore, but He hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of righteousness. I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord."

And through all this long and sore trial, dear Mrs. Ward was my best earthly comfort. She shared with me all the fatigues of that protracted nursing; she encouraged me to hope, even at the worst; she was ever ready to speak the word of consolation, and to cheer me on when the very blackness of misery seemed gathering around me. My children never feared her, as her own and as I had done; they ran to her in all their several troubles and pleasures, and she was made the confidante of every little difficulty, every innocent scheme, every baby-secret; she was never so happy as when they gathered around her to listen to her stories, to ask her advice, or to make her the recipient of a host of hopes and troubles, such as 'We all have in the earliest years of our life. Her hope, too, grew brighter and clearer as the years rolled on; the moroseness, the narrowness that once marked her religious profession had given place to a cheerful trust and a large-hearted charity; and the sunshine of God's peace in her soul reflected its calm brightness on her countenance. One could scarcely recognise in her the Mrs. Ward of Thornycroft Hall, whom every one feared and shunned, and very few loved; the Mrs. Ward whose chief pleasure had seemed to consist in throwing a wet blanket upon the happy emotions of all who came under her influence; whose tongue could mercilessly wound; whose eyes shot pride, and fierce anger, and keen suspicion.

And now my story is ended; may it not have been told in vain! We are still in our beloved home at Ormside; my husband, perfectly restored to his old robust health, is working more zealously than ever. As a pastor, a preacher, and an author, he is doing the world good service; many rise up and call him blessed. My children are now six in number. Besides Edward Marshall Chippendale, our first-born, and Emily, our eldest daughter, we have Julia, John Dudley Ward, Isabella, and Francis Hearn--our baby Frank, the fattest, merriest, sauciest little rogue of ten months that ever gladdened a mother's heart, and awakened a father's pride! Marshall, I must tell you, is absurdly proud of his children! that is his weakness, if he has one--which, as his wife, I am not bound to confess.

And he!--he is far more to me now than in those happy days when first he brought me--his girl-wife--to our pretty nest-like horn?, under the Yorkshire hills. I know him better, though I can never trust him more perfectly than I did from the very beginning of our intercourse. I can better appreciate the force of his character; his goodness, and sweetness, and truth, and unmingled charity; his unassuming Christian walk and conversation in the bosom of his family, as in the presence of the Church, and in the sight of the world. I thank God that lean be so proud of my husband. I like to remember that from my heavenly Father came this richest and choicest earthly blessing--which yet is not all earthly, since love like ours has in it that immortal essence over which Death has little or no control. How good God has been to me, ever since I was east on the world a solitary, unloved orphan; nay, how good He has been to me ever since I was born! For everything, both spiritual and temporal, I desire most devoutly to thank Him, as the Author and Giver of all blessings. I could wish that my future life might be one living doxology.

I will not write more about Maria and her husband, for I have nothing pleasant to say concerning them. Poor Arabella is dead. Humanly speaking, I believe she might have lived to old age, had she pursued a different course of life, Nothing short of total abstinence could have saved her; and that, as we have seen, she turned from in her wilful anger and self-indulgence.

Next spring, if all be well, Marshall and I are going abroad for a few weeks, and we shall once more visit the burial-ground at Rome, where our dear Julia's remains are so quietly resting.

And now I lay dawn my pen; it is a lovely summer evening, and the sun is declining behind the Ingleborough range, and my husband is calling to me to walk with him through the meadows, where the brook pursues its rapid course. Grandmamma will look after the elder children; the tinies are in bed, of course, though not asleep, for I hear Johnnie and Isabella singing an extraordinary duet--words and music of their own improvisation.

Surely I have a goodly heritage; surely the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. praise God! Praise God for all that is, and has been, and shall be! My God has been so gracious through the past, that I cannot but trust Him for all time to come.

His purposes shall ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour:
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower."

"Yes, dear Marshall! I hear you. I am coming; have a little patience. I have quite finished. Ross, fetch my hat and shawl, and take away my writing-case; I shall not want it again for a long while."