Chapter XVI…

Chapter XVI

Then out into the world, my course I did determine; Though, to be rich was not my wish, yet to be great was charming. My talents they were not the worst, nor yet my education; Resolved was I, at least to try, to mend my situation.--BURNS.

In the meantime, the session of Parliament had begun, and the Rivers’ party had, since February, inhabited Park Lane. Meta had looked pale and pensive, as she bade her friends at Stoneborough good-bye; but only betrayed that she had rather have stayed at home, by promising herself great enjoyment in meeting them again at Easter.

Flora was, on the other hand, in the state of calm patronage that betokened perfect satisfaction. She promised wonders for Miss Bracy’s sisters--talked of inviting Mary and Blanche to see sights and take lessons; and undertook to send all the apparatus needed by Cocksmoor school; and she did, accordingly, send down so many wonderful articles, that curate and schoolmistress were both frightened; Mrs. Taylor thought the easels were new-fashioned instruments of torture; and Ethel found herself in a condition to be liberal to Stoneborough National School.

Flora was a capital correspondent, and made it her business to keep Margaret amused, so that the home-party were well informed of the doings of each of her days--and very clever her descriptions were. She had given herself a dispensation from general society until after Easter; but, in the meantime, both she and Meta seemed to find great enjoyment in country rides and drives, and in quiet little dinners at home, to George’s agreeable political friends. With the help of two such ladies as Mrs. and Miss Rivers, Ethel could imagine George’s house pleasant enough to attract clever people; but she was surprised to find how full her sister’s letters were of political news.

It was a period when great interests were in agitation; and the details of London talk and opinions were extremely welcome. Dr. Spencer used to come in to ask after “Mrs. Rivers’s Intelligencer”; and, when he heard the lucid statements, would say, she ought to have been a “special correspondent.” And her father declared that her news made him twice as welcome to his patients; but her cleverest sentences always were prefaced with “George says,” or “George thinks,” in a manner that made her appear merely the dutiful echo of his sentiments.

In an early letter, Flora mentioned how she had been reminded of poor Harry, by finding Miss Walkinghame’s card. That lady lived with her mother at Richmond, and, on returning the visit, Flora was warmly welcomed by the kind old Lady Walkinghame, who insisted on her bringing her baby and spending a long day. The sisters-in-law had been enchanted with Miss Walkinghame, whose manners, wrote Flora, certainly merited papa’s encomium.

On the promised “long day,” they found an unexpected addition to the party, Sir Henry Walkinghame, who had newly returned from the continent. “A fine-looking, agreeable man, about five-and-thirty,” Flora described him, “very lively and entertaining. He talked a great deal of Dr. Spencer, and of the life in the caves at Thebes; and he asked me whether that unfortunate place, Cocksmoor, did not owe a great deal to me, or to one of my sisters. I left Meta to tell him that story, and they became very sociable over it.”

A day or two after--“Sir Henry Walkinghame has been dining with us. He has a very good voice, and we had some delightful music in the evening.”

By and by Sir Henry was the second cavalier, when they went to an oratorio, and Meta’s letter overflowed with the descriptions she had heard from him of Italian church music. He always went to Rome for Easter, and had been going as usual, this spring, but he lingered, and, for once, remained in England, where he had only intended to spend a few days on necessary business.

The Easter recess was not spent at the Grange, but at Lady Leonora’s pretty house in Surrey. She had invited the party in so pressing a manner that Flora did not think it right to decline. Meta expressed some disappointment at missing Easter among her school-children, but she said a great deal about the primroses and the green corn-fields, and nightingales--all which Ethel would have set down to her trick of universal content, if it had not appeared that Sir Henry was there too, and shared in all the delicious rides.

“What would Ethel say,” wrote Flora, “to have our little Meta as Lady of the Manor of Cocksmoor? He has begun to talk about Drydale, and there are various suspicious circumstances that Lady Leonora marks with the eyes of a discreet dowager. It was edifying to see how, from smiles, we came to looks, and by and by to confidential talks, which have made her entirely forgive me for having so many tall brothers. Poor dear old Mr. Rivers! Lady Leonora owns that it was the best thing possible for that sweet girl that he did not live any longer to keep her in seclusion; it is so delightful to see her appreciated as she deserves, and with her beauty and fortune, she might make any choice she pleases. In fact, I believe Lady Leonora would like to look still higher for her, but this would be mere ambition, and we should be far better satisfied with such a connection as this, founded on mutual and increasing esteem, with a man so well suited to her, and fixing her so close to us. You must not, however, launch out into an ocean of possibilities, for the good aunt has only infected me with the castle-building propensities of chaperons, and Meta is perfectly unconscious, looking on him as too hopelessly middle-aged, to entertain any such evil designs, avowing freely that she likes him, and treating him very nearly as she does papa. It is my business to keep ‘our aunt,’ who, between ourselves, has, below the surface, the vulgarity of nature that high-breeding cannot eradicate, from startling the little humming-bird, before the net has been properly twined round her bright little heart. As far as I can see, he is much smitten, but very cautious in his approaches, and he is wise.”

Margaret did not know what dismay she conveyed, as she handed this letter to her sister. There was no rest for Ethel till she could be alone with her father. “Could nothing prevent it? Could not Flora be told of Mr. Rivers’s wishes?” she asked.

“His wishes would have lain this way.”

“I do not know that.”

“It is no concern of ours. There is nothing objectionable here, and though I can’t say it is not a disappointment, it ought not to be. The long and short of it is, that I never ought to have told you anything about it.”

“Poor Norman!”

“Absurd! The lad is hardly one-and-twenty. Very few marry a first love.” (Ah, Ethel!) “Poor old Rivers only mentioned it as a refuge from fortune-hunters, and it stands to reason that he would have preferred this. Anyway, it is awkward for a man with empty pockets to marry an heiress, and it is wholesomer for him to work for his living. Better that it should be out of his head at once, if it were there at all. I trust it was all our fancy. I would not have him grieved now for worlds, when his heart is sore.”

“Somehow,” said Ethel, “though he is depressed and silent, I like it better than I did last Christmas.”

“Of course, when we were laughing out of the bitterness of our hearts,” said Dr. May, sighing. “It is a luxury to let oneself alone to be sorrowful.”

Ethel did not know whether she desired a tete-a-tete with Norman or not. She was aware that he had seen Flora’s letter, and she did not believe that he would ever mention the hopes that must have been dashed by it; or, if he should do so, how could she ever guard her father’s secret? At least, she had the comfort of recognising the accustomed Norman in his manner, low-spirited, indeed, and more than ever dreamy and melancholy, but not in the unnatural and excited state that had made her unhappy about him. She could not help telling Dr. Spencer that this was much more the real brother.

“I dare say,” was the answer, not quite satisfactory in tone.

“I thought you would like it better.”

“Truth is better than fiction, certainly. But I am afraid he has a tendency to morbid self-contemplation, and you ought to shake him out of it.”

“What is the difference between self-contemplation and self-examination?”

“The difference between your brother and yourself. Ah! you think that no answer. Will you have a medical simile? Self-examination notes the symptoms and combats them; self-contemplation does as I did when I was unstrung by that illness at Poonshedagore, and was always feeling my own pulse. It dwells on them, and perpetually deplores itself. Oh, dear! this is no better--what a wretch I am. It is always studying its deformities in a moral looking-glass.”

“Yes, I think poor Norman does that, but I thought it right and humble.”

“The humility of a self-conscious mind. It is the very reverse of your father, who is the most really humble man in existence.”

“Do you call self-consciousness a fault?”

“No. I call it a misfortune. In the vain, it leads to prudent vanity; in the good, to a painful effort of humility.”

“I don’t think I quite understand what it is.”

“No, and you have so much of your father in you, that you never will. But take care of your brother, and don’t let his brains work.”

How Ethel was to take care of him she did not know; she could only keep a heedful eye on him, and rejoice when he took Tom out for a long walk--a companion certainly not likely to promote the working of the brain--but though it was in the opposite direction to Cocksmoor, Tom came home desperately cross, snubbed Gertrude, and fagged Aubrey; but, then, as Blanche observed, perhaps that was only because his trousers were splashed.

In her next solitary walk to Cocksmoor, Norman joined Ethel. She was gratified, but she could not think of one safe word worth saying to him, and for a mile they preserved an absolute silence, until he first began, “Ethel, I have been thinking--”

“That you have!” said she, between hope and dread, and the thrill of being again treated as his friend.

“I want to consult you. Don’t you think now that Richard is settled at home, and if Tom will study medicine, that I could be spared.”

“Spared!” exclaimed Ethel. “You are not much at home.”

“I meant more than my present absences. It is my earnest wish--” he paused, and the continuation took her by surprise. “Do you think it would give my father too much pain to part with me as a missionary to New Zealand?”

She could only gaze at him in mute amazement.

“Do you think he could bear it?” said Norman hastily.

“He would consent,” she replied. “Oh, Norman, it is the most glorious thing man can do! How I wish I could go with you.”

“Your mission is here,” said Norman affectionately.

“I know it is--I am contented with it,” said Ethel; “but oh! Norman, after all our talks about races and gifts, you have found the more excellent way.”

“Hush! Charity finds room at home, and mine are not such unmixed motives as yours.”

She made a sound of inquiry.

“I cannot tell you all. Some you shall hear. I am weary of this feverish life of competition and controversy--”

“I thought you were so happy with your fellowship. I thought Oxford was your delight.”

“She will always be nearer my heart than any place, save this. It is not her fault that I am not like the simple and dutiful, who are not fretted or perplexed.”

“Perplexed?” repeated Ethel.

“It is not so now,” he replied. “God forbid! But where better men have been led astray, I have been bewildered; till, Ethel, I have felt as if the ground were slipping from beneath my feet, and I have only been able to hide my eyes, and entreat that I might know the truth.”

“You knew it!” said Ethel, looking pale, and gazing searchingly at him.

“I did, I do; but it was a time of misery when, for my presumption, I suppose, I was allowed to doubt whether it were the truth.”

Ethel recoiled, but came nearer, saying, very low, “It is past.”

“Yes, thank Him who is Truth. You all saved me, though you did not know it.”

“When was this?” she asked timidly.

“The worst time was before the Long Vacation. They told me I ought to read this book and that. Harvey Anderson used to come primed with arguments. I could always overthrow them, but when I came to glory in doing so, perhaps I prayed less. Anyway, they left a sting. It might be that I doubted my own sincerity, from knowing that I had got to argue, chiefly because I liked to be looked on as a champion.”

Ethel saw the truth of what her friend had said of the morbid habit of self-contemplation.

“I read, and I mystified myself. The better I talked, the more my own convictions failed me; and, by the time you came up to Oxford, I knew how you would have shrunk from him who was your pride, if you could have seen into the secrets beneath.”

Ethel took hold of his hand. “You seemed bright,” she said.

“It melted like a bad dream before--before the humming-bird, and with my father. It was weeks ere I dared to face the subject again.”

“How could you? Was it safe?”

“I could not have gone on as I was. Sometimes the sight of my father, or the mountains and lakes in Scotland, or--or--things at the Grange, would bring peace back; but there were dark hours, and I knew that there could be no comfort till I had examined and fought it out.”

“I suppose examination was right,” said Ethel, “for a man, and defender of the faith. I should only have tried to pray the terrible thought away. But I can’t tell how it feels.”

“Worse than you have power to imagine,” said Norman, shuddering. “It is over now. I worked out their fallacies, and went over the reasoning on our side.”

“And prayed--” said Ethel.

“Indeed I did; and the confidence returned, firmer, I hope, than ever. It had never gone for a whole day.”

Ethel breathed freely. “It was life or death,” she said, “and we never knew it!”

“Perhaps not; but I know your prayers were angel-wings ever round me. And far more than argument, was the thought of my father’s heart-whole Christian love and strength.”

“Norman, you believed, all the time, with your heart. This was only a bewilderment of your intellect.”

“I think you are right,” said Norman. “To me the doubt was cruel agony--not the amusement it seems to some.”

“Because our dear home has made the truth, our joy, our union,” said Ethel. “And you are sure the cloud is gone, and for ever?” she still asked anxiously.

He stood still. “For ever, I trust,” he said. “I hold the faith of my childhood in all its fullness as surely as--as ever I loved my mother and Harry.”

“I know you do,” said Ethel. “It was only a bad dream.”

“I hope I may be forgiven for it,” said Norman. “I do not know how far it was sin. It was gone so far as that my mind was convinced last Christmas, but the shame and sting remained. I was not at peace again till the news of this spring came, and brought, with the grief, this compensation--that I could cast behind me and forget the criticisms and doubts that those miserable debates had connected with sacred words.”

“You will be the sounder for having fought the fight,” said Ethel.

“I do not dread the like shocks,” said her brother, “but I long to leave this world of argument and discussion. It is right that there should be a constant defence and battle, but I am not fit for it. I argue for my own triumph, and, in heat and harassing, devotion is lost. Besides, the comparison of intellectual power has been my bane all my life.”

“I thought ‘praise was your penance here.’”

“I would fain render it so, but--in short, I must be away from it all, and go to the simplest, hardest work, beginning from the rudiments, and forgetting subtle arguments.”

“Forgetting yourself,” said Ethel.

“Right. I want to have no leisure to think about myself,” said Norman. “I am never so happy as at such times.”

“And you want to find work so far away?”

“I cannot help feeling drawn towards those southern seas. I am glad you can give me good-speed. But what do you think about my father?”

Ethel thought and thought. “I know he would not hinder you,” she repeated.

“But you dread the pain for him? I had talked to Tom about taking his profession; but the poor boy thinks he dislikes it greatly, though, I believe, his real taste lies that way, and his aversion only arises a few grand notions he has picked up, out of which I could soon talk him.”

“Tom will not stand in your place,” said Ethel.

“He will be more equable and more to be depended upon,” said Norman. “None of you appreciate Tom. However, you must hear my alternative. If you think my going would be too much grief for papa, or if Tom be set against helping him in his practice, there is an evident leading of Providence, showing that I am unworthy of this work. In that case I would go abroad and throw myself, at once, with all my might, into the study of medicine, and get ready to give my father some rest. It is a shame that all his sons should turn away from his profession.”

“I am more than ever amazed!” cried Ethel. “I thought you detested it. I thought papa never wished it for you. He said you had not nerve.”

“He was always full of the tenderest consideration for me,” said Norman. “With Heaven to help him, a man may have nerve for whatever is his duty.”

“How he would like to have you to watch and help. But New Zealand would be so glorious!”

“Glory is not for me,” said Norman. “Understand, Ethel, the choice is New Zealand, or going at once--at once, mind--to study at Edinburgh or Paris.”

“New Zealand at once?” said Ethel.

“I suppose I mast stay for divinity lectures, but my intention must be avowed,” said Norman hastily. “And now, will you sound my father? I cannot.”

“I can’t sound,” said Ethel. “I can only do things point-blank.”

“Do then,” said Norman, “any way you can! Only let me know which is best for him. You get all the disagreeable things to do, good old unready one,” he added kindly. “I believe you are the one who would be shoved in front, if we were obliged to face a basilisk.”

The brightness that had come over Norman, when he had discharged his cares upon her, was encouragement enough for Ethel. She only asked how much she was to repeat of their conversation.

“Whatever you think best. I do not want to grieve him, but he must not think it fine in me.”

Ethel privately thought that no power on earth could prevent him from doing that.

It was not consistent with cautious sounding, that Norman was always looking appealingly towards her; and, indeed, she could not wait long with such a question on her mind. She remained with her father in the drawing-room, when the rest were gone upstairs, and, plunging at once into the matter, she said, “Papa, there is something that Norman cannot bear to say to you himself.”

“Humming-birds to wit?” said Dr. May.

“No, indeed, but he wants to be doing something at once. What should you think of--of--there are two things; one is--going out as a missionary--”

“Humming-birds in another shape,” said the doctor, startled, but smiling, so as to pique her.

“You mean to treat it as a boy’s fancy!” said she.

“It is rather suspicious,” he said. “Well, what is the other of his two things?”

“The other is, to begin studying medicine at once, so as to help you.”

“Heyday!” cried Dr. May, drawing up his tall vigorous figure, “does he think me so very ancient and superannuated?”

What could possess him to be so provoking and unsentimental to-night? Was it her own bad management? She longed to put an end to the conversation, and answered, “No, but he thinks it hard that none of your sons should be willing to relieve you.”

“It won’t be Norman,” said Dr. May. “He is not made of the stuff. If he survived the course of study, every patient he lost, he would bring himself in guilty of murder, and there would soon be an end of him!”

“He says that a man can force himself to anything that is his duty.”

“This is not going to be his duty, if I can make it otherwise. What is the meaning of all this? No, I need not ask, poor boy, it is what I was afraid of!”

“It is far deeper,” said Ethel; and she related great part of what she had heard in the afternoon. It was not easy to make her father listen--his line was to be positively indignant, rather than compassionate, when he heard of the doubts that had assailed poor Norman. “Foolish boy, what business had he to meddle with those accursed books, when he knew what they were made of--it was tasting poison, it was running into temptation! He had no right to expect to come out safe--” and then he grasped tightly hold of Ethel’s hands, and, as if the terror had suddenly flashed on him, asked her, with dilated eye and trembling voice, whether she were sure that he was safe, and held the faith.

Ethel repeated his asseveration, and her father covered his face with his hands in thanksgiving.

After this, he seemed somewhat inclined to hold poor Oxford in horror, only, as he observed, it would be going out of the frying-pan into the fire, to take refuge at Paris--a recurrence to the notion of Norman’s medical studies, that showed him rather enticed by the proposal.

He sent Ethel to bed, saying he should talk to Norman and find out what was the meaning of it, and she walked upstairs, much ashamed of having so ill served her brother, as almost to have made him ridiculous.

Dr May and Norman never failed to come to an understanding, and after they had had a long drive into the country together, Dr May told Ethel that he was afraid, of what he ought not to be afraid of, that she was right, that the lad was very much in earnest now at any rate, and if he should continue in the same mind, he hoped he should not be so weak as to hold him from a blessed work.

From Norman, Ethel heard the warmest gratitude for his father’s kindness. Nothing could be done yet, he must wait patiently for the present, but he was to write to his uncle, Mr. Arnott, in New Zealand, and, without pledging himself, to make inquiries as to the mission; and in the meantime, return to Oxford, where, to his other studies, he was to add a course of medical lectures, which, as Dr. May said, would do him no harm, would occupy his mind, and might turn to use wherever he was.

Ethel was surprised to find that Norman wrote to Flora an expression of his resolution, that, if he found he could be spared from assisting his father as a physician, he would give himself up to the mission in New Zealand. Why should he tell any one so unsympathetic as Flora, who would think him wasted in either case?

Chapter XVII

Do not fear: Heaven is as near, By water, as by land.--LONGFELLOW.

The fifth of May was poor Harry’s eighteenth birthday, and, as usual, was a holiday. Etheldred privately thought his memory more likely to be respected, if Blanche and Aubrey were employed, than if they were left in idleness; but Mary would have been wretched had the celebration been omitted, and a leisure day was never unwelcome.

Dr. Spencer carried off Blanche and Aubrey for a walk, and Ethel found Mary at her great resort--Harry’s cupboard--dusting and arranging his books, and the array of birthday gifts, to which, even to-day, she had not failed to add the marker that had been in hand at Christmas. Ethel entreated her to come down, and Mary promised, and presently appeared, looking so melancholy, that, as a sedative, Ethel set her down to the basket of scraps to find materials for a tippet for some one at Cocksmoor, intending, as soon as Margaret should be dressed, to resign her morning to the others, invite Miss Bracy to the drawing-room, and read aloud.

Gertrude was waiting for her walk, till nurse should have dressed Margaret, and was frisking about the lawn, sometimes looking in at the drawing-room window at her sisters, sometimes chattering to Adams at his work, or laughing to herself and the flowers, in that overflow of mirth, that seemed always bubbling up within her.

She was standing in rapt contemplation of a pear-tree in full blossom, her hands tightly clasped behind the back, for greater safety from the temptation, when, hearing the shrubbery gate open, she turned, expecting to see her papa, but was frightened at the sight of two strangers, and began to run off at full speed.

“Stop! Blanche! Blanche, don’t you know me?” The voice was that tone of her brother’s, and she stood and looked, but it came from a tall, ruddy youth, in a shabby rough blue coat, followed by a grizzled old seaman. She was too much terrified and perplexed even to run.

“What’s the matter! Blanche, it is I! Why, don’t you know me--Harry?”

“Poor brother Harry is drowned,” she answered; and, with one bound, he was beside her, and, snatching her up, devoured her with kisses.

“Put me down--put me down, please,” was all she could say.

“It is not Blanche! What? the little Daisy, I do believe!”

“Yes, I am Gertrude, but please let me go;” and, at the same time, Adams hurried up, as if he thought her being kidnapped, but his aspect changed at the glad cry, “Ha! Adams’ how are you? Are they all well?”

“‘Tisn’t never Master Harry! Bless me!” as Harry’s hand gave him sensible proof; “when we had given you up for lost!”

“My father well?” Harry asked, hurrying the words one over the other.

“Quite well, sir, but he never held up his head since he heard it, and poor Miss Mary has so moped about. If ever I thought to see the like--”

“So they did not get my letter, but I can’t stop. Jennings will tell you. Take care of him. Come, Daisy--” for he had kept her unwilling hand all the time. “But what’s that for?” pointing to the black ribbons, and, stopping short, startled.

“Because of poor Harry,” said the bewildered child.

“Oh, that’s right!” cried he, striding on, and dragging her in a breathless run, as he threw open the well-known doors; and, she escaping from him, hid her face in Mary’s lap, screaming, “He says he is Harry! he says he is not drowned!”

At the same moment Ethel was in his arms, and his voice was sobbing, “Ethel! Mary! home! Where’s papa?” One moment’s almost agonising joy in the certainty of his identity! but ere she could look or think, he was crying, “Mary! oh, Ethel, see--”

Mary had not moved, but sat as if turned to stone, with breath suspended, wide-stretched eyes, and death-like cheeks--Ethel sprang to her, “Mary, Mary dear, it is Harry! It is himself! Don’t you see? Speak to her, Harry.”

He seemed almost afraid to do so, but, recovering himself, exclaimed, “Mary, dear old Polly, here I am! Oh, won’t you speak to me?” he added piteously, as he threw his arm round her and kissed her, startled at the cold touch of her cheek.

The spell seemed broken, and, with a wild hoarse shriek that rang through the house, she struggled to regain her breath, but it would only come in painful, audible catches, as she held Harry’s hand convulsively.

“What have I done?” he exclaimed, in distress.

“What’s this! Who is this frightening my dear?” was old nurse’s exclamation, as she and James came at the outcry.

“Oh, nurse, what have I done to her?” repeated Harry.

“It is joy--it is sudden joy!” said Ethel. “See, she is better now--”

“Master Harry! Well, I never!” and James, “with one wring of the hand, retreated, while old nurse was nearly hugged to death, declaring all the time that he didn’t ought to have come in such a way, terrifying every one out of their senses! and as for poor Miss May--

“Where is she?” cried Harry, starting at the sight of the vacant sofa.

“Only upstairs,” said Ethel; “but where’s Alan? Is not he come?”

“Oh, Ethel, don’t you know?” His face told but too plainly.

“Nurse! nurse, how shall we tell her?” said Ethel.

“Poor dear!” exclaimed nurse, sounding her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “She’ll never abear it without her papa. Wait for him, I should say. But bless me, Miss Mary, to see you go on like that, when Master Harry is come back such a bonny man!”

“I’m better now,” said Mary, with an effort. “Oh, Harry! speak to me again.”

“But Margaret!” said Ethel, while the brother was holding Mary in his embrace, and she lay tremulous with the new ecstasy upon his breast--“but Margaret. Nurse, you must go up, or she will suspect. I’ll come when I can; speak quietly. Oh! poor Margaret! If Richard would but come in!”

Ethel walked up and down the room, divided between a tumult of joy, grief, dread, and perplexity. At that moment a little voice said at the door, “Please, Margaret wants Harry to come up directly.”

They looked one upon another in consternation. They had never thought of the child, who, of course, had flown up at once with the tidings.

“Go up, Miss Ethel,” said nurse.

“Oh! nurse, I can’t be the first. Come, Harry, come.”

Hand-in-hand, they silently ascended the stairs, and Ethel pushed open the door. Margaret was on her couch, her whole form and face in one throb of expectation.

She looked into Harry’s face--the eagerness flitted like sunshine on the hillside, before a cloud, and, without a word, she held out her arms.

He threw himself on his knees, and her fingers were clasped among his thick curls, while his frame heaved with suppressed sobs, “Oh, if he could only have come back to you.”

“Thank God,” she said; then slightly pushing him back, she lay holding his hand in one of hers, and resting the other on his shoulder, and gazing in silence into his face. Each was still--she was gathering strength--he dreaded word or look.

“Tell me how and where;” she said at last.

“It was in the Loyalty Isles; it was fever--the exertions for us. His head was lying here,” and he pointed to his own breast. “He sent his love to you--he bade me tell you there would be meeting by and by, in the haven where he would be.--I laid his head in the grave--under the great palm--I said some of the prayers--there are Christians round it.”

He said this in short disconnected phrases, often pausing to gather voice, but forced to resume, by her inquiring looks and pressure of his hand.

She asked no more. “Kiss me,” she said, and when he had done so, “Thank you, go down, please, all of you. You have brought great relief. Thank you. But I can’t talk yet. You shall tell me the rest by and by.”

She sent them all away, even Ethel, who would have lingered.

“Go to him, dearest. Let me be alone. Don’t be uneasy. This is peace--but go.”

Ethel found Mary and Harry interlaced into one moving figure, and Harry greedily asking for his father and Norman, as if famishing for the sight of them. He wanted to set out to seek the former in the town, but his movements were too uncertain, and the girls clung to the newly-found, as if they could not trust him away from them. They wandered about, speaking, all three at random, without power of attending to the answers. It was enough to see him, and touch him; they could not yet care where he had been.

Dr. May was in the midst of them ere they were aware. One look, and he flung his arms round his son, but, suddenly letting him go, he burst away, and banged his study door. Harry would have followed.

“No, don’t,” said Ethel; then, seeing him disappointed, she came nearer, and murmured, “‘He entered into his chamber and--’”

Harry silenced her with another embrace, but their father was with them again, to verify that he had really seen his boy, and ask, alas! whether Alan were with Margaret. The brief sad answer sent him to see how it was with her. She would not let him stay; she said it was infinite comfort, and joy was coming, but she would rather be still, and not come down till evening.

Perhaps others would fain have been still, could they have borne an instant’s deprivation of the sight of their dear sailor, while greetings came thickly on him. The children burst in, having heard a report in the town, and Dr. Spencer waited at the door for the confirmation; but when Ethel would have flown out to him, he waved his hand, shut the door, and hurried away, as if a word to her would have been an intrusion.

The brothers had been summoned by a headlong apparition of Will Adams in Cocksmoor school, shouting that Master Harry was come home; and Norman’s long legs out-speeding Richard, had brought him back, flushed, and too happy for one word, while, “Well, Harry,” was Richard’s utmost, and his care for Margaret seemed to overpower everything else, as he went up, and was not so soon sent away.

Words were few downstairs. Blanche and Aubrey agreed that they thought people would have been much happier, but, in fact, the joy was oppressive from very newness. Ethel roamed about, she could not sit still without feeling giddy, in the strangeness of the revulsion. Her father sat, as if a word would break the blest illusion; and Harry stood before each of them in turn, as if about to speak, but turned his address into a sudden caress, or blow on the shoulder, and tried to laugh. Little Gertrude, not understanding; the confusion, had taken up her station under the table, and peeped out from beneath the cover.

There was more composure as they sat at dinner, and yet there was very little talking or eating. Afterwards Dr. May and Norman exultingly walked away, to show their Harry to Dr. Spencer and Mr. Wilmot; and Ethel would gladly have tried to calm herself, and recover the balance of her mind, by giving thanks where they were due; but she did not know what to do with her sisters. Blanche was wild, and Mary still in so shaky a state of excitement, that she went off into mad laughing, when Blanche discovered that they were in mourning for Harry.

Nothing would satisfy Blanche but breaking in on Margaret, and climbing to the top of the great wardrobe to disinter the coloured raiment, beseeching that each favourite might be at once put on, to do honour to Harry. Mary chimed in with her, in begging for the wedding merinos--would not Margaret wear her beautiful blue?

“No, my dear, I cannot,” said Margaret gently.

Mary looked at her and was again in a flood of tears, incoherently protesting, together with Ethel, that they would not change.

“No, dears,” said Margaret. “I had rather you did so. You must not be unkind to Harry. He will not think I do not welcome him. I am only too glad that Richard would not let my impatience take away my right to wear this.”

Ethel knew that it was for life.

Mary could not check her tears, and would go on making heroic protests against leaving off her black, sobbing the more at each. Margaret’s gentle caresses seemed to make her worse, and Ethel, afraid that Margaret’s own composure would be overthrown, exclaimed, “How can you be so silly? Come away!” and rather roughly pulled her out of the room, when she collapsed entirely at the top of the stairs, and sat crying helplessly.

“I can’t think what’s the use of Harry’s coming home,” Gertrude was heard saying to Richard. “It is very disagreeable;” whereat Mary relapsed into a giggle, and Ethel felt frantic.

“Richard! Richard! what is to be done with Mary? She can’t help it, I believe, but this is not the way to treat the mercy that--”

“Mary had better go and lie down in her own room,” said Richard, tenderly and gravely.

“Oh, please! please!” began Mary, “I shall not see him when he comes back!”

“If you can’t behave properly when he does come,” said Richard, “there is no use in being there.”

“Remember, Ritchie,” said Ethel, thinking him severe, “she has not been well this long time.”

Mary began to plead, but, with his own pretty persuasive manner, he took her by the hand, and drew her into his room; and when he came down, after an interval, it was to check Blanche, who would have gone up to interrupt her with queries about the perpetual blue merino. He sat down with Blanche on the staircase window-seat, and did not let her go till he had gently talked her out of flighty spirits into the soberness of thankfulness.

Ethel, meanwhile, had still done nothing but stray about, long for loneliness, find herself too unsteady to finish her letters to Flora and Tom; and, while she tried to make Gertrude think Harry a pleasant acquisition, she hated her own wild heart, that could not rejoice, nor give thanks, aright.

By and by Mary came down, with her bonnet on, quite quiet now. “I am going to church with Ritchie,” she said. Ethel caught at the notion, and it spread through the house. Dr May, who just then came in with his two sons, looked at Harry, saying, “What do you think of it? Shall we go, my boy?” And Harry, as soon as he understood, declared that he should like nothing better. It seemed what they all needed, even Aubrey and Gertrude begged to come, and, when the solemn old minster was above their heads, and the hallowed stillness around them, the tightened sense of half-realised joy began to find relief in the chant of glory. The voices of the sanctuary, ever uplifting notes of praise, seemed to gather together and soften their emotions; and agitation was soothed away, and all that was oppressive and tumultuous gave place to sweet peace and thankfulness. Ethel dimly remembered the like sense of relief, when her mother had hushed her wild ecstasy, while sympathising with her joy. Richard could not trust his voice, but Mr. Wilmot offered the special thanksgiving.

Harry was, indeed, “at home,” and his tears fell fast over his book, as he heard his father’s “Amen,” so fervent and so deep; and he gazed up and around, with fond and earnest looks, as thoughts and resolutions, formed there of old, came gathering thick upon him. And there little Gertrude seemed first to accept him. She whispered to her papa, as they stood up to go away, that it was very good in God Almighty to have sent Harry home; and, as they left the cloister, she slipped into Harry’s hand a daisy from the grave, such a gift as she had never carried to any one else, save her father and Margaret, and she shrank no longer from being lifted up in his arms, and carried home through the twilight street.

He hurried into the drawing-room, and was heard declaring that all was right, for Margaret was on the sofa; but he stopped short, grieved at her altered looks. She smiled as he stooped to kiss her, and then made him stand erect, and measure himself against Norman, whose height he had almost reached. The little curly midshipman had come back, as nurse said, “a fine-growed young man,” his rosy cheeks, brown and ruddy, and his countenance--

“You are much more like papa and Norman than I thought you would be,” said Margaret.

“He has left his snub nose and yellow locks behind,” said his father; “though the shaggy mane seems to remain. I believe lions grow darker with age. So there stand June and July together again!”

Dr. May walked backwards to look at them. It was good to see his face.

“I shall see Flora and Tom to-morrow!” said Harry, after nodding with satisfaction, as they all took their wonted places.

“Going!” exclaimed Richard.

“Why, don’t you know?” said Ethel; “it is current in the nursery that he is going to be tried by court-martial for living with the King of the Cannibal Islands.”

“Aubrey says he had a desert island, with Jennings for his man Friday,” said Blanche.

“Harry,” said little Gertrude, who had established herself on his knee, “did you really poke out the giant’s eye with the top of a fir-tree?”

“Who told you so, Daisy?” was the general cry; but she became shy, and would not answer more than by a whisper about Aubrey, who indignantly declared that he never said so, only Gertrude was so foolish that she did not know Harry from Ulysses.

“After all,” said Ethel, “I don’t think our notions are much more defined. Papa and Norman may know more, but we have heard almost nothing. I have been waiting to hear more to close up my letters to Flora and Tom. What a shame that has not been done!”

“I’ll finish,” said Mary, running to the side-table.

“And tell her I’ll be there to-morrow,” said Harry. “I must report myself; and what fun to see Flora a member of Parliament! Come with me, June; I’ll be back next day. I wish you all would come.”

“Yes, I must come with you,” said Norman. “I shall have to go to Oxford on Thursday;” and very reluctant he looked. “Tell Flora I am coming, Mary.”

“How did you know that Flora was a married lady?” asked Blanche, in her would-be grown-up manner.

“I heard that from Aunt Flora. A famous lot of news I picked up there!”

“Aunt Flora!”

“Did you not know he had been at Auckland?” said Dr. May. “Aunt Flora had to nurse him well after all he had undergone. Did you not think her very like mamma, Harry?”

“Mamma never looked half so old!” cried Harry indignantly.

“Flora was five years younger!”

“She has got her voice and way with her,” said Harry; “but you will soon see. She is coming home soon.”

There was a great outcry of delight.

“Yes, there is some money of Uncle Arnott’s that must be looked after, but he does not like the voyage, and can’t leave his office, so perhaps Aunt Flora may come alone. She had a great mind to come with me, but there was no good berth for her in this schooner, and I could not wait for another chance. I can’t think what possessed the letters not to come! She would not write by the first packet, because I was so ill, but we both wrote by the next, and I made sure you had them, or I would have written before I came.”

The words were not out of his mouth before the second post was brought in, and there were two letters from New Zealand! What would they not have been yesterday? Harry would have burned his own, but the long closely-written sheets were eagerly seized, as, affording the best hope of understanding his adventures, as it had been written at intervals from Auckland, and the papers, passing from one to the other, formed the text for interrogations on further details, though much more was gleaned incidentally in tete-a-tetes, by Margaret, Norman, or his father, and no one person ever heard the whole connectedly from Harry himself.

“What was the first you knew of the fire, Harry?” asked Dr. May, looking up from the letter.

“Owen shaking me awake; and I thought it was a hoax,” said Harry. “But it was true enough, and when we got on deck, there were clouds of smoke coming up the main hatch-way.”

Margaret’s eyes were upon him, and her lips formed the question, “And he?”

“He met us, and told us to be steady--but there was little need for that! Every man there was as cool and collected as if it had been no more than the cook’s stove--and we should have scorned to be otherwise! He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Keep by me,’ and I did.”

“Then there was never much hope of extinguishing the fire?”

“No; if you looked down below the forecastle it was like a furnace, and though the pumps were at work, it was only to gain time while the boats were lowered. The first lieutenant told off the men, and they went down the side without one word, only shaking hands with those that were left.”

“Oh, Harry! what were you thinking of?” cried Blanche.

“Of the powder,” said Harry.

Ethel thought there was more in that answer than met the ear, and that Harry, at least, had thought of the powder to-night at church.

“Mr. Ernescliffe had the command of the second cutter. He asked to take me with him; I was glad enough; and Owen--he is mate, you know--went with us.”

As to telling how he felt when he saw the good ship Alcestis blown to fragments, that was past Harry, and all but Blanche were wise enough not to ask. She had by way of answer, “Very glad to be safe out of her.”

Nor was Harry willing to dwell on the subsequent days, when the unclouded sun had been a cruel foe; and the insufficient stores of food and water did, indeed, sustain life, but a life of extreme suffering. What he told was of the kindness that strove to save him, as the youngest, from all that could be spared him. “If I dropped asleep at the bottom of the boat, I was sure to find some one shading me from the sun. If there was an extra drop of water, they wanted me to have it.”

“Tell me their names, Harry!” cried Dr. May. “If ever I meet one of them--”

“But the storm, Harry, the storm?” asked Blanche. “Was that not terrible?”

“Very comfortable at first, Blanche,” was the answer. “Oh, that rain!”

“But when it grew so very bad?”

“We did not reck much what happened to us,” said Harry. “It could not be worse than starving. When we missed the others in the morning, most of us thought them the best off.”

Mary could not help coming round to kiss him, as if eyes alone were not enough to satisfy her that here he was.

Dr. May shuddered, and went on reading, and Margaret drew Harry down to her, and once more by looks craved for more minute tidings.

“All that you can think,” murmured Harry; “the very life and soul of us all--so kind, and yet discipline as perfect as on board. But don’t now, Margaret--”

The tone of the don’t, the reddening cheek, liquid eye, and heaving chest, told enough of what the lieutenant had been to one, at least, of the desolate boat’s crew.

“Oh, Harry, Harry! I can’t bear it!” exclaimed Mary. “How long did it last? How did it end?”

“Fifteen days,” said Harry. “It was time it should end, for all the water we had caught in the storm was gone--we gave the last drop to Jones, for we thought him dying; one’s tongue was like a dry sponge.”

“How did it end?” repeated Mary, in an agony.

“Jennings saw a sail. We thought it all a fancy of weakness, but ‘twas true enough, and they saw our signal of distress!”

The vessel proved to be an American whaler, which had just parted with her cargo to a homeward bound ship, and was going to refit, and take in provisions and water at one of the Milanesian islands, before returning for further captures. The master was a man of the shrewd, hard money-making cast; but, at the price of Mr. Ernescliffe’s chronometer, and of the services of the sailors, he undertook to convey them where they might fall in with packets bound for Australia.

The distressed Alcestes at first thought themselves in paradise, but the vessel, built with no view, save to whales, and, with a considerable reminiscence of the blubber lately parted with, proved no wholesome abode, when overcrowded, and in the tropics! Mr. Ernescliffe’s science, resolution, and constancy, had saved his men so far; but with the need for exertion his powers gave way, and he fell a prey to a return of the fever which had been his introduction to Dr. May.

“There he was,” said Harry, “laid up in a little bit of a stifling cabin, just like an oven, without the possibility of a breath of air! The skin-flint skipper carried no medicine; the water--shocking stuff it was--was getting so low, that there was only a pint a day served out to each, and though all of us Alcestes clubbed every drop we could spare for him--it was bad work! Owen and I never were more glad in our lives than when we heard we were to cast anchor at the Loyalty Isles! Such a place as it was! You little know what it was to see anything green! And there was this isle fringed down close to the sea with cocoa-nut trees! And the bay as clear!--you could see every shell, and wonderful fishes swimming in it! Well, every one was for going ashore, and some of the natives swam out to us, and brought things in their canoes, but not many; it is not encouraged by the mission, nor by David--for those Yankee traders are not the most edifying society--and the crew vowed they were cannibals, and had eaten a man three years ago, so they all went ashore armed.”

“You stayed with him,” said Margaret.

“Ay, it was my turn, and I was glad enough to have some fresh fruit and water for him, but he could not take any notice of it. Did not I want you, papa? Well, by and by, Owen came back, in a perfect rapture with the place and the people, and said it was the only hope for Mr. Ernescliffe, to take him on shore--”

“Then you did really go amongst the cannibals!” exclaimed Blanche.

“That is all nonsense,” said Harry. “Some of them may once have been, and I fancy the heathens might not mind a bit of ‘long pig’ still; but these have been converted by the Samoans.”

The Samoans, it was further explained, are the inhabitants of the Navigator Islands, who, having been converted by the Church Missionary Society, have sent out great numbers of most active and admirable teachers among the scattered islands, braving martyrdom and disease, never shrinking from their work, and, by teaching and example, preparing the way for fuller doctrine than they can yet impart. A station of these devoted men had for some years been settled in this island, and had since been visited by the missions of Newcastle and New Zealand. The young chief, whom Harry called David, and another youth, had spent two summers under instruction at New Zealand, and had been baptised. They were spending the colder part of the year at home, and hoped shortly to be called for by the mission-ship to return, and resume their course of instruction.

Owen had come to an understanding with the chief and the Samoans, and had decided on landing his lieutenant, and it was accordingly done, with very little consciousness on the patient’s part. Black figures, with woolly mop-heads, and sometimes decorated with whitewash of lime, crowded round to assist in the transport of the sick man through the surf; and David himself, in a white European garb, met his guests, with dignified manners that would have suited a prince of any land, and conducted them through the grove of palms, interspersed with white huts, to a beautiful house consisting of a central room, with many others opening from it, floored with white coral lime, and lined with soft shining mats of Samoan manufacture. This, Harry learned, had been erected by them in hopes of an English missionary taking up his abode amongst them.

They were a kindly people, and had shown hospitality to other Englishmen, who had less appreciated it than these young officers could. They lavished every kindness in their power upon them, and Mr. Ernescliffe, at first, revived so much, that he seemed likely to recover.

But the ship had completed her repairs, and was ready to sail. The two midshipmen thought it would be certain death to their lieutenant to bring him back to such an atmosphere; “and so,” continued Harry’s letter to his father, “I thought there was nothing for it but for me to stay with him, and that you would say so. I got Owen to consent, after some trouble, as we were sure to be fetched off one time or another. We said not a word to Mr. Ernescliffe, for he was only sensible now and then, so that Owen had the command. Owen made the skipper leave me a pistol and some powder, but I was ashamed David should know it, and stowed it away. As to the quarter-master, old Jennings, whose boy you remember we picked up at the Roman camp, he had not forgotten that, and when we were shaking hands and wishing good-bye, he leaped up, and vowed ‘he would never leave the young gentleman that had befriended his boy, to be eaten up by them black savage niggers. If they made roast-pork of Mr. May, he would be eaten first, though he reckoned they would find him a tougher morsel.’ I don’t think Owen was sorry he volunteered, and no words can tell what a blessing the good old fellow was to us both.

“So there we stayed, and, at first, Mr. Ernescliffe seemed mending. The delirium went off, he could talk quite clearly and comfortably, and he used to lie listening, when David and I had our odd sort of talks. I believe, if you had been there, or we could have strengthened him any way, he might have got over it; but he never thought he should, and he used to talk to me about all of you, and said Stoneborough had been the most blessed spot in his life; he had never had so much of a home, and that sharing our grief, and knowing you, had done him great good, just when he might have been getting elated. I cannot recollect it all, though I tried hard, for Margaret’s sake, but he said Hector would have a great deal of temptation, and he hoped you would be a father to him, and Norman an elder brother. You would not think how much he talked of Cocksmoor, about a church being built there, as Ethel wished, and little Daisy laying the first stone. I remember one night, I don’t know whether he was quite himself, for he looked full at me with his eyes, that had grown so large, till I did not know what was coming, and he said, ‘I have seen a ship built by a sailor’s vow; the roof was like the timbers of a ship--that was right. Mind, it is so. That is the ship that bears through the waves; there is the anchor that enters within the veil.’ I believe that was what he said. I could not forget that--he looked at me so; but much more he said, that I dimly remember, and chiefly about poor dear Margaret. He bade me tell her--his own precious pearl, as he used to call her--that he was quite content, and believed it was best for her and him both, that all should be thus settled, for they did not part for ever, and he trusted--But I can’t write all that.” (There was a great tear-blot just here). “It is too good to recollect anywhere but at church. I have been there to-day, with my uncle and aunt, and I thought I could have told it when I came home, but I was too tired to write then, and now I don’t seem as if it could be written anyhow. When I come home, I will try to tell Margaret. The most part was about her; only what was better seemed to swallow that up.”

The narrative broke off here, but had been subsequently resumed.

“For all Mr. Ernescliffe talked as I told you, he was so quiet and happy, that I made sure he was getting well, but Jennings did not; and there came an old heathen native once to see us, who asked why we did not bury him alive, because he got no better, and gave trouble. At last, one night--it was the third of August--he was very restless, and could not breathe, nor lie easily; I lifted him up in my arms, for he was very light and thin, and tried to make him more comfortable. But presently he said, ‘Is it you, Harry? God bless you;’ and, in a minute, I knew he was dead. You will tell Margaret all about it. I don’t think she can love him more than I did; and she did not half know him, for she never saw him on board, nor in all that dreadful time, nor in his illness. She will never know what she has lost.”

There was another break here, and the story was continued.

“We buried him the next day, where one could see the sea, close under the great palm, where David hopes to have a church one of these days. David helped us, and said the Lord’s Prayer and the Glory with us there. I little thought, when I used to grumble at my two verses of the psalms every day, when I should want the ninetieth, or how glad I should be to know so many by heart, for they were such a comfort to Mr. Ernescliffe.

“David got us a nice bit of wood, and Jennings carved the cross, and his name, and all about him. I should have liked to have done it, but I knocked up after that. Jennings thinks I had a sun-stroke. I don’t know, but my head was so bad, whenever I moved, that I thought only Jennings would ever have come to tell you about it. Jennings looked after me as if I had been his own son; and there was David too, as kind as if he had been Richard himself--always sitting by, to bathe my forehead, or, when I was a little better, to talk to me, and ask me questions about his Christian teaching. You must not think of him like a savage, for he is my friend, and a far more perfect gentleman than I ever saw any one, but you, papa, holding the command over his people so easily and courteously, and then coming to me with little easy first questions about the Belief, and such things, like what we used to ask mamma. He liked nothing so well as for me to tell him about King David; and we had learned a good deal of each other’s languages by that time. The notion of his heart--like Cocksmoor to Ethel--is to get a real English mission, and have all his people Christians. Ethel talked of good kings being Davids to their line; I think that is what he will be, if he lives; but those islanders have been dying off since Europeans came among them.”

But Harry’s letter could not tell what he confessed, one night, to his father, the next time he was out with him by starlight, how desolate he had been, and how he had yearned after his home, and, one evening, he had been utterly overcome by illness and loneliness, and had cried most bitterly and uncontrollably; and, though Jennings thought it was for his friend’s death, it really was homesickness, and the thought of his father and Mary. Jennings had helped him out to the entrance of the hut, that the cool night air might refresh his burning brow. Orion shone clear and bright, and brought back the night when they had chosen the starry hunter as his friend. “It seemed,” he said, “as if you all were looking at me, and smiling to me in the stars. And there was the Southern Cross upright, which was like the minster to me; and I recollected it was Sunday morning at home, and knew you would be thinking about me. I was so glad you had let me be confirmed, and be with you that last Sunday, papa, for it seemed to join me on so much the more; and when I thought of the words in church, they seemed, somehow, to float on me so much more than ever before, and it was like the minster, and your voice. I should not have minded dying so much after that.”

At last, Harry’s Black Prince had hurried into the hut with the tidings that his English father’s ship was in the bay, and soon English voices again sounded in his ears, bringing the forlorn boy such warmth of kindness that he could hardly believe himself a mere stranger. If Alan could but have shared the joy with him!

He was carried down to the boat in the cool of the evening, and paused on the way, for a last farewell to the lonely grave under the palm tree-one of the many sailors’ graves scattered from the tropics to the poles, and which might be the first seed in a “God’s acre” to that island, becoming what the graves of holy men of old are to us.

A short space more of kind care from his new friends and his Christian chief, and Harry awoke from a feverish doze at sounds that seemed so like a dream of home, that he was unwilling to break them by rousing himself; but they approved themselves as real, and he found himself in the embrace of his mother’s sister.

And here Mrs. Arnott’s story began, of the note that reached her in the early morning with tidings that her nephew had been picked up by the mission-ship, and how she and her husband had hastened at once on board.

“They sent me below to see a hero,” she wrote. “What I saw was a scarecrow sort of likeness of you, dear Richard; but, when he opened his eyes, there was our Maggie smiling at me. I suppose he would not forgive me for telling how he sobbed and cried, when he had his arms round my neck, and his poor aching head on my shoulder. Poor fellow, he was very weak, and I believe he felt, for the moment, as if he had found his mother.

“We brought him home with us, but when the next mail went, the fever was still so high, that I thought it would be only alarm to you to write, and I had not half a story either, though you may guess how proud I was of my nephew.”

Harry’s troubles were all over from that time. He had thenceforth to recover under his aunt’s motherly care, while talking endlessly over the home that she loved almost as well as he did. He was well more quickly than she had ventured to hope, and nothing could check his impatience to reach his home, not even the hopes of having his aunt for a companion. The very happiness he enjoyed with her only made him long the more ardently to be with his own family; and he had taken his leave of her, and of his dear David, and sailed by the first packet leaving Auckland.

“I never knew what the old Great Bear was to me till I saw him again!” said Harry.

It was late when the elders had finished all that was to be heard at present, and the clock reminded them that they must part.

“And you go to-morrow?” sighed Margaret.

“I must. Jennings has to go on to Portsmouth, and see after his son.”

“Oh, let me see Jennings!” exclaimed Margaret. “May I not, papa?”

Richard, who had been making friends with Jennings, whenever he had not been needed by his sisters that afternoon, went to fetch him from the kitchen, where all the servants, and all their particular friends, were listening to the yarn that made them hold their heads higher, as belonging to Master Harry.

Harry stepped forward, met Jennings, and said, aside, “My sister, Jennings; my sister that you have heard of.”

Dr. May had already seen the sailor, but he could not help addressing him again. “Come in; come in, and see my boy among us all. Without you, we never should have had him.”

“Make him come to me,” said Margaret breathlessly, as the embarrassed sailor stood, sleeking down his hair; and, when he had advanced to her couch, she looked up in his face, and put her hand into his great brown one.

“I could not help saying thank you,” she said.

“Mr. May, sir!” cried Jennings, almost crying, and looking round for Harry, as a sort of protector--“tell them, sir, please, it was only my duty--I could not do no less, and you knows it, sir,” as if Harry had been making an accusation against him.

“We know you could not,” said Margaret, “and that is what we would thank you for, if we could. I know he--Mr. Ernescliffe--must have been much more at rest for leaving my brother with so kind a friend, and--”

“Please, miss, don’t say no more about it. Mr. Ernescliffe was as fine an officer as ever stepped a quarter-deck, and Mr. May here won’t fall short of him; and was I to be after leaving the like of them to the mercy of the black fellows--that was not so bad neither? If it had only pleased God that we had brought them both back to you, miss; but, you see, a man can’t be everything at once, and Mr. Ernescliffe was not so stout as his heart.”

“You did everything, we know--” began Dr. May.

“‘Twas a real pleasure,” said Jennings hastily, “for two such real gentlemen as they was. Mr. May, sir, I beg your pardon if I say it to your face, never flinched, nor spoke a word of complaint, through it all; and, as to the other--”

“Margaret cannot bear this,” said Richard, coming near. “It is too much.”

The sailor shook his head, and was retreating, but Margaret signed him to come near again, and grasped his hand. Harry followed him out of the room, to arrange their journey, and presently returned.

“He says he is glad he has seen Margaret; he says she is the right sort of stuff for Mr. Ernescliffe.”

Harry had not intended Margaret to hear, but she caught the words, smiled radiantly, and whispered, “I wish I may be!”

Chapter XVIII

Margaret had borne the meeting much too well for her own good, and a wakeful night of palpitation was the consequence; but she would not allow any one to take it to heart, and declared that she should be ready to enjoy Harry by the time he should return, and meantime, she should dwell on the delight of his meeting Flora.

No one had rested too soundly that night, and Dr. May had not been able to help looking in at his sleeping boy at five in the morning, to certify himself that he had not only figured his present bliss to himself, in his ten minutes’ dream. And looking in again at half-past seven, he found Harry half dressed, with his arm round Mary; laughing, almost sobbing, over the treasures in his cupboard, which he had newly discovered in their fresh order.

Dr. May looked like a new man that morning, with his brightened eye and bearing, as if there were a well-spring of joy within him, ready to brim over at once in tear and in smile, and finding an outlet in the praise and thanksgiving that his spirit chanted, and his face expressed, and in that sunny genial benevolence that must make all share his joy.

He was going to run over half the town--every one would like to hear it from him; Ethel and Mary must go to the rest--the old women in the almshouses, where lived an old cook who used to be fond of Harry--they should have a feast; all who were well enough in the hospital should have a tea-drinking; Dr. Hoxton had already granted a holiday to the school; every boy with whom they had any connection should come to dinner, and Edward Anderson should be asked to meet Harry on his return, because, poor fellow, he was so improved.

Dr. May was in such a transport of kind-hearted schemes, that he was not easily made to hear that Harry had not a sixpence wherewith to reach London.

Ethel, meanwhile, was standing beside her brother tendering to him some gold, as his last quarter.

“How did you get it, Ethel? do you keep the purse?”

“No, but papa took Cocksmoor in your stead, when--”

“Nonsense, Ethel,” said Harry; “I don’t want it. Have I not all my pay and allowance for the whole time I was dead? And as to robbing Cocksmoor--”

“Yes, keep it, Ethel,” said her father; “do you think I would take it now, when if there were a thank-offering in the world.--And, by the bye, your Cocksmoor children must have something to remember this by--”

Every one could have envied Norman, for travelling to London with Harry, but that he must proceed to Oxford in two days, when Harry would return to them. The station-master, thinking he could not do enough for the returned mariner, put the two brothers into the coupe, as if they had been a bridal couple, and they were very glad of the privacy, having, as yet, hardly spoken to each other, when Harry’s attention was dispersed among so many.

Norman asked many questions about the mission work in the southern hemisphere, and ended by telling his brother of his design, which met with Harry’s hearty approbation.

“That’s right, old June. There’s nothing they want so much, as such as you. How glad my aunt will be! Perhaps you will see David! Oh, if you were to go out to the Loyalty group!”

“Very possibly I might,” said Norman.

“Tell them you are my brother, and how they will receive you! I can see the mop-heads they will dress in honour of you, and what a feast of pork and yams you will have to eat! But there is plenty of work among the Maoris for you--they want a clergyman terribly at the next village to my uncle’s place. I say, Norman, it will go hard if I don’t get a ship bound for the Pacific, and come and see you.”

“I shall reckon on you. That is, if I have not to stay to help my father.”

“To be sure,” exclaimed Harry; “I thought you would have stayed at home, and married little Miss Rivers!”

Thus broadly and boyishly did he plunge into that most tender subject, making his brother start and wince, as if he had touched a wound.

“Nonsense!” he cried, almost angrily.

“Well! you used to seem very much smitten, but so, to be sure, were some of the Alcestes with the young ladies at Valparaiso. How we used to roast Owen about that Spanish Donna, and he was as bad at Sydney about the young lady whose father, we told him, was a convict, though he kept such a swell carriage. He had no peace about his father-in-law, the house-breaker! Don’t I remember how you pinched her hand the night you were righted!”

“You know nothing about it,” said Norman shortly. “She is far beyond my reach.”

“A fine lady? Ha! Well, I should have thought you as good as Flora any day,” said Harry indignantly.

“She is what she always was,” said Norman, anxious to silence him; “but it is unreasonable to think of it. She is all but engaged to Sir Henry Walkinghame.”

“Walkinghame!” cried the volatile sailor. “I have half a mind to send in my name to Flora as Miss Walkinghame!” and he laughed heartily over that adventure, ending, however, with a sigh, as he said, “It had nearly cost me a great deal! But tell me, Norman, how has that Meta, as they called her, turned out? I never saw anything prettier or nicer than she was that day of the Roman encampment, and I should be sorry if that fine fashionable aunt of hers, had made her stuck-up and disdainful.”

“No such thing,” said Norman.

“Ha!” said Harry to himself, “I see how it is! She has gone and made poor old June unhappy, with her scornful airs--a little impertinent puss!--I wonder Flora does not teach her better manners.”

Norman, meanwhile, as the train sped over roofs, and among chimneys, was reproaching himself for running into the fascination of her presence, and then recollecting that her situation, as well as his destiny, both guaranteed that they could meet only as friendly connections.

No carriage awaited them at the station, which surprised Norman, till he recollected that the horses had probably been out all day, and it was eight o’clock. Going to Park Lane in a cab, the brothers were further surprised to find themselves evidently not expected. The butler came to speak to them, saying that Mr. and Mrs. Rivers were gone out to dinner, but would return, probably, at about eleven o’clock. He conducted them upstairs, Harry following his brother, in towering vexation and disappointment, trying to make him turn to hear that they would go directly--home--to Eton--anywhere--why would he go in at all?

The door was opened, Mr. May was announced, and they were in a silk-lined boudoir, where a little slender figure in black started up, and came forward with outstretched hand.

“Norman!” she cried, “how are you? Are you come on your way to Oxford?”

“Has not Flora had Mary’s letter?”

“Yes, she said she had one. She was keeping it till she had time to read it.”

As she spoke, Meta had given her hand to Harry, as it was evidently expected; she raised her eyes to his face, and said, smiling’ and blushing, “I am sure I ought to know you, but I am afraid I don’t.”

“Look again,” said Norman. “See if you have ever seen him before.”

Laughing, glancing, and casting down her eyes, she raised them with a sudden start of joy, but colouring more deeply, said, “Indeed, I cannot remember. I dare say I ought.”

“I think you see a likeness,” said Norman.

“Oh, yes, I see,” she answered, faltering; but perceiving how bright were the looks of both, “No? Impossible! Yes, it is!”

“Yes, it is,” said both brothers with one voice. She clasped her hands, absolutely bounded with transport, then grasped both Harry’s hands, and then Norman’s, her whole countenance radiant with joy and sympathy beyond expression.

“Dear, dear Dr. May!” was her first exclamation. “Oh, how happy you must all be! And Margaret?” She looked up at Norman, and came nearer. “Is not Mr. Ernescliffe come?” she asked softly, and trembling.

“No,” was the low answer, which Harry could not bear to hear, and therefore walked to the window. “No, Meta, but Margaret is much comforted about him. He died in great peace--in his arms”--as he signed towards his brother. And as Harry continued to gaze out on the stars of gas on the opposite side of the park, he was able to add a few of the particulars.

Meta’s eyes glistened with tears, as she said, “Perhaps it would have been too perfect if he had come; but oh, Norman! how good she is to bear it so patiently! And how gloriously he behaved! How can we make enough of him! And Flora out! how sorry she will be!”

“And she never opened Mary’s letter,” said Harry, coming back to them.

“She little thought what it contained,” said Meta. “Mary’s letters are apt to bear keeping, you know, and she was so busy, that she laid it aside for a treat after the day’s work. But there! inhospitable wretch that I am! you have had no dinner!”

A refection of tea and cold meat was preferred, and in her own pretty manner Meta lavished her welcomes, trying to cover any pain given by Flora’s neglect.

“What makes her so busy?” asked Harry, looking round on the beautifully furnished apartment, which, to many eyes besides those fresh from a Milanesian hut, might have seemed a paradise of luxurious ease.

“You don’t know what an important lady you have for a sister,” said Meta merrily.

“But tell me, what can she have to do? I thought you London ladies had nothing to do, but to sit with your hands before you entertaining company.”

Meta laughed heartily. “Shall I begin at the beginning? I’ll describe to-day then, and you must understand that this is what Tom would call a mild specimen--only one evening engagement. Though, perhaps, I ought to start from last night at twelve o’clock, when she was at the Austrian Ambassador’s ball, and came home at two; but she was up by eight--she always manages to get through her housekeeping matters before breakfast. At nine, breakfast, and baby--by the bye, you have never inquired for our niece.”

“I have not come to believe in her yet,” said Harry.

“Seeing is believing,” said Meta; “but no, I won’t take an unfair advantage over her mamma; and she will be fast asleep; I never knew a child sleep as she does. So to go on with our day. The papers come, and Miss Leonora is given over to me; for you must know we are wonderful politicians. Flora studies all the debates till George finds out what he has heard in the House, and baby and I profit. Baby goes out walking, and the post comes. Flora always goes to the study with George, and writes, and does all sorts of things for him. She is the most useful wife in the world. At twelve, we had our singing lesson--”

“Singing lesson!” exclaimed Harry.

“Yes, you know she has a pretty voice, and she is glad to cultivate it. It is very useful at parties, but it takes up a great deal of time, and with all I can do to save her in note-writing, the morning is gone directly. After luncheon, she had to ride with George, and came back in a hurry to make some canvassing calls about the orphan asylum, and Miss Bracy’s sister. If we get her in at all, it will be Flora’s diplomacy. And there was shopping to do, and when we came in hoping for time for our letters, there were the Walkinghames, who stayed a long time, so that Flora could only despatch the most important notes, before George came in and wanted her. She was reading something for him all the time she was dressing, but, as I say, this is quite a quiet day.”

“Stop!” cried Harry, with a gesture of oppression, “it sounds harder than cleaning knives, like Aunt Flora! And what is an unquiet day like?”

“You will see, for we have a great evening party to-morrow.”

“Do you always stay at home?” asked Harry.

“Not always, but I do not go to large parties or balls this year,” said Meta, glancing at her deep mourning; “I am very glad of a little time at home.”

“So you don’t like it.”

“Oh, yes! it is very pleasant,” said Meta. “It is so entertaining when we talk it over afterwards, and I like to hear how Flora is admired, and called the beauty of the season. I tell George, and we do so gloat over it together! There was an old French marquis the other night, a dear old man, quite of the ancien regime, who said she was exactly like the portraits of Madame de Maintenon, and produced a beautiful miniature on a snuff-box, positively like that very pretty form of face of hers. The old man even declared that Mistress Rivers was worthy to be a Frenchwoman.”

“I should like to kick him!” amiably responded Harry.

“I hope you won’t to-morrow! But don’t let us waste our time over this; I want so much to hear about New Zealand.”

Meta was well read in Australasian literature, and drew out a great deal more information from Harry than Norman had yet heard. She made him talk about the Maori pah near his uncle’s farm, where the Sunday services were conducted by an old gentleman tattooed elegantly in the face, but dressed like an English clergyman; and tell of his aunt’s troubles about the younger generation, whom their elders, though Christians themselves, could not educate, and who she feared would relapse into heathenism, for want of instruction, though with excellent dispositions.

“How glad you must be that you are likely to go!” exclaimed Meta to Norman, who had sat silently listening.

The sound of the door bell was the first intimation that Harry’s histories had occupied them until long past twelve o’clock.

“Now, then!” cried Meta, springing forward, as if intending to meet Flora with the tidings, but checking herself, as if she ought not to be the first. There was a pause. Flora was hearing downstairs that Mr. Norman May and another gentleman had arrived, and, while vexed at her own omission, and annoyed at Norman’s bringing friends without waiting for permission, she was yet prepared to be courteous and amiable. She entered in her rich black watered silk, deeply trimmed with lace, and with silver ornaments in her dark hair, so graceful and distinguished-looking, that Harry stood suspended, hesitating, for an instant, whether he beheld his own sister, especially as she made a dignified inclination towards him, offering her hand to Norman, as she said, “Meta has told you--” But there she broke off, exclaiming, “Ha! is it possible! No, surely it cannot be--”

“Miss Walkinghame?” said the sailor, who had felt at home with her at the first word, and she flew into his great rough arms.

“Harry! this is dear Harry! our own dear sailor come back,” cried she, as her husband stood astonished; and, springing towards him, she put Harry’s hand into his, “My brother Harry! our dear lost one.”

“Your--brother--Harry,” slowly pronounced George, as he instinctively gave the grasp of greeting--“your brother that was lost? Upon my word,” as the matter dawned fully on him, and he became eager, “I am very glad to see you. I never was more rejoiced in my life.”

“When did you come? Have you been at home?” asked Flora.

“I came home yesterday--Mary wrote to tell you.”

“Poor dear old Mary! There’s a lesson against taking a letter on trust. I thought it would be all Cocksmoor, and would wait for a quiet moment! How good to come to me so soon, you dear old shipwrecked mariner!”

“I was forced to come to report myself,” said Harry, “or I could not have come away from my father so soon.”

The usual questions and their sad answers ensued, and while Flora talked to Harry, fondly holding his hand, Norman and Meta explained the history to George, who no sooner comprehended it, that he opined it must have been a horrid nuisance, and that Harry was a gallant fellow; then striking him over the shoulder, welcomed him home with all his kind heart, told him he was proud to receive him, and falling into a state of rapturous hospitality, rang the bell, and wanted to order all sorts of eatables and drinkables, but was sadly baffled to find him already satisfied.

There was more open joy than even at home, and Flora was supremely happy as she sat between her brothers, listening and inquiring till far past one o’clock, when she perceived poor George dozing off, awakened every now and then by a great nod, and casting a wishful glance of resigned remonstrance, as if to appeal against sitting up all night.

The meeting at breakfast was a renewal of pleasure. Flora was proud and happy in showing off her little girl, a model baby, as she called her, a perfect doll for quietness, so that she could be brought in at family prayers; “and,” said Flora, “I am the more glad that she keeps no one away, because we can only have evening prayers on Sunday. It is a serious thing to arrange for such a household.”

“She is equal to anything,” said George.

The long file of servants marched in, George read sonorously, and Flora rose from her knees, highly satisfied at the impression produced upon her brothers.

“I like to have the baby with us at breakfast,” she said; “it is the only time of day when we can be sure of seeing anything of her, and I like her nurse to have some respite. Do you think her grown, Norman?”

“Not very much,” said Norman, who thought her more inanimate and like a pretty little waxen toy, than when he had last seen her. “Is she not rather pale?”

“London makes children pale. I shall soon take her home to acquire a little colour. You must know Sir Henry has bitten us with his yachting tastes, and as soon as we can leave London, we are going to spend six weeks with the Walkinghames at Ryde, and rival you, Harry. I think Miss Leonora will be better at home, so we must leave her there. Lodgings and irregularities don’t suit people of her age.”

“Does home mean Stoneborough?” asked Norman.

“No. Old nurse has one of her deadly prejudices against Preston, and I would not be responsible for the consequences of shutting them up in the same nursery. Margaret would be distracted between them. No, miss, you shall make her a visit every day, and be fondled by your grandpapa.”

George began a conversation with Harry on nautical matters, and Norman tried to discover how Meta liked the yachting project, and found her prepared to think it charming. Hopes were expressed that Harry might be at Portsmouth, and a quantity of gay scheming ensued, with reiterations of the name of Walkinghame; while Norman had a sense of being wrapped in some gray mist, excluding him from participation in their enjoyments, and condemned his own temper as frivolous for being thus excited to discontent.

Presently, he heard George insisting that he and Harry should return in time for the evening party; and, on beginning to refuse, was amazed to find Harry’s only objection was on the score of lack of uniform.

“I don’t want you in one, sir,” said Flora.

“I have only one coat in the world, besides this,” continued Harry, “and that is all over tar.”

“George will see to that,” said Flora. “Don’t you think you would be welcome in matting, with an orange cowry round your neck?”

Norman, however, took a private opportunity of asking Harry if he was aware of what he was undertaking, and what kind of people they should meet.

“All English people behave much the same in a room,” said Harry, as if all society, provided it was not cannibal, were alike to him.

“I should have thought you would prefer finding out Forder in his chambers, or going to one of the theatres.”

“As you please,” said Harry; “but Flora seems to want us, and I should rather like to see what sort of company she keeps.”

Since Harry was impervious to shyness, Norman submitted, and George took them to a wonder-worker in cloth, who undertook that full equipments should await the young gentleman. Harry next despatched his business at the Admiralty, and was made very happy by tidings of his friend Owen’s safe arrival in America.

Thence the brothers went to Eton, where home letters had been more regarded; and Dr. May having written to secure a holiday for the objects of their visit, they were met at the station by the two boys. Hector’s red face and prominent light eyebrows were instantly recognised; but, as to Tom, Harry could hardly believe that the little, dusty, round-backed grub be had left had been transformed into the well-made gentlemanlike lad before him, peculiarly trim and accurate in dress, even to the extent of as much foppery as Eton taste permitted.

Ten minutes had not passed before Tom, taking a survey of the newcomer, began to exclaim at Norman, for letting him go about such a figure; and, before they knew what was doing, they had all been conducted into the shop of the “only living man who knew how to cut hair.” Laughing and good-natured, Harry believed his hair was “rather long,” allowed himself to be seated, and to be divested of a huge superfluous mass of sun-dried curls, which Tom, particularly resenting that “rather long,” kept on taking up, and unrolling from their tight rings, to measure the number of inches.

“That is better,” said he, as they issued from the shop; “but, as to that coat of yours, the rogue who made it should never make another. Where could you have picked it up?”

“At a shop at Auckland,” said Harry, much amused.

“Kept by a savage?” said Tom, to whom it was no laughing matter. “See that seam!”

“Have done, May!” exclaimed Hector. “He will think you a tailor’s apprentice!”

“Or worse,” said Norman. “Rivers’s tailor kept all strictures to himself.”

Tom muttered that he only wanted Harry to be fit to be seen by the fellows.

“The fellows are not such asses as you!” cried Hector. “You don’t deserve that he should come to see you. If my--”

There poor Hector broke off. If his own only brother had been walking beside him, how would he not have felt? They had reached their tutor’s house, and, opening his own door, he made an imploring sign to Harry to enter with him. On the table lay a letter from Margaret, and another which Harry had written to him from Auckland.

“Oh, Harry, you were with him,” he said; “tell me all about him.”

And he established himself, with his face hidden on the table, uttering nothing, except, “Go on,” whenever Harry’s voice failed in the narration. When something was said of “all for the best,” he burst out, “He might say so. I suppose one ought to think so. But is not it hard, when I had nobody but him? And there was Maplewood; and I might have been so happy there, with him and Margaret.”

“They say nothing could have made Margaret well,” said Harry.

“I don’t care; he would have married her all the same, and we should have made her so happy at Maplewood. I hate the place! I wish it were at Jericho!”

“You are captain of the ship now,” said Harry, “and you must make the best of it.”

“I can’t. It will never be home. Home is with Margaret, and the rest of them.”

“So Alan said he hoped you would make it; and you are just like one of us, you know.”

“What’s the use of that, when Captain Gordon will not let me go near you. Taking me to that abominable Maplewood last Easter, with half the house shut up, and all horrid! And he is as dry as a stick!”

“The captain!” cried Harry angrily. “There’s not a better captain to sail with in the whole navy, and your brother would be the first to tell you so! I’m not discharged yet. Hector--you had better look out what you say!”

“Maybe he is the best to sail with, but that is not being the best to live with,” said the heir of Maplewood disconsolately. “Alan himself always said he never knew what home was, till he got to your father and Margaret.”

“So will you,” said Harry; “why, my father is your master, or whatever you may call it.”

“No, Captain Gordon is my guardian.”

“Eh! what’s become of the will then?”

“What will?” cried Hector. “Did Alan make one after all?”

“Ay. At Valparaiso, he had a touch of fever; I went ashore to nurse him, to a merchant’s, who took us in for love of our Scottish blood. Mr. Ernescliffe made a will there, and left it in his charge.”

“Do you think he made Dr. May my guardian?”

“He asked me whether I thought he would dislike it, and I told him, no.”

“That’s right!” cried Hector. “That’s like dear old Alan! I shall get back to the doctor and Margaret after all. Mind you write to the captain, Harry!”

Hector was quite inspirited and ready to return to the others, but Harry paused to express a hope that he did not let Tom make such a fool of himself as he had done to-day.

“Not he,” said Hector. “He is liked as much as any one in the house--he has been five times sent up for good. See there in the Eton list! He is a real clever fellow.”

“Ay, but what’s the good of all that, if you let him be a puppy?”

“Oh, he’ll be cured. A fellow that has been a sloven always is a puppy for a bit,” said Hector philosophically.

Norman was meantime taking Tom to task for these same airs, and, hearing it was from the desire to see his brother respectable--Stoneborough men never cared for what they looked like, and he must have Harry do himself credit.

“You need not fear,” said Norman. “He did not require Eton to make him a gentleman. How now? Why, Tom, old man, you are not taking that to heart? That’s all over long ago.”

For that black spot in his life had never passed out of the lad’s memory, and it might be from the lurking want of self-respect that there was about him so much of self-assertion, in attention to trifles. He was very reserved, and no one except Norman had ever found the way to anything like confidence, and Norman had vexed him by the proposal he had made in the holidays.

He made no answer, but stood looking at Norman with an odd undecided gaze.

“Well, what now, old fellow?” said Norman, half fearing “that” might not be absolutely over. “One would think you were not glad to see Harry.”

“I suppose he has made you all the more set upon that mad notion of yours,” said Tom.

“So far as making me feel that that part of the world has a strong claim on us,” replied Norman.

“I’m sure you don’t look as if you found your pleasure in it,” cried Tom.

“Pleasure is not what I seek,” said Norman.

“What is the matter with you?” said Tom. “You said I did not seem rejoiced--you look worse, I am sure.” Tom put his arm on Norman’s shoulder, and looked solicitously at him--demonstrations of affection very rare with him.

“I wonder which would really make you happiest, to have your own way, and go to these black villains--”

“Remember, that but for others who have done so, Harry--”

“Pshaw,” said Tom, rubbing some invisible dust from his coat sleeve. “If it would keep you at home, I would say I never would hear of doctoring.”

“I thought you had said so.”

“What’s the use of my coming here, if I’m to be a country doctor?”

“I have told you I do not mean to victimise you. If you have a distaste to it, there’s an end of it--I am quite ready.”

Tom gave a great sigh. “No,” he said, “if I must, I must; I don’t mind the part of it that you do. I only hate the name of it, and the being tied down to a country place like that, while you go out thousands of miles off to these savages; but if it is the only thing to content you, I wont stand in your way. I can’t bear your looking disconsolate.”

“Don’t think yourself bound, if you really dislike the profession.”

“I don’t,” said Tom. “It is my free choice. If it were not for horrid sick people, I should like it.”

Promising! it must be confessed!

Perhaps Tom had expected Norman to brighten at once, but it was a fallacious hope. The gaining his point involved no pleasant prospect, and his young brother’s moody devotion to him suggested scruples whether he ought to exact the sacrifice, though, in his own mind, convinced that it was Tom’s vocation; and knowing that would give him many of the advantages of an eldest son.

Eton fully justified Hector’s declaration that it would not regard the cut of Harry’s coat. The hero of a lost ship and savage isle was the object of universal admiration and curiosity, and inestimable were the favours conferred by Hector and Tom in giving introductions to him, till he had shaken hands with half the school, and departed amid deafening cheers.

In spite of Harry, the day had been long and heavy to Norman, and though he chid himself for his depression, he shrank from the sight of Meta and Sir Henry Walkinghame together, and was ready to plead an aching head as an excuse for not appearing at the evening party; but, besides that this might attract notice, he thought himself bound to take care of Harry in so new a world, where the boy must be at a great loss.

“I say, old June,” cried a voice at his door, “are you ready?”

“I have not begun dressing yet. Will you wait?”

“Not I. The fun is beginning.”

Norman heard the light foot scampering downstairs, and prepared to follow, to assume the protection of him.

Music sounded as Norman left his room, and he turned aside to avoid the stream of company flowing up the flower-decked stairs, and made his way into the rooms through Flora’s boudoir. He was almost dazzled by the bright lights, and the gay murmurs of the brilliant throng. Young ladies with flowers and velvet streamers down their backs, old ladies portly and bejewelled, gentlemen looking civil, abounded wherever he turned his eyes. He could see Flora’s graceful head bending as she received guest after guest, and the smile with which she answered congratulations on her brother’s return; but Harry he did not so quickly perceive, and he was trying to discover in what corner he might have hidden himself, when Meta stood beside him, asking whether their Eton journey had prospered, and how poor Hector was feeling at Harry’s return.

“Where is Harry?” asked Norman. “Is he not rather out of his element?”

“No, indeed,” said Meta, smiling. “Why, he is the lion of the night!”

“Poor fellow, how he must hate it!”

“Come this way, into the front room. There, look at him--is it not nice to see him, so perfectly simple and at his ease, neither shy nor elated? And what a fine-looking fellow he is!”

Meta might well say so. The trim, well-knit, broad-chested form, the rosy embrowned honest face, the shining light-brown curly locks, the dancing well-opened blue eyes, and merry hearty smile showed to the best advantage, in array that even Tom would not have spurned, put on with naval neatness; and his attitude and manner were so full of manly ease, that it was no wonder that every eye rested on him with pleasure. Norman smiled at his own mistake, and asked who were the lady and gentleman conversing with him. Meta mentioned one of the most distinguished of English names, and shared his amusement in seeing Harry talking to them with the same frank unembarrassed ease as when he had that morning shaken hands with their son, in the capacity of Hector Ernescliffe’s fag. No one present inspired him with a tithe of the awe he felt for a post-captain--it was simply a pleasant assembly of good-natured folks, glad to welcome home a battered sailor, and of pretty girls, for whom he had a sailor’s admiration, but without forwardness or presumption--all in happy grateful simplicity.

“I suppose you cannot dance?” said Flora to him.

“I!” was Harry’s interjection; and while she was looking round for a partner to whom to present him, he had turned to the young daughter of his new acquaintance, and had her on his arm, unconscious that George had been making his way to her.

Flora was somewhat uneasy, but the mother was looking on smiling, and expressed her delight in the young midshipman; and Mrs. Rivers, while listening gladly to his praises, watched heedfully, and was reassured to see that dancing was as natural to him as everything else; his steps were light as a feather, his movement all freedom and joy, without being boisterous, and his boyish chivalry as pretty a sight as any one could wish to see.

If the rest of the world enjoyed their dances a quarter as much as did “Mr. May,” they were enviable people, and he contributed not a little to their pleasure, if merely by the sight of his blithe freshness and spirited simplicity, as well as the general sympathy with his sister’s joy, and the interest in his adventures. He would have been a general favourite, if he had been far less personally engaging; as it was, every young lady was in raptures at dancing with him, and he did his best to dance with them all; and to try to stir up Norman, who, after Meta had been obliged to leave him, and go to act her share of the part of hostess, had disposed of himself against a wall, where he might live out the night.

“Ha! June! what makes you stand sentry there? Come and dance, and have some of the fun! Some of these girls are the nicest partners in the world. There’s that Lady Alice, something with the dangling things in her hair, sitting down now--famous at a polka. Come along, I’ll introduce you. It will do you good.”

“I know nothing of dancing,” said Norman, beginning to apprehend that he might be dragged off, as often he had been to cricket or football, and by much the same means.

“Comes by nature, when you hear the music. Ha! what a delicious polka! Come along, or I must be off! She will be waiting for me, and she is the second prettiest girl here! Come!”

“I have been trying to make something of him, Harry,” said the ubiquitous Flora, “but I don’t know whether it is mauvaise honte, or headache.”

“I see! Poor old June!” cried Harry. “I’ll get you an ice at once, old fellow! Nothing like one for setting a man going!”

Before Norman could protest, Harry had flown off.

“Flora,” asked Norman, “is--are the Walkinghames here?”

“Yes. Don’t you see Sir Henry. That fine-looking man with the black moustache. I want you to know him. He is a great admirer of your prize poem and of Dr. Spencer.”

Harry returning, administered his ice, and then darted off to excuse himself to his partner, by explanations about his brother, whom everybody must have heard of, as he was the cleverest fellow living, and had written the best prize poem ever heard at Oxford. He firmly believed Norman a much greater lion than himself.

Norman was forced to leave his friendly corner to dispose of the glass of his ice, and thus encountered Miss Rivers, of whom Sir Henry was asking questions about a beautiful collection of cameos, which Flora had laid out as a company trap.

“Here is Norman May,” said Meta; “he knows them better than I do. Do you remember which of these is the head of Diana, Norman?”

Having set the two gentlemen to discuss them, she glided away on fresh hospitable duties, while Norman repeated the comments that he had so enjoyed hearing from poor Mr. Rivers, hoping he was, at least, sparing Meta some pain, and wondering that Flora should have risked hurting her feelings by exposing these treasures to the general gaze.

If Norman were wearied by Sir Henry, it was his own fault, for the baronet was a very agreeable person, who thought a first-class man worth cultivation, so that the last half-hour might have compensated for all the rest, if conversation were always the test.

“Why, Meta,” cried Harry, coming up to her, “you have not once danced! We are a sort of brother and sister, to be sure, but that is no hindrance, is it?”

“No,” said Meta, smiling, “thank you, Harry, but you must find some one more worthy. I do not dance this season; at least, not in public. When we get home, who knows what we may do?”

“You don’t dance! Poor little Meta! And you don’t go out! What a pity!”

“I had rather not work quite so hard,” said Meta. “Think what good fortune I had by staying at home last night!”

“I declare!” exclaimed Harry, bewitched by the beaming congratulation of her look, “I can’t imagine why Norman had said you had turned into a fine lady! I can’t see a bit of it!”

“Norman said I had turned into a fine lady!” repeated Meta. “Why?”

“Never mind! I don’t think so; you are just like papa’s humming-bird, as you always were, not a bit more of a fine lady than any girl here, and I am sure papa would say so. Only old June had got a bad headache, and is in one of his old dumps, such as I hoped he had left off. But he can’t help it, poor fellow, and he will come out of it, by and by--so never mind. Hallo! why people are going away already. There’s that girl without any one to hand her downstairs.”

Away ran Harry, and presently the brothers and sisters gathered round the fire--George declaring that he was glad that nuisance was so well over, and Harry exclaiming, “Well done, Flora! It was capital fun! I never saw a lot of prettier or more good-natured people in my life. If I am at home for the Stoneborough ball, I wonder whether my father will let me go to it.”

This result of Harry’s successful debut in high life struck his sister and Norman as so absurd that both laughed.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Harry.

“Your comparing Flora’s party to a Stoneborough ball,” said Norman.

“It is all the same, isn’t it?” said Harry. “I’m sure you are equally disgusted at both!”

“Much you know about it,” said Flora, patting him gaily. “I’m not going to put conceit in that lion head of yours, but you were as good as an Indian prince to my party. Do you know to whom you have been talking so coolly?”

“Of course. You see, Norman, it is just as I told you. All civilised people are just alike when they get into a drawing-room.”

“Harry takes large views of the Genus homo,” Norman exerted himself to say. “Being used to the black and brown species, he takes little heed of the lesser varieties.”

“It is enough for him that he does not furnish the entertainment in another way,” said Flora. “But, good-night. Meta, you look tired.”

Chapter XIX

Let none, henceforward, shrink from daring dreams, For earnest hearts shall find their dreams fulfilled.--FOUQUE.

“I have it!” began Harry, as he came down to breakfast. “I don’t know how I came to forget it. The will was to be sent home to Mr. Mackintosh’s English partner. I’ll go and overhaul him this very morning. They won’t mind my coming by a later train, when there is such a reason.”

“What is his name? Where shall you find him?” asked Flora.

“I can’t be sure; but you’ve a navy list of that sort of cattle, have not you, Flora? I’ll hunt him up.”

Flora supposed he meant a directory; and all possible South American merchants having been overlooked, and the Mackintoshes selected, he next required a chart of London, and wanted to attempt self-navigation, but was forced to accept of George’s brougham and escort; Flora would not trust him otherwise; and Norman was obliged to go to Oxford at once, hurrying off to his train before breakfast was over.

Flora might have trusted Harry alone. George contributed no more than the dignity of his presence; and, indeed, would have resigned the pursuit at the first blunder about the firm; and still more when the right one had been found, but the partner proved crusty, and would not believe that any such document was in his hands. George was consenting to let it rest till Mr. Mackintosh could be written to; but Harry, outrunning his management, and regardless of rebuffs, fairly teased the old gentleman into a search, as the only means of getting rid of the troublesome sailor.

In the midst of George’s civil regrets at the fruitless trouble they were causing, forth came a bundle of papers, and forth from the bundle fell a packet, on which Harry pounced as he read, “Will of Alan Halliday Ernescliffe, Esquire, of Maplewood, Yorkshire, Lieutenant in H. M. S. Alcestis,” and, in the corner, the executors’ names, Captain John Gordon, of H. M. S. Alcestis; and Richard May, Esquire, M. D., Market Stoneborough.

As if in revenge, the prudent merchant would not be induced to entrust him with the document, saying he could not give it up till he had heard from the executors, and had been certified of the death of the testator. He withstood both the angry gentlemen, who finally departed in a state of great resentment--Harry declaring that the old land-lubber would not believe that he was his own father’s son; and Mr. Rivers, no less incensed, that the House of Commons had been insulted in his person, because he did not carry all before him.

Flora laughed at their story, and told them that she suspected that the old gentleman was in the right; and she laid plans for having Harry to teach them yachting at Ryde, while Harry declared he would have nothing to do with such trumpery.

Harry found his home in a sort of agony of expectation, for his non-arrival at the time expected had made his first appearance seem like an unsubstantial illusion, though Dr. May, or Mary and Aubrey, had been at the station at the coming in of each train. Margaret had recovered the effects of the first shock, and the welcome was far more joyous than the first had been, with the mixed sensations that were now composed, and showed little, outwardly, but gladness.

Dr. May took Flora’s view of the case, and declared that, if Harry had brought home the will, he should not have opened it without his co-executor. So he wrote to the captain, while Harry made the most of his time in learning his sisters over again. He spent a short time alone with Margaret every morning, patiently and gently allowing himself to be recalled to the sad recollections that were all the world to her. He kept Ethel and Mary merry with his droll desultory comments; he made Blanche keep up her dancing; and taught Gertrude to be a thorough little romp. As to Dr. May, his patients never were so well or so cheerful, till Dr. Spencer and Ethel suspected that the very sight of his looks brightened them--how could they help it? Dr. Spencer was as happy as a king in seeing his friend freed from the heavy weight on his spirits; and, truly, it was goodly to watch his perfect look of content, as he leaned on his lion-faced boy’s arm, and walked down to the minster, whither it seemed to have become possible to go on most evenings. Good Dr. May was no musician, but Mr. Wilmot could not regret certain tones that now and then burst out in the chanting, from the very bottom of a heart that assuredly sang with the full melody of thankfulness, whatever the voice might do.

Captain Gordon not only wrote but came to Stoneborough, whence Harry was to go with him to the court-martial at Portsmouth.

The girls wondered that, after writing with so much warmth and affection, both of and to Harry, he met him without any demonstration of feeling; and his short peremptory manner removed all surprise that poor Hector had been so forlorn with him at Maplewood, and turned, with all his heart, to Dr. May. They were especially impressed at the immediate subsidence of all Harry’s noise and nonsense, as if the drawing-room had been the quarter-deck of the Alcestis.

“And yet,” said Margaret, “Harry will not hear a single word in dispraise of him. I do believe he loves him with all his heart.”

“I think,” said Ethel, “that in a strong character, there is an exulting fear in looking up to a superior, in whose justice there is perfect reliance. It is a germ of the higher feeling.”

“I believe you are right,” said Margaret; “but it is a serious thing for a man to have so little sympathy with those below him. You see how Hector feels it, and I now understand how it told upon Alan, and how papa’s warmth was like a surprise to him.”

“Because Captain Gordon had to be a father to them, and that is more than a captain. I should not wonder if there were more similarity and fellow-feeling between him and Harry than there could be with either of them. Harry, though he has all papa’s tenderness, is of a rougher sort that likes to feel itself mastered. Poor Hector! I wonder if he is to be given back to us.”

“Do you know--when--whether they will find out this morning?” said Margaret, catching her dress nervously, as she was moving away.

“Yes, I believe so. I was not to have told you, but--”

“There is no reason that it should do me any harm,” said Margaret, almost smiling, and looking as if she was putting a restraint on something she wished to say. “Go down, dear Ethel--Aubrey will be waiting for you.”

Ethel went down to the difficult task of hearing Aubrey’s lessons, while Harry was pretending to write to Mrs. Arnott, but, in reality, teaching Gertrude the parts of a ship, occasionally acting mast, for her to climb.

By and by Dr. May came in. “Margaret not downstairs yet?” he said.

“She is dressed, but will not come down till the evening,” said Ethel.

“I’ll go to her. She will be pleased. Come up presently, Ethel. Or, where’s Richard?”

“Gone out,” said Harry. “What, is it anything left to her?”

“The best, the best!” said Dr. May. “Ethel, listen--twenty thousand, to build and endow a church for Cocksmoor!”

No need to bid Ethel listen. She gave a sort of leap in her chair, then looked almost ready to faint.

“My dear child,” said her father, “This is your wish. I give you joy, indeed I do!”

Ethel drew his arm round her, and leaned against him. “My wish! my wish!” she repeated, as if questioning the drift of the words.

“I’m glad it is found!” cried Harry. “Now I know why he talked of Cocksmoor, and seemed to rest in planning for it. You will mind the roof is as he said.”

“You must talk to Dr. Spencer about that,” said Dr. May. “The captain means to leave it entirely in our hands.”

“Dear Alan!” exclaimed Ethel. “My wish! Oh, yes, but how gained? Yet, Cocksmoor with a church! I don’t know how to be glad enough, and yet--”

“You shall read the sentence,” said Dr. May. “‘In testimony of thankfulness for mercy vouchsafed to him here--’ poor dear boy!”

“What does the captain say?” asked Harry.

“He is rather astounded, but he owns that the estate can bear it, for old Halliday had saved a great deal, and there will be more before Hector comes of age.”

“And Hector?”

“Yes, we get him back. I am fellow-trustee with Captain Gordon, and as to personal guardianship, I fancy the captain found he could not make the boy happy, and thinks you no bad specimen of our training.”

“Famous!” cried Harry. “Hector will hurrah now! Is that all?”

“Except legacies to Captain Gordon, and some Scottish relations. But poor Margaret ought to hear it. Ethel, don’t be long in coming.”

With all Ethel’s reputation for bluntness, it was remarkable how her force of character made her always called for whenever there was the least dread of a scene.

She turned abruptly from Harry; and, going outside the window, tried to realise and comprehend the tidings, but all she could have time to discover was that Alan’s memory was dearer to her than ever, and she was obliged to hasten upstairs.

Her father quitted the room by one door, as she entered by the other; she believed that it was to hide his emotion, but Margaret’s fair wan face was beaming with the sweetest of congratulating smiles.

“I thought so,” she said, as Ethel came in. “Dear Ethel, are you not glad?”

“I think I am,” said Ethel, putting her hands to her brow.

“You think!” exclaimed Margaret, as if disappointed.

“I beg your pardon,” said Ethel, with quivering lip. “Dear Margaret, I am glad--don’t you believe I am, but somehow, it is harder to deal with joy than grief. It confuses one! Dear Alan--and then to have been set on it so long--to have prayed so for it, and to have it come in this way--by your--”

“Nay, Ethel, had he come home, it was his great wish to have done it. He used to make projects when he was here, but he would not let me tell you, lest he should find duties at Maplewood--whereas this would have been his pleasure.”

“Dear Alan!” repeated Ethel. “If you are so kind, so dear as to be glad, Margaret, I think I shall be so presently.”

Margaret almost grudged the lack of the girlish outbreak of rejoicing which would once have forgotten everything in the ecstasy of the fulfilled vision. It did not seem to be what Alan had intended; he had figured to himself unmixed joy, and she wanted to see it, and something of the wayward impatience of weakness throbbed at her heart, as Ethel paced the room, and disappeared in her own curtained recess.

Presently she came back saying, “You are sure you are glad?”

“It would be strange if I were not,” said Margaret. “See, Ethel, here are blessings springing up from what I used to think had served for nothing but to bring him pain and grief. I am so thankful that he could express his desire, and so grateful to dear Harry for bringing it to light. How much better it is than I ever thought it could be! He has been spared disappointment, and surely the good that he will have done will follow him.”

“And you?” said Ethel sadly.

“I shall lie here and wait,” said Margaret. “I shall see the plans, and hear all about it, and oh!”--her eyes lighted up--“perhaps some day, I may hear the bell.”

Richard’s tap interrupted them. “Had he heard?”

“I have.” The deepened colour in his cheek betrayed how much he felt, as he cast an anxious glance towards Margaret--an inquiring one on Ethel.

“She is so pleased,” was all Ethel could say.

“I thought she would be,” said Richard, approaching. “Captain Gordon seemed quite vexed that no special token of remembrance was left to her.”

Margaret smiled in a peculiar way. “If he only knew how glad I am there was not.” And Ethel knew that the church was his token to Margaret, and that any “fading frail memorial” would have lessened the force of the signification.

Ethel could speak better to her brother than to her sister. “Oh, Richard! Richard! Richard!” she cried, and a most unusual thing with both, she flung her arms round his neck. “It is come at last! If it had not been for you, this would never have been. How little likely it seemed, that dirty day, when I talked wildly, and you checked me!”

“You had faith and perseverance,” said Richard, “or--”

“You are right,” said Margaret, as Ethel was about to disclaim. “It was Ethel’s steadiness that brought it before Alan’s mind. If she had yielded when we almost wished it, in the time of the distress about Mrs. Green, I do believe that all would have died away!”

“I didn’t keep steady--I was only crazy. You and Ritchie and Mr. Wilmot--” said Ethel, half crying; then, as if unable to stay, she exclaimed with a sort of petulance, “And there’s Harry playing all sorts of rigs with Aubrey! I shan’t get any more sense out of him to-day!”

And away she rushed to the wayfaring dust of her life of labour, to find Aubrey and Daisy half-way up the tulip tree, and Harry mischievously unwilling to help them down again, assuring her that such news deserved a holiday, and that she was growing a worse tartar than Miss Winter. She had better let the poor children alone, put on her bonnet, and come with him to tell Mr. Wilmot.

Whereat Ethel was demurring, when Dr. May came forth, and declared he should take her himself.

Poor Mr. Wilmot laboured under a great burden of gratitude, which no one would receive from him. Dr. May and Ethel repudiated thanks almost with terror; and, when he tried them with the captain, he found very doubtful approval of the whole measure, so that Harry alone was a ready acceptant of a full meed of acknowledgments for his gallant extraction of the will.

No one was more obliged to him than Hector Ernescliffe, who wrote to Margaret that it would be very jolly to come home again, and that he was delighted that the captain could not hinder either that or Cocksmoor Church. “And as to Maplewood, I shall not hate it so much, if that happens which I hope will happen.” Of which oracular sentence, Margaret could make nothing.

The house of May felt more at their ease when the uncongenial captain had departed, although he carried off Harry with him. There was the better opportunity for a tea-drinking consultation with Dr. Spencer and Mr. Wilmot, when Margaret lay on her sofa, looking better than for months past, and taking the keenest interest in every arrangement.

Dr. Spencer, whose bright eyes glittered at every mention of the subject, assumed that he was to be the architect, while Dr. May was assuring him that it was a maxim that no one unpaid could be trusted; and when he talked of beautiful German churches with pierced spires, declared that the building must not make too large a hole in the twenty thousand, at the expense of future curates, because Richard was the first.

“I’ll be prudent, Dick,” said Dr. Spencer. “Trust me not to rival the minster.”

“We shall find work next for you there,” said Mr. Wilmot.

“Ay, we shall have May out of his family packing-box before many years are over his head.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Dr. May; “I know what I exposed myself to in bringing Wilmot here.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Spencer, “we shall put you in the van when we attack the Corporation pen.”

“I shall hold by the good old cause. As if the galleries had not been there before you were born!”

“As if poor people had a right to sit in their own church!” said Ethel.

“Sit, you may well say,” said Mr. Wilmot. “As if any one could do otherwise, with those ingenious traps for hindering kneeling.”

“Well, well, I know the people must have room,” said Dr. May, cutting short several further attacks which he saw impending.

“Yes, you would like to build another blue gallery, blocking up another window, and with Richard May and Christopher Tomkins, Churchwardens, on it, in orange-coloured letters--the Rivers’ colours. No disrespect to your father, Miss May, but, as a general observation, it is a property of Town Councillors to be conservative only where they ought not.”

“I brought you here to talk of building a church, not of pulling one to pieces.”

Poor Dr. May, he knew it was inevitable and quite right, but his affectionate heart and spirit of perpetuity, which had an association connected with every marble cloud, green baize pew, and square-headed panel, anticipated tortures in the general sweep, for which his ecclesiastical taste and sense of propriety would not soon compensate.

Margaret spared his feelings by bringing the Cocksmoor subject back again; Dr. Spencer seemed to comprehend the ardour with which she pressed it on, as if it were very near her heart that there should be no delay. He said he could almost promise her that the first stone should be laid before the end of the summer, and she thanked him in her own warm sweet way, hoping that it would be while Hector and Harry were at home.

Harry soon returned, having gone through the court-martial with the utmost credit, been patronised by Captain Gordon in an unheard-of manner, asked to dine with the admiral, and promised to be quickly afloat again. Ere many days had passed, he was appointed to one of the finest vessels in the fleet, commanded by a captain to whom Captain Gordon had introduced him, and who “seemed to have taken a fancy to him,” as he said. The Bucephalus, now the object of his pride, was refitting, and his sisters hoped to see a good deal of him before he should again sail. Besides, Flora would be at Ryde before the end of July.

It was singular that Ethel’s vision should have been fulfilled simultaneously with Flora’s having obtained a position so far beyond what could have been anticipated.

She was evidently extremely happy and valuable, much admired and respected, and with full exercise for the energy and cleverness, which were never more gratified than by finding scope for action. Her husband was devotedly attached to her, and was entirely managed by her, and though her good judgment kept her from appearing visibly in matters not pertaining to her own sphere, she was, in fact, his understanding. She read, listened, and thought for him, imbued him with her own views, and composed his letters for him; ruling his affairs, both political and private, and undeniably making him fill a position which, without her, he would have left vacant; nor was there any doubt that he was far happier for finding himself of consequence, and being no longer left a charge upon his own hands. He seemed fully to suffice to her as a companion, although she was so far superior in power; for it was, perhaps, her nature to love best that which depended upon her, and gave her a sense of exercising protection; as she had always loved Margaret better than Ethel.

“Mrs. Rivers was an admirable woman.” So every one felt, and her youthful beauty and success in the fashionable world made her qualities, as a wife and mistress of a household, the more appreciated. She never set aside her religious habits or principles, was an active member of various charitable associations, and found her experience of the Stoneborough Ladies’ Committee applicable among far greater names. Indeed, Lady Leonora thought dear Flora Rivers’s only fault, her over-strictness, which encouraged Meta in the same, but there were points that Flora could not have yielded on any account, without failing in her own eyes.

She made time for everything, and though, between business and fashion, she seemed to undertake more than mortal could accomplish, it was all effected, and excellently. She did, indeed, sigh over the briefness of the time that she could bestow on her child or on home correspondence, and declared that she should rejoice in rest; but, at the same time, her achievements were a positive pleasure to her.

Meta, in the meantime, had been living passively on the most affectionate terms with her brother and sister, and though often secretly yearning after the dear old father, whose darling she had been, and longing for power of usefulness, she took it on trust that her present lot had been ordered for her, and was thankful, like the bird of Dr. May’s fable, for the pleasures in her path--culling sweet morals, and precious thoughts out of book, painting or concert, occasions for Christian charities in each courtesy of society, and opportunities for cheerful self-denial and submission, whenever any little wish was thwarted.

So Norman said she had turned into a fine lady! It was a sudden and surprising intimation, and made a change in the usually bright and calm current of her thoughts. She was not aware that there had been any alteration in herself, and it was a revelation that set her to examine where she had changed--poor little thing! She was not angry, she did not resent the charge, she took it for granted that, coming from such a source, it must be true and reasonable--and what did it mean? Did they think her too gay, or neglectful of old friends? What had they been saying to Harry about her?

“Ah!” thought Meta, “I understand it. I am living a life of ease and uselessness, and with his higher aims and nobler purposes, he shrinks from the frivolities among which I am cast. I saw his saddened countenance among our gaieties, and I know that to deep minds there is heaviness in the midst of display. He withdraws from the follies that have no charms for him, and I--ought I to be able to help being amused? I don’t seek these things, but, perhaps, I ought to avoid them more than I do. If I could be quite clear what is right, I should not care what effort I made. But I was born to be one of those who have trial of riches, and such blessed tasks are not my portion. But if he sees the vanities creeping into my heart, I should be grateful for that warning.”

So meditated Meta, as she copied one of her own drawings of the Grange, for her dear old governess, Mrs. Larpent, while each line and tint recalled the comments of her fond amateur father, and the scenery carried her home, in spite of the street sounds, and the scratching of Flora’s pen, coursing over note-paper. Presently Sir Henry Walkinghame called, bringing a beautiful bouquet.

“Delicious,” cried Meta. “See, Flora, it is in good time, for those vases were sadly shabby.”

She began at once to arrange the flowers, a task that seemed what she was born for, and the choice roses and geraniums acquired fresh grace as she placed them in the slender glasses and classic vases; but Flora’s discerning eyes perceived some mortification on the part of the gentleman, and, on his departure, playfully reproached Meta for ingratitude.

“Did we not thank him? I thought I did them all due honour, actually using the Dresden bowl.”

“You little wretch! quite insensible to the sentiment of the thing.”

“Sentiment! One would think you had been reading about the language of flowers!”

“Whatever there was, poor Sir Henry did not mean it for the Dresden bowl or Bohemian glass.”

“Flora! do pray tell me whether you are in fun?”

“You ridiculous child!” said Flora, kissing her earnest forehead, ringing the bell, and gathering up her papers, as she walked out of the room, and gave her notes to the servant.

“What does she mean? Is it play? Oh, no, a hint would be far more like her. But I hope it is nonsense. He is very kind and pleasant, and I should not know what to do.”

Instances of his complaisance towards herself rose before her, so as to excite some warmth and gratitude. Her lonely heart thrilled at the idea of being again the best beloved, and her energetic spirit bounded at the thought of being no longer condemned to a life of idle ease. Still it was too new a light to her to be readily accepted, after she had looked on him so long, merely as a familiar of the house, attentive to her, because she fell to his share, when Flora was occupied. She liked him, decidedly; she could possibly do more; but she was far more inclined to dread, than to desire, any disturbance of their present terms of intercourse.

“However,” thought she, “I must see my way. If he should have any such thing in his head, to go on as we do now would be committing myself, and I will not do that, unless I am sure it is right. Oh, papa, you would settle it for me! But I will have it out with Flora. She will find out what I cannot--how far he is a man for whom one ought to care. I do not think Norman liked him, but then Norman has so keen a sense of the world-touched. I suppose I am that! If any other life did but seem appointed for me, but one cannot tell what is thwarting providential leading, and if this be as good a man as--What would Ethel say? If I could but talk to Dr. May! But Flora I will catch, before I see him again, that I may know how to behave.”

Catching Flora was not the easiest thing in the world, among her multifarious occupations; but Meta was not the damsel to lose an opportunity for want of decision.

Flora saw what was coming, and was annoyed with herself for having given the alarm; but, after all, it must have come some time or other, though she had rather that Meta had been more involved first.

It should be premised that Mrs. Rivers had no notion of the degree of attachment felt by her brother for Meta; she only knew that Lady Leonora had a general distrust of her family, and she felt it a point of honour to promote no dangerous meetings, and to encourage Sir Henry--a connection who would be most valuable, both as conferring importance upon George in the county, and as being himself related to persons of high influence, whose interest might push on her brothers. Preferment for Richard; promotion for Harry; nay, diplomatic appointments for Tom, came floating before her imagination, even while she smiled at her Alnaschar visions.

But the tone of Meta, as she drew her almost forcibly into her room, showed her that she had given a great shock to her basket.

“Flora, if you would only give me a minute, and would tell me--”

“What?” asked Flora, not inclined to spare her blushes.

“Whether, whether you meant anything in earnest?”

“My dear little goose, did no one ever make an innocent joke in their lives before?”

“It was very silly of me,” said Meta; “but you gave me a terrible fright.”

“Was it so very terrible, poor little bird?” said Flora, in commiseration. “Well then, you may safely think of him as a man tame about the house. It was much prettier of you not to appropriate the flowers, as any other damsel would have done.”

“Do you really and truly think--” began Meta; but, from the colour of her cheek and the timid resolution of her tone, Flora thought it safest not to hear the interrogation, and answered, “I know what he comes here for--it is only as a refuge from his mother’s friend, old Lady Drummond, who would give the world to catch him for her daughters--that’s all. Put my nonsense out of your head, and be yourself, my sweet one.”

Flora had never gone so near an untruth, as when she led Meta to believe this was the sole reason. But, after all, what did Flora herself know to the contrary?

Meta recovered her ease, and Flora marked, as weeks passed on, that she grew more accustomed to Sir Henry’s attentions. A little while, and she would find herself so far bound by the encouragement she had given, that she could not reject him.

“My dear,” said George, “when do you think of going down to take the baby to the Grange? She looks dull, I think.”

“Really, I think it is hardly worth while to go down en masse,” said Flora. “These last debates may be important, and it is a bad time to quit one’s post. Don’t you think so?”

“As you please--the train is a great bore.”

“And we will send the baby down the last day before we go to Ryde, with Preston and Butts to take care of her. We can’t spare him to take them down, till we shut up the house. It is so much easier for us to go to Portsmouth from hence.”

The lurking conviction was that one confidential talk with Ethel would cause the humming-bird to break the toils that were being wound invisibly round her. Ethel and her father knew nothing of the world, and were so unreasonable in their requirements! Meta would consult them all, and all her scruples would awaken, and perhaps Dr. Spencer might be interrogated on Sir Henry’s life abroad, where Flora had a suspicion that gossip had best not be raked up.

Not that she concealed anything positively known to her, or that she was not acting just as she would have done by her own child. She found herself happily married to one whom home notions would have rejected, and she believed Meta would be perfectly happy with a man of decided talent, honour, and unstained character, even though he should not come up to her father’s or Ethel’s standard.

If Meta were to marry as they would approve, she would have far to seek among “desirable connections.” Meantime, was not Flora acting with exemplary judgment and self-denial?

So she wrote that she could not come home; Margaret was much disappointed, and so was Meta, who had looked to Ethel to unravel the tangles of her life.

“No, no, little miss,” said Flora to herself; “you don’t talk to Ethel till your fate is irrevocable. Why, if I had listened to her, I should be thankful to be singing at Mrs. Hoxton’s parties at this minute! and, as for herself, look at Norman Ogilvie! No, no, after six weeks’ yachting--moonlight, sea, and sympathy--I defy her to rob Sir Henry of his prize! And, with Meta lady of Cocksmoor, even Ethel herself must be charmed!”

Chapter XX

We barter life for pottage, sell true bliss For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown; Thus, Esau-like, our Father’s blessing miss, Then wash with fruitless tears our faded crown. Christian Year.

“Papa, here is a message from Flora for you,” said Margaret, holding up a letter; “she wants to know whom to consult about the baby.”

“Ha! what’s the matter?”

Margaret read--“Will you ask papa whom I had better call in to see the baby. There does not seem to be anything positively amiss, but I am not happy about her. There is a sleepiness about her which I do not understand, and, when roused, she is fretful, and will not be amused. There is a look in her eyes which I do not like, and I should wish to have some advice for her. Lady Leonora recommends Mr.--, but I always distrust people who are very much the rage, and I shall send for no one without papa’s advice.”

“Let me see!” said Dr. May, startled, and holding out his hand for the letter. “A look about the eyes! I shall go up and see her myself. Why has not she brought her home?”

“It would have been far better,” said Margaret.

“Sleepy and dull! She was as lively a child when they took her away as I ever saw. What! is there no more about her? The letter is crammed with somebody’s fete--vote of want of confidence--debate last night. What is she about? She fancies she knows everything, and, the fact is, she knows no more about infants--I could see that, when the poor little thing was a day old!”

“Do you think there is cause for fear?” said Margaret anxiously.

“I can’t tell. With a first child, one can’t guess what may be mamma’s fancy, or what may be serious. But Flora is not too fanciful, and I must see her for my own satisfaction. Let some one write, and say I will come up to-morrow by the twelve o’clock train--and mind she opens the letter.”

Dr. May kept his word, and the letter had evidently not been neglected; for George was watching for him at the station, and thanked him so eagerly for coming, that Dr. May feared that he was indeed needed, and inquired anxiously.

“Flora is uneasy about her--she seems heavy, and cries when she is disturbed,” replied George. “Flora has not left her to-day, and hardly yesterday.”

“Have you had no advice for her?”

“Flora preferred waiting till you should come.”

Dr. May made an impatient movement, and thought the way long, till they were set down in Park Lane. Meta came to meet them on the stairs, and said that the baby was just the same, and Flora was in the nursery, and thither they hastily ascended.

“Oh, papa! I am so glad you are come!” said Flora, starting up from her low seat, beside the cradle.

Dr. May hardly paused to embrace his daughter, and she anxiously led him to the cradle, and tried to read his expression, as his eyes fell on the little face, somewhat puffed, but of a waxy whiteness, and the breathing seeming to come from the lips.

“How long has she been so?” he asked, in a rapid, professional manner.

“For about two or three hours. She was very fretful before, but I did not like to call in any one, as you were coming. Is it from her teeth?” said Flora, more and more alarmed by his manner. “Her complexion is always like that--she cannot bear to be disturbed,” added she, as the child feebly moaned, on Dr. May beginning to take her from her cradle; but, without attending to the objection, he lifted her up, so that she lay as quietly as before, on his arm. Flora had trusted that hope and confidence would come with him; but, on the contrary, every lurking misgiving began to rush wildly over her, as she watched his countenance, while he carried his little granddaughter towards the light, studied her intently, raised her drooping eyelids, and looked into her eyes, scarcely eliciting another moan. Flora dared not ask a question, but looked on with eyes open, as it were, stiffened.

“This is the effect of opium,” were Dr. May’s first words, breaking on all with startling suddenness; but, before any one could speak, he added, “We must try some stimulant directly;” then looking round the room, “What have you nearest?”

“Godfrey’s Cordial, sir,” quickly suggested the nurse.

“Ay--anything to save time--she is sinking for want of the drug that has--” He broke off to apportion the dose, and to hold the child in a position to administer it--Flora tried to give it--the nurse tried--in vain.

“Do not torment her further,” said the doctor, as Flora would have renewed the trial--“it cannot be done. What have you all been doing?” cried he, as, looking up, his face changed from the tender compassion with which he had been regarding his little patient, into a look of strong indignation, and one of his sentences of hasty condemnation broke from him, as it would not have done, had Flora been less externally calm. “I tell you this child has been destroyed with opium!”

They all recoiled; the father turned fiercely round on the nurse, with a violent exclamation, but Dr. May checked him. “Hush! This is no presence for the wrath of man.” The solemn tone seemed to make George shrink into an awestruck quiescence; he stood motionless and transfixed, as if indeed conscious of some overwhelming presence.

Flora had come near, with an imploring gesture, to take the child in her own arms; but Dr. May, by a look of authority, prevented it; for, indeed, it would have been harassing and distressing the poor little sufferer again to move her, as she lay with feeble gasps on his arm.

So they remained, for what space no one knew--not one word was uttered, not a limb moved, and the street noises sounded far off.

Dr. May stooped his head closer to the babe’s face, and seemed listening for a breath, as he once more touched the little wrist; he took away his finger, he ceased to listen, he looked up.

Flora gave one cry--not loud, not sharp, but “an exceeding bitter cry”--she would have moved forward, but reeled, and her husband’s arms supported her as she sank into a swoon.

“Carry her to her room,” said Dr. May. “I will come;” and, when George had borne her away, he kissed the lifeless cheek, and reverently placed the little corpse in the cradle; but, as he rose from doing so, the sobbing nurse exclaimed, “Oh, sir! oh, sir! indeed, I never did--”

“Never did what?” said Dr. May sternly.

“I never gave the dear baby anything to do her harm,” cried Preston vehemently.

“You gave her this,” said Dr. May, pointing to the bottle of Godfrey’s Cordial.

He could say no more, for her master was hurrying back into the room. Anger was the first emotion that possessed him, and he hardly gave an answer to Dr. May’s question about Flora. “Meta is with her! Where is that woman? Have you given her up to the police?”

Preston shrieked and sobbed, made incoherent exclamations, and was much disposed to cling to the doctor.

“Silence!” said Dr. May, lifting his hand, and assuming a tone and manner that awed them both, by reminding them that death was present in the chamber; and, taking his son-in-law out, and shutting the door, he said, in a low voice,

“I believe this is no case for the police--have mercy on the poor woman.”

“Mercy--I’ll have no mercy on my child’s murderer! You said she had destroyed my child.”

“Ignorantly.”

“I don’t care for ignorance! She destroyed her--I’ll have justice,” said George doggedly.

“You shall,” said Dr. May, laying his hand on his arm; “but it must be investigated, and you are in no state to investigate. Go downstairs--do not do anything till I come to you.”

His peremptory manner imposed on George, who, nevertheless, turned round as he went, saying, with a fierce glare in his eyes, “You will not let her escape.”

“No. Go down--be quiet.”

Dr. May returned to Preston, and had to assure her that Mr. Rivers was not gone to call the police, before he could bring her to any degree of coherence. She regarded him as her only friend, and soon undertook to tell the whole truth, and he perceived that it was, indeed, the truth. She had not known that the cordial was injurious, deeming it a panacea against fretfulness, precious to nurses, but against which ladies always had a prejudice, and, therefore, to be kept secret. Poor little Leonora had been very fretful and uneasy when Flora’s many avocations had first caused her to be set aside, and Preston had had recourse to the remedy which, lulling her successfully, was applied with less moderation and judgment than would have been shown by a more experienced person, till gradually the poor child became dependent on it for every hour of rest. When her mother, at last, became aware of her unsatisfactory condition, and spent her time in watching her, the nurse being prevented from continuing her drug, she was, of course, so miserable without it, that Preston had ventured on proposing it, to which Mrs. Rivers had replied with displeasure sufficient to prevent her from declaring how much she had previously given. Preston was in an agony of distress for her little charge, as well as of fear for herself, and could hardly understand what her error had been. Dr. May soon saw that, though not highly principled, her sorrow was sincere, and that she still wept bitterly over the consequences of her treatment, when he told her that she had nothing to fear from the law, and that he would protect her from Mr. Rivers.

Her confession was hardly over when Meta knocked at the door, pale and frightened. “Oh, Dr. May, do come to poor Flora! I don’t know what to do, and George is in such a state!”

Dr. May made a sound of sorrow and perplexity, and Meta, as she went down before him, asked, in a low, horror-stricken whisper, “Did Preston really--”

“Not knowingly,” said Dr. May. “It is the way many children have gone; but I never thought--”

They had come to Flora’s dressing-room. Her bedroom door was open, and George was pacing heavily up and down the length of both apartments, fiercely indignant. “Well!” said he, advancing eagerly on Dr. May, “has she confessed?”

“But Flora!” said Dr. May, instead of answering him. Flora lay on her bed, her face hidden on her pillow, only now and then moaning.

“Flora, my poor, poor child!” said her father, bending down to raise her, and taking her hand.

She moved away, so as to bury her face more completely; but there was life in the movement, and he was sufficiently reassured on her situation to be able to attend to George, who was only impatient to rush off to take his revenge. He led him into the outer room, where Meta was waiting, and forced upon his unwilling conviction that it was no case for the law. The child had not been killed by any one dose, but had rather sunk from the want of stimulus, to which she had been accustomed. As to any pity for the woman, George would not hear of it. She was still, in his eyes, the destroyer of his child; and, when he found the law would afford him no vengeance, he insisted that she should be turned out of his house at once.

“George!” called a hollow voice from the next room, and hurrying back, they saw Flora sitting up, and, as well as trembling limbs allowed, endeavouring to rise to her feet, while burning spots were in her cheeks.

“George, turn me out of the house too! If Preston killed her, I did!” and she gave a ghastly laugh.

George threw his arms round her, and laid her on her bed again, with many fond words, and strength which she had not power to withstand. Dr. May, in the meantime, spoke quickly to Meta in the doorway. “She must go. They cannot see her again; but has she any friends in London?”

“I think not.”

“Find out. She must not be sent adrift. Send her to the Grange, if nothing better offers. You must judge.”

He felt that he could confide in Meta’s discretion and promptitude, and returned to the parents.

“Is she gone?” said George, in a whisper, which he meant should be unheard by his wife, who had sunk her face in her pillows again.

“Going. Meta is seeing to it.”

“And that woman gets off free!” cried George, “while my poor little girl--” and, no longer occupied by the hope of retribution, he gave way to an overpowering burst of grief.

His wife did not rouse herself to comfort him, but still lay motionless, excepting for a convulsive movement that passed over her frame at each sound from him, and her father felt her pulse bound at the same time with corresponding violence, as if each of his deep-drawn sobs were a mortal thrust. Going to him, Dr. May endeavoured to repress his agitation, and lead him from the room; but he could not, at first, prevail on him to listen or understand, still less, to quit Flora. The attempt to force on him the perception that his uncontrolled sorrow was injuring her, and that he ought to bear up for her sake, only did further harm; for, when he rose up and tried to caress her, there was the same torpid, passive resistance, the same burying her face from the light, and the only betrayal of consciousness in the agonised throbs of her pulse.

He became excessively distressed at being thus repelled, and, at last, yielded to the impatient signals of Dr. May, who drew him into the next room, and, with brief, strong, though most affectionate and pitying words, enforced on him that Flora’s brain--nay, her life, was risked, and that he must leave her alone to his care for the present. Meta coming back at the same moment, Dr. May put him in her charge, with renewed orders to impress on him how much depended on tranquillity.

Dr. May went back, with his soft, undisturbing, physician’s footfall, and stood at the side of the bed, in such intense anxiety as those only can endure who know how to pray, and to pray in resignation and faith.

All was still in the darkening twilight; but the distant roar of the world surged without, and a gaslight shone flickering through the branches of the trees, and fell on the rich dress spread on the couch, and the ornaments on the toilet-table. There was a sense of oppression, and of being pursued by the incongruous world, and Dr. May sighed to silence all around, and see his poor daughter in the calm of her own country air; but she had chosen for herself, and here she lay, stricken down in the midst of the prosperity that she had sought.

He could hear every respiration, tightened and almost sobbing, and he was hesitating whether to run the risk of addressing her; when, as if it had occurred to her suddenly that she was alone and deserted, she raised up her head with a startled movement, but, as she saw him, she again hid her face, as if his presence were still more intolerable than solitude.

“Flora! my own, my dearest--my poor child! you should not turn from me. Do I not carry with me the like self-reproachful conviction?”

Flora let him turn her face towards him and kiss her forehead. It was burning, and he brought water and bathed it, now and then speaking a few fond, low, gentle words, which, though she did not respond, evidently had some soothing effect; for she admitted his services, still, however, keeping her eyes closed, and her face turned towards the darkest side of the room. When he went towards the door, she murmured, “Papa!” as if to detain him.

“I am not going, darling. I only wanted to speak to George.”

“Don’t let him come!” said Flora.

“Not till you wish it, my dear.”

George’s step was heard; his hand was on the lock, and again Dr. May was conscious of the sudden rush of blood through all her veins. He quickly went forward, met him, and shut him out, persuading him, with difficulty, to remain outside, and giving him the occupation of sending out for an anodyne--since the best hope, at present, lay in encouraging the torpor that had benumbed her crushed faculties.

Her father would not even venture to rouse her to be undressed; he gave her the medicine, and let her lie still, with as little movement as possible, standing by till her regular breathings showed that she had sunk into a sleep; when he went into the other room and found that George had also forgotten his sorrows in slumber on the sofa, while Meta sat sadly presiding over the tea equipage.

She came up to meet him, her question expressed in her looks.

“Asleep,” he said; “I hope the pulses are quieter. All depends on her wakening.”

“Poor, poor Flora!” said Meta, wiping away her tears.

“What have you done with the woman?”

“I sent her to Mrs. Larpent’s. I knew she would receive her and keep her till she could write to her friends. Bellairs took her, but I could hardly speak to her--”

“She did it ignorantly,” said Dr. May.

“I could never be so merciful and forbearing as you,” said Meta.

“Ah! my dear, you will never have the same cause!”

They could say no more, for George awoke, and the argument of his exclusion had to be gone through again. He could not enter into it by any means; and when Dr. May would have made him understand that poor Flora could not acquit herself of neglect, and that even his affection was too painful for her in the present state; he broke into a vehement angry defence of her devotion to her child, treating Dr. May as if the accusation came from him; and when the doctor and Meta had persuaded him out of this, he next imagined that his father-in-law feared that he was going to reproach his wife, and there was no making him comprehend more than that, if she were not kept quiet, she might have a serious illness.

Even then he insisted on going to look at her, and Dr. May could not prevent him from pressing his lips to her forehead. She half opened her eyes, and murmured “good-night,” and by this he was a little comforted; but he would hear of nothing but sitting up, and Meta would have done the same, but for an absolute decree of the doctor.

It was a relief to Dr. May that George’s vigil soon became a sound repose on the sofa in the dressing-room; and he was left to read and muse uninterruptedly.

It was far past two o’clock before there was any movement; then Flora drew a long breath, stirred, and, as her father came and drew her hand into his, before she was well awake, she gave a long, wondering whisper, “Oh, papa! papa!” then sitting up, and passing her hand over her eyes, “Is it all true?”

“It is true, my own poor dear,” said Dr. May, supporting her, as she rested against his arm, and hid her face on his shoulder, while her breath came short, and she shivered under the renewed perception--“she is gone to wait for you.”

“Hush! Oh, don’t! papa!” said Flora, her voice shortened by anguish. “Oh, think why--”

“Nay, Flora, do not, do not speak as if that should exclude peace or hope!” said Dr. May entreatingly. “Besides, it was no wilful neglect--you had other duties--”

“You don’t know me, papa,” said Flora, drawing her hands away from him, and tightly clenching them in one another, as thoughts far too terrible for words swept over her.

“If I do not, the most Merciful Father does,” said Dr. May. Flora sat for a minute or two, her hands locked together round her knees, her head bowed down, her lips compressed. Her father was so far satisfied that the bodily dangers he had dreaded were averted; but the agony of mind was far more terrible, especially in one who expressed so little, and in whom it seemed, as it were, pent up.

“Papa!” said Flora presently, with a resolution of tone as if she would prevent resistance; “I must see her!”

“You shall, my dear,” said the doctor at once; and she seemed grateful not to be opposed, speaking more gently, as she said, “May it be now--while there is no daylight?”

“If you wish it,” said Dr. May.

The dawn, and a yellow waning moon, gave sufficient light for moving about, and Flora gained her feet; but she was weak and trembling, and needed the support of her father’s arm, though hardly conscious of receiving it, as she mounted the same stairs, that she had so often lightly ascended in the like doubtful morning light; for never, after any party, had she omitted her visit to the nursery.

The door was locked, and she looked piteously at her father as her weak push met the resistance, and he was somewhat slow in turning the key with his left hand. The whitewashed, slightly furnished room reflected the light, and the moonbeams showed the window-frame in pale and dim shades on the blinds, the dewy air breathed in coolly from the park, and there was a calm solemnity in the atmosphere--no light, no watcher present to tend the babe. Little Leonora needed such no more; she was with the Keeper, who shall neither slumber nor sleep.

So it thrilled across her grandfather, as he saw the little cradle drawn into the middle of the room, and, on the coverlet, some pure white rosebuds and lilies of the valley, gathered in the morning by Mary and Blanche, little guessing the use that Meta would make of them ere nightfall.

The mother sank on her knees, her hands clasped over her breast, and rocking herself to and fro uneasily, with a low, irrepressible moaning.

“Will you not see her face?” whispered Dr. May.

“I may not touch her,” was the answer, in the hollow voice, and with the wild eye that had before alarmed him; but trusting to the soothing power of the mute face of the innocent, he drew back the covering.

The sight was such as he anticipated, sadly lovely, smiling and tranquil--all oppression and suffering fled away for ever.

It stilled the sounds of pain, and the restless motion; the compression of the hands became less tight, and he began to hope that the look was passing into her heart. He let her kneel on without interruption, only once he said, “Of such is the kingdom of Heaven!”

She made no immediate answer, and he had had time to doubt whether he ought to let her continue in that exhausting attitude any longer, when she looked up and said, “You will all be with her there.”

“She has flown on to point your aim more steadfastly,” said Dr. May.

Flora shuddered, but spoke calmly--“No, I shall not meet her.”

“My child!” he exclaimed, “do you know what you are saying?”

“I know, I am not in the way,” said Flora, still in the same fearfully quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “I never have been”--and she bent over her child, as if taking her leave for eternity.

His tongue almost clave to the roof of his mouth, as he heard the words--words elicited by one of those hours of true reality that, like death, rend aside every wilful cloak of self-deceit, and self-approbation. He had no power to speak at first; when he recovered it, his reply was not what his heart had, at first, prompted.

“Flora! How has this dear child been saved?” he said. “What has released her from the guilt she inherited through you, through me, through all? Is not the Fountain open?”

“She never wasted grace,” said Flora.

“My child! my Flora!” he exclaimed, losing the calmness he had gained by such an effort; “you must not talk thus--it is wrong! Only your own morbid feeling can treat this--this--as a charge against you, and if it were, indeed”--he sank his voice--“that such consequences destroyed hope, oh, Flora! where should I be?”

“No,” said Flora, “this is not what I meant. It is that I have never set my heart right. I am not like you nor my sisters. I have seemed to myself, and to you, to be trying to do right, but it was all hollow, for the sake of praise and credit. I know it, now it is too late; and He has let me destroy my child here, lest I should have destroyed her everlasting life, like my own.”

The most terrible part of this sentence was to Dr. May, that Flora spoke as if she knew it all as a certainty, and without apparent emotion, with all the calmness of despair. What she had never guessed before had come clearly and fully upon her now, and without apparent novelty, or, perhaps, there had been misgivings in the midst of her complacent self-satisfaction. She did not even seem to perceive how dreadfully she was shocking her father, whose sole comfort was in believing her language the effect of exaggerated self-reproach. His profession had rendered him not new to the sight of despondency, and, dismayed as he was, he was able at once to speak to the point.

“If it were indeed so, her removal would be the greatest blessing.”

“Yes,” said her mother, and her assent was in the same tone of resigned despair, owning it best for her child to be spared a worldly education, and loving her truly enough to acquiesce.

“I meant the greatest blessing to you,” continued Dr. May, “if it be sent to open your eyes, and raise your thoughts upwards. Oh, Flora, are not afflictions tokens of infinite love?”

She could not accept the encouragement, and only formed, with her lips, the words, “Mercy to her--wrath to me!”

The simplicity and hearty piety which, with all Dr. May’s faults, had always been part of his character, and had borne him, in faith and trust, through all his trials, had never belonged to her. Where he had been sincere, erring only from impulsiveness, she had been double-minded and calculating; and, now that her delusion had been broken down, she had nothing to rest upon. Her whole religious life had been mechanical, deceiving herself more than even others, and all seemed now swept away, except the sense of hypocrisy, and of having cut herself off, for ever, from her innocent child. Her father saw that it was vain to argue with her, and only said, “You will think otherwise by and by, my dear. Now shall I say a prayer before we go down?”

As she made no reply, he repeated the Lord’s Prayer, but she did not join; and then he added a broken, hesitating intercession for the mourners, which caused her to bury her face deeper in her hands, but her dull wretchedness altered not.

Rising, he said authoritatively, “Come, Flora, you must go to bed. See, it is morning.”

“You have sat up all night with me!” said Flora, with somewhat of her anxious, considerate self.

“So has George. He had just dropped asleep on the sofa when you awoke.”

“I thought he was in anger,” said she.

“Not with you, dearest.”

“No, I remember now, not where it was justly due. Papa,” she said, pausing, as to recall her recollection, “what did I do? I must have done something very unkind to make him go away and leave me.”

“I insisted on his leaving you, my dear. You seemed oppressed, and his affectionate ways were doing you harm; so I was hardhearted, and turned him out, sadly against his will.”

“Poor George!” said Flora, “has he been left to bear it alone all this time? How much distressed he must have been. I must have vexed him grievously. You don’t guess how fond he was of her. I must go to him at once.”

“That is right, my dear.”

“Don’t praise me,” said she, as if she could not bear it. “All that is left for me is to do what I can for him.”

Dr. May felt cheered. He was sure that hope must again rise out of unselfish love and duty.

Their return awoke George, who started, half sitting up, wondering why he was spending the night in so unusual a manner, and why Flora looked so pale, in the morning light, with her loosened, drooping hair.

She went straight to him, and, kneeling by his side, said, “George, forgive!” The same moment he had caught her to his bosom; but so impressed was his tardy mind with the peril of talking to her, that he held her in his arms without a single word, till Dr. May had unclosed his lips--a sign would not suffice--he must have a sentence to assure him; and then it was such joy to have her restored, and his fondness and solicitude were so tender and eager in their clumsiness, that his father-in-law was touched to the heart.

Flora was quite herself again, in presence of mind and power of dealing with him; and Dr. May left them to each other, and went to his own room, for such rest as sorrow, sympathy, and the wakening city, would permit him.

When the house was astir in the morning, and the doctor had met Meta in the breakfast-room, and held with her a sad, affectionate conversation, George came down with a fair report of his wife, and took her father to see her.

That night had been like an illness to her, and, though perfectly composed, she was feeble and crushed, keeping the room darkened, and reluctant to move or speak. Indeed, she did not seem able to give her attention to any one’s voice, except her husband’s. When Dr. May, or Meta, spoke to her, she would miss what they said, beg their pardon, and ask them to repeat it; and sometimes, even then, become bewildered. They tried reading to her, but she did not seem to listen, and her half-closed eye had the expression of listless dejection, that her father knew betokened that, even as last night, her heart refused to accept promises of comfort as meant for her.

For George, however, her attention was always ready, and was perpetually claimed. He was forlorn and at a loss without her, every moment; and, in the sorrow which he too felt most acutely, could not have a minute’s peace unless soothed by her presence; he was dependent on her to a degree which amazed and almost provoked the doctor, who could not bear to have her continually harassed and disturbed, and yet was much affected by witnessing so much tenderness, especially in Flora, always the cold utilitarian member of his family.

In the middle of the day she rose and dressed, because George was unhappy at having to sit without her, though only in the next room. She sat in the large arm-chair, turned away from the blinded windows, never speaking nor moving, save when he came to her, to make her look at his letters and notes, when she would, with the greatest patience and sweetness, revise them, suggest word or sentence, rouse herself to consider each petty detail, and then sink back into her attitude of listless dejection. To all besides, she appeared totally indifferent; gently courteous to Meta and to her father, when they addressed her, but otherwise showing little consciousness whether they were in the room; and yet, when something was passing about her father’s staying or returning, she rose from her seat, came up to him before he was aware, and said, “Papa! papa! you will not leave me!” in such an imploring tone, that if he had ever thought of quitting her, he could not have done so.

He longed to see her left to perfect tranquillity, but such could not be in London. Though theirs was called a quiet house, the rushing stream of traffic wearied his country ears, the door bell seemed ceaselessly ringing, and though Meta bore the brunt of the notes and messages, great numbers necessarily came up to Mr. Rivers, and of these Flora was not spared one. Dr. May had his share too of messages and business, and friends and relations, the Rivers’ kindred, always ready to take offence with their rich connections, and who would not be satisfied with inquiries, at the door, but must see Meta, and would have George fetched down to them--old aunts, who wanted the whole story of the child’s illness, and came imagining there was something to be hushed up; Lady Leonora extremely polite, but extremely disgusted at the encounter with them; George ready to be persuaded to take every one up to see his wife, and the prohibition to be made by Dr. May over and over again--it was a most tedious, wearing afternoon, and at last, when the visitors had gone, and George had hurried back to his wife, Dr. May threw himself into an arm-chair and said, “Oh, Meta, sorrow weighs more heavily in town than in the country!”

“Yes!” said Meta. “If one only could go out and look at the flowers, and take poor Flora up a nosegay!”

“I don’t think it would make much difference to her,” sighed the doctor.

“Yes, I think it would,” said Meta; “it did to me. The sights there speak of the better sights.”

“The power to look must come from within,” said Dr. May, thinking of his poor daughter.

“Ay,” said Meta, “as Mr. Ernescliffe said, ‘heaven is as near--!’ But the skirts of heaven are more easily traced in our mountain view than here, where, if I looked out of window, I should only see that giddy string of carriages and people pursuing each other!”

“Well, we shall get her home as soon as she is able to move, and I hope it may soothe her. What a turmoil it is! There has not been one moment without noise in the twenty-two hours I have been here!”

“What would you say if you were in the city?”

“Ah! there’s no talking of it; but if I had been a fashionable London physician, as my father-in-law wanted to make me, I should have been dead long ago!”

“No, I think you would have liked it very much.”

“Why?”

“Love’s a flower that will not die,” repeated Meta, half smiling. “You would have found so much good to do--”

“And so much misery to rend one’s heart,” said Dr. May. “But, after all, I suppose there is only a certain capacity of feeling.”

“It is within, not without, as you said,” returned Meta.

“Ha, there’s another!” cried Dr. May, almost petulant at the sound of the bell again, breaking into the conversation that was a great refreshment.

“It was Sir Henry Walkinghame’s ring,” said Meta. “It is always his time of day.”

The doctor did not like it the better.

Sir Henry sent up a message to ask whether he could see Mr. or Miss Rivers.

“I suppose we must,” said Meta, looking at the doctor. “Lady Walkinghame must be anxious about Flora.”

She blushed greatly, fancying that Dr. May was putting his own construction on the heightened colour which she could not control. Sir Henry came in, just what he ought to be, kindly anxious, but not overwhelming, and with a ready, pleased recognition of the doctor, as an old acquaintance of his boyhood. He did not stay many minutes; but there was a perceptible difference between his real sympathy and friendly regard only afraid of obtruding, and the oppressive curiosity of their former visitors. Dr. May felt it due, both from kindness and candour, to say something in his praise when he was gone.

“That is a sensible superior man,” he said. “He will be an acquisition when he takes up his abode at Drydale.”

“Yes,” said Meta; a very simple yes, from which nothing could be gathered.

The funeral was fixed for Monday, the next day but one, at the church where Mr. Rivers had been buried. No one was invited to be present; Ethel wrote that, much as she wished it, she could not leave Margaret, and, as the whole party were to return home on the following day, they should soon see Flora.

Flora had laid aside all privileges of illness after the first day; she came downstairs to breakfast and dinner, and though looking wretchedly ill, and speaking very low and feebly, she was as much as ever the mistress of her house. Her father could never draw her into conversation again on the subject nearest his heart, and could only draw the sad conclusion that her state of mind was unchanged, from the dreary indifference with which she allowed every word of cheer to pass by unheeded, as if she could not bear to look beyond the grave. He had some hope in the funeral, which she was bent on attending, and more in the influence of Margaret, and the counsel of Richard, or of Mr. Wllmot.

The burial, however, failed to bring any peaceful comfort to the mourning mother. Meta’s tears flowed freely, as much for her father as for her little niece; and George’s sobs were deep and choking; but Flora, externally, only seemed absorbed in helping him to go through with it; she, herself, never lost her fixed, composed, hopeless look.

After her return, she went up to the nursery, and deliberately set apart and locked up every possession of her child’s, then, coming down, startled Meta by laying her hand on her shoulder and saying, “Meta, dear, Preston is in the housekeeper’s room. Will you go and speak to her for a moment, to reassure her before I come?”

“Oh, Flora!”

“I sent for her,” said Flora, in answer. “I thought it would be a good opportunity while George is out. Will you be kind enough to prepare her, my dear?”

Meta wondered how Flora had known whither to send, but she could not but obey. Poor Preston was an ordinary sort of woman, kind-hearted, and not without a conscience; but her error had arisen from the want of any high religious principle to teach her obedience, or sincerity. Her grief was extreme, and she had been so completely overcome by the forbearance and consideration shown to her, that she was even more broken-hearted by the thought of them, than by the terrible calamity she had occasioned.

Kind-hearted Mrs. Larpent had tried to console her, as well as to turn the misfortune to the best account, and Dr. May had once seen her, and striven gently to point out the true evil of the course she had pursued. She was now going to her home, and they augured better of her, that she had been as yet too utterly downcast to say one word of that first thought with a servant, her character.

Meta found her sobbing uncontrollably at the associations of her master’s house, and dreadfully frightened at hearing that she was to see Mrs. Rivers; she began to entreat to the contrary with the vehemence of a person unused to any self-government; but, in the midst, the low calm tones were heard, and her mistress stood before her--her perfect stillness of demeanour far more effective in repressing agitation, than had been Meta’s coaxing attempts to soothe.

“You need not be afraid to see me, Preston,” said Flora kindly. “I am very sorry for you--you knew no better, and I should not have left so much to you.”

“Oh, ma’am--so kind--the dear, dear little darling--I shall never forgive myself.”

“I know you did love her,” continued Flora. “I am sure you intended no harm, and it was my leaving her that made her fretful.”

Preston tried to thank.

“Only remember henceforth”--and the clear tone grew fainter than ever with internal anguish, though still steady--“remember strict obedience and truth henceforth; the want of them will have worse results by and by than even this. Now, Preston, I shall always wish you well. I ought not, I believe, to recommend you to the like place, without saying why you left me, but for any other I will give you a fair character. I will see what I can do for you, and if you are ever in any distress, I hope you will let me know. Have your wages been paid?”

There was a sound in the affirmative, but poor Preston could not speak. “Good-bye, then,” and Flora took her hand and shook it. “Mind you let me hear if you want help. Keep this.”

Meta was a little disappointed to see sovereigns instead of a book. Flora turned to go, and put her hand out to lean on her sister as for support; she stood still to gather strength before ascending the stairs, and a groan of intense misery was wrung from her.

“Dearest Flora, it has been too much!”

“No,” said Flora gently.

“Poor thing, I am glad for her sake. But might she not have a book--a Bible?”

“You may give her one, if you like. I could not.”

Flora reached her own room, went in, and bolted the door.

Chapter XXI

Oh, where dwell ye, my ain sweet bairns? I’m woe and weary grown! Oh, Lady, we live where woe never is, In a land to flesh unknown.--ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

It had been with a gentle sorrow that Etheldred had expected to go and lay in her resting-place, the little niece, who had been kept from the evil of the world, in a manner of which she had little dreamt. Poor Flora! she must be ennobled, she thought, by having a child where hers is, when she is able to feel anything but the first grief; and Ethel’s heart yearned to be trying, at least, to comfort her, and to be with her father, who had loved his grandchild so fondly.

It was not to be. Margaret had borne so many shocks with such calmness, that Ethel had no especial fears for her; but there are some persons who have less fortitude for others than for themselves, and she was one of these. Ethel had been her own companion-sister, and the baby had been the sunbeam of her life, during the sad winter and spring.

In the middle of the night, Ethel knocked at Richard’s door. Margaret had been seized with faintness, from which they could not bring her back; and, even when Richard had summoned Dr. Spencer, it was long ere his remedies took effect; but, at last, she revived enough to thank them, and say she was glad that papa was not there.

Dr. Spencer sent them all to bed, and the rest of the night was quiet; but Margaret could not deny, in the morning, that she felt terribly shattered, and she was depressed in spirits to a degree such as they had never seen in her before. Her whole heart was with Flora; she was unhappy at being at a distance from her, almost fretfully impatient for letters, and insisting vehemently on Ethel’s going to London.

Ethel had never felt so helpless and desolate, as with Margaret thus changed and broken, and her father absent.

“My dear,” said Dr. Spencer, “nothing can be better for both parties than that he should be away. If he were here, he ought to leave all attendance to me, and she would suffer from the sight of his distress.”

“I cannot think what he will do or feel!” sighed Ethel.

“Leave it to me. I will write to him, and we shall see her better before post time.”

“You will tell him exactly how it was, or I shall,” said Ethel abruptly, not to say fiercely.

“Ho! you don’t trust me?” said Dr. Spencer, smiling, so that she was ashamed of her speech. “You shall speak for yourself, and I for myself; and I shall say that nothing would so much hurt her as to have others sacrificed to her.”

“That is true,” said Ethel; “but she misses papa.”

“Of course she does; but, depend on it, she would not have him leave your sister, and she is under less restraint without him.”

“I never saw her like this!”

“The drop has made it overflow. She has repressed more than was good for her, and now that her guard is broken down, she gives way under the whole weight.”

“Poor Margaret! I am pertinacious; but, if she is not better by post time, papa will not bear to be away.”

“I’ll tell you what I think of her by that time. Send up your brother Richard, if you wish to do her good. Richard would be a much better person to write than yourself. I perceive that he is the reasonable member of the family.”

“Did not you know that before?”

“All I knew of him, till last night, was, that no one could, by any possibility, call him Dick.”

Dr. Spencer was glad to have dismissed Ethel smiling; and she was the better able to bear with poor Margaret’s condition of petulance. She had never before experienced the effects of bodily ailments on the temper, and she was slow to understand the change in one usually so patient and submissive. She was, by turns, displeased with her sister and with her own abruptness; but, though she knew it not, her bluntness had a bracing effect. She thought she had been cross in declaring it was nonsense to harp on her going to London; but it made Margaret feel that she had been unreasonable, and keep silence.

Richard managed her much better, being gentle and firm, and less ready to speak than Ethel, and he succeeded in composing her into a sleep, which restored her balance, and so relieved Ethel, that she not only allowed Dr. Spencer to say what he pleased, but herself made light of the whole attack, little knowing how perilous was any shock to that delicate frame.

Margaret’s whole purpose was to wind herself up for the first interview with Flora; and though she had returned to her usual state, she would not go downstairs on the evening the party were expected, believing it would be more grateful to her sister’s feelings to meet her without witnesses.

The travellers arrived, and Dr. May hurried up to her. She barely replied to his caresses and inquiries in her eagerness to hear of Flora, and to convince him that he must not forbid the meeting. Nor had he any mind so to do. “Surely,” said he, when he had seen the spiritualised look of her glistening blue eyes, the flush on her transparent cheeks, and her hands clasped over her breast--“surely poor Flora must feel as though an angel were waiting to comfort her.”

Flora came, but there was sore disappointment. Fond and tender she was as ever, but, neither by word or gesture, would she admit the most remote allusion to her grief. She withdrew her hand when Margaret’s pressure became expressive; she avoided her eye, and spoke incessantly of different subjects. All the time, her voice was low and hollow, her face had a settled expression of wretchedness, and her glances wandered drearily and restlessly anywhere but to Margaret’s face; but her steadiness of manner was beyond her sister’s power to break, and her visit was shortened on account of her husband. Poor George had quite given way at the sight of Gertrude, whom his little girl had been thought to resemble; and, though Dr. May had soothed him almost like a child, no one put any trust in his self-control, and all sat round, fearing each word or look, till Flora came downstairs, and they departed.

Richard and Ethel each offered to go with them; they could not bear to think of their spending that first evening in their childless home; but Flora gently, but decidedly, refused; and Dr. May said that, much as he wished to be with them, he believed that Flora preferred having no one but Meta. “I hope I have done Margaret no harm,” were Flora’s last words to him, and they seemed to explain her guarded manner; but he found Margaret weeping as she had never wept for herself, and palpitation and faintness were the consequence.

Ethel looked on at Flora as a sad and perplexing mystery during the weeks that ensued. There were few opportunities of being alone together, and Flora shrank from such as they were--nay, she checked all expression of solicitude, and made her very kisses rapid and formal.

The sorrow that had fallen on the Grange seemed to have changed none of the usual habits there--visiting, riding, driving, dinners, and music, went on with little check. Flora was sure to be found the animated, attentive lady of the house, or else sharing her husband’s pursuits, helping him with his business, or assisting him in seeking pleasure, spending whole afternoons at the coachmaker’s over a carriage that they were building, and, it was reported, playing ecarte in the evening.

Had grief come to be forgotten and cast aside without effecting any mission? Yet Ethel could not believe that the presence of the awful messenger was unfelt, when she heard poor George’s heavy sigh, or when she looked at Flora’s countenance, and heard the peculiar low, subdued tone of her voice, which, when her words were most cheerful, always seemed to Ethel the resigned accent of despair.

Ethel could not talk her over with Margaret, for all seemed to make it a point that Margaret should believe the best. Dr. May turned from the subject with a sort of shuddering grief, and said, “Don’t talk of her, poor child--only pray for her!”

Ethel, though shocked by the unwonted manner of his answer, was somewhat consoled by perceiving that a double measure of tenderness had sprung up between her father and his poor daughter. If Flora had seemed, in her girlhood, to rate him almost cheaply, this was at an end now; she met him as if his embrace were peace, the gloom was lightened, the attention less strained, when he was beside her, and she could not part with him without pressing for a speedy meeting. Yet she treated him with the same reserve; since that one ghastly revelation of the secrets of her heart, the veil had been closely drawn, and he could not guess whether it had been but a horrible thought, or were still an abiding impression. Ethel could gather no more than that her father was very unhappy about Flora, and that Richard understood why; for Richard had told her that he had written to Flora, to try to persuade her to cease from this reserve, but that he had no reply.

Norman was not at home; he had undertaken the tutorship of two schoolboys for the holidays; and his father owned, with a sigh, that he was doing wisely.

As to Meta, she was Ethel’s chief consolation, by the redoubled assurances, directed to Ethel’s unexpressed dread, lest Flora should be rejecting the chastening Hand. Meta had the most absolute certainty that Flora’s apparent cheerfulness was all for George’s sake, and that it was a most painful exertion. “If Ethel could only see how she let herself sink together, as it were, and her whole countenance relax, as soon as he was out of sight,” Meta said, “she could not doubt what misery these efforts were to her.”

“Why does she go on with them?” said Ethel.

“George,” said Meta. “What would become of him without her? If he misses her for ten minutes he roams about lost, and he cannot enjoy anything without her. I cannot think how he can help seeing what hard work it is, and how he can be contented with those dreadful sham smiles; but as long as she can give him pleasure, poor Flora will toil for him.”

“It is very selfish,” Ethel caught herself saying.

“No, no, it is not,” cried Meta. “It is not that he will not see, but that he cannot see. Good honest fellow, he really thinks it does her good and pleases her. I was so sorry one evening when I tried to take her place at that perpetual ecarte, and told him it teased her; he went so wistfully to her, and asked whether it did, and she exerted herself into such painful enjoyment to persuade him to the contrary; and afterwards she said to me, ‘Let me alone, dearest--it is the only thing left me.’”

“There is something in being husband and wife that one cannot understand,” slowly said Ethel, so much in her quaint way that Meta laughed.

Had it not been for Norman’s absence, Ethel would, in the warm sympathy and accustomed manner of Meta Rivers, have forgotten all about the hopes and fears that, in brighter days, had centred on that small personage; until one day, as she came home from Cocksmoor, she found “Sir Henry Walkinghame’s” card on the drawing-room table. “I should like to bite you! Coming here, are you?” was her amiable reflection.

Meta, in her riding-habit, peeped out of Margaret’s room. “Oh, Ethel, there you are! It is such a boon that you did not come home sooner, or we should have had to ride home with him! I heard him asking for the Miss Mays! And now I am in hopes that he will go home without falling in with Flora and George.”

“I did not know he was in these parts.”

“He came to Drydale last week, but the place is forlorn, and George gave him a general invitation to the Grange.”

“Do you like him?” said Ethel, while Margaret looked on, amazed at her audacity.

“I liked him very much in London,” said Meta; “he is pleasant enough to talk to, but somehow, he is not congruous here--if you understand me. And I think his coming oppresses Flora--she turned quite pale when he was announced, and her voice was lower than ever when she spoke to him.”

“Does he come often?” said Ethel.

“I don’t think he has anything else to do,” returned Meta, “for our house cannot be as pleasant as it was; but he is very kind to George, and for that we must be grateful. One thing I am afraid of, that he will persuade us off to the yachting after all.”

“Oh!” was the general exclamation.

“Yes,” said Meta. “George seemed to like the plan, and I very much fear that he is taking a dislike to the dear old Grange. I heard him say, ‘Anything to get away.’”

“Poor George, I know he is restless,” said Margaret.

“At least,” said Ethel, “you can’t go till after your birthday, Miss Heiress.”

“No, Uncle Cosham is coming,” said Meta. “Margaret, you must have your stone laid before we go!”

“Dr. Spencer promises it before Hector’s holidays are over,” said Margaret, blushing, as she always did, with pleasure, when they talked of the church.

Hector Ernescliffe had revived Margaret wonderfully. She was seldom downstairs before the evening, and Ethel thought his habit of making her apartment his sitting-room must be as inconvenient to her as it was to herself; but Hector could not be de trop for Margaret. She exerted herself to fulfil for him all the little sisterly offices that, with her brothers, had been transferred to Ethel and Mary; she threw herself into all his schemes, tried to make him endure Captain Gordon, and she even read his favourite book of Wild Sports, though her feelings were constantly lacerated by the miseries of the slaughtered animals. Her couch was to him as a home, and he had awakened her bright soft liveliness which had been only dimmed for a time.

The church was her other great interest, and Dr. Spencer humoured her by showing her all his drawings, consulting her on every ornament, and making many a perspective elevation, merely that she might see the effect.

Richard and Tom made it their recreation to construct a model of the church as a present for her, and Tom developed a genius for carving, which proved a beneficial interest to keep him from surliness. He had voluntarily propounded his intended profession to his father, who had been so much pleased by his choice, that he could not but be gratified; though now and then ambitious fancies, and discontent with Stoneborough, combined to bring on his ordinary moody fits, the more, because his habitual reserve prevented any one from knowing what was working in his mind.

Finally the Rivers’ party announced their intention of going to the Isle of Wight as soon as Meta had come of age; and the council of Cocksmoor, meeting at tea at Dr. May’s house, decided that the foundation stone of the church should be laid on the day after her birthday, when there would be a gathering of the whole family, as Margaret wished. Dr. Spencer had worked incredibly hard to bring it forward, and Margaret’s sweet smiles, and liquid eyes, expressed how personally thankful she felt.

“What a blessing this church has been to that poor girl,” said Dr. Spencer, as he left the house with Mr. Wilmot. “How it beguiles her out of her grief! I am glad she has the pleasure of the foundation; I doubt if she will see the consecration.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Wilmot, shocked. “Was that attack so serious?”

“That recumbent position and want of exercise were certain to produce organic disease, and suspense and sorrow have hastened it. The death of Mrs. Rivers’s poor child was the blow that called it into activity, and, if it last more than a year, I shall be surprised.”

“For such as she is, one cannot presume to wish, but her father--is he aware of this?”

“He knows there is extensive damage; I think he does not open his eyes to the result, but he will bear it. Never was there a man to whom it came so naturally to live like the fowls of the air, or the lilies of the field, as it does to dear Dick May,” said Dr. Spencer, his voice faltering.

“There is a strength of faith and love in him that carries him through all,” said Mr. Wilmot. “His childlike nature seems to have the trustfulness that is, in itself, consolation. You said how Cocksmoor had been blessed to Margaret--I think it is the same with them all--not only Ethel and Richard, who have been immediately concerned; but that one object has been a centre and aim to elevate the whole family, and give force and unity to their efforts. Even the good doctor, much as I always looked up to him--much good as he did me in my young days--I must confess that he was sometimes very provoking.”

“If you had tried to be his keeper at Cambridge, you might say so!” rejoined Dr. Spencer.

“He is so much less impetuous--more consistent--less desultory; I dare say you understand me,” said Mr. Wilmot. “His good qualities do not entangle one another as they used to do.”

“Exactly so. He was far more than I looked for when I came home, though I might have guessed that such a disposition, backed by such principles and such--could not but shake off all the dross.”

“One thing was,” said Mr. Wilmot, smiling, “that a man must take himself in hand at some time in his life, and Dr. May only began to think himself responsible for himself when he lost his wife, who was wise for both. She was an admirable person, but not easy to know well. I think you knew her at--”

“I say,” interrupted Dr. Spencer, “it strikes me that we could not do better than get up our S. P. G. demonstration on the day of the stone--”

Hitherto the Stoneborough subscribers to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had been few and far between; but, under the new dynasty, there was a talk of forming an association, and having a meeting to bring the subject forward. Dr. Spencer’s proposal, however, took the vicar by surprise.

“Never could there be a better time,” he argued. “You have naturally a gathering of clergy--people ought to be liberal on such an occasion, and, as Cocksmoor is provided for, why not give the benefit to the missions, in their crying need!”

“True, but there is no time to send for any one to make a speech.”

“Husband your resources. What could you have better than young Harry and his islanders?”

“Harry would never make a speech.”

“Let him cram Norman. Young Lake tells me Norman made a great sensation at the Union at Oxford, and if his heart is in the work, he must not shrink from the face of his townsmen.”

“No doubt he had rather they were savages,” said the vicar. “And yourself--you will tell them of the Indian missions.”

“With all my heart,” said Dr. Spencer. “When my Brahminhee godson--the deacon I told you of, comes to pay me his promised visit, what doings we shall have! Seriously, I have just had letters from him and from others, that speak of such need, that I could feel every moment wasted that is not spent on their behalf.”

Mr. Wilmot was drawn into Dr. Spencer’s house, and heard the letters, till his heart burned within him.

The meeting was at once decided upon, though Ethel could not see why people could not give without speechifying, and her two younger brothers declared it was humbug--Tom saying, he wished all blackamoors were out of creation, and Harry, that he could not stand palaver about his friend David. Dr. May threatened him with being displayed on the platform as a living instance of the effects of missions, at which he took alarm, and so seriously declared that he should join the Bucephalus at once, that they pacified him by promising that he should do as he pleased.

The archdeacon promised a sermon, and the active Dr Spencer worked the nine muses and all the rest of the town and neighbourhood into a state of great enthusiasm and expectation. He went to the Grange, as he said, to collect his artillery; primed Flora that she might prime the M. P.; made the willing Meta promise to entrap the uncle, who was noted for philanthropical speeches; and himself captured Sir Henry Walkinghame, who looked somewhat rueful at what he found incumbent on him as a country gentleman, though there might be some compensation in the eagerness of Miss Rivers.

Norman had hardly set foot in Stoneborough before he was told what was in store for him, and, to the general surprise, submitted as if it were a very simple matter. As Dr. Spencer told him, it was only a foretaste of the penalty which every missionary has to pay for coming to England. Norman was altogether looking much better than when he had been last at home, and his spirits were more even. He had turned his whole soul to the career he had chosen, cast his disappointment behind him, or, more truly, made it his offering, and gathered strength and calmness, with which to set out on tasks of working for others, with thoughts too much absorbed on them, to give way to the propensity of making himself the primary object of study and contemplation. The praise of God, and love of man, were the best cures for tendencies like his, and he had found it out. His calm, though grave cheerfulness, came as a refreshment to those who had been uneasy about him, and mournfully watching poor Flora.

“Yes,” said Dr. Spencer, “you have taken the best course for your own happiness.”

Norman coloured, as if he understood more than met the ear. Mary and Blanche were very busy preparing presents for Meta Rivers, and every one was anxious to soften to her the thought of this first birthday without her father. Each of the family contributed some pretty little trifle, choice in workmanship or kind in device, and each was sealed and marked with the initials of the giver, and packed up by Mary, to be committed to Flora’s charge. Blanche had, however, much trouble in extracting a gift from Norman, and he only yielded at last, on finding that all his brothers had sent something, so that his omission would be marked. Then he dived into the recesses of his desk, and himself sealed up a little parcel, of which he would not allow his sisters to inspect the contents.

Ethel had a shrewd guess. She remembered his having, in the flush of joy at Margaret’s engagement, rather prematurely caused a seal to be cut with a daisy, and “Pearl of the meadow” as the motto; and his having said that he should keep it as a wedding present. She could understand that he was willing to part with it without remark.

Flora met Meta in her sitting-room, on the morning of the day, which rose somewhat sadly upon the young girl, as she thought of past affection and new responsibilities. If the fondness of a sister could have compensated for what she had lost, Meta received it in no scanty measure from Flora, who begged to call George, because he would be pleased to see the display of gifts.

His own was the only costly one--almost all the rest were homemade treasures of the greater price, because the skill and fondness of the maker were evident in their construction; and Meta took home the kindness as it was meant, and felt the affection that would not let her feel herself lonely. She only wished to go and thank them all at once.

“Do then,” said Flora. “If Lord Cosham will spare you, and your business should be over in time, you could drive in, and try to bring papa home with you.”

“Oh, thank you, Flora. That is a kind treat, in case the morning should be very awful!”

Margaret Agatha Rivers signed her documents, listened to explanations, and was complimented by her uncle on not thinking it necessary to be senseless on money matters, like her cousin, Agatha Langdale.

Still she looked a little oppressed, as she locked up the tokens of her wealth, and the sunshine of her face did not beam out again till she arrived at Stoneborough, and was dispensing her pretty thanks to the few she found at home.

“Ethel out and Norman? His seal is only too pretty--”

“They are all helping Dr. Spencer at Cocksmoor.”

“What a pity! But it is so very kind of him to treat me as a daisy. In some ways I like his present for that the best of all,” said Meta.

“I will tell him so,” said Mary.

“Yes, no,” said Meta. “I am not pretending to be anything half so nice.”

Mary and Blanche fell upon her for calling herself anything but the nicest flower in the world; and she contended that she was nothing better than a parrot-tulip, stuck up in a parterre; and just as the discussion was becoming a game at romps, Dr. May came in, and the children shouted to him to say whether his humming-bird were a daisy or a tulip.

“That is as she comports herself,” he said playfully.

“Which means that you don’t think her quite done for,” said Meta.

“Not quite,” said the doctor, with a droll intonation; “but I have not seen what this morning may have done to her.”

“Come and see, then,” said Meta. “Flora told me to bring you home--and it is my birthday, you know. Never mind waiting to tell Ethel. Margaret will let her know that I’ll keep you out of mischief.”

As usual, Dr. May could not withstand her, and she carried him off in triumph in her pony carriage.

“Then you don’t give me up yet?” was the first thing she said, as they were off the stones.

“What have you been doing to make me?” said he.

“Doing or not doing--one or the other,” she said. “But indeed I wanted to have you to myself. I am in a great puzzle!”

“Sir Henry! I hope she won’t consult me!” thought Dr. May, as he answered, “Well, my dear.”

“I fear it is a lasting puzzle,” she said. “What shall I do with all this money?”

“Keep it in the bank, or buy railway shares!” said Dr. May, looking arch.

“Thank you. That’s a question for my cousins in the city. I want you to answer me as no one else can do. I want to know what is my duty now that I have my means in my own hands?”

“There is need enough around--”

“I do not mean only giving a little here and there, but I want you to hear a few of my thoughts. Flora and George are kindness itself--but, you see, I have no duties. They are obliged to live a gay sort of life--it is their position; but I cannot make out whether it is mine. I don’t see that I am like those girls who have to go out as a matter of obedience.”

Dr. May considered, but could only say, “You are very young.”

“Too young to be independent,” sighed Meta. “I must grow old enough to be trusted alone, and in the meantime--”

“Probably an answer will be found,” said the doctor. “You and your means will find their--their vocation.”

“Marriage,” said Meta, calmly speaking the word that he had avoided. “I think not.”

“Why--” he began.

“I do not think good men like heiresses.”

He became strongly interested in a corn-field, and she resumed,

“Perhaps I should only do harm. It may be my duty to wait. All I wish to know is, whether it is?”

“I see you are not like girls who know their duty, and are restless, because it is not the duty they like.”

“Oh! I like everything. It is my liking it so much that makes me afraid.”

“Even going to Ryde?”

“Don’t I like the sailing? and seeing Harry too? I don’t feel as if that were waste, because I can sometimes spare poor Flora a little. We could not let her go alone.”

“You need never fear to be without a mission of comfort,” said Dr. May. “Your ‘spirit full of glee’ was given you for something. Your presence is far more to my poor Flora than you or she guess.”

“I never meant to leave her now,” said Meta earnestly. “I only wished to be clear whether I ought to seek for my work.”

“It will seek you, when the time comes.”

“And meantime I must do what comes to hand, and take it as humiliation that it is not in the more obviously blessed tasks! A call might come, as Cocksmoor did to Ethel. But oh! my money! Ought it to be laid up for myself?”

“For your call, when it comes,” said Dr. May, smiling; then gravely, “There are but too many calls for the interest. The principal is your trust, till the time comes.”

Meta smiled, and was pleased to think that her first-fruits would be offered to-morrow.