Hopes and Fears / or, scenes from the life of a spinster

by Charlotte M. Yonge

CHAPTER XXXI

Thekla. I should love thee.
Whate’er thou hadst chosen, thou wouldst still have acted
Nobly and worthy of thee; but repentance
Shall ne’er disturb thy soul’s fair peace.

Max. Then I must leave thee; must part from thee!

Thekla. Being faithful
To thine own self, thou art faithful too to me.—Wallenstein

Phœbe and Maria went alone to the Park to receive the bridal pair, for poor Bertha was so nervous and unhinged as not even to wish to leave the fireside. It was plain that she must not be deprived of an elder sister’s care, and that it would be unlikely that she would ever have nerve enough to undertake the charge of Maria, even if Phœbe could think of shifting the responsibility, or if a feeble intellect could be expected to yield the same deference to a younger sister as came naturally to an elder one.

Thus Phœbe’s heart was somewhat heavy as she braced herself for her communication to Mervyn, doubtful as to the extent of his probable displeasure, but for that very cause resolved on dealing openly from the first, while satisfied that, at her age, his right was rather to deference than to surrender of judgment. Maria roamed through the house, exclaiming at the alterations, and Phœbe sat still in the concentrated, resolute stillness that was her form of suspense.

They came! The peals of the Hiltonbury bells rung merrily in the cold air, the snow sparkled bridally, the icicles glittered in the sunset light, the workpeople stood round the house to cheer the arrival, and the sisters hurried out.

It was no more the pale, patient face! The cheeks were rounded, the brown eyes smiled, the haggard air, that even as a bride Cecily had worn, was entirely gone, and Mervyn watched exultingly Phœbe’s surprise at what he had made of the wan, worn girl they had met at Hyères. The only disappointment was Bertha’s absence, and there was much regret that the new-comers had not heard of her cold so as to have seen her at the Underwood on their way. They had spent the previous day in town in going over the distillery, by

Cecily’s particular wish, and had afterwards assisted at a grand impromptu entertainment of all the workpeople, at their own expense and Robert’s trouble. Mervyn did certainly seem carried out of his own knowledge of himself, and his wife had transgressed every precedent left by his mother, who had never beheld Whittingtonia in her life!

Phœbe found their eager talk so mazy and indistinct to her perception that she became resolved to speak and clear her mind at the first opportunity; so she tarried behind, when Cecily went up, under Maria’s delighted guidance, to take off her bonnet, and accosted Mervyn with the ominous words, ‘I want to speak to you.’

‘Make haste, then; there is Cecily left to Maria.’

‘I wanted to tell you that I am engaged.’

‘The deuce you are!’

‘To Mr. Randolf, Miss Charlecote’s Canadian cousin.’

Mervyn, who had expected no less than John Raymond, whirled round in indignant surprise, and looked incredulously at her, but was confronted by her two open, unabashed eyes, as she stood firm on both her feet, and continued: ‘I have been thrown a good deal with him, so as to learn his goodness and superiority. I know you will think it a very bad match, for he has nothing but his hands and head; but we mean to wait till he can offer what are considered as equal terms. We thought it right you should know.’

‘Upon my word, that’s a clever fellow!’

Phœbe knew very well that this was ironical, but would not so reply. ‘He has abilities,’ she said, ‘and we are ready to wait till he has made proof of them.’

‘Well, what now?’ he cried in despair. ‘I did think you the sensible one of the lot.’

‘When you know him,’ she said, with her fearless smile, ‘you will own that I was sensible there.’

‘Really, the child looks so complacent that she would outface me that this mad notion was a fine thing! I declare it is worse than Bertha’s business; and you so much older! At least Hastings was a man of family, and this is a Yankee adventurer picked out of the back of a ditch by that young dog, Sandbrook. Only a Yankee could have had the impudence! I declare you are laughing all the time. What have you to say for yourself?’

‘His father was major in the ---th dragoons, and was one of the Randolfs of ---shire. His mother was a Charlecote. His birth is as good as our own, and you saw that he is a gentleman. His character and talents have gained his present situation, and it is a profession that gives every opening for ability; nor does he ask for me till his fortune is made.’

‘But hinders you from doing better! Pray, what would Augusta say to you?’ he added, jocosely, for even while lashing himself up, his tone had been placable.

‘He shall satisfy her.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘We only spoke of it yesterday. Bertha found it out; but I wish no one else to know it except Robert.’

‘Somehow she looks so cool, and she is so entirely the last girl I expected to go crazy, that I can’t laugh at the thing as I ought! I say, what’s this about Miss Charlecote; will she do anything for him?’

‘I believe not.’

‘And pray who vouches for his antecedents, such as they are.’

‘Mr. Currie and Owen Sandbrook both know the whole.’

‘Is Sandbrook at the Holt?’

‘Yes,’ answered Phœbe, suppressing her strong distaste against bringing him into the affair.

‘Well, I shall make inquiries, and—and—it is a horrid unlucky business, and the old girl should be scarified for putting you in his way. The end will be that you’ll marry on your own means, and be pinched for life. Now, look here, you are no fool at the bottom; you will give it up if I find that he is no go.’

‘If it be proved that I ought,’ said Phœbe. ‘And if you find him what I have told you, you will make no opposition. Thank you, Mervyn.’

‘Stay,’ said he, laughing, and letting her kiss him, ‘I have made no promises, mind!’

The confidence that Phœbe had earned had stood her in good stead. Mervyn had great trust in her judgment, and was too happy besides for severity on other people’s love. Nor were her perfect openness, and fearless though modest independence, without effect. She was not one who invited tyranny, but truly ‘queen o’er herself,’ she ruled herself too well to leave the reins loose for others to seize.

The result of the interview had surpassed her hopes, and she had nothing to regret but her brother’s implied purpose of consulting Owen Sandbrook. Friend of Humfrey though he were, she could not feel secure of his generosity, and wished the engineer had been the nearer referee; but she did not say so, as much for shame at her own uncharitableness, as for fear of rousing Mervyn’s distrust; and she was afraid that her injunctions to secrecy would be disregarded. Fully aware that all would be in common between the husband and wife, she was still taken by surprise when Cecily, coming early next day to the Underwood to see Bertha, took her aside to say, ‘Dearest, I hope this is all right, and for your happiness.’

‘You will soon know that it is,’ said Phœbe, brightly.

‘Only, my dear, it must not be a long engagement. Ah! you think that nothing now, but I could not bear to think that you were to go through a long attachment.’

Was this forgiving Cecily really fancying that her sorrows had been nothing worse than those incidental to a long attachment?

‘Ah!’ thought Phœbe, ‘if she could ever have felt the full

reliance on which I can venture, she need never have drooped! What is time to trust?’

Mervyn kept his word, and waiving ceremony, took his wife at once to the Holt, and leaving her with Miss Charlecote, made a visit to Owen in the study, wishing, in the first place, to satisfy himself of the young man’s competence to reply to his questions. On this he had no doubt; Owen had made steady progress ever since he had been in England, and especially during the quiet time that had succeeded his sister’s marriage. His mental powers had fully regained their keenness and balance, and though still incapable of sustained exertion of his faculties, he could talk as well as ever, and the first ten minutes convinced Mervyn that he was conversing with a shrewd sensible observer, who had seen a good deal of life, and of the world. He then led to the question about young Randolf, endeavouring so to frame it as not to betray the occasion of it.

The reply fully confirmed all that Phœbe had averred. The single efforts of a mere youth, not eighteen at the time of his father’s failure, without capital, and set down in a wild uncleared part of the bush, had of course been inadequate to retrieve the ruined fortunes of the family; but he had shown wonderful spirit, patience, and perseverance, and the duteous temper in which he had borne the sacrifice of his prospects by his father’s foolish speculations and unsuitable marriage, his affectionate treatment of the wife and children when left on his hands, and his cheerful endurance of the severest and most hopeless drudgery for the bare support of life, had all been such as to inspire the utmost confidence in his character. Of his future prospects, Owen spoke with a sigh almost of envy. His talent and industry had already made him a valuable assistant to Mr. Currie, and an able engineer had an almost certain career of prosperity open to him. Lastly Mervyn asked what was the connection with Miss Charlecote, and what possibilities it held out. Owen winced for a moment, then explained the second cousinship, adding, however, that there was no entail, that the disposal of Miss Charlecote’s property was entirely in her own power, and that she had manifested no intention of treating the young man with more than ordinary civility, in fact that she had rather shrunk from acknowledging his likeness to the family. His father’s English relatives had, in like manner, owned him as a kinsman; but had shown no alacrity in making friends with him. The only way to be noticed, as the two gentlemen agreed, when glad to close their conference in a laugh, is to need no notice.

‘Uncommon hard on a fellow,’ soliloquized Owen, when left alone. ‘Is it not enough to have one’s throat cut, but must one do it with one’s own hands? It is a fine thing to be magnanimous when one thinks one is going off the stage, but quite another thing when one is to remain there. I’m no twelfth century saint, only a nineteenth century beggar, with an unlucky child on my hands! Am I to give away girl, land, and all to

the fellow I raked out of his swamps? Better have let him grill and saved my limbs! And pray what more am I to do? I’ve introduced him, made no secret of his parentage, puffed him off, and brought him here, and pretty good care he takes of himself! Am I to pester poor Honey if she does prefer the child she bred up to a stranger? No, no, I’ve done my part: let him look out for himself!’

Mervyn allowed to Phœbe that Randolf was no impostor, but warned her against assuming his consent. She suspected that Owen at least guessed the cause of these inquiries, and it kept her aloof from the Holt. When Miss Charlecote spoke of poor Owen’s want of spirits, discretion told her that she was not the person to enliven him; and the consciousness of her secret made her less desirous of confidences with her kind old friend, so that her good offices chiefly consisted in having little Owen to the Underwood to play with Maria, who delighted in his society, and unconsciously did much for his improvement.

Honor herself perceived that Phœbe’s visits only saddened her convalescent, and that in his present state he was happiest with no one but her, who was more than ever a mother to him. They were perfectly at ease together, as she amused him with the familiar books, which did not strain his powers like new ones, the quiet household talk, the little playful exchanges of tender wit, and the fresh arrangement of all her museum on the natural system, he having all the entertainment, and she all the trouble, till her conversion astonished Bertha. The old religious habits of the Holt likewise seemed to soothe and give him pleasure; but whether by force of old association, or from their hold on his heart, was as yet unknown to Honora, and perhaps to himself. It was as if he were deferring all demonstration till he should be able again to examine the subject with concentrated attention. Or it might be that, while he shrank from exerting himself upon Randolf’s behalf, he was not ready for repentance, and therefore distrusted, and hung back from, the impulses that would otherwise have drawn him to renew all that he had once cast aside. He was never left alone without becoming deeply melancholy, yet no companionship save Honor’s seemed to suit him for many minutes together. His brain was fast recovering the injury, but it was a trying convalescence; and with returning health, his perfect helplessness fretted him under all the difficulties of so tall and heavy a man being carried from bed to sofa, from sofa to carriage.

‘Poor Owen!’ said Phœbe to herself, one day when she had not been able to avoid witnessing this pitiable spectacle of infirmity; ‘I can’t think why I am always fancying he is doing Humfrey and me some injustice, and that he knows it. He, who brought Humfrey home, and has praised him to Mervyn! It is very uncharitable of me, but why will he look at me as if he were asking my pardon? Well, we shall see the result of Mervyn’s inspection!’

Mervyn and his wife were going for two nights to the rooms at the office, in the first lull of the bridal invitations, which were infinitely more awful to Cecily than to Phœbe. After twenty-nine years of quiet clerical life, Cecily neither understood nor liked the gaieties even of the county, had very little to say, and, unless her aunt were present, made Phœbe into a protector, and retired behind her, till Phœbe sometimes feared that Mervyn would be quite provoked, and remember his old dread lest Cecily should be too homely and bashful for her position. Poor dear Cecily! She was as good and kind as possible; but in the present close intercourse it sometimes would suggest to Phœbe, ‘was she quite as wise as she was good?’

And Miss Fennimore, with still clearer eyes, inwardly decided that, though religion should above all form the morals, yet the morality of common sense and judgment should be cultivated with an equal growth.

Cecily returned from London radiant with sisterly congratulation, in a flutter of delight with Mr. Randolf, and intimating a glorious project in the background, devised between herself and Mervyn, then guarding against possible disappointment by declaring it might be all her own fancy.

The meaning of these prognostics appeared the next morning. Mervyn had been much impressed by Humfrey Randolf’s keen business-like appearance and sensible conversation, as well as by Mr. Currie’s opinion of him; and, always detesting the trouble of his own distillery, it had occurred to him that to secure an active working partner, and throw his sister’s fortune into the business, would be a most convenient, generous, and brotherly means of smoothing the course of true love; and Cecily had been so enchanted at the happiness he would thus confer, that he came to the Underwood quite elevated with his own kindness.

Phœbe heard his offer with warm thankfulness, but could not answer for Humfrey.

‘He has too much sense not to take a good offer,’ said Mervyn, ‘otherwise, it is all humbug his pretending to care for you. As to Robert’s folly, have not I given up all that any rational being could stick at? I tell you, it is the giving up those houses that makes me in want of capital, so you are bound to make it up to me.’

Mervyn and Phœbe wrote by the same post. ‘I will be satisfied with whatever you decide upon as right,’ were Phœbe’s words; but she refrained from expressing any wish. What was the use of a wise man, if he were not to be let alone to make up his mind? She would trust to him to divine what it would be to her to be thus one with her own family, and to gain him without losing her sisters. The balance must not be weighted by a woman’s hand, when ready enough to incline to her side; and why should she add to his pain, if he must refuse?

How ardently she wished, however, can be imagined. She

could not hide from herself pictures of herself and Humfrey, sometimes in London, sometimes at the Underwood, working with Robert, and carrying out the projects which Mervyn but half acted on, and a quarter understood.

The letter came, and the first line was decisive. In spite of earnest wishes and great regrets, Humfrey could not reconcile the trade to his sense of right. He knew that as Mervyn conducted it, it was as unobjectionable as was possible, and that the works were admirably regulated; but it was in going over the distillery as a curiosity he had seen enough to perceive that it was a line in which enterprise and exertion could only find scope by extending the demoralizing sale of spirits, and he trusted to Phœbe’s agreeing with him, that when he already had a profession fairly free from temptation, it was his duty not to put himself into one that might prove more full of danger to him than to one who had been always used to it. He had not consulted Robert, feeling clear in his own mind, and thinking that he had probably rather not interfere.

Kind Humfrey! That bit of consideration filled Phœbe’s heart with grateful relief. It gave her spirits to be comforted by the tender and cheering words with which the edge of the disappointment was softened, and herself thanked for her abstinence from persuasion. ‘Oh, better to wait seven years, with such a Humfrey as this in reserve, than to let him warp aside one inch of his sense of duty! As high-minded as dear Robert, without his ruggedness and harshness,’ she thought as she read the manly, warm-hearted letter to Mervyn, which he had enclosed, and which she could not help showing to Bertha.

It was lost on Bertha. She thought it dull and poor-spirited not to accept, and manage the distillery just as he pleased. Any one could manage Mervyn, she said, not estimating the difference between a petted sister and a junior partner, and it was a new light to her that the trade—involving so much chemistry and mechanic ingenuity—was not good enough for anybody, unless they were peacocks too stupid to appreciate the dignity of labour! For the first time Phœbe wished her secret known to Miss Charlecote, for the sake of her appreciation of his triumph of principle.

‘This is Robert’s doing!’ was Mervyn’s first exclamation, when Phœbe gave him the letter. ‘If there be an intolerable plague in the world, it is the having a fanatical fellow like that in the family. Nice requital for all I have thrown away for the sake of his maggots! I declare I’ll resume every house I’ve let him have for his tomfooleries, and have a gin bottle blown as big as an ox as a sign for each of them.’

Phœbe had a certain lurking satisfaction in observing, when his malediction had run itself down, ‘He never consulted Robert.’

‘Don’t tell me that! As if Robert had not run about with his mouth open, reviling his father’s trade, and pluming himself on keeping out of it.’

‘Mervyn, you know better! Robert had said no word against you! It is the facts that speak for themselves.’

‘The facts? You little simpleton, do you imagine that we distil the juices of little babies?’

Phœbe laughed, and he added kindly, ‘Come, little one, I know this is no doing of yours. You have stuck by this wicked distiller of vile liquids through thick and thin. Don’t let the parson lead you nor Randolf by the nose; he is far too fine a fellow for that; but come up to town with me and Cecily, as soon as Lady Caroline’s bear fight is over, and make him hear reason.’

‘I should be very glad to go and see him, but I cannot persuade him.’

‘Why not?’

‘When a man has made up his mind, it would be wrong to try to over-persuade him, even if I believed that I could.’

‘You know the alternative?’

‘What?’

‘Just breaking with him a little.’

She smiled.

‘We shall see what Crabbe, and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking up with a dumpy leveller. We shall have another row. And you’ll be broken up again!’

That was by far the most alarming of his threats; but she did not greatly believe that he would bring it to pass, or that an engagement, however imprudent, conducted as hers had been, could be made a plea for accusing Miss Fennimore or depriving her of her sisters. She tried to express her thankfulness for the kindness that had prompted the original proposal, and her sympathy with his natural vexation at finding that a traffic which he had really ameliorated at considerable loss of profit, was still considered objectionable; but he silenced this at once as palaver, and went off to fetch his wife to try her arguments.

This was worse than Phœbe had expected! Cecily was too thorough a wife not to have adopted all her husband’s interests, and had totally forgotten all the objections current in her own family against the manufacture of spirits. She knew that great opportunities of gain had been yielded up, and such improvements made as had converted the distillery into a model of its kind; she was very proud of it, wished every one to be happy, and Mervyn to be saved trouble, and thought the scruples injurious and overstrained. Phœbe would not contest them with her. What the daughter had learnt by degrees, might not be forced on the wife; and Phœbe would only protest against trying to shake a fixed purpose, instead of maintaining its grounds. So Cecily continued affectionately hurt, and unnecessarily compassionate, showing that a woman can hardly marry a person of tone inferior to her own without some deterioration of judgment, beneficial and elevating as her influence may be in the main.

Poor Cecily! she did the very thing that those acquainted with the ins and outs of the family had most deprecated! She dragged Robert into the affair, writing a letter, very pretty in wifely and sisterly goodwill, to entreat him to take Mr. Randolf in hand, and persuade him of the desirableness of the spirit manufacture in general, and that of the Fulmort house in particular.

The letter she received in return was intended to be very kind, but was severely grave, in simply observing that what he had not thought fit to do himself, he could not persuade another to do.

Those words somehow acted upon Mervyn as bitter and ungrateful irony; and working himself up by an account, in his own colouring, of Robert’s behaviour at the time of the foundation of St. Matthew’s, he went thundering off to assure Phœbe that he must take an active partner, at all events; and that if she and Robert did not look out, he should find a moneyed man who knew what he was about, would clear off Robert’s waste, and restore the place to what it had once been.

‘What is your letter, Phœbe?’ he asked, seeing an envelope in Robert’s handwriting on her table.

Phœbe coloured a little. ‘He has not said one word to Humfrey,’ she said.

‘And what has he said to you? The traitor, insulting me to my wife!’

Phœbe thought for one second, then resolved to take the risk of reading all aloud, considering that whatever might be the effect, it could not be worse than that of his surmises.

‘Cecily has written to me, greatly to my surprise, begging for my influence with Randolf to induce him to become partner in the house. I understand by this that he has already refused, and that you are aware of his determination; therefore I have no scruple in writing to tell you that he is perfectly right. It is true that the trade, as Mervyn conducts it, is free from the most flagrant evils that deterred me from taking a share in it; and I am most thankful for the changes he has made.’

‘You show it, don’t you?’ interjected Mervyn.

‘I had rather see it in his hands than those of any other person, and there is nothing blameworthy in his continuance in it. But it is of questionable expedience, and there are still hereditary practices carried on, the harm of which he has not hitherto perceived, but which would assuredly shock a new-comer such as Randolf. You can guess what would be the difficulty of obtaining alteration, and acquiescence would be even more fatal. I do not tell you this as complaining of Mervyn, who has done and is doing infinite good, but to warn you against the least endeavour to influence Randolf. Depend upon it, even the accelerating your marriage would not secure your happiness if you saw your husband and brother at continual variance in the details of the business, and opposition might at any moment lead Mervyn to undo all the good he has effected.’

‘Right enough there;’ and Mervyn, who had looked furious at several sentences, laughed at last. ‘I must get another partner, then, who can and will manage; and when all the gin-palaces are more splendiferous than ever, what will you and the parson say?’

‘That to do a little wrong in hopes of hindering another from doing worse, never yet succeeded!’ said Phœbe, bravely.

She saw that the worst was over when he had come to that laugh, and that the danger of a quarrel between the brothers was averted. She did not know from how much terror and self-reproach poor Cecily was suffering, nor her multitudinous resolutions against kindly interferences upon terra incognita.

That fit of wrath subsided, and Mervyn neither looked out for his moneyed partner, nor fulfilled his threat of bringing the united forces of the family displeasure upon his sister. Still there was a cloud overshadowing the enjoyment, though not lessening the outward harmony of those early bridal days. The long, dark drives to the county gaieties, shut up with Mervyn and Cecily, were formidable by the mere existence of a topic, never mentioned, but always secretly dwelt on. And in spite of three letters a week, Phœbe was beginning to learn that trust does not fully make up to the heart for absence, by the distance of London to estimate that of Canada, and by the weariness of one month, the tedium of seven years!

‘Yet,’ said Bertha to Cecily, ‘Phœbe is so stupidly like herself now she is engaged, that it is no fun at all. Nobody would guess her to be in love! If they cared for each other one rush, would not they have floated to bliss even on streams of gin?’

Cecily would not dispute their mutual love, but she was not one of those who could fully understand the double force of that love which is second to love of principle. Obedience, not judgment, had been her safeguard, and, like most women, she was carried along, not by the abstract idea, but by its upholder.

Intuition, rather than what had actually passed before her, showed Phœbe more than once that Cecily was sorely perplexed by the difference between the standard of Sutton and that of Beauchamp. Strict, scrupulous, and deeply devout, the clergyman’s daughter suffered at every deviation from the practices of the parsonage, made her stand in the wrong places, and while conscientiously and painfully fretting Mervyn about petty details, would be unknowingly carried over far greater stumbling-blocks. In her ignorance she would be distressed at habits which were comparatively innocent, and then fear to put forth her influence at the right moment. There was hearty affection on either side, and Mervyn was exceedingly improved, but more than once Phœbe saw in poor Cecily’s harassed, puzzled, wistful face, and heard in her faltering remonstrances, what it was to have loved and married without perfect esteem and trust.

CHAPTER XXXII

Get thee an ape, and trudge the land
The leader of a juggling band.—Scott

‘Master Howen, Master Howen, you must not go up the best stairs.’

‘But I will go up the best stairs. I don’t like the nasty, dark, back stairs!’

‘Let me take off your boots then, sir; Mrs. Stubbs said she could not have such dirty marks—’

‘I don’t care for Mrs. Stubbs! I won’t take my boots off! Get off—I’ll kick you if you touch them! I shall go where I like! I’m a gentleman. I shall ave hall the Olt for my very hown!’

‘Master Howen! Oh my!’

For Flibbertigibbet’s teeth were in the crack orphan’s neck, and the foot that she had not seized kicking like a vicious colt, when a large hand seized him by the collar, and lifted him in mid-air; and the crack orphan, looking up as though the oft-invoked ‘ugly man’ of her infancy had really come to bear off naughty children, beheld for a moment, propped against the door-post, the tall figure and bearded head hitherto only seen on the sofa.

The next instant the child had been swung into the study, and the apparition, stumbling with one hand and foot to the couch, said breathlessly to the frightened girl, ‘I am sorry for my little boy’s shameful behaviour! Leave him here. Owen, stay.’

The child was indeed standing, as if powerless to move or even to cry, stunned by his flight in the air, and dismayed at the terrific presence in which he was for the first time left alone. Completely roused and excited, the elder Owen sat upright, speaking not loud, but in tones forcible from vehement feeling.

‘Owen, you boast of being a gentleman! Do you know what we are? We are beggars! I can neither work for myself nor for you. We live on charity. That girl earns her bread—we do not! We are beggars! Who told you otherwise?’

Instead of an answer, he only evoked a passion of frightened tears, so piteous, that he spoke more gently, and stretched out his hand; but his son shook his frock at him in terror, and retreated out of reach, backwards into a corner, replying to his calls and assurances with violent sobs, and broken entreaties to go back to ‘granma.’

At last, in despair, Owen lowered himself to the floor, and made the whole length of his person available; but the child, in the extremity of terror at the giant crawling after him, shrieked wildly and made a rush at the door, but was caught and at once drawn within the grasp of the sweeping arm.

All was still. He was gathered up to the broad breast; the hairy cheek was gently pressed against his wet one. It was a great powerful, encircling caress that held him. There was a strange thrill in this contact between the father and son—a new sensation of intense loving pity in the one, a great but soothing awe in the other, as struggling and crying no more, he clung ever closer and closer, and drew the arm tighter round him.

‘My poor little fellow!’ And never had there been such sweetness in those deep full tones.

The boy responded with both arms round his neck, and face laid on his shoulder. Poor child! it was the affection that his little heart had hungered for ever since he had left his grandmother, and which he had inspired in no one.

A few more seconds, and he was sitting on the floor, resting against his father, listening without alarm to his question—‘Now, Owen, what were you saying?’

‘I’ll never do it again, pa—never!’

‘No, never be disobedient, nor fight with girls. But what were you saying about the Holt?’

‘I shall live here—I shall have it for my own.’

‘Who told you so?’

‘Granma.’

‘Grandmamma knows nothing about it.’

‘Shan’t I, then?’

‘Never! Listen, Owen. This is Miss Charlecote’s house as long as she lives—I trust till long after you are a man. It will be Mr. Randolf’s afterwards, and neither you nor I have anything to do with it.’

The two great black eyes looked up in inquiring, disappointed intelligence. Then he said, in a satisfied tone—

‘We ain’t beggars—we don’t carry rabbit-skins and lucifers!’

‘We do nothing so useful or profitable,’ sighed poor Owen, striving to pull himself up by the table, but desisting on finding that it was more likely to overbalance than to be a support. ‘My poor boy, you will have to work for me!’ and he sadly stroked down the light hair.

‘Shall I?’ said the little fellow. ‘May I have some white mice? I’ll bring you all the halfpence, pa!’

‘Bring me a footstool, first of all. There—at this rate I shall be able to hop about on one leg, and be a more taking spectacle,’ said Owen, as, dragging himself up by the force of hand and arm, he resettled himself on his couch, as much pleased as amazed at his first personal act of locomotion after seven months, and at the discovery of recovered strength in the sound limbs. Although, with the reserve of convalescence, he kept his exploit secret, his spirits visibly rose; and whenever he was left alone, or only with his little boy, he repeated his experiments, launching himself from one piece of furniture to another; and in spite of the continued deadness of the left side, feeling life, vigour, and hope returning on him.

His morbid shyness of his child had given way to genuine affection, and Owen soon found that he liked to be left to the society of Flibbertigibbet, or as he called him for short, Giblets, exacting in return the title of father, instead of the terrible ‘pa.’ Little Owen thought this a preparation for the itinerant white-mouse exhibition, which he was permitted to believe was only delayed till the daily gymnastic exertions should have resulted in the use of crutches, and till he could safely pronounce the names of the future mice, Hannibal and Annabella, and other traps for aspirates! Nay, his father was going to set up an exhibition of his own, as it appeared; for after a vast amount of meditation, he begged for pen and paper, ruler and compasses, drew, wrote, and figured, and finally took to cardboard and penknife, begging the aid of Miss Charlecote, greatly to the distress of the little boy, who had thought the whole affair private and confidential, and looked forward to a secret departure early in the morning, with crutches, mice, and model.

Miss Charlecote did her best with needle and gum, but could not understand; and between her fears of trying Owen’s patience and letting him overstrain his brain, was so much distressed that he gave it up; but it preyed on him, till one day Phœbe came in, and he could not help explaining it to her, and claiming her assistance, as he saw her ready comprehension. For two afternoons she came and worked under him; and between card, wire, gum, and watch-spring, such a beauteous little model locomotive engine and train were produced, that Owen archly assured her that ‘she would be a fortune in herself to a rising engineer,’ and Honor was struck by the sudden crimson evoked by the compliment.

Little Owen thought their fortune made, and was rather disappointed at the delay, when his father, confirming his idea that their livelihood might depend on the model, insisted that it should be carried out in brass and wood, and caused his chair to be frequently wheeled down to the blacksmith’s and carpenter’s, whose comprehension so much more resembled their lady’s than that of Miss Fulmort, and who made such intolerable blunders, that he bestowed on them more vituperation than, in their opinion, ‘he had any call to;’ and looked in a passion of despair at the numb, nerveless fingers, once his dexterous servants.

Still his spirits were immensely improved, since resolution, hope, and independence had returned. His mental faculties had recovered their force, and with the removal of the disease, the healthfulness and elasticity of his twenty-five years were beginning to compensate for the lost powers of his limbs. As he accomplished more, he grew more enterprising and less disinclined to show off his recovered powers. He first alarmed, then delighted Honor; begged for crutches, and made such good use of them, that Dr. Martin held out fair hopes of progress, though advising a course of rubbing and sea-air at Brighton.

Perhaps Honor had never been happier than during these weeks of improvement, with her boy so completely her own, and more than she had ever known him; his dejection lessening, his health returning, his playfulness brilliant, his filial fondness most engaging. She did not know the fixed resolution that actuated him, and revived the entire man! She did not know what was kept in reserve till confidence in his efficiency should dispose her to listen favourably. Meantime the present was so delightful to her that she trembled and watched lest she should be relapsing into the old idolatry. The test would be whether she would put Owen above or below a clear duty.

The audit of farm-accounts before going to Brighton was as unsatisfactory as the last. Though not beyond her own powers of unravelling, they made it clear that Brooks was superannuated. It was piteous to see the old man seated in the study, racking his brains to recollect the transaction with Farmer Hodnet about seed-wheat and working oxen; to explain for what the three extra labourers had been put on, and to discover his own meaning in charging twice over for the repairs of Joe Littledale’s cottage; angered and overset by his mistress’s gentle cross-examination, and enraged into absolute disrespect when that old object of dislike, Mr. Sandbrook, looked over the books, and muttered suggestions under his moustache.

‘Poor old man!’ both exclaimed, as he left the room, and Honor sighed deeply over this failure of the last of the supports left her by Humfrey. ‘I must pension him off,’ she said. ‘I hope it will not hurt his feelings much!’ and then she turned away to her old-fashioned bureau, and applied herself to her entries in her farming-books, while Owen sat in his chair, dreamily caressing his beard, and revolving the proposition that had long been in his mind.

At last the tall, red book was shut, the pen wiped, the bureau locked, and Honor came back to her place by the table, and resumed her needlework. Still there was silence, till she began: ‘This settles it! I have been thinking about it ever since you have been so much better. Owen, what should you think of managing the property for me?’

He only answered by a quick interrogative glance.

‘You see,’ she continued, ‘by the help of Brooks, who knew his master’s ways, I have pottered on, to my own wonderment; but Brooks is past work, my downhill-time is coming, high farming has outrun us both, and I know that we are not doing as Humfrey would wish by his inheritance. Now I believe that nothing could be of greater use to me, the people, or the place, than that you should be in charge. We could put some deputy under your control, and contrive for your getting about the fields. I would give you so much a year, so that your boy’s education would be your own doing, and we should be so comfortable.’

Owen leant back, much moved, smiled and said, ‘Thanks, dear Honor; you are much too good to us.’

‘Think about it, and tell me what would be right. Brooks has £100 a year, but you will be worth much more, for you will develop all the resources, you know.’

‘Best Honor, Sweetest Honey,’ said Owen, hastily, the tears rising to his eyes, ‘I cannot bear to frustrate such kind plans, nor seem more ungrateful than I have been already. I will not live on you for nothing longer than I can help; but indeed, this must not be.’

‘Not?’

‘No. There are many reasons against it. In the first place, I know nothing of farming.’

‘You would soon learn.’

‘And vex your dear old spirit with steam-ploughs and haymaking machines.’

She smiled, as if from him she could endure even steam.

‘Next, such an administration would be highly distasteful here. My overweening airs as a boy have not been forgotten, and I have always been looked on as an interloper. Depend on it, poor old Brooks fancies the muddle in his accounts was a suggestion of my malice! Imagine the feelings of Hiltonbury, when I, his supplanter, begin to tighten the reins.’

‘If it be so, it can be got over,’ said Honor, a little aghast.

‘If it ought to be attempted,’ said Owen; ‘but you have not heard my personal grounds for refusing your kindness. All your goodness and kind teaching cannot prevent the undesirableness of letting my child grow up here, in a half-and-half position, engendering domineering airs and unreasonable expectations. You know how, in spite of your care and warnings, it worked on me, though I had more advantages than that poor little man. Dear Honor, it is not you, but myself that I blame. You did your utmost to disabuse me, and it is only the belief that my absurd folly is in human nature that makes me thus ungracious.’

‘But,’ said Honora, murmuring, as if in shame, ‘you know you, and therefore your child, must be my especial charge, and always stand first with me.’

‘First in your affection, dearest Honey,’ he said, fondly; ‘I trust I have been in that place these twenty years; I’ll never give that up; but if I get as well as I hope to do, I mean to be no charge on any one.’

‘You cannot return to your profession?’

‘My riding and surveying days are over, but there’s plenty of work in me still; and I see my way to a connection that will find me in enough of writing, calculating, and drawing, to keep myself and Owen, and I expect to make something of my invention too, when I am settled in London.’

‘In London?’

‘Yes; the poor old woman in Whittington-street is breaking—pining for her grandchild, I believe, and losing her lodgers, from not being able to make them comfortable; and without

what she had for the child, she cannot keep an effective servant. I think of going to help her out.’

‘That woman?’

‘Well, I do owe her a duty! I robbed her of her own child, and it is cruel to deprive her of mine when she has had all the trouble of his babyhood. Money would not do the thing, even if I had it. I have brought it on myself, and it is the only atonement in my power; so I mean to occupy two or three of her rooms, work there, and let her have the satisfaction of “doing for me.” When you are in town, I shall hop into Woolstone-lane. You will give me holidays here, won’t you? And whenever you want me, let me be your son? To that you know I reserve my right,’ and he bent towards her affectionately.

‘It is very right—very noble,’ she was faltering forth. He turned quickly, the tears, ready to fall, springing quite forth.

‘Honor! you have not been able to say that since I was a child! Do not spoil it. If this be right, leave it so.’

‘Only one thing, Owen, are you sufficiently considering your son’s good in taking him there, out of the way of a good education.’

‘A working education is the good one for him,’ said Owen, ‘not the being sent at the cost of others—not even covertly at yours, Sweet Honey—to an expensive school. He is a working man’s son, and must so feel himself. I mean to face my own penalties in him, and if I see him in a grade inferior to what was mine by birth, I shall know that though I brought it on him, it is more for his real good and happiness to be a man of the people, than a poor half-acknowledged gentleman. So much for my Americanisms, Honor!’

‘But the dissent—the cant!’

‘Not so much cant as real piety obtrusively expressed. Poor old thing! I have no fear but that little Giblets will go my way! he worships me, and I shall not leave his h’s nor more important matters to her mercy. He is nearly big enough for the day school Mr. Parsons is setting on foot. It is a great consideration that the place is in the St. Matthew’s district!’

‘Well, Owen, I cannot but see that it may be your rightest course; I hope you may find yourself equal to it,’ said Honor, struggling with a fresh sense of desertion, though with admiration and esteem returning, such as were well worth the disappointment.

‘If not,’ said Owen, smiling, to hide deeper feelings, ‘I reserve to you the pleasure of maintaining me, nursing me, or what not! If my carcase be good for nothing, I hereby make it over to you. And now, Honor, I have not been without thought for you. I can tell you of a better successor for Brooks.’

‘Well!’ she said, almost crossly.

‘Humfrey Charlecote Randolf,’ said Owen, slowly, giving full effect to the two Christian names.

Honor started, gasped, and snatching at the first that occurred

of her objections, exclaimed, ‘But, my dear, he is as much an engineer as yourself.’

‘From necessity, not choice. He farmed till last August.’

‘Canadian farming! Besides, what nonsense to offer a young man, with all the world before him, to be bailiff of this little place.’

‘It would, were he only to stand in Brooks’s position; but if he were the acknowledged heir, as he ought to be—yes, I know I am saying a dreadful thing—but, my good Queen Elizabeth, your Grace would be far wiser to accept Jamie at once than to keep your subjects fretting over your partialities. He will be a worthy Humfrey Charlecote if you catch and pin him down young. He will be worthy any way, but if you let him go levelling and roaming over the world for the best half of his life, this same Holt will lose its charms for him and his heirs for ever.’

‘But—but how can you tell that he would be caught and pinned?’

‘There is a very sufficient pin at the Underwood.’

‘My dear Owen, impossible!’

‘Mind, no one has told me in so many words, but Mervyn Fulmort gave me such an examination on Randolf as men used to do when matrimony is in the wind; and since that, he inferred the engagement, when he came to me in no end of a rage, because my backwoodsman had conscientious scruples against partaking in their concoction of evil spirits.’

‘Do you mean that Mervyn wants to employ him?’

‘To take him into partnership, on the consideration of a certain thirty thousand. You may judge whence that was to come! And he, like Robert, declined to live by murdering bodies and souls. I am afraid Mervyn has been persecuting them ever since.’

‘Ever since when?’

‘This last conversation was some three weeks ago. I suspect the principal parties settled it on that snowy Twelfth-day—’

‘But which of them, Owen?’

‘Which?’ exclaimed Owen, laughing. ‘The goggle or the squint?’

‘For shame, Owen. But I cannot believe that Phœbe would not have told me!’

‘Having a sister like Lady Bannerman may hinder confidences to friends.’

‘Now, Owen, are you sure?’

‘As sure as I was that it was a moonstruck man that slept in my room in Woolstone-lane. I knew that Cynthia’s darts had been as effective as though he had been a son of Niobe!’

‘I don’t believe it yet,’ cried Honor; ‘an honourable man—a sensible girl! Such a wild thing!’

‘Ah! Queen Elizabeth! Queen Elizabeth! shut up an honourable man and a sensible girl in a cedar parlour every evening

for ten days, and then talk of wild things! Have you forgotten what it is to be under twenty-five?’

‘I hate Queen Elizabeth,’ said Honor, somewhat tartly.

He muttered something of an apology, and resumed his book. She worked on in silence, then looking up said, rather as if rejoicing in a valid objection, ‘How am I to know that this man is first in the succession? I am not suspecting him of imposition. I believe that, as you say, his mother was a Charlecote, but how do I know that she had not half-a-dozen brothers. There is no obligation on me to leave the place to any one, but this youth ought not to come before others.’

‘That is soon answered,’ said Owen. ‘The runaway, your grandfather’s brother, led a wild, Leather-Stocking life, till he was getting on in years, then married, luckily not a squaw, and died at the end of the first year, leaving one daughter, who married Major Randolf, and had this only son.’

‘The same relation to me as Humfrey! Impossible! And pray how do you prove this?’

‘I got Currie to make notes for me which I can get at in my room,’ said Owen. ‘You can set your lawyer to write to the places, and satisfy yourself without letting him know anything about it.’

‘Has he any expectations?’

‘I imagine not. I think he has never found out that our relationship is not on the Charlecote side.’

‘Then it is the more—impertinent, I really must say, in him to pay his addresses to Phœbe, if he have done so.’

‘I can’t agree with you. What was her father but an old distiller, who made his fortune and married an heiress. You sophisticated old Honey, to expect him to be dazzled with her fortune, and look at her from a respectful distance! I thought you believed that “a man’s a man for a’ that,” and would esteem the bold spirit of the man of progress.’

‘Progress, indeed!’ said Honor, ironically.

‘Listen, Honor,’ said Owen, ‘you had better accuse me of this fortune-hunting which offends you. I have only obeyed Fate, and so will you. From the moment I met him, he seemed as one I had known of old. It was Charlecotism, of course; and his signature filled me with presentiment. Nay, though the fire and the swamp have become mere hearsay to me now, I still retain the recollection of the impression throughout my illness that he was to be all that I might have been. His straightforward good sense and manly innocence brought Phœbe before me, and Currie tells me that I had fits of hatred to him as my supplanter, necessary as his care was to me.’

Honor just stopped herself from exclaiming, ‘Never!’ and changed it into, ‘My own dear, generous boy!’

‘You forget that I thought it was all over with me! The first sensations I distinctly remember were as I lay on my bed at Montreal, one Sunday evening, and saw him sitting in the

window, his profile clearly cut against the light, and retracing all those old silhouettes over the mantelshelf. Then I remembered that it had been no sick delusion, but truth and verity, that he was the missing Charlecote! And feeling far more like death than life, I was glad that you should have some one to lean on of your own sort; for, Honor, it was his Bible that he was reading!—one that he had saved out of the fire. I thought it was a lucid interval allowed me for the sake of giving you a better son and support than I had been, and looked forward to your being happy with him. As soon as I could get Currie alone, I told him how it stood, and made him take notes of the evidence of his identity, and promise to make you understand it if I were dead or childish. My best hope was to see him accepted as my expiation; but when I got back, and you wouldn’t have him at any price, and I found myself living and lifelike, and had seen her again—’

‘Her? Phœbe? My poor boy, you do not mean—’

‘I do mean that I was a greater fool than you even took me for,’ said Owen, with rising colour. ‘First and last, that pure child’s face and honest, plain words had an effect on me which nothing else had. The other affair was a mere fever by comparison, and half against my will.’

‘Owen!’

‘Yes, it was. When I was with that poor thing, her fervour carried me along; and as to the marriage, it was out of shortsighted dread of the uproar that would have followed if I had not done it. Either she would have drowned herself, or her mother would have prosecuted me for breach of promise, or she would have proclaimed all to Lucy or Mr. Prendergast. I hadn’t courage for either; though, Honor, I had nearly told you the day I went to Ireland, when I felt myself done for.’

‘You were married then?’

‘Half-an-hour!’ said Owen, with something of a smile, and a deep sigh. ‘If I had spoken, it would have saved a life! but I could not bear to lose my place with you, nor to see that sweet face turned from me.’

‘You must have known that it would come out in time, Owen. I never could understand your concealment.’

‘I hardly can,’ said Owen, ‘except that one shuffles off unpleasant subjects! I did fancy I could stave it off till Oxford was over, and I was free of the men there; but that notion might have been a mere excuse to myself for putting off the evil day. I was too much in debt, too, for an open rupture with you; and as to her, I can truly say that my sole shadow of an excuse is that I was too young and selfish to understand what I was inflicting!’ He passed his hand over his face, and groaned, as he added—‘Well, that is over now; and at last I can bear to look at her child!’ Then recurring in haste to the former subject—‘You were asking about Phœbe! Yes, when I saw the fresh face ennobled but as simple as ever, the dog in

the manger seemed to me a reasonable beast! Randolf’s admiration was a bitter pill. If I were to be nailed here for ever, I could not well spare the moonbeams from my prison! But that’s over now—it was a diseased fancy! I have got my boy now, and can move about; and when I get into harness, and am in the way of seeing people, and maturing my invention, I shall never think of it again.’

‘Ah! I am afraid that is all I can wish for you!’

‘Don’t wish it so pitifully, then,’ said Owen, smiling. ‘After having had no hope of her for five years, and being the poor object I am, this is no such great blow; and I am come to the mood of benevolence in which I really desire nothing so much as to see them happy.’

‘I will think about it,’ said Honor.

And though she was bewildered and disappointed, the interview had, on the whole, made her happier, by restoring the power of admiring as much as she loved. Yet it was hard to be required to sacrifice the interests of one whom she adored, her darling, who might need help so much, to do justice to a comparative stranger; and the more noble and worthy Owen showed himself, the less willing was she to decide on committing herself to his unconscious rival. Still, did the test of idolatry lie here?

She perceived how light-hearted this conversation had rendered Owen, as though he had thrown off a weight that had long been oppressing him. He was overflowing with fun and drollery throughout the journey; and though still needing a good deal of assistance at all changes of carriage, showed positive boyish glee in every feat he could accomplish for himself; and instead of shyly shrinking from the observation and casual help of fellow-travellers, gave ready smiles and thanks.

Exhilarated instead of wearied by the journey, he was full of enjoyment of the lodgings, the window, and the view; a new spring of youthfulness seemed to have come back to him, and his animation and enterprise carried Honor along with him. Assuredly she had never known more thorough present pleasure than in his mirthful, affectionate talk, and in the sight of his daily progress towards recovery; and a still greater happiness was in store for her. On the second day, he begged to accompany her to the week-day service at the neighbouring church, previously sending in a request for the offering of the thanks of Owen Charteris Sandbrook for preservation in great danger, and recovery from severe illness.

‘Dearest,’ she said, ‘were I to recount my causes of thanksgiving, I should not soon have done! This is best of all.’

‘Not fully best yet, is it?’ said Owen, looking up to her with eyes like those of his childhood.

‘No; but it soon will be.’

‘Not yet,’ said Owen; ‘I must think first; perhaps write or talk to Robert Fulmort. I feel as if I could now.’

‘You long for it?’

‘Yes, as I never even thought I did,’ said Owen, with much emotion. ‘It was strange, Honor, as soon as I came home to the old places, how the old feelings, that had been set aside so long, came back again. I would have given the world to recover them in Canada, but could only envy Randolf, till they woke up again of themselves at the sight of the study, and the big Bible we used to read with you.’

‘Yet you never spoke.’

‘No; I could not till I had proved to myself that there was no time-serving in them, if you must know the truth!’ said Owen, colouring a little. ‘Besides, having been told my wits would go, how did I know but that they were a symptom of my second childhood?’

‘How could any one have been so cruel as to utter such a horrible presage?’

‘One overhears and understands more than people imagine, when one has nothing to do but to lie on the broad of one’s back and count the flies,’ said Owen. ‘So, when I was convinced that my machine was as good as ever, but only would not stand application, I put off the profession, just to be sure what I should think of it when I could think.’

‘Well!’ was all Honor could say, gazing through glad tears.

‘And now, Honor dear,’ said he, with a smile, ‘I don’t know how it is. I’ve tried experiments on my brains. I have gone through half-a-dozen tough calculations. I have read over a Greek play, and made out a problem or two in mechanics, without being the worse for it; but, somehow, I can’t for the life of me hark back to the opinions that had such power over me at Oxford. I can’t even recollect the half of them. It is as if that hemlock spruce had battered them out of my head.’

‘Even like as a dream when one awaketh.’

‘Something like it! Why, even unknownst to you, Sweet Honey, I got at one or two of the books I used to swear by, and somehow I could not see the force of what they advanced. There’s a futility about it all, compared with the substance.’

‘Before, you did not believe with your heart, so your understanding failed to be convinced.’

‘Partly so,’ said Owen, thoughtfully. ‘The fact is, that religion is so much proved to the individual by personal experience and actual sensation, that those who reason from without are on different ground, and the avocato del diavolo has often apparently the advantage, because the other party’s security is that witness in his own breast which cannot be brought to light.’

‘Only apparently.’

‘Really, sometimes, with the lookers-on who have accepted the doctrines without feeling them. They, having no experience, feel the failure of evidence, where the tangible ends.’

‘Do you mean to say that this was the case with yourself, my dear? I should have thought, if ever child were good—’

‘So did I,’ said Owen, smiling. ‘I simulated the motions to

myself and every one else: and there was a grain of reality, after all; but neither you nor I ever knew how much was mere imitation and personal influence. When I outgrew implicit faith in you, I am afraid my higher faith went with it—first through recklessness, then through questioning. After believing more than enough, the transition is easy to doubting what is worthy of credit at all.’

‘From superstition to rationalism.’

‘Yes; overdoing articles of faith and observances, while the mind and conscience are young and tender, brings a dangerous reaction when liberty and independent reflection begin.’

‘But, Owen, I may have overdone observances, yet I did not teach superstitions,’ said Honor.

‘Not consciously,’ said Owen. ‘You meant to teach me dogmatically only what you absolutely believed yourself. But you did not know how boundless is a child’s readiness to accept what comes as from a spiritual authority, or you would have drawn the line more strongly between doctrine and opinion, fact and allegory, the true and the edifying.’

‘In effect, I treated you as the Romish Church began by doing to the populace.’

‘Exactly so. Like the mediæval populace, I took legend for fact; and like the modern populace, doubted of the whole together, instead of sifting. There is my confession, Honor dear. I know you are happier for hearing it in full; but remember, my errors are not chargeable upon you. If I had ever been true towards myself or you, and acted out what I thought I felt, I should have had the personal experience that would have protected the truth when the pretty superstructure began to pass away.’

‘What you have undertaken now is an acting out!’

‘I hope it is. Therefore it is the first time that I have ever trusted myself to be in earnest. And after all, Honor, though it is a terrible past to look back on, it is so very pleasant to be coming home, and to realize mercy and pardon, and hopes of doing better, that I can’t feel half the broken-down sorrow that perhaps ought to be mine. It won’t stay with me, when I have you before me.’

Honor could not be uneasy. She was far too glad at heart for that. The repentance was proving itself true by its fruits, and who could be anxious because the gladness of forgiveness overpowered the pain of contrition?

Her inordinate affection had made her blind and credulous where her favourite was concerned, so as to lead to his seeming ruin, yet when the idol throne was overturned, she had learnt to find sufficiency in her Maker, and to do offices of love without excess. Then after her time of loneliness, the very darling of her heart had been restored, when it was safe for her to have him once more; but so changed that he himself guarded against any recurrence to the old exclusive worship.

CHAPTER XXXIII

But the pine woods waved,
And the white streams raved;
They told me in my need,
That softness and feeling
Were not soul-healing;
And so it was decreed—
That the marvellous flowers of woman’s duty
Should grow on the grave of buried beauty.—Faber

Easter was at hand, and immediately after it Mr. Currie was to return to Canada to superintend the formation of the Grand Ottawa and Superior line. He and his assistants were hard at work on the specifications, when a heavy tap and tramp came up the stairs, and Owen Sandbrook stood before them, leaning on his crutch, and was greeted with joyful congratulations on being on his legs again.

‘Randolf,’ he said, hastily, ‘Miss Charlecote is waiting in the carriage to speak to you. Give me your pen.’

‘I shall be back in an instant.’

‘Time will show. Where are you?—“such sleepers to be—” I see. Down with you.’

‘Yes; never mind hurrying back,’ said the engineer; ‘we can get this done without you’—and as the door closed—‘and a good deal beside. I hear you have put it in train.’

‘I have every reason to hope so. Does he guess?’

‘Not a whit, as far as I can tell. He has been working hard, and improving himself in his leisure. He would have made a first-rate engineer. It is really hard to be robbed of two such assistants one after the other.’

Meanwhile Honor had spent those few moments in trepidation. She had brought herself to it at last! The lurking sense of injustice had persuaded her that it was crossing her conscience to withhold the recognition of her heir, so soon as she had received full evidence of his claims and his worthiness. Though she had the power, she felt that she had not the right to dispose of her property otherwise; and such being the case, it was a duty to make him aware of his prospects, and offer him such a course as should best enable him to take his future place in the county. Still it was a severe struggle. Even with her sense of insufficiency, it was hard to resign any part of the power that she had so long exercised; she felt that it was a risk to put her happiness into unknown hands, and perhaps because she had had this young man well-nigh thrust on her, and had heard him so much lauded, she almost felt antagonistic to him as rival of Owen, and could have been glad if any cause for repudiating him would have arisen. Even the favour that he had met with in Phœbe’s eyes was no recommendation. She was still sore at Phœbe’s want of confidence in her; she took Mervyn’s view of his presumption, and moreover it was another prize

borne off from Owen. Poor dear Honor, she never made a greater sacrifice to principle than when she sent her William off to Normandy to summon her Edgar Atheling.

She did not imagine that she had it in her to have hated any one so much.

Yet, somehow, when the bright, open face appeared, it had the kindred, familiar air, and the look of eagerness so visibly fell at the sight of her alone in the carriage, that she could not defend herself from a certain amusement and interest, while she graciously desired him to get in, and drive with her round the Park, since she had something to tell him that could not be said in a hurry. Then as he looked up in inquiry, suspecting, perhaps, that she had heard of his engagement, she rushed at once to the point.

‘I believe you know,’ she said, ‘that I have no nearer relation than yourself?’

‘Not Sandbrook?’ he asked, in surprise.

‘He is on my mother’s side. I speak of my own family. When the Holt came to me, it was as a trust for my lifetime to do my best for it, and to find out to whom afterwards it should belong. I was told that the direct heir was probably in America. Owen Sandbrook has convinced me that you are that person.’

‘Thank you,’ began young Randolf, somewhat embarrassed; ‘but I hope that this will make little difference to me for many years!’

Did he underrate the Holt, the wretch, or was it civility? She spoke a little severely. ‘It is not a considerable property, but it gives a certain position, and it should make a difference to you to know what your prospects are.’

The colour flushed into his cheeks as he said, ‘True! It may have a considerable effect in my favour. Thank you for telling me;’ and then paused, as though considering whether to volunteer more, but as yet her manner was not encouraging, but had all the dryness of effort.

‘I have another reason for speaking,’ she continued. ‘It is due to you to warn you that the estate wants looking after. I am unequal to the requirements of modern agriculture, and my faithful old bailiff, who was left to me by my dear cousin, is past his work. Neither the land nor the people are receiving full justice.’

‘Surely Sandbrook could find a trustworthy steward,’ returned the young man.

‘Nay, had you not better, according to his suggestion, come and live on the estate yourself, and undertake the management, with an allowance in proportion to your position as the heir?’

Her heart beat high with the crisis, and she saw his colour deepen from scarlet to crimson as he said, ‘My engagement with Mr. Currie—’

‘Mr. Currie knows the state of things. Owen Sandbrook has been in communication with him, and he does not expect to

take you back with him, unless you prefer the variety and enterprise of your profession to becoming a country gentleman of moderate means.’ She almost hoped that he would, as she named the rental and the proposed allowance, adding, ‘The estate must eventually come to you, but it is for you to consider whether it may not be better worth having if, in the interim, it be under your superintendence.’

He had had time to grow more familiar with the idea, and spoke readily and frankly. ‘Indeed, Miss Charlecote, I need no inducement. It is the life I should prefer beyond all others, and I can only hope to do my duty by you, and whatever you may think fit to intrust to me.’ And, almost against her will, the straightforward honesty of his look brought back to her the countenance where she had always sought for help.

‘Then your past misfortunes have not given you a distaste to farming?’

‘They did not come from farming, but speculation. I was brought up to farm work, and am more at home in it than in anything else, so that I hope I could be useful to you.’

She was silent. Oh, no; she had not the satisfaction of being displeased. He was ready enough, but not grasping; and she found herself seeing more of the Charlecote in him, and liking him better than she was ready to grant.

‘Miss Charlecote,’ he said after a few moments’ thought, ‘in the relations you are establishing between us, it is right that you should know the full extent of the benefits you are conferring.’

It was true, then? Well, it was better than a New World lady, and Honora contrived to look pleasantly expectant.

‘I know it was very presumptuous,’ he said; ‘but I could not help making my feelings known to one who is very dear to you—Miss Fulmort.’

‘Indeed she is,’ said Honor; though maybe poor Phœbe had of late been a shade less dear to her.

‘And with your consent,’ said be, perhaps a little disconcerted by her want of warmth, ‘I hope this kindness of yours may abridge the term of waiting to which we looked forward.’

‘What were you waiting for?’

‘Until such time as I could provide a home to which she could take her sister Maria. So you see what you have done for us.’

‘Maria!’

‘Yes. She promised her mother, on her death-bed, that Maria should be her charge, and no one could wish her to lay it aside.’

‘And the family are aware of the attachment?’

‘The brothers are, and have been kinder than I dared to expect. It was thought better to tell no one else until we could see our way; but you have a right to know now, and I have the more hope that you will find comfort in the arrangement, since I know how warmly and gratefully she feels towards you. I may tell her?’ he added, with a good deal of affirmation in his question.

‘What would you do if I told you not?’ she asked, thawing for the first time out of her set speeches.

‘I should feel very guilty and uncomfortable in writing.’

‘Then come home with me to-morrow, and let us talk it over,’ she said, acting on a mandate of Owen’s which she had strenuously refused to promise to obey. ‘You may leave your work in Owen’s hands. He wants to stay a few days in town, to arrange his plans, and, I do believe, to have the pleasure of independence; but he will come back on Saturday, and we will spend Easter together.’

‘Miss Charlecote,’ said Humfrey, suddenly, ‘I have no right to ask, but I cannot but fear that my having turned up is an injury to Sandbrook.’

‘I can only tell you that he has been exceedingly anxious for the recognition of your rights.’

‘I understand now!’ exclaimed Humfrey, turning towards her quickly; ‘he betrayed it when his mind was astray. I am thrusting him out of what would have been his!’

‘It cannot be helped,’ began Honor; ‘he never expected—’

‘I can say nothing against it,’ said the young man, with much emotion. ‘It is too generous to be talked of, and these are not matters of choice, but duty; but is it not possible to make some compensation?’

‘I have done my best to lay up for those children,’ said Honor; ‘but his sister will need her full half, and my City property has other claimants. I own I should be glad to secure that, after me, he should not be entirely dependent upon health which, I fear, will never be sound again.’

‘I know you would be happier in arranging it yourself, though he has every claim on my gratitude. Could not the estate be charged with an annuity to him?’

‘Thank you!’ said Honor, warmly. ‘Such a provision will suit him best. I see that London is his element; indeed, he is so much incapacitated for a country life that the estate would have been a burthen to him, could he have rightly inherited it. He is bent on self-maintenance; and all I wish is, that when I am gone, he should have sonething to fall back upon.’

‘I do not think that I can thank you more heartily for any of your benefits than for making me a party to this!’ he warmly said. ‘But there is no thanking you; I must try to do so by deeds.’

She was forced to allow that her Atheling was winning upon her!

‘Two points I liked,’ she said to Robert, who spent the evening with her, while Owen was dining with Mr. Currie—‘one that he accepted the Holt as a charge, not a gift—the other that he never professed to be marrying for my sake.’

‘Yes, he is as true as Phœbe,’ said Robert. ‘Both have real power of truth from never deceiving themselves. They perfectly suit one another.’

‘High praise from you, Robin. Yet how could you forgive his declaration from so unequal a position?’

‘I thought it part of his consistently honest dealing. Had she been a mere child, knowing nothing of the world, and subject to parents, it might have been otherwise; but independent and formed as she is, it was but just to avow his sentiments, and give her the choice of waiting.’

‘In spite of the obloquy of a poor man paying court to wealth?’

‘I fancy he was too single-minded for that idea, and that it was not wealth which he courted was proved by his rejection of Mervyn’s offer. Do you know, I think his refusal will do Mervyn a great deal of good. He is very restless to find out the remaining objections to his management, and Randolf will have more influence with him than I ever could, while he considers parsons as a peculiar species.’

‘If people would only believe the good of not compromising!’

‘They must often wait a good while to see the good!’

‘But, oh! the fruit is worth waiting for! Robin,’ she added, after a pause, ‘you have been in correspondence with my boy.’

‘Yes,’ said Robert; ‘and there, indeed, you may be satisfied. The seed you sowed in the morning is bearing its increase!’

‘I sowed! Ah, Robert! what I sowed was a false crop, that had almost caused the good seed to be rooted up together with it!’

‘Not altogether, said Robert. ‘If you made any mistakes that led to a confusion of real and unreal in his mind, still, the real good you did to him is incalculable.’

‘So he tells me, dear boy! But when I think what he was as a child, and what he has been as a youth, I cannot but charge it on myself.’

‘Then think what he is, and will be, I trust, as a man,’ said Robert. ‘Even at the worst, the higher, purer standard that had been impressed on him saved him from lower depths; and when “he came to himself,” it was not as if he had neither known his Father’s house nor the way to it. Oh, Miss Charlecote! you must not come to me to assure you that your training of him was in vain! I, who am always feeling the difference between trying to pull him and poor Mervyn upwards! There may be more excuse for Mervyn, but Owen knows where he is going, and springs towards it; while Mervyn wonders at himself at every stage, and always fancies the next some delusion of my strait-laced imagination.’

‘Ah! once I spurned, and afterwards grieved over, the saying that very religious little boys either die or belie their promise.’

‘There is some truth in it,’ said Robert. ‘Precocious piety is so beautiful that it is apt to be fostered so as to make it insensibly imitative and unreal, or depend upon some individual personal influence; and there is a certain reaction at one stage of growth against what has been overworked.’

‘Then what could you do with such a child as my Owen if

it were all to come over again? His aspirations were often so beautiful that I could not but reverence them greatly; and I cannot now believe that they were prompted by aught but innocence and baptismal grace!’

‘Looking back,’ said Robert, ‘I believe they were genuine, and came from his heart. No; such a devotional turn should be treated with deep reverence and tenderness; but the expression had better be almost repressed, and the test of conduct enforced, though without loading the conscience with details not of general application, and sometimes impracticable under other circumstances.’

‘It is the practicalness of dear Owen’s reformation that makes it so thoroughly satisfactory,’ said Honora; ‘though I must say that I dread the experiment. You will look after him, for this week, Robert; I fear he is overdoing himself in his delight at moving about and working again.’

‘I will see how he gets on. It will be a good essay for the future.’

‘I cannot think how he is ever to bear living with Mrs. Murrell.’

‘She is a good deal broken and subdued, and is more easily repressed than one imagines at her first onset. Besides, she is very proud, and rather afraid, of him, and will not molest him much. Indeed, it is a good arrangement for him; he ought to have care above that of the average landlady.’

‘Will he get it?’

‘I trust so. She has the ways of a respectable servant; and her religious principle is real, though we do not much admire its manifestation. She will be honest and careful of his wants, and look after his child, and nurse him tenderly if he require it!’

‘As if any one but myself would do that! But it is right, and he will be all the better and happier for accepting his duty to her while she lives, if he can bear it.’

‘As he says, it is his only expiation.’

‘Well! I should not wonder if you saw more of me here than hitherto. A born Cockney like me gets inclined to the haunts of men as she grows old, and if your sisters and Charlecote Raymond suffice for the parish, I shall be glad to be out of sight of the improvements he will make.’

‘Not without your consent?’

‘I shall have to consent in my conscience to what I hate in my heart.’

‘I am not the man to argue you away from here,’ said Robert, eagerly. ‘If you would take up the Young Women’s Association, it would be the only thing to make up for the loss of Miss Fennimore. Then the St. Wulstan’s Asylum wants a lady visitor.’

‘My father’s foundation, whence his successor ousted me, in a general sweep of troublesome ladies,’ said Honor. ‘How sore I was, and how things come round.’

‘We’ll find work for you,’ cried Robert, highly exhilarated. ‘I should like to make out that we can’t do without you.’

‘Why, Robin, you of all men taking to compliments!’

‘It is out of self-interest. Nothing makes so much difference to me as having this house inhabited.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, highly gratified; ‘I thought you wanted nothing but St. Matthew’s.’

‘Nay,’ said Robert, as a bright colour came over his usually set and impassive countenance. ‘You do not want me to say what you have always been to me, and how better things have been fostered by your presence, ever since the day you let me out of Hiltonbury Church. I have often since thought it was no vain imagination that you were a good spirit sent to my rescue by Mr. Charlecote.’

‘Poor Robin,’ said Honor, her lip quivering; ‘it was less what I gave than what you gathered up. I barely tolerated you.’

‘Which served me right,’ said Robert, ‘and made me respect you. There are so few to blame me now that I need you all the more. I can hardly cede to Owen the privilege of being your only son.’

‘You are my autumn-singing Robin,’ said Honor, too true to let him think that he could stand beside Owen in her affections, but with intense pleasure at such unwonted warmth from one so stern and reserved; it was as if he was investing her with some of the tenderness that the loss of Lucilla had left vacant, and bestowing on her the confidences to which new relations might render Phœbe less open. It was no slight preferment to be Robert Fulmort’s motherly friend; and far beyond her as he had soared, she might still be the softening element in his life, as once she had been the ennobling one. If she had formed Robert, or even given one impulse such as to lead to his becoming what he was, the old maid had not lived in vain.

She was not selfish enough to be grieved at Owen’s ecstasy in emancipation; and trusting to being near enough to watch over him without being in his way, she could enjoy his overflowing spirits, and detect almost a jocund sound in the thump of his crutch across the hall, as he hurried in, elated with hopes of the success of his invention, eager about the Canadian railway, delighted with the society of his congeners, and pouring out on her all sorts of information that she could not understand. The certainty that her decision was for his happiness ought surely to reconcile her to carrying home his rival in his stead.

Going down by an early train, she resolved, by Robert’s advice, to visit Beauchamp at once, and give Mervyn a distinct explanation of her intentions. He was tardy in taking them in, then exclaimed—‘Phœbe’s teetotaller! Well, he is a sharp fellow! The luck that some men have!’

‘Dear Phœbe,’ cried Cecily, ‘I am so thankful that she is spared a long attachment. It was telling on her already!’

‘Oh, we should have put a stop to the affair if he had gone out to Canada,’ roundly asserted Mervyn; ‘but of course he knew better—’

‘Not at all—this was quite a surprise.’

Mervyn recollected in time that it was best that Miss Charlecote should so imagine, and reserved for his wife’s private ear his conviction that the young fellow had had this hope in his eye when refusing the partnership. Such smartness and foresight commanded his respect as a man of the world, though maybe the women would not understand it. For Phœbe’s interest, he must encourage the lady in her excellent intentions.

‘It is very handsome in you, Miss Charlecote—very handsome—and I am perfectly unprejudiced in assuring you that you have done the very best thing for yourself. Phœbe is a good girl, and devoted to you already.’

‘Indeed she is,’ said Cecily. ‘She looks up to you so much!’

Somehow Honor did not want Mrs. Fulmort to assure her of this.

‘And as to the place,’ continued Mervyn, ‘you could not put it into better hands to get your people out of their Old World ways. A young man like that, used to farming, and with steam and mechanics at his fingers’ ends, will make us all look about us.’

‘Perhaps,’ murmured poor Honor, with quailing heart.

‘John Raymond and I were looking about the Holt the other day,’ said Mervyn, ‘and agreeing how much more could be made of it. Clear away some of those hedgerows—grub up a bit of copse or two—try chemical manures—drain that terrible old marsh beyond the plantation—and have up a good engine-house where you have those old ramshackle buildings at the Home Farm! Why, the place will bring in as much again, and you’ve hit on the very man to carry it out. He shall try all the experiments before I adopt them.’

Honora felt as if she must flee! If she were to hear any more she should be ready to banish young Randolf to Canada, were he ten times her heir. Had she lived to hear Humfrey’s new barn, with the verge boards conceded to her taste, called ramshackle? And she had given her word!

As she left Beauchamp, and looked at her scraggy pine-trees cresting the hill, she felt as though they were her own no longer, and as if she had given them up to an enemy. She assured herself that nothing could be done without her free-will, and considered of the limitations that must be imposed on this frightful reformer, but her heart grew sick at the conviction that either she would have to yield, or be regarded as a mere incubus and obstruction.

With almost a passionate sense of defence of Humfrey’s trees, and Humfrey’s barns, she undid the gate of the fir plantations—his special favourites. The bright April sun shed clear gleams athwart the russet boles of the trees, candied by their white gum, the shadows were sharply defined, and darkened by the dense silvered green canopy, relieved by fresh light young shoots, culminating in white powdery clusters, or little soft crimson conelets, all redolent of fresh resinous fragrance. The wind

whispered like the sound of ocean in the summit of the trees, and a nightingale was singing gloriously in the distance. All recalled Humfrey, and the day, thirty years back, when she had given him such sore pain, in those very woods, grasping the shadow instead of the substance, and taking the sunshine out of his life as well as from her own. Never had she felt such a pang in thinking of that day, or in the vain imagination of how it might have been!

‘Yet I believe I am doing right,’ she thought. ‘Humfrey himself might say that old things must pass away, and the past give place to the present! Let me stand once more under the tree where I gave him that answer! Shall I feel as if he would laugh at me for my shrinking, or approve me for my resolution?’

The tree was a pinaster, of lengthy foliage and ponderous cones, standing in a little shooting-path, leading from the main walk. She turned towards it and stood breathless for a moment.

There stood the familiar figure—youthful, well-knit, firm, with the open, steadfast, kindly face, but with the look of crowned exultant love that she had only once beheld, and that when his feet were already within the waters of the dark river. It was his very voice that exclaimed, ‘Here she is!’ Had her imagination indeed called up Humfrey before her, or was he come to upbraid her with her surrender of his charge to modern innovation! But the spell was broken, for a woodland nymph in soft gray, edged with green, was instantly beside him, and that calmly-glad face was no reflection of what Honora’s had ever been.

‘Dear, dear Miss Charlecote,’ cried Phœbe, springing to her; ‘we thought you would come home this way, so we came to meet you, and were watching both the paths.’

‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Honor. Could that man, who looked so like Humfrey, be thinking how those firs would cut up into sleepers?

‘Do you know,’ said Phœbe, eagerly, ‘he says this wood is a little likeness of his favourite place in his old home.’

‘I am afraid,’ he added, as if apologizing, ‘I shall always feel most at home in the smell of pine-trees.’

Mervyn’s predictions began to lose their force, and Honor smiled.

‘But,’ said Phœbe, turning to her, ‘I was longing to beg your pardon. I did not like to have any secret from you.’

‘Ah! you cunning children,’ said Honor, finding surface work easiest; ‘you stole a march upon us all.’

‘I could not help it,’ said Phœbe.

They both laughed, and turning to him, she said, ‘Now, could I? When you spoke to me, I could only tell the truth.’

‘And I suppose he could not help it,’ said Honor.

‘Of course not, if there was no reason for helping it,’ he said. There could be no dwelling on the horrible things that he would perpetrate, while he looked so like the rightful squire,

and while both were so fair a sight in their glad gratitude; and she found herself saying, ‘You will bear our name.’

There might be a pang in setting aside that of his father, but he looked at the glowing cheeks and glistening eyes beside him, and said, ‘Answer for me.’

‘It is what I should like best of all,’ Phœbe said, fervently.

‘If we can deserve to bear it,’ he gravely added.

And something in his tone made Honora feel confident that, even if he should set up an engine-house, it would be only if Humfrey would have done so in his place.

‘It will be belonging to you all the more,’ said Phœbe. ‘It is one great pleasure that now I shall have a right to you!’

‘Yes, Phœbe, the old woman will depend on you, her “Eastern moon brightening as day’s wild lights decline.” But she will trouble you no longer. Finish your walk with Humfrey.’ It was the first time she had called him by that name.

‘No,’ they said, with one voice, ‘we were waiting to walk home with you, if we may.’

There was something in that walk, in the tender, respectful kindness with which she was treated, in the intelligent interest that Humfrey showed in the estate, his clear-headed truthfulness on the need of change, and his delicate deference in proposing alteration, that set her heart at rest, made her feel that the ‘goodly heritage’ was in safe hands, and that she had a staff in her hands for the first time since that Sunday in harvest.

* * * * *

Before the next harvest, Hiltonbury bells rang out, and the church was crowded with glad faces; but there was none more deeply joyful than that of the lonely woman with silvery hair, who quietly knelt beside the gray slab, lettered H. C., 1840, convinced that the home and people of him who lay there would be in trusty hands, when she should join him in his true inheritance. Her idols set aside, she could with clearer eyes look to that hope, though in no weariness of earth, no haste to depart, but still in full strength, ready to work for man’s good and God’s glory.

Beside her, as usual, was Owen, leaning on his crutch, but eminent in face and figure as the handsomest man present, and full of animation, betraying neither pain or regret, but throughout the wedding festivities showing himself the foremost in mirth, and spurring Hiltonbury on to rejoicings that made the villagers almost oblivious of the Forest Show.

The saddest face in church was that of the head bridesmaid. Even though Phœbe was only going as far as the Holt, and Humfrey was much loved, Bertha’s heart was sore with undefined regret for her own blotted past, and with the feeling of present loss in the sister whose motherly kindness she had never sufficiently recognized. Bertha knew not how much gentler and more lovable she herself was growing in that very struggle with her own sadness, and in her endeavours to be sufficient

protectress for Maria. The two sisters were to remain at the Underwood with Miss Fennimore, and in her kindness, and in daily intercourse with Phœbe and Cecily, could hardly fail to be happy. Maria was radiantly glad, in all the delight of her bridesmaid’s adornments and of the school feasting, and above all in patronizing her pretty little niece, Elizabeth Acton, the baby bridesmaid.

It was as if allegiance to poor Juliana’s dislikes had hitherto kept Sir Bevil aloof from Phœbe, and deterred him from manifesting his good-will; but the marriage brought him at last to Beauchamp, kind, grave, military, and melancholy as ever, and so much wrapped up in his little girl and his fancied memory of her mother, that Cecily’s dislike of long attachments was confirmed by his aspect; and only her sanguine benevolence was bold enough to augur his finding a comforter in her cousin Susan.

Poor man! Lady Bannerman had been tormenting him all the morning with appeals to his own wedding as precedents for Cecily’s benefit! Her instructions to Cecily were so overwhelming as to reduce that meek little lady to something approaching to annihilation; and the simple advice given by Bertha, and backed by Phœbe herself, ‘never to mind,’ appeared the summit of audacity! Long since having ceased to trouble herself as to the danger of growing too stout, Lady Bannerman, in her brocades and laces, was such a mountain of a woman that she was forced to sail up the aisle of Hiltonbury Church alone in her glory, without space for a cavalier beside her.

The bridegroom’s friend was his little seven years’ old brother, whom he had sent for to place at a good school, and who fraternized with little Owen, a brisk little fellow, his h’s and his manners alike doing credit to the paternal training, and preparing in due time to become a blue-gowned and yellow-legged Christ’s Hospital scholar—a nomination having been already promised through the Fulmort City influence.

Robert assisted Charlecote Raymond in the rite which joined together the young pair. They were goodly to look upon, in their grave, glad modesty and self-possession, and their youthful strength and fairness—which, to Honor’s mind, gave the idea of the beauty of simple strength and completeness, such as befits a well-built vessel at her launch, in all her quiet force, whether to glide over smooth waters or to battle with the tempest. Peaceful as those two faces were, there was in them spirit and resolution sufficient for either storm or calm, for it was steadfastness based upon the only strong foundation.

For the last time was signed, and with no unsteady hand, the clear, well-made letters of the maiden Phœbe Fulmort, and as, above it, the bride read the words, ‘Humfrey Charlecote Randolf Charlecote,’ she looked up to her husband with a sweet, half-smile of content and exultation, as though his name were doubly endeared, as recalling her ‘wise man,’ the revered guardian of her imagination in her orphaned girlhood.

There are years when the buds of spring are nipped by frost or blight, and when summer blossoms are rent by hail and storm, till autumn sets in without one relenting pause. Then, even at the commencement of decline, comes an interval, a renewal of all that former seasons had proffered of fair and sweet; the very tokens of decay are lovely—the skies are deep calm blue, the sunsets soft gold, and the exquisite serenity and tranquil enjoyment are beyond even the bright, fitful hopes of spring. There is a tinge of melancholy, for this is a farewell, though a lingering farewell; and for that very cause the enduring flowers, the brilliant eaves, the persevering singing birds, are even more prized than those which, in earlier months, come less as present boons than foretastes of the future.

Such an Indian summer may be Honor Charlecote’s present life. It is not old age, for she has still the strength and health of her best days, but it is the later stage of middle life, with experience added to energy. Her girlhood suffered from a great though high-minded mistake, her womanhood was careworn and sorrow-stricken. As first the beloved of her youth, so again the darling of her after-age was a disappointment; but she was patient, and patience has met with a reward, even in this life. Desolateness taught her to rely no longer on things of earth, but to satisfy her soul with that Love which is individual as well as Infinite; and that lesson learnt, the human affection that once failed her is come back upon her in full measure. She is no longer forlorn; the children whom she bred up, and those whom she led by her influence, alike vie with one another in their love and gratitude.

The old house in Woolstone-lane is her home for the greater part of the winter and spring, and her chief work lies in her father’s former parish, directed by Mr. Parsons and Robert, and enjoying especially the Sunday evenings that Owen constantly spends with her in the cedar parlour, in such converse, whether grave or gay, as men rarely seek save with a mother, or one who has been as a mother. But she is still the lady of the Holt. There she still spends autumn and Christmas, resuming her old habits, without feeling them a burthen; bemoaning a little, but approving all the while, Humfrey’s moderate and successful alterations, and loving and delighting above all in Phœbe’s sweet wisdom in her happy household rule. It is well worth all the past to return to the Holt with the holiday feeling of her girlhood.