"John!" she exclaimed.

"I suppose you thought I had forgotten to despise myself," he went on in a tone rather less defiant. "When that night I asked you for a kiss—I had not, nothing of the kind—I thought my mind would go, or my breath would leave me before the morning. Surely that would have been so but for you. But if I have lived through this for good ends, one at least has been that I have learned my place in creation—and yours. I have seen more than once since that you have felt vexed with yourself for the form your compassion took then. I deserve that you should think I misunderstood, but I did not. I came to tell you so. It should have been above all things my care not to offend the good angel so necessary in my house during those hours of my misfortune. But I am destined never to be right—never. I let you divine all too easily the secret I should have kept—my love, my passion. It was my own fault, to betray it was to dismiss you. Well, I have done that also."

Emily drew a long breath, put her hand to her delicate throat, and turning away hastily moved into the window, and gazed out with wide-opened eyes; Her face suffused with a pale tint of carnation was too full of unbelieving joy to be shown to him yet. He had made a mistake, though not precisely the mistake he supposed. He was destined, so long as he lived, never to have it explained. It was a mistake which made all things right again, made the past recede, and appear a dream, and supplied a sweet reason for all the wifely duty, all the long fealty and impassioned love she was to bestow on him ever after.

It was strange, even to her, who was so well accustomed to the unreasoning, exaggerated rhapsody of a lover, to hear him; his rage against himself, his entire hopelessness; and as for her, she knew not how to stop him, or how to help him; she could but listen and wonder.

Nature helped him, however; for a waft of summer wind coming in at that moment, swung the rose-branches that clustered round the window, and flung some of their white petals on her head. Something else stirred, she felt a slight movement behind her, and a little startled, turned involuntarily to look, and to see her cap—the widow's delicate cap—wafted along the carpet by the air, and settling at John Mortimer's feet.

He lifted it up, and she stood mute while she saw him fold it together with a man's awkwardness, but with something of reverence too; then, as if he did not know what else to do with it, he laid it on the table before an opened miniature of Fred Walker.

After a moment's consideration she saw him close this miniature, folding its little doors together.

"That, because I want to ask a favour of you," he said.

"What is it?" she asked, and blushed beautifully.

"You gave me a kiss, let me also bestow one—one parting kiss—and I will go."

He was about to go then, he meant to consider himself dismissed. She could not speak, and he came up to her, she gave him her hand, and he stooped and kissed her.

Something in her eyes, or perhaps the blush on her face, encouraged him to take her for a moment into his arms. He was extremely pale, but when she lifted her face from his breast a strange gleam of hope and wonder flashed out of his eyes.

She had never looked so lovely in her life, her face suffused with a soft carnation, her lucid grey-blue eyes full of sweet entreaty. Nevertheless, she spoke in a tone of the quietest indifference—a sort of pensive wistfulness habitual with her.

"You can go if you please," she said, "but you had much better not."

"No!" he exclaimed.

"No," she repeated. "Because, John—because I love you."



CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE TRUE GHOST STORY.

Horatio.—"Look, my lord, it comes!" Hamlet the Dane.

Valentine was at Melcombe again. He had begun several improvements about the place which called for time, and would cost money. It was not without misgiving that he had consented to enter on the first of them.

There was still in his mind, as he believed, a reservation. He would give up the property if he ever saw fit cause.

Now, if he began to tie himself by engaging in expensive enterprises, or by undertaking responsibilities, it might be impossible to do this.

Therefore he held off for some little time.

He fell into his first enterprise almost unawares, he got out of his reluctant shrinking from it afterwards by a curious sophistry. "While this estate is virtually mine," he thought, "it is undoubtedly my duty to be a good steward of it. If, in the course of providence, I am shown that I am to give it up, no doubt I shall also be shown how to proceed about these minor matters."

He had learnt from his uncle the doctrine of a particular providence, but had not received with it his uncle's habit of earnest waiting on providence, and straightforward desire to follow wherever he believed it to lead.

Valentine came almost at once under the influence of the vicar, Mr. Craik, the man who had always seen something so more than commonly mysterious about the ways of God to men. Mr. Craik wanted Valentine to restore the old church, by which he meant to pull it almost to pieces, to raise the roof, to clear away the quaint old oaken galleries, to push out a long chancel, and to put in some painted windows, literally such, pictures of glass, things done at Munich.

When Valentine, always facile, had begun to consider this matter, a drawing of the building, as it was to look when restored, was made, in order to stir up his zeal, and make him long for a parish church that would do him and the vicar credit. He beheld it, and forthwith vowed, with uncivil directness, that he would rather build the vicar a crack church to his mind, in the middle of the village, than help in having that dear old place mauled and tampered with.

Mr. Craik no sooner heard this than he began to talk about a site.

He was a good man, had learned to be meek, so that when he was after anything desirable he might be able to take a rebuff, and not mind it.

In the pleasant summer evenings he often came to see Valentine, and while the latter sauntered about with a cigar, he would carve faces on a stick with his knife, walking beside him. He had given up smoking, because he wanted the poor also to give it up, as an expensive luxury, and one that led to drinking. Valentine respected him, was sure the scent of a cigar was still very pleasant to his nostrils, and knew he could well have afforded to smoke himself. That was one reason why he let himself be persuaded in the matter of the site (people never are persuaded by any reason worth, mentioning). Another reason was, that Mr. Craik had become a teetotaller, "for you know, old fellow, that gives me such a pull in persuading the drunkards;" a third reason was, that there was a bit of land in the middle of the village, just the thing for a site, and worth nothing, covered with stones and thistles. Mr. Craik said he should have such a much better congregation, he felt sure, if the church was not in such an extremely inconvenient out-of-the-way place; that aged saint, who was gone, had often regretted the inconvenience for the people.

Valentine at last gave him the site. Mr. Craik remarked on what a comfort it would have been to the aged saint if she could have known what a good churchman her heir would prove himself.

But Valentine was not at all what Mr. Craik meant by a good churchman. Such religious opinions and feelings as had influence over him, had come from the evangelical school. His old father and uncle had been very religious men, and of that type, almost as a matter of course. In their early day evangelical religion had been as the river of God—the one channel in which higher thought and fervent feeling ran.

Valentine had respected their religion, had seen that it was real, that it made them contented, happy, able to face death with something more than hope, able to acquiesce in the wonderful reservations of God with men, the more able on account of them to look on this life as the childhood of the next, and to wait for knowledge patiently. But yet, of all the forms taken by religious feeling, Valentine considered it the most inconvenient; of all the views of Christianity, the most difficult to satisfy.

He told the vicar he did not see why his grandmother was to be called a saint because she had gone through great misfortunes, and because it had pleased her to be trundled to church, on all Sundays and saints' days, besides attending to the other ordinances of the church and the sacraments.

When he was mildly admonished that a site seemed to presuppose a church, he assented, and with one great plunge, during which he distinctly felt, both that his position as landlord was not to be defended, and that this good use of the money might make things more secure, he gave a promise to build one—felt a twinge of compunction, and a glow of generosity, but blushed hotly when Mr. Craik observed that the old church, being put in decent repair, and chiefly used for marriages and for the burial service, it might, perhaps be a pleasing testimony, a filial act, to dedicate the new one to St. Elizabeth, "Simply in reverend recollection, you know, Melcombe, of that having been—been your grandmother's name."

"No, I shouldn't like it," said Valentine abruptly. Mr. Craik was not sure whether his evident shrinking was due to some low-church scruple as to any dedication at all, or whether the name of the sainted Elizabeth had startled him by reminding him of self-renunciation and a self-denial even to the death, of all that in this world we love and long for. This Elizabeth, his grandmother, might have been a saintly old woman in her conversation, her patience, her piety, for anything Valentine knew to the contrary, but he had hold now of all her accounts; he knew from them, and from investigations made among the tenants, that she had held a hard grip of her possessions, had sometimes driven shrewd bargains, and even up to her extreme old age had often shown herself rather more than a match for some of those about her. Things to be done by others she had seen to with vigilance, things to be done by herself she had shown a masterly power of leaving undone. Her property had considerably increased during her term of possession, though in ordinary charity a good deal had been given away. All was in order, and her heir whom she had never seen was reaping the fruits of her judgment and her savings; but whether she ought to be called a saint he rather doubted.

He had returned to Melcombe, not without shrewd suspicions that his cousin was soon to be his brother-in-law. A letter following closely on his steps had confirmed them. Some time in September he expected a summons to be present at the wedding; he wished after that to travel for several months, so he allowed Mr. Craik to persuade him that his good intentions ought not to be put off, and he made arrangements for the commencement of the new church at once.

It was to cost about three thousand pounds, a large sum; but the payment was to be spread over three or four years, and Valentine, at present, had few other claims. He had, for instance, no poor relations, at least he thought not; but he had scarcely given his word for the building of the church when he received a letter from Mrs. Peter Melcombe—"an ugly name," thought Valentine. "Mrs. Valentine Melcombe will sound much better. Oh, I suppose the young woman will be Mrs. Melcombe, though." Mrs. Peter Melcombe let Valentine know that she and Laura had returned to England, and would now gladly accept his invitation, given in the spring, to come and stay a few weeks with him whenever this should be the case.

"I have always considered Laura a sacred trust," continued the good lady. "My poor dear Peter, having left her to me—my means are by no means large—and I am just now feeling it my duty to consider a certain very kind and very flattering offer. I am not at all sure that a marriage with one whom I could esteem might not help me to bear better the sorrow of my loss in my dear child; but I have decided nothing. Laura has actually only five hundred pounds of her own, and that, I need not say, leaves her as dependent on me as if she was a daughter."

"Now look here," exclaimed Valentine, laying the letter down flat on the table, and holding it there with his hand—"now look here, this is serious. You are going to bring that simpleton Laura to me, and you would like to leave her here, would you? Preposterous! She cannot live with me! Besides, I am such a fool myself, that if I was shut up with her long, I should certainly marry her. Take a little time, Val, and consider.

"'Wilt them brave? Or wilt thou bribe? Or wilt thou cheat the kelpie?'

"Let me see. Laura is my own cousin, and the only Melcombe. Now, if Craik had any sense of gratitude—but he hasn't—it seems so natural, 'I built you a church, you marry my cousin. Do I hear you say you won't? You'd better think twice about that. I'd let you take a large slice of the turnip-field into your back garden. Turnips, I need hardly add, you'd have ad lib. (very wholesome vegetables), and you'd have all that capital substantial furniture now lying useless in these attics, and an excellent family mangle out of the messuage or tenement called the laundry—the wedding breakfast for nothing. I think you give in, Craik?' Yes; we shake hands—he has tears in his eyes. 'Now, Laura, what have you got to say?' 'He has sandy hair.' 'Of course he has, the true Saxon colour. Go down on your knees, miss, and thank heaven fasting for a good man's love (Shakespeare).' 'And he has great red hands.' 'Surely they had better be red than green—celestial rosy red, love's proper hue.' Good gracious! here he is."

"Ah, Craik! is that you? How goes it?"

One of Mr. Craik's gifts was that he could sigh better than almost anybody; whenever he was going to speak of anything as darkly mysterious, his sigh was enough to convince any but the most hardened. He fetched a sigh then (that is the right expression)—he fetched it up from the very bottom of his heart, and then he began to unfold his grievances to Valentine, how some of his best school-girls had tittered at church, how some of his favourite boys had got drunk, how some of the farmers had not attended morning service for a month, and how two women, regular attendants, had, notwithstanding, quarrelled to that degree that they had come to blows, and one of them had given the other a black eye, and old Becky Maddison is ill, he concluded. "I've been reading to her to-day. I don't know what to think about administering the Holy Communion to her while she persists in that lie."

"Do you mean the ghost story?" asked Valentine.

"Yes."

"It may have been a lie when she first told it; but in her extreme old age she may have utterly forgotten its first invention. It may possibly not be now a conscious lie, or, on the other hand, it may be true that she did see something."

"Your grandmother always considered that it was a lie, and a very cruel lie."

"How so? She accused no one of anything."

"No, but she made people talk. She set about a rumour that the place was haunted, and for some years the family could hardly get a servant to live with them."

"Poor old soul!" thought Valentine. "I suppose it would be wrong to try and bribe her to deny it. I wish she would though."

"I think," said Mr. Craik, an air of relief coming over his face—"I think I shall tell her that I regard it in the light you indicated."

Soon after that he went away. It was evening, the distant hills, when Valentine sauntered forth, were of an intense solid blue, gloomy and pure, behind them lay wedges of cloud edged with gold, all appeared still, unchanging, and there was a warm balmy scent of clover and country crops brooding over the place.

Valentine sauntered on through the peaceful old churchyard, and over the brow of the little hill. What a delightful evening view! A long hollow, with two clear pools (called in those parts meres) in it, narrow, and running side by side, the evening star and crescent moon, little more than a gold line, reflected in one of them. The reed warbler was beginning to sing, and little landrails were creeping out of the green sedges, the lilies were closing and letting themselves down. There was something so delightful, so calm, that Valentine felt his heart elevated by it. The peace of nature seems a type of the rest of God. It reminds man of that deep awful leisure in which his Maker dwells, taking thought for, and having, as we express it, time, to bless and think upon his creatures.

Valentine watched the gold in the sky, and the primrose-tinted depths beyond. He was thankful for his delightful home; he felt a good impulse in him, urging that he must do his duty in this his day and generation; he seemed to respond to it, hoped the new church would be of use in the neighbourhood, and felt that, even if it cost him some sacrifice, Laura must be provided for; either he must settle on her something that she could live on, or he must promise her a marriage portion.

As for himself, he was a good young fellow, better than many, and when he went on to think of himself, he saw, in his vision of his own future, nothing worse than an almost impossibly pretty girl as his bride, one with whom he was to take a specially long and agreeable wedding tour; and some time after that he supposed himself to see two or three jolly little boys rolling about on the grass, the Melcombes of the future, and with them and their mother he saw himself respected and happy. Sauntering on still, he came past Becky Maddison's cottage, a pleasant abode, thatched, whitewashed, and covered with jasmine, but too close to the mere. "I will talk to that poor old soul again, and see if I can make anything of her. I am sure Craik is mistaken about her."

"She fails fast," said the daughter, when accosted by Valentine; and she took him up-stairs to see her mother. He first made himself welcome by giving her a handsome alms, and then inquired about her health.

The daughter had gone down of her own accord. "I'n bin very bad with my sparms" meaning spasms, she answered in a plaintive voice. Valentine saw a very great change in her, the last sunset's afterglow fell upon her face, it was sunk and hollow, yet she spoke in clear tones, full of complaint, but not feeble. "And I'n almost done wi' this world."

"Mr. Craik comes to see you, I know; he told me to-day that you were ill."

"Parson were always hard on I."

"Because he doesn't believe the ghost story."

"Ay, told me so this blessed marnin'; and who be he? wanted I to own 'twas a lie, and take the blessed sacrament, and make a good end. 'Sir,' says I, 'Mr. Martimer believed it, that's Mr. Melcombe now—and so 'e did, sir.'"

"No, I didn't," said Valentine.

"No?" she exclaimed, in a high piping tone.

"No, I say. I thought you had either invented it—made it up, I mean—or else dreamed it. I do not wish to be hard on you, but I want to remind you how you said you had almost done with this world."

"Why did 'e goo away, and never tell I what 'e thought?" she interrupted.

Valentine took no notice, but went on. "And the parson feels uneasy about you, and so do I. I wish you would try to forget what is written down in the book, and try to remember what you really saw; you must have been quite a young girl then. Well, tell me how you got up very early in the morning, almost before it was light, and tell what you saw, however much it was, or however little; and if you are not quite sure on the whole that you saw anything at all, tell that, and you will have a right to hope that you shall be forgiven."

"I'n can't put it in fine words."

"No, and there is no need."

"Would 'e believe it, if I told it as true as I could?"

"Yes, I would."

"I will, then, as I hope to be saved."

"I mean to stand your friend, whatever you say, and I know how hard it is to own a lie.'

"Ay, that it be, and God knows I'n told a many."

"Well, I ask you, then, as in the sight of God, is this one of them?"

"No, sir. It ain't."

"What! you did see a ghost?"

"Ay, I did."

Valentine concealed his disappointment as well as he could, and went on.

"You told me the orchard of pear-trees and cherry-trees was all in blossom, as white as snow. Now don't you think, as it was so very early, almost at dawn, that what you saw really might have been a young cherry-tree standing all in white, but that you, being frightened, took it for a ghost?"

"The sperit didn't walk in white," she answered; "I never said it was in white."

"Why, my good woman, you said it was in a shroud!"

"Ay, I told the gentleman when he took it down, the ghost were wrapped up in a cloak, a long cloak, and he said that were a shroud."

"But don't you know what a shroud is?" exclaimed Valentine, a good deal surprised. "What is the dress called hereabout, that a man is buried in?"

"His buryin' gown. 'Tis only a sperit, a ghost, that walks in a shroud. I'n told that oft enough, I should know." She spoke in a querulous tone, as one having reasonable cause for complaint.

"Well," said Valentine, after a pause, "if the shroud was not white, what colour was it?"

"Mid have been black for aught I know, 'twere afore sunrise; but it mid have been a dark blue, and I think 'twas. There were a grete wash up at the house that marnin', and I were coming to help. A sight of cherry-trees grow all about the door, and as I came round the corner there it stood with its hand on the latch, and its eyes very serious."

"What did it look like?"

"It looked like Mr. Cuthbert Martimer, and it stared at I, and then I saw it were Mr. Melcombe."

"Were you near it?"

"Ay, sir."

"Well, what next?"

"I dropped a curtsey."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Valentine, turning cold. "What, curtsey to a ghost, a spirit?"

"Ay, I did, and passed on, and that very instant I turned, and it were gone."

Valentine's voice faltered as he asked the next question. "You were not frightened?"

"No, sir, because I hadn't got in my head yet that 'twere a sperit. When I got in, I said, 'I'n seen him,' 'You fool,' says Mary Carfoil, that was cook then, 'your head,' says she, 'is for ever running on the men folks. He's a thousand mile off,' says she, 'in the Indies, and the family heerd on him a week agoo.' 'I did see him,' says I. 'Goo along about your business,' says she, 'and light the copper. It were Mr. Cuthbert 'e saw, got up by-times to shoot rooks. Lucky enough,' says she, 'that Mr. Melcombe be away.'"

"Why was it lucky?"

"Because they'd both set their eyes on the same face—they had. It's hard to cry shame on the dead, but they had. And she's dead too. Neither on 'em meant any good to her. They had words about her. She'd have nought to say to Mr. Cuthbert then."

Valentine groaned.

"No, nor she wouldn't after I'n seen the ghost, nor till every soul said he was dead and drowned, and the letter come from London town."

"There must have been others beside you," said Valentine, sharply, "other people passing in and out of the laundry door. Why did no one see him but you—see it but you?"

"It were not the laundry door, sir, 'twere the door in the garden wall, close by the grete pear-tree, as it went in at; Madam shut up that door for ever so many years—'e can't mistake it."

"Ah!"

"That's the place, sir."

"And who was fool enough first to call it a ghost?" cried Valentine almost fiercely. "No, no, I mean," he continued faltering—"I don't know what I mean," and he dropped his face into his hands, and groaned. "I always thought it was the yard door."

"No, Sir."

"And so when he disappeared, and was no more seen, you thought you had seen his ghost?"

"Ay, sir, we all knowed it then, sure enough; Madam seemed to know't from the first. When they told her I'n seen Mr. Melcombe, she fell in a grete faint, and wrung her hands, and went in another faint, and cried out he were dead; but the sperit never walked any more, folks said it came for a token to I, 'her did ought to look for death by-times,' said they."

"That's all, is it?"

"Ay, sir, that be all."

"I believe you this time."

"'E may, sir, and God bless 'e."



CHAPTER XXXIV.

VALENTINE AND LAURA

"The flower out of reach is dedicate to God."

Tamil Proverb.

Some one passing Valentine as he walked home in the gloaming, started, and hurried on. "He came up so still-like," she said, afterwards, "that I e'en took him for a sperit, he being a Melcombe, and they having a way of walking."

She did not speak without book, for old Madam Melcombe was already said to haunt the churchyard. Not as a being in human guise, but as a white, widewinged bird, perfectly noiseless in its movements, skimming the grass much as owls do, but having a plaintive voice like that of a little child.

Late in the night again, when all the stars were out sparkling in a moonless sky, and the household should long have been asleep, the same fancy or fear recurred. Two housemaids woke suddenly, and felt as if there was a moaning somewhere outside. They had been sleeping in the heat with their window open, and they looked out and saw a dark shadow moving in the garden, moving away from the house, and seeming to make as if it wrung its hands. After this, still peering out into the starlight, they lost sight of it; but they fancied that they heard it sigh, and then it stood a dark column in their sight, and seemed to fall upon the bed of lilies, and there lie till they were afraid to look any longer, and they shut their window and crept again into their beds.

But the lilies? It might have been true that they saw somewhat, but if a spirit had haunted the dark garden that night, surely no trace of its sojourn would have remained on the bed of lilies; yet in the morning many, very many of their fragrant leaves were crushed and broken, as if in truth some houseless or despairing being had crouched there.

The housemaids told their tale next morning, and it was instantly whispered in the house that the ghost had come again. The maids shook with fear as they went about, even in broad daylight. The gardener alone was incredulous, and made game of the matter.

"Hang the ghost!" said he; but then he came from the eastern counties, and had no reverence for the old family "fetch." "Hang the ghost! why shouldn't that shadow have been the brown pony? Ain't he out at grass, and didn't I find the garden-door ajar this morning? He came in, I'll be bound." Then the gardener shouldered his spade, and finding a number of footmarks all over the place, specially about the bed of lilies, and certainly not those of a pony, he carefully obliterated them, and held his peace. Shaking his head when alone, and muttering, "They're a queer lot, these Melcombes—who'd have expected this now! If the dead ones don't walk, the live ones do. Restless, that's what it is. Restless, too much to eat. I should say, and too little to do. When the missis comes we shall have more sensible doings, and I wish the missis had never left us, that I do."

Mrs. Peter Melcombe, thus welcomed back again in the gardener's mind, was then driving up to the door of Melcombe House, and Valentine was stepping out to receive her.

It was natural that she should feel agitated, and Valentine accosted her so seriously as to increase her emotion. She had been able to recover her usually equable spirits after the loss of her child, it was only on particular occasions that she now gave way to tears. She was by no means of their number who love to make a parade of grief; on the contrary, emotion was painful to her, and she thankfully avoided it when she could.

She retired with Laura, and after a reasonable time recovered herself, taking care to go at once into the room where her darling had slept, and where he had played, that she might not again be overcome.

"I have dreaded this inexpressibly," she said, sobbing, to Laura, who was following her with real sympathy.

"Valentine was very odd," answered Laura; "you would, I am sure, have got over your return quite calmly, if he had been less solemn. Surely, Amelia dear, he is altered."

"He was oppressed, no doubt, at sight of me; he felt for me."

Laura said no more, but several times during that first day she made wondering observations. She looked in vain for the light-hearted companionable young fellow with whom she had become intimate in cousinly fashion, and whom she had fully hoped to consult about a certain affair of her own. She saw an air of oppressive bitterness and absence of mind that discouraged her greatly. "There is no mistaking his expression of countenance," she thought; "he must have been disappointed in love."

"Laura," exclaimed Mrs. Melcombe, when the two ladies, having left the dining-room, were alone together in the old grandmother's favourite parlour, now used as a drawing-room—"Laura, what can this mean? Is he dyspeptic? Is he hypochondriacal? I declare, if Mr. Craik had not been invited to meet us, I hardly see how we could have got through the dinner: he is very odd."

"And surely the conversation was odd too," said Laura. "How they did talk about old Becky Maddison and her death this afternoon! How fervently he expressed his gladness that Mr. Craik had seen her to-day, and had administered the sacrament to her! I suppose you observed Valentine's hesitation when you asked if he believed her story?"

"Yes; I felt for the moment as if I had no patience with him, and I asked because I wanted to bring him to reason. He can hardly wish to own before sensible people that he does believe it; and if he does not, he must know that she was an impostor, poor old creature." Then she repeated, "He is very odd," and Laura said—

"But we know but little of him. It may be his way to have fits of melancholy now and then. How handsome he is!"

Amelia admitted this; adding, "And he looks better without that perpetual smile. He had an illness, I think, two years ago; but he certainly appears to be perfectly well now. It cannot be his health that fails him."

There was the same surprise next morning. Valentine seemed to be making an effort to entertain them, but he frequently lapsed into silence and thought. No jokes, good or bad, were forthcoming. Mrs. Melcombe felt that if she had not received such a warm and pressing invitation to come to visit Melcombe, she must have now supposed herself to be unwelcome. She took out some work, and sat in the room where they had breakfasted, hoping to find an opportunity to converse with him on her own plans and prospects; while Laura, led by her affectionate feelings, put on her hat and sauntered down the garden—to the lily-bed of course, and there she stood some time, thinking of her dear old grandmother. She was not altogether pleased with its appearance, and she stooped to gather out a weed here and there.

Presently Valentine came down the garden. He was lost in thought, and when he saw Laura he started and seemed troubled. "What can you be about, Laura dear?" he said.

He had made up his mind that she had a pecuniary claim on him, and therefore he purposely addressed her with the affection of a relative. He felt that this would make it easier for her to admit this convenient claim.

"What am I about?" answered Laura. "Why, Valentine, I was just picking off some of these leaves, which appear to have been broken. The bed looks almost as if some—some creature had been lying on it."

"Does it?" said Valentine, and he sighed, and stood beside her while she continued her self-imposed task.

"These lilies, you know," she remarked, "have great attractions for us."

"Yes," said Valentine, and sighed again.

"How he shivers!" thought Laura. "You cannot think," she said, rising from her task and looking about her, "how it touches my feelings to come back to the old place."

"You like it then, Laura?"

"Like it! I love it, and everything belonging to it."

"Including me!" exclaimed Valentine, rallying for the moment and laughing.

Laura looked up and laughed too, but without answering. Before there was time for that, she had seen the light of his smile die out, and the gloom settle down again. A sort of amazement seemed to be growing under his eyelids; his thought, whatever it was, had gradually returned upon him, and he was struck by it with a new surprise.

"Valentine!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he answered steadily and gravely, and then roused himself to add, "Come out from under the shadow of this wall. The garden is all gloomy here in the morning; it makes me shiver. I want to speak to you," he continued, when they had passed through the door in the wall, and were walking on the lawn before the house.

"And I to you," she replied. "It was kind of you to ask us to come here."

"I suppose Mrs. Melcombe has decided to marry again," he began.

"Yes, but she would like to tell you about that herself."

"All right. I consider, Laura dear, that you have much more claim upon me than upon her."

"Do you, Valentine, do you?"

As they walked down into the orchard, Laura shed a few agitated tears; then she sat down on a grassy bank, and while Valentine, leaning against the trunk of a pear-tree, looked down upon her, she said—

"Then I wish you would help me, Valentine. The devotion that I have inspired, if I could only meet it as it deserves—" And then she went on in a tone of apology, "And it is only help that I want, for I have five hundred pounds of my own, if I could but get at it."

"Where is the devotion?" exclaimed Valentine, suddenly rallying. "Let me only catch hold of that devotion, and I'll soon have it down on its knees, and old Craik's large red hands hovering over it and you, while he matches it as the Church directs to a devotion more than worthy of it, as I will the five hundred pounds with another."

"Ah, but you can't," said Laura, laughing also, "because he's in America; and, besides, you don't know all."

"Oh, he's in America, is he?"

"Yes; at least I suppose he's on the high seas by this time, or he will be very shortly, for he's going up to New York."

"Up to New York! Where does he hang out then when he's at home?"

"At Santo Domingo."

"That at least shows his original mind. Not black, of course? Not descended from the woman who 'suddenly married a Quaker?'"

"Oh no, Valentine—an Englishman."

"An Englishman and live at Santo Domingo! Well, I should as soon have expected him to live in the planetary spaces. It would be much more roomy there, and convenient too, though to be sure a planet coming up might butt at him now and then."

"It is rather a large island," said Laura. "But, Valentine——"

"Well."

"He speaks Spanish very well. He is comfortably off."

"His speciality, no doubt, is the sugar-cane. Well, I shall consider him very mean if he doesn't let me have my sugar cheap, in return for my kindness."

"You are sure you are going to be kind then."

"Yes. if he is a good fellow."

"He is a good fellow, and I am not worthy of him, for I behaved shamefully to him. He has written me a very gentlemanly letter, and he said, with perfect straightforwardness, that he did at one time believe himself to have quite got over his attachment to me, but—but he had been a good deal alone, had found time to think, and, in short, it had come on again; and he hoped he was now able to offer me not only a very agreeable home, but a husband more worthy of me. That's a mistake, for I behaved ill to him, and he well, and always well, to me. In short, he begged me to come over to New York in September: he is obliged to be there on business himself at that time. He said, taking the chances, and in the hope of my coming, he would name the very line of steamers I ought to come by; and if I could but agree to it, he would meet me and marry me, and take me back with him."

"Somehow, Laura, I seem to gather that you do not consider him quite your equal."

"No, I suppose, as I am a Melcombe——"

"A Melcombe!" repeated Valentine with bitter scorn. "A Melcombe!" Laura felt the colour rush over her face with astonishment. She knew rather than saw that the little glimpse she had had of his own self was gone again; but before she could decide how to go on, he said, with impatience and irritation, "I beg your pardon; you were going to say——"

"That he is in a fairly good position now," she proceeded, quoting her lover's language; "and he has hopes that the head of the firm, who is a foreigner, will take him into partnership soon. Besides, as his future home is in America (and mine, if I marry him), what signifies his descent?"

"No," murmured Valentine with a sigh. "'The gardener Adam and his wife' (Tennyson)."

"And," proceeded Laura, "nothing can be more perfectly irreproachable than his people are—more excellent, honest, and respectable."

"Whew!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh, "that is a great deal to say of any family. Well, Laura, if you're sure they won't mind demeaning themselves by an alliance with us——"

"Nonsense, Valentine; I wish you would not be so odd," interrupted Laura.

"I have nothing to say against it."

"Thank you, dear Valentine; and nobody else has a right to say anything, for you are the head of the family. It was very odd that you should have pitched upon that particular line to quote."

"Humph! And as I have something of my own, more than three thousand pounds in fact——"

"And Melcombe," exclaimed Laura.

"Ah, yes, I forgot. But I was going to say that you, being the only other Melcombe, you know, and you and I liking one another, I wish to act a brotherly part by you; and therefore, when you have bought yourself a handsome trousseau and a piano, and everything a lady ought to have, and your passage is paid for, I wish to make up whatever is left of your five hundred pounds to a thousand, that you may not go almost portionless to your husband."

"I am sure, dear Valentine, he does not expect anything of the sort," exclaimed Laura faintly, but with such a glow of pleasure in her face as cheated Valentine for the moment into gladness and cordiality.

"Depend upon it, he will be pleased notwithstanding to find you even a better bargain than he expected." Laura took Valentine's hand when he said this, and laid it against her cheek. "What's his name, Laura?"

"His name is Swan."

Thereupon the whole story came out, told from Laura's point of view, but with moderate fairness.

Valentine was surprised; but when he had seen the letters and discovered that the usually vacillating Laura had quite made up her mind to sail to New York, he determined that his help and sanction should enable her to do so in the most desirable and respectable fashion. Besides, how convenient for him, and how speedy a release from all responsibility about her! Of course he remembered this, and when Laura heard him call her lover "Don Josef," she thought it a delightful and romantic name.

But Mrs. Peter Melcombe was angry when Laura told her that Joseph had written again, and that Valentine knew all and meant to help her. She burst into tears. "Considering all I have suffered," she said, "in consequence of that young man's behaviour, I wonder you have not more feeling than to have anything to say to him. Humanly speaking, he is the cause of all my misfortunes; but for him, I might have been mistress of Melcombe still, and my poor darling, my only delight, might have been well and happy."

Laura made no reply, but she repeated the conversation afterwards to Valentine with hesitating compunction, and a humble hope that he would put a more favourable construction on her conduct than Amelia had done.

"Humanly speaking," repeated Valentine with bitterness, "I suppose, then, she wishes to insinuate that God ordained the child's death, and she had nothing to do with it?"

"She behaved with beautiful submission," urged Laura.

"I dare say! but the child had been given over to her absolute control, and she actually had a warning sent to her, so that she knew that it was running a risk to take him into heat, and hurry, and to unwholesome food. She chose to run the risk. She is a foolish, heartless woman. If she says anything to me, I shall tell her that I think so."

"I feel all the more bitter about it," he muttered to himself, "because I have done the same thing."

But Mrs. Melcombe said nothing, she contented herself with having made Laura uncomfortable by her tears, and as the days and weeks of her visit at Melcombe went on she naturally cared less about the matter, for she had her own approaching marriage to think of, and on the whole it was not unpleasant to her to be for ever set free from any duty toward her sister-in-law.

Valentine, though he often amazed Laura by his fits of melancholy, never forgot to be kind and considerate to her; he had long patience with her little affectations, and the elaborate excuses she made about all sorts of unimportant matters. She found herself, for the first time in her life, with a man of whom she could exact attendance, and whom she could keep generally occupied with her affairs. She took delighted advantage of this state of things, insomuch that before she was finally escorted to Liverpool and seen off, people in the neighbourhood, remarking on his being constantly with her, and observing his only too evident depression, thought he must have formed an attachment to her; it was universally reported that young Mr. Melcombe was breaking his heart for that silly Laura; and when, on his return, he seemed no longer to care for society, the thing was considered to be proved.

It was the last week in October when he reached Wigfield, to be present at his sister's wedding. All the woods were in brown and gold, and the still dry October summer was not yet over. John's children were all well again, and little Anastasia came to meet him in the garden, using a small crutch, of which she was extremely proud, "It was such a pretty one, and bound with pink leather!" Her face was still pinched and pale, but the nurse who followed her about gave a very good account of her, it was confidently expected that in two or three months she would walk as well as ever. "A thing to be greatly wished," said the nurse, "for Mr. Mortimer makes himself quite a slave to her, and Mrs. Walker spoils her."

Valentine found all his family either excited or fully occupied, and yet he was soon aware that a certain indefinable change in himself was only the more conspicuous for his fitful attempts to conceal it.

As to whether he was ill, whether unhappy, or whether displeased, they could not agree among themselves, only, as by one consent, they forbore to question him; but while he vainly tried to be his old self, they vainly tried to treat him in the old fashion.

He thought his brother seemed, with almost studied care, to avoid all reference to Melcombe. There was, indeed, little that they could talk about. One would not mention his estate, the other his wife, and as for his book, this having been a great failure, and an expensive one, was also a sore subject. Almost all they said when alone concerned the coming marriage, which pleased them both, and a yachting tour.

"I thought you had settled into a domestic character, St. George?" said Valentine.

"So did I, but Tom Graham, Dorothea's brother, is not going on well, he is tired of a sea life, and has left his uncle, as he says, for awhile. So as the old man longs for Dorothea, I have agreed to take her and the child, and go for a tour of a few months with him to the Mediterranean. It is no risk for the little chap, as his nurse, Mrs. Brand, feels more at home at sea than on shore."

On the morning of the wedding Valentine sauntered down from his sister's house to John Mortimer's garden. Emily had Dorothea with her, and Giles was to give her away. She was agitated, and she made him feel more so than usual; a wedding at which Brandon and Dorothea were to be present would at any time have made him feel in a somewhat ridiculous position, but just then he was roused by the thought of it from those ideas and speculations in the presence of which he ever dwelt, so that, on the whole, though it excited it refreshed him.

He was generally most at ease among the children; he saw some of them, and Swan holding forth to them in his most pragmatical style. Swan was dressed in his best suit, but he had a spade in his hand. Valentine joined them, and threw himself on a seat close by. He meant to take the first opportunity he could find for having a talk with Swan, but while he waited he lost himself again, and appeared to see what went on as if it was a shifting dream that meant nothing; his eyes were upon, the children, and his ears received expostulation and entreaty: at last his name roused him.

"And what Mr. Melcombe will think on you it's clean past my wits to find out. Dressed up so beautiful, all in your velvets and things, and buckles in your shoes, and going to see your pa married, and won't be satisfied unless I'll dig out this here nasty speckled beast of a snake."

"But you're so unfair," exclaimed Bertram. "We told you if you'd let us conjure it, there would be no snake."

"What's it all about?" said Valentine, rousing himself and remarking some little forked sticks held by the boys.

"Why, it's an adder down that hole," cried one.

"And it's a charm we've got for conjuring him," quoth the other. "And we only want Swanny to dig, and then if the charm is only a sham charm, the adder will come out."

"I should have thought he was a sight better wheer he is," said Swan. "But you've been so masterful and obstinate, Master Bertie, since you broke your arm!"

"It's not at all kind of you to disappoint us on father's wedding-day."

"Well, Mr. Melcombe shall judge. If he says, 'Charm it,' charm you shall; for he knows children's feelings as well as grown folks's. There never was anybody that was so like everybody else."

"It's conjuring, I tell you, cousin Val. Did you never see a conjuror pull out yards and yards of shavings from his mouth, and then roll them up till they were as small as a pea, and swallow them? This is conjuring too. We say, 'Underneath this hazelin mote;' that's the forked-stick, you know; and while we say it the adder is obliged to roll himself up tighter and tighter, just like those shavings, till he is quite gone."

"I can't swallow that!" exclaimed Valentine. "Well, off then."

"But I won't have the stick poked down his hole!" cried Swan, while Hugh shouted down his defiance—

"'Underneath this hazelin mote There's a braggerty worm with a speckled throat, Now! Nine double hath he.'

"That means he's got nine rings."

"Well, I shall allers say I'm surprised at such nonsense. What do you think he cares for it all?"

"Why, we told you it would make him twist himself up to nothing. Go on, Hughie. It's very useful to be able to get rid of snakes."

"'Now from nine double to eight double, And from eight double to seven double, And from seven double to six double. And from six double to five double, And from five double to four double, And from four double to three double.'

(He's getting very tight now!)

"'And from three double to two double, And from two double to one double, Now! No double hath he,'

"There, now he's gone, doubled up to nothing. Now dig, Swanny, and you'll see he's gone."

"It's only an old Cornish charm," said Valentine. "I often heard it when I was a boy."

"I call it heathenish!" exclaimed Mr. Swan. "What do folks want with a charm when they've got a spade to chop the beast's head off with?"

"But as he's gone, Swan," observed Valentine, "of course you cannot dig him out; so you need not trouble yourself to dig at all."

"Oh, but that's not fair. We want, in case he's there, to see him."

"No, no," said Swan dogmatically; "I never heard of such a thing as having the same chance twice over. I said if you'd sit on that bench, all on you, I'd dig him out, if he was there. You wouldn't; you thought you'd a charm worth two of that work, and so you've said your charm."

"Well, we'll come and sit upon the bench tomorrow, then, and you'll dig him."

"That'll be as I please. I've no call to make any promises," said Swan, looking wise.

The only observer felt a deep conviction that the children would never see that snake, and slight and ridiculous as the incident was, Swan's last speech sunk deeply into Valentine's heart, and served to increase his dejection. "And yet," he repeated to himself, "I fully hope, when I've given up all, that I shall have my chance—the same chance over again. I hope, please God, to prove that very soon; for now Laura's gone, I'm bound to Melcombe no longer than it takes me to pack up my clothes and the few things I brought with me."



CHAPTER XXXV.

A VISIT TO MELCOMBE.

"Fairest fair, best of good. Too high for hope that stood; White star of womanhood shining apart O my liege lady, And O my one lady, And O my loved lady, come down to my heart.

"Reach me life's wine and gold, What is man's best all told, If thou thyself withhold, sweet, from thy throne? O my liege lady, And O my loved lady, And O my heart's lady, come, reign there alone."

Afterwards while Valentine stood in the church, though his eyes and his surface thoughts were occupied with the approaching ceremony, still in devouter and more hopeful fashion than he had found possible of late, he repeated, "Please God, when I have given up all, as my poor father would wish, I shall have my chance over again. I'll work, like my betters, and take not a stick or a clod away from that Melcombe."

The guests were arriving. John Mortimer had been standing at the altar-rails, his three sons with him. Several members of the family grouped themselves right and left of him. This was to be the quietest of weddings. And Miss Christie Grant thought what a pity that was; for a grander man than the bridegroom or handsomer little fellows than his two younger sons it would be hard to find. "He's just majestic," she whispered to Mrs. Henfrey. "Never did I see him look so handsome or so content, and there's hardly anybody to see him. Ay, here they come." Miss Christie seldom saw anything to admire in her own sex. Valentine looked down the aisle; his sister was coming, and John Mortimer's twin-daughters, her only bridesmaids, behind her.

The children behaved very well, though it was said afterwards that a transaction took place at that moment between Bertie and Hugh, in the course of which several large scarlet-runner beans were exchanged for some acorns; also that when John Mortimer moved down the aisle to meet his bride little Anastasia, seizing Mrs. Henfrey's gown to steady herself, thrust out her crutch toward Valentine, that he might have the privilege of again admiring it.

The peculiarity of this wedding, distinguishing it from others where love is, was the measureless contentment of the future step-children. "Nothing new in this family," observed Mrs. Henfrey. "When Emily's mother came here, all her children took to my father directly, and loved him as if he had been their own."

Emily had been married from her brother's house, Valentine's old home, and in the dining-room there was spread a wedding breakfast. The room looked nearly as it had done when Valentine should have appeared to be a bridegroom himself; but he did not know this so well as Dorothea did; yet he felt exceedingly sheepish, and was only consoled by observing that she also was a good deal out of countenance, and scarcely knew whether to blush or to smile when she spoke to him or met his eyes.

So the ceremony of the breakfast well over, and John Mortimer and his wife departed, Valentine was very glad to take leave of his family and walk across the fields with Johnnie. He did this partly to while away the time before his train started, partly to see Swan, who, with Mrs. Swan in gorgeous array, was found walking about the garden, her husband showing her the plants and flowers, and enlarging on their perfections.

"But how can I find time for it, even on this noble occasion, Mr. Melcombe, my wife's just been saying, is a wonder, for that long new conservatory all down the front of the house will take a sight of filling—filled it shall be, and with the best, for if ever there was a lady as deserved the best, it's Mrs. John Mortimer. I'm sorry now I burnt so many of my seedlings."

"Burnt them, Nicholas?"

"Why yes, sir," said Mrs. Swan, "when he used to be sitting up with Mr. Johnnie, he had plenty of time to think, and he did it."

Johnnie being not yet so strong as before his accident, now went into the house to rest, and Swan proceeded to explain matters.

"It seems, sir, that the new mistress said some time ago, that if there was a conservatory along the front of the house, the rooms could be entered from it, and need not be thoroughfares; so Mr. John Mortimer built one, for he prizes every word she ever said. Now he had allers allowed me to sell for my own benefit such of my seedlings as we couldn't use ourselves. And Fergus sent, when the children were ill, and made me a handsome bid for them. But there air things as can't be made fair and square anyhow. The farrier has no right to charge me so high for shoeing my horse that I'm forced to sell him my horse to pay his bill; but he has a right to say he won't shoe him at all. Well, I reckoned as a fair price wouldn't do for me, and an unfair price I was above asking, so I flung the seedlings on my pea-sticks, and made a bon-fire on 'em."

"You did! I think that was waste, Swan. I think it was wrong."

"No, sir, I think not; for, as I said, some things won't pay at any figure. Their soil's better than ours. He meant to bribe me, and so beat me, and bring me down through my own plants. But would it pay a man to insure his brig that was not seaworthy (though he was to get L50,000 if she went down) provided he had to sail in her himself? Better by half break her up in the harbour, and have a dry burial for his corpse when his time was come, and mourners to follow, decent and comfortable. Now it's reason that if I'd known of this here new conservatory, and the new lad I'm to have to help me, I'd have kept them."

"Mrs. Swan," said Valentine, observing that she was moving away, "if it's agreeable to you, I'll come in shortly and take a cup of tea with you."

Mrs. Swan expressed herself pleased, and Swan marched off after her to get ready some cuttings which he was very desirous to send to the gardener at Melcombe.

"How Swanny talks!" said Barbara, who had now returned with her sisters in the carriage, and joined Valentine; "he is so proud when his wife has her best things on, her silk gown and her grand shawl; she only wears them at flower shows and great days like this because she's a Methodist."

Mrs. Swan, in fact, consented out of wifely affection to oblige her husband by wearing this worldly array when he specially desired it, but she always sighed more than usual, and behaved with even more sobriety and gravity then, as if to show that the utmost splendour of the world as represented by the satinet gown and a Paisley shawl could not make her forget that she was mortal, or puff up her heart with unbecoming pride.

Valentine, when a young boy, had often taken tea with Mrs. Swan, generally by invitation, when radishes and fruit were added to the buttered muffins.

On this occasion she gave him brown bread and butter, and some delicate young onions, together with a cake, baked in honour of Mr. Mortimer's wedding. Valentine thought it was only due to her that she should be told something concerning Joseph's wedding. A man's mother does not often care to hear of her son's love for another woman, but Valentine expected to please Mrs. Swan on this occasion.

"Like old times to see you, sir," she said, "ain't it, Nicholas?"

Then Valentine, seated at his ease, told his story, and was aware before it was half over that Swan was attempting to feign a surprise he did not feel, and that Mrs. Swan was endeavouring to keep within due bounds her expression of the surprise she did feel.

"Bless my heart!" she exclaimed, "you take this very easy, Nicholas."

Then Mr. Swan said, looking rather foolish, "Well, Maria, there's many more wonderful things in this world to hear on than to hear that a young man have fell in love with a young woman."

Mrs. Swan gasped. "Our Joey!" she exclaimed; "and what will Mr. Mortimer think?"

Valentine sat, composed, and almost impassive.

"You think she likes our boy, sir?"

"I am sure of it."

"How is he ever to maintain her as she'll expect!"

"She has a thousand pounds of her own; that will help him. I have written to him that he must settle it on her."

Here Mrs. Swan's added surprise made her thoughtful.

"She is a good, modest, virtuous young lady, as I've heerd," said Swan, looking pointedly at Valentine, as if to admonish-him that the mother would like to have this confirmed.

"Yes," answered Valentine, with great decision; "she is all that and more, she is very affectionate, and has a good temper."

"Well," said Swan, drawing a deep breath, "all I have to observe is, that wives were made afore coats of mail, though coats of female would be more to the purpose here" (he meant coats of arms), "and," continued the gardener, with that chivalrous feeling which lies at the very core of gentlemanhood, "I'm not going to disparage my son, my Joey, that would be to disparage her chice. If she thinks he's ekal to be her husband, she'll respect him as a wife should. Why, bless you, Maria, my dear, if you come to that, there's hardly a young man alive that's ekal to his young wife, whether she be gentle or simple. They're clean above us, most on 'em. But he can rise; Joseph can rise if she'll help him."

"My word!" repeated Mrs. Swan several times over; and then added slowly, "It'll be an awk'ard thing for Swan if Mr. Mortimer should take offence about this."

Valentine was perfectly aware that something either in his manner, or his account of his own part in the matter, had much surprised them; also he thought that their poor place and preferment in this world seemed to them to be menaced by it. He did what he could to dissipate any such thoughts, and added a request that until they heard from Joseph that he was actually married nothing might be said about the matter. This request was very welcome to Mrs. Swan. It seemed to put off an eventful day, which she was not ready for even in imagination.

"Swan," said Valentine, "when he had taken leave of his hostess, this is no news to you."

"No, sir, Joseph told me all about it afore he sailed, and how he thought he'd got over it. Mr. Mortimer knows, as you're aware. Well, lastly, Joseph wrote again and told me he was fairly breaking his heart about her, and he should try his chance once more. You see, sir, his ways and fashions and hers are not alike. It would not have answered here—but there they'd both have to learn perfectly new ways and manners, and speak to their feller creatures in a new language. There's hardly another Englishman for her to measure him with, and not one English lady to let her know she should have made a better match."

"Mr. Mortimer knows?"

"Ay, sir."

"And you never told your wife?"

"No, she has a good deal to hear, Mr. Valentine, besides that, and I thought I'd tell it her all at once."

Valentine saw that he was expected to ask a question here.

"What, Swanny, is something else coming off then?"

"Ay, sir; you see, Mr. Melcombe, I'm lost here, I'm ekal to something better, Mr. Mortimer knows it as well as I do. He's said as much to me more than once. What he'll do without me I'm sure I don't know, but I know well enough he'll never get such another."

"No, I don't suppose he will."

"There ain't such a gardener going—not for his weight in gold. But I'm off in the spring. I've done a'most all but break it to my wife. It's Joseph that's helping me, and for hindrance I've got a Methodist chapel and a boarded floor. There's boarded floors to her kitchen, and back kitchen, as Mr. Mortimer put in for her, because she was so rheumatic, they air what she chiefly vally's the place for. But at some of them small West India islands there's a fine opening, Joey says, for a man with a headpiece as can cultivate, and knows what crops require, and I ought to go. I'm only sixty-one or thereabouts. You'll not say anything about it, sir," he continued, as the twins, who were in the garden, came towards Valentine.

They brought him in triumph to the schoolroom, which was decorated, and full of the wedding presents the children had made for their father and the dear mamma.

"And you'll remember," said Bertram, "how you promised us—promised us with all your might, that we should come to Melcombe."

"Yes, all of us," proceeded Anastasia; "he said the little ones too."

"So you should have done, you poor darlings, but for that accident," said Valentine.

"And we were to see the pears and apples gathered, and have such fun. Do you know that you're a sort of uncle now to us?"

"What sort? The right sort?"

"Yes, and now when shall we come?"

"I am afraid I shall be away all the winter."

"In the spring, then, and father and the dear mamma."

"It's a long time till the spring," said Valentine, with a sigh; "but if I am at Melcombe then-"

"You'll have us?"

"Yes."

"Then let it be in the Easter holidays," said Johnnie, "that I may come too."

"All right," said Valentine, and he took leave of them, and departed in one of their father's carriages for the Junction, muttering as he looked back at the house, "No, you'll never see Melcombe, youngsters. I shall be at the other end of the earth, perhaps, by that time."

"Oh, what a long time to wait!" quoth the younger Mortimers; "five months and a half to Easter—twenty-three weeks—twenty-three times seven—what a lot of days! Now, if we were going to sea, as the Brandon baby is, we shouldn't mind waiting. What a pity that such a treat should come to a little stupid thing that does nothing but sputter and crow instead of to us! Such a waste of pleasure." They had never heard of "the irony of fate," but in their youthful manner they felt it then.

So St. George Mortimer Brandon was borne off to the Curlew, and there, indifferent to the glory of sunsets, or the splendour of bays and harbours, he occupied his time in cutting several teeth, in learning to seize everything that came near him, and in finding out towards the end of the time how to throw or drop his toys overboard. He was even observed on a calm day to watch these waifs as they floated off, and was confidently believed to recognise them as his own property, while in such language as he knew, which was not syllabic, he talked and scolded at them, as if, in spite of facts, he meant to charge them with being down there entirely through their own perversity.

There is nothing so unreasonable as infancy, excepting the maturer stages of life.

His parents thought all this deeply interesting. So did the old uncle, who put down the name of St. George Mortimer Brandon for a large legacy, and was treated by the legatee with such distinguishing preference as seemed to suggest that he must know what he was about, and have an eye already to his own interests.

Four months and a half. The Mortimers did not find them so long in passing as in anticipation, and whether they were long or short to their father and his new wife, they did not think of considering. Only a sense of harmony and peace appeared to brood over the place, and they felt the sweetness of it, though they never found out its name. There was more freedom than of yore. Small persons taken with a sudden wish to go down and see what father and mamma were about could do so; one would go tapping about with a little crutch, another would curl himself up at the end of the room, and never seem at all in the way. The new feminine element had great fascinations for them, they made pictures for Emily, and brought her flowers, liking to have a kiss in return, and to feel the softness of her velvet-gown.

The taller young people, instead of their former tasteless array, wore delightfully pretty frocks and hats, and had other charming decorations chosen for them. They began to love the memory of their dead mother. What could she not have been to them if she had lived, when only a step-mother was so sweet and so dear and so kind? And mamma had said to them long before she had thought of marrying father, that their mother would have greatly wished them to please their father's wife, and love her if they could. Nothing was so natural as to do both, but it was nice, to be sure, that she would have approved.

It was not long after John Mortimer and his wife returned from their very short wedding tour that they had a letter from Valentine, and he had spoken so confidently of his intended absence in the south of Europe during the later autumn and the whole winter, that they were surprised to find he had not yet started, and surprised also at the excessive annoyance, the unreasonable annoyance he expressed at having been detained to be a witness at some trial of no great importance. The trial had not come on so soon as it should have done, and he was kept lingering on at this dull, melancholy Melcombe, till he was almost moped to death.

Emily folded up this letter with a sensation of pain and disappointment. She had hoped that prosperity would do so much for Valentine, and wondered to find him dissatisfied and restless, when all that life can yield was within his reach.

His next letter showed that he meant to stay at Melcombe all the winter. He complained no more; but from that time, instead of stuffing his letters with jokes, good and bad, he made them grave and short, and Emily was driven to the conclusion that rumour must be right, the rumour which declared that young Mr. Melcombe was breaking his heart for that pretty, foolish Laura.

At last the Easter holidays arrived, Johnnie came home, and forthwith Emily received a letter from Valentine with the long-promised invitation. The cherry orchards were in blossom, the pear-trees were nearly out; he wanted his sister and John Mortimer to come, and bring the whole tribe of children, and make a long stay with him. Some extraordinary things were packed up as presents for cousin Val, an old and much-loved leader, and Emily allowed more pets and more toys to accompany the cavalcade than anybody else would have thought it possible to get into two carriages. The little crutch, happily, was no longer wanted.

All the country was white with blossom when Valentine met his guests at the door of Melcombe House. It was late in the afternoon. Emily thought her brother looked thin, but the children rushing round him, and taking possession of him, soon made her forget that, and the unwelcome thought of Laura, for she saw his almost boyish delight in his young guests, and they made him sit down, and closed him in, thrusting up, with tyrannous generosity, cages of young starlings, all for him, and demanding that a room, safe from cats, should immediately be set aside for them. Then two restless, yelping puppies were proudly brought forward, hugged in their owner's arms. Emily, who loved a stir, and a joyous chattering, felt her spirits rise. Her marriage had drawn the families yet nearer together, and for the rest of that evening she pleased herself with the thought.

The next morning she wanted to see this beautiful house and garden. Valentine was showman, and the whole family accompanied her, wandering among the great white pear-trees, and the dark yews, then going into the stable-yard, to see the strange, old out-buildings, with doors of heavy, ancient oak, and then on to the glen.

Valentine did not seem to care about his beautiful house, he rather disparaged it.

"You're not to say, 'it's well enough,' when it's beautiful," observed Anastasia.

Then with what was considered by the elder portion of the party to be a pretty specimen of childish sagacity, Hugh admonished his little sister—

"But he mustn't praise his own things; that's not good manners. He talks in this way to make us think that he's not conceited; but he really knows in his heart that they're very handsome."

"Is he grander than father, mamma dear?" asked Anastasia.

"I don't think so, my sweet," answered Emily laughing. "I see you are not too grand, Val, to use your father's old repeater."

"No," said Valentine, who had been consulting rather a shabby old watch, and who now excused himself for leaving the party on the ground of an appointment that he had made. "This, and a likeness of him that I have in the house, are among the things I most value."

What did the appointment matter to them?

John noticed that he walked as if weary, or reluctant perhaps to leave them. He was the only person who noticed anything, for you must understand that the place was full of nests. All sorts of birds built there, even herons; and to stand at the brink of the glen, and actually see them—look down on to the glossy backs of the brooding mothers, and count the nests—wealth incalculable of eggs, and that of all sorts,—to do this, and not to be sure yet whether you shall ever finger them, is a sensation for a boy that, as Mr. Weller said, "is more easier conceived than described."

And so Valentine went in. There were two appointments for him to keep, one with his doctor, one with his lawyer. The first told him he had unduly tired himself, and should lie down. So lying down, in his grandmother's favourite sitting-room, he received the second, but could decide on nothing, because he had not yet found opportunity to consult the person principally concerned.

So after the man of law had departed, Valentine continued to lie quietly on the sofa for perhaps an hour; he closed his eyes, and had almost the air of a man who is trying to gather strength for something that he has to do.

Children's voices roused him at last. Emily was moving up the garden towards the house, leaning on John's arm; the two younger children were with them, all the others having dispersed themselves about the place.

Valentine sat up to gaze, and as their faces got nearer a sudden anguish, that was not envy, overcame him.

It was not so much the splendour of manly prime and strength that struck him with the contrast to himself, not so much even the sight of love, as of hope, and spring, and bloom, that were more than he could bear. How sufficient to themselves they seemed! How charming Emily was! A woman destined to inspire a life-long love seldom shows much consciousness of it. "I never saw a fellow so deeply in love with his wife," thought Valentine. "Surely she knows it. What are you saying to her, John?" They had stopped under the great fruit-trees near the garden-door. John bent down one of the blossom-laden boughs, and she, fair, and almost pale, stood in the delicate white shadow looking at it.

Beautiful manhood and womanhood! beautiful childhood, and health, and peace! Valentine laid himself down again and shut his eyes.

Emily had betrayed a little anxiety about him that morning. He was very thin, she said; he must take care of himself.

"Oh, yes," he had answered, "I shall do that. I have been very unwell, but I am better now." And then he had noticed that John looked at him uneasily, and seemed disturbed when he coughed. He thought that as they stood under the fruit-trees John had caught sight of him.

"I knew he would come up as soon as he found opportunity, and here he is," thought Valentine, not moving from his place, but simply lifting up his head as John entered. "What have you done with Emily?" he asked.

"Emily is gone up to her dressing-room. She means to hear the children read."

"Ah," exclaimed Valentine, with a sudden laugh of good-humoured raillery, "of all womankind, John, you have evidently secured the pearl, the 'one entire and perfect chrysolite.' You know you think so."

"Yes," answered John gravely, "but don't put me off, my dear fellow."

"What do you want? What do you mean?" said Valentine, for John sitting down near him, held out his hand. "Oh, nonsense; I'm all right." But he put his own into it, and let John with his other hand push up the sleeve of his coat.

"Too thin by half, isn't it?" he said, affecting indifference, as John gravely relinquished it; "but I am so mummied up in flannels that it doesn't show much."

"My dear fellow," John Mortimer repeated.

"Yes, I have been long unwell, but now I have leave to start in one week, John. I'm to take a sea voyage. You told me you could only stay here a few days, and there is a great deal that ought to be done while you are here. Don't look so dismayed, the doctors give me every hope that I shall be all right again."

"I devoutly hope so——"

"There's nothing to drive the blood from your manly visage," Valentine said lightly, then went on, "There is one thing that I ought not to have neglected so long, and if I were in the best health possible I still ought to do it, before I take a long sea voyage." He spoke now almost with irritation, as if he longed to leave the subject of his health and was urgent to talk of business matters. John Mortimer, with as much indifference as he could assume, tried to meet his wishes.

"You have been in possession of this estate almost a year," he said, "so I hope, indeed I assume, that the making of a will is not what you have neglected?"

"But it is."

Rather an awkward thing this to be said to the heir-at-law. He paused for a moment, then remarked, "I met just now, driving away from your door, the very man who read to us our grandmother's will."

"I have been telling him that he shall make one for me forthwith."

"When I consider that you have many claims," said John, "and consider further that your property is all land, I wonder at your——"

"My neglect. Yes, I knew you would say so."

"When shall this be done then?"

"To-morrow."

Then Valentine began to talk of other matters, and he expressed, with a directness certainly not called for, his regret that John Mortimer should have made the sacrifices he had acknowledged to, in order eventually to withdraw his name and interest altogether from his banking affairs.

John was evidently surprised, but he took Valentine's remarks good-humouredly.

"I know you have had losses," continued Valentine. "But now you have got a partner, and——"

"It's all settled," said John, declining to argue the question.

"You fully mean to retire from probable riches to a moderate competence?"

"Quite; I have, as you say, made great sacrifices in order to do so."

"I rather wonder at you," Valentine added; "there was no great risk, hardly any, in fact."

"I do not at all repent my choice," said John with a smile in his eyes that showed Valentine how useless it was to say more. John was amused, surprised, but not moved at all from his determination. He thought proper to add, "My father, as you know, left two thousand pounds each to every one of my children."

"And he gave the same sum to me," Valentine broke in. "You said my property was all land, but it is not. And so, John, you will no longer be a rich man."

"I shall be able to live just as I do at present," answered John Mortimer, calmly turning him round to his own duty. "And you have relatives who are decidedly poor. Then one of your sisters has married a curate without a shilling, or any seeming chance of preferment; and your brother, to whom you owe so much, has cramped his resources very much for the sake of his mother's family. Of course, when I married Emily, I insisted on repaying him the one thousand pounds he had made over to her on her first marriage, but——"

"Giles is very fairly off," interrupted Valentine, "and some day no doubt his wife will have a good fortune."

"I thought the old man had settled eight thousand pounds on her."

"He made a settlement on her when she was to marry me, and he signed it. But that settlement was of no use when she married St. George."

"Had he the imprudence, then, to leave everything to chance?"

"Even so. But, John, St. George will never have a single acre of Melcombe."



CHAPTER XXXVI.

A PRIVATE CONSULTATION.

"Remove from me the way of lying...I have chosen the way of truth."—PSALM cxix. 29, 30.

"Why, you young rogues, you make your father blush for your appetites," said John Mortimer to his boys, when he saw Valentine at the head of the table, serving out great slices of roast beef at a luncheon which was also to be early dinner for the children.

Valentine had placed Emily at the other end of the table. "Take my place, John," he now said laughing, "I always was a most wretched carver."

"No, love, no," pleaded Emily to her husband in a quick low tone of entreaty, and John, just in time to check himself in the act of rising, turned the large dish toward him instead, and began to carve it, making as if he had not heard Valentine's request. But Valentine having taken some wine and rested for a few moments, after the slight exertion, which had proved too much for his strength, looked at his sister till she raised her eyes to meet his, smiled, and murmured to her across the table, "You daughter of England, 'I perceive that in many things you are too superstitious.'"

Emily had nothing to say in reply. She had made involuntary betrayal of her thought. She shrank from seeing her husband in her brother's place, because she was anxious about, afraid for, this same brother. She had even now and then a foreboding fear lest ere long she should see John there for good. But to think so, was to take a good deal for granted, and now Valentine chose to show her that he had understood her feeling perfectly.

She would fain not have spoken, but she could not now amend her words. "Never was any one freer from superstition than he," she thought, "but after all, in spite of what John tells me of his doctor's opinion, and how the voyage is to restore him, why must I conceal an anxiety so natural and so plainly called for? I will not. I shall speak. I shall try to break down his reserve; give him all the comfort and counsel I can, and get him to open his mind to me in the view of a possible change."

Emily was to take a drive at four o'clock, her husband and her brother with her.

In the meantime Valentine told her he was going to be busy, and John had promised to help him. "An hour and a half," he sighed, as he mounted the stairs with John to his old grandmother's sitting-room, "an hour and a half, time enough and too much. I'll have it out, and get it over."

"Now then," said John Mortimer, seating himself before a writing-table, "tell me, my dear fellow, what it is that I can do to help you?"

He did not find his position easy. Valentine had let him know pointedly that he should not leave the estate to his half brother. All was in his own power, yet John Mortimer might have been considered the rightful heir. What so natural and likely as that it should be left to him? John did not even feign to his own mind that he was indifferent about this, he had all the usual liking for an old family place or possession. He thought it probable that Valentine meant it to come to him, and wanted to consult with him as to some burdens to be laid on the land for the benefit of his mother's family.

If Valentine's death in early youth had been but a remote contingency, the matter could have been very easily discussed, but hour by hour John Mortimer felt less assured that the poor young fellow's own hopeful view was the true one.

Valentine had extended himself again on the sofa. "I want you presently to read some letters," he said; "they are in that desk, standing before you."

John opened it, and in the act of turning it towards him his eyes wandered to the garden, and then to the lovely country beyond; they seemed for the moment to be arrested by its beauty, and his hand paused.

"What a landscape!" he said, "and how you have improved the place, Val! I did not half do it justice the last time I came here."

"I hate it," said Valentine with irritation, "and everything belonging to it."

John looked at him with scarcely any surprise.

"That is only because you have got out of health since you came here; you have not been able to enjoy life. But you are better, you know. You are assured that you have good hope of coming back recovered. I devoutly trust you may. Forget any morbid feelings that may have oppressed you. The place is not to blame. Well, and these letters—I only see two. Are they all?"

"Yes. But, John, you can see that I am not very strong."

"Yes, indeed," said John with an involuntary sigh.

"Well, then, I want you to be considerate. I mean," he added, when he perceived that he had now considerably astonished John Mortimer—"I mean that when you have read them. I want you to take some little time to think before you speak to me at all."

"Why, this is in my uncle's handwriting!" exclaimed John.

"Yes," answered Valentine, and he turned away as he still reclined, that he might not see the reader, "so it is."

Silence then—silence for a longer time than it could have taken to read that letter. Valentine heard deep breathing from time to time, and the rustling of pages turned and turned again. At last, when there was still silence, he moved on the sofa and looked at his cousin.

John was astonished, as was evident, and mystified; but more than that, he was indignant and exceedingly alarmed.

Valentine had asked him to be considerate. His temper was slightly hasty; but he was bearing the request in mind, and controlling it, though his heightened colour and flashing eyes showed that he suffered keenly from a baffling sense of shame and impending disgrace. These feelings, however, were subsiding, and as they retired his astonishment seemed to grow, and his hand trembled when he folded up the letter for the last time and laid it down.

He took up the second letter, which was addressed to his grandmother, and read it through.

It set forth that the writer, Cuthbert Melcombe, being then in London, had heard that morning the particulars of his young uncle's death at sea, had heard it from one of the young man's brother officers, and felt that he ought to detail them to his mother; he then went on to relate certain commonplace incidents of a lingering illness and death at sea.

After this he proceeded to inform his mother that he had bought for her in Leadenhall Street the silver forks she had wished for, and was about to pack them up, and send them (with this letter enclosed in the parcel) by coach to Hereford, where his mother then was.

"Why did you show me this?" said John in a low, husky tone. "There is nothing in it."

"I found it," Valentine replied, "carefully laid by itself in a desk, as being evidently of consequence."

"We know that all the other Melcombes died peaceably in their beds," John answered; "and it shows (what I had been actually almost driven to doubt) that this poor young fellow did also. There is no real evidence, however, that the letter was written in London; it bears no post-mark."

"No," said Valentine; "how could there be? It came in a parcel. THE LETTER, John, will tell you nothing."

"I don't like it," John Mortimer answered. "There is a singular formality about the narrative;" and before he laid it down he lifted it slightly, and, as it seemed half unconsciously, towards the light, and then his countenance changed, and he said beneath his breath, "Oh, that's it, is it!"

Valentine started from the sofa.

"What have you found?" he cried out, and, coming behind John, he also looked through the paper, and saw in the substance of it a water-mark, showing when it had been pressed. Eighteen hundred and seven was the date. But this letter was elaborately dated from some hotel in London, 1804. "A lie! and come to light at last!" he said in an awe-struck whisper. "It has deceived many innocent people. It has harboured here a long time."

"Now, wait a minute," answered John. "Stop—no more. You asked me to be considerate to you. Be also considerate to me. If, in case of your death, there is left on earth no wrong for me to right, I desire you to be silent for ever."

He took Valentine by the arm and helped him to the sofa, for he was trembling with excitement and surprise.

"There is no wrong that can be righted now," Valentine presently found voice enough to say; "there never has been from the first, unless I am mistaken."

"Then I depend on your love for me and mine—your own family—to be silent in life, and silent after death. See that no such letters as these are left behind you."

"I have searched the whole place, and there is not another letter—not one line. You may well depend on me. I will be silent."

John stood lost in thought and amazement; he read Daniel Mortimer's letter again, folded it reverently, and pressed it between his hands. "Well, I am grateful to him," Valentine heard him whisper, and he sank into thought again.

"Our fathers were perfectly blameless," said Valentine.

John roused himself then. "Evidently, thank God! And now these two letters—they concern no one but ourselves." He approached the grate; a fire was burning in it. He lifted off the coals, making a hollow bed in its centre. "You will let me burn them now, of course?"

"Yes," said Valentine; "but not together."

"No; you are right," John answered, and he took old Daniel Mortimer's letter and laid it into the place he had prepared, covering it with the glowing cinders, then with the poker he pushed the other between the lower bars, and he and Valentine watched it till every atom was consumed.

There was no more for him to tell; John Mortimer thought he knew enough. Valentine felt what a relief this was, but also that John's amazement by no means subsided. He was trying hard to be gentle, to be moderately calm; he resolutely forbore from any comment on Valentine's conduct; but he could not help expressing his deep regret that the matter should have been confided to any one—even to Brandon—and finding, perhaps, that his horror and indignation were getting the better of him, he suddenly started up, and declared that he would walk about in the gallery for awhile. "For," he said pointedly to Valentine, "as you were remarking to me this morning, there is a good deal that ought to be done at once," and out he dashed into the fresh spring air, and strode about in the long wooden gallery, with a vigour and vehemence that did not promise much for the quietness of their coming discussion.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, went by—almost half an hour—before John Mortimer came in again.

Valentine looked up and saw, as John shut himself in, that he looked almost as calm as usual, and that his face had regained its customary hue.

"My difficulty, of course, is Emily," he said. "If this had occurred a year ago it would have been simpler." Valentine wondered what he meant; but he presently added in a tone, however, as of one changing the subject, "Well, my dear fellow, you were going to have a talk with me, you know, about the making of your will. You remarked that you possessed two thousand pounds."

Valentine wondered at his coolness, he spoke so completely as usual.

"And what would you have me do with that?" he answered with a certain directness and docility that made John Mortimer pause; he perceived that whatever he proposed would be done.

"I think if you left a thousand pounds to the old aunt who brought your mother up, and has a very scanty pittance, it would be worthy of your kindly nature, and no more than her due."

"Well, John, I'll do it. And the other thousand?"

"Louisa has married a rich man's son, and I have made a handsome settlement on Emily, but your sister Lizzie has nothing."

"I will leave her the other thousand; and—and now, John, there is the estate—there is Melcombe. I thought you had a right to know that there had been a disadvantage as regarded my inheritance of it, but you are perfectly——" He hesitated for a word.

John turned his sentence rather differently for him, and went on with it. "But you feel that I am perfectly entitled to give you my opinion?"

"Certainly."

"I advise that you leave it for a county hospital."

"John!"

"Unconditionally and for ever, for," John went on calmly and almost gently, "we are here a very long way from the county town, where the only hospital worth anything is situated. This house has, on two stories, a corridor running completely through it, and is otherwise so built that it would require little alteration for such a purpose. The revenue from the land would go a good way towards supporting it. Therefore, as I said before—" Then pausing, when he observed the effect of his words on Valentine, he hesitated, and instead of going on, said, "I am very sorry, my dear Valentine."

"This is a shock to me," said Valentine. "It shows me so plainly that you would not have acted as I have done, if you had been in my place."

As he seemed to wait for an answer, John said, with more decided gentleness, "I suppose it does;" and went on in a tone half apology, half persuasion, "But you will see your lawyer to-morrow, and, using all discretion, direct him as I propose."

"Yes. Nothing at all is to go to you then?"

"I should like to have this portrait of your father; and, Val, I wish to assure you most sincerely that I do not judge your conduct. I have no opinion to give upon it."

"I have a good right to tell you now, that I have for some months fully intended to give up the place."

"Well, I am glad of that."

"I hope to recover, and then to work, living abroad, the better to conceal matters. I had quite decided, John; and yet what you have done is a shock to me. I feel that I am judged by it. I told you in the autumn that I meant to go away; I did. But though I took the estate so easily, so almost inevitably, I could not get away from it, though I wished and tried."

"But you can now. If you want money, of course you will look to me to help you. And so you could not manage to go?"

"No. So long as I was well and in high spirits I never meant to go; but one night I got a great shock, and walking home afterwards by the mere, I felt the mist strike to my very marrow. I have never been well since. I had no heart to recover; but when I might have got away I was detained by that trumpery trial till I was so ill that I could not safely travel; but now, John, I am ready, and you cannot imagine how I long to be off, and, please God, begin a better life, and serve Him as my old father did. I have three hundred pounds of honest money in hand, besides the two thousand your father gave me. But, John, Emily is my favourite sister."

"There!" said John, "I was afraid this would come."

"If I should die young—if she should find that I have left every shilling and every acre away from you and her, two of the people I love most, and thrown it into the hands of strangers, I could not bear to know that she would think meanly of my good sense and my affection after I am gone."

John was silent.

"For," continued Valentine, "no one feels more keenly than she does that it is not charity, not a good work, in a man to leave from his own family what he does not want and can no longer use, thinking that it is just as acceptable to God as if he had given it in his lifetime, when he liked it, enjoyed it—when, in short, it was his own."

"You alienate it with no such thoughts."

"Oh, no, God forbid! But she will think I must have done. There is hardly any one living who cares for me as much as she does. It would be very distressing for me to die, knowing she would think me a fanatic, or a fellow with no affection."

"I was afraid you would think of this."

"You will say something to her, John. All will depend on you. She will be so hurt, so astonished that I should have done such a thing that she will never open her lips about it to you. I know her, and, and——"

John seemed to feel this appeal very keenly: he could not look Valentine in the face. "I acknowledge," he muttered, "that this is hard."

"But you will say something to her?"

"If you can think of anything in the world that would not be better left unsaid—if you can think of any one thing that for the sake of her love and sorrow, and my peace and your own memory, should not be left to the silence you deprecate—then tell me what it is."

Neither spoke for some time after that. At last the poor young fellow said, with something like a sob, "Then you meant that when you mentioned Emily?"

"Yes, I did. I felt how hard it was. I feel it much more now I know you are going to divest yourself of any profit during your life." He had been looking at Valentine anxiously and intently. The large eyes, too bright for health; the sharp, finely-cut features and pallid forehead. Suddenly turning, he caught sight of himself in the glass, and stood arrested by a momentary surprise. Very little accustomed to consider his own appearance, for he had but a small share of personal vanity, he was all the more astonished thus to observe the contrast. The fine hues of health, the clear calm of the eyes, the wide shoulders and grand manly frame. This sudden irresistible consciousness of what a world of life and strength there was in him, had just the opposite effect of what seemed the natural one. "Perhaps he may survive us both," he thought. "Who can tell?"

"But it seems to me," he continued aloud, "that we have talked as if it was more than likely that Emily and I were to have some knowledge and consciousness of this will of yours; and yet the vicissitudes of life and the surprises of death ought to place them almost outside our thoughts of probability, I hope to see you some day as grey-headed as your father was. I hope it indeed! it may well be the case, and I not be here to see."

Valentine, always hopeful, was very much cheered by this speech. He did not know how John's thought had been turned in this direction by a strong sense of that very improbability which he wanted to leave out of the question.

They remained some time in silence together after this—John lost in thought, Valentine much the better for having relieved his mind. Then Emily came to the door ready for her drive, and looking very sweet and serene.

"Come, you have been talking long enough. John, how grave you look! I could not forbear to let you know that some letters have arrived. St. George and Dorothea are at home again, and the baby can almost walk alone. But, Val, it seems that you have been inviting young Crayshaw here?"

"I have taken that liberty, madam," said Valentine. "Have you anything to say against it?"

Emily smiled, but made no answer.

"That boy and I suit each other uncommonly well," continued Valentine. "Our correspondence, though I say it, would be worth publishing—stuck as full of jokes as a pincushion should be of pins. It often amused me when I was ill. But his brother is going to take him home."

"Ah, home to America!" said Emily, betraying to neither John nor Valentine the pleasure this news gave her.

John was silent, still deeply pondering the unwelcome surprise of the afternoon. Valentine was refreshed by her presence, and at finding his avowal over.

"And so," continued Valentine, "he wrote to me and asked if I would have him for two days before he left. He knew that you would all be here, and he wanted to take leave."

"He is a droll young fellow," said Emily. "Johnnie will miss his 'chum.' One of the letters was from him. He is to be here in an hour, and Johnnie has started off to meet him, with Bertie and one of the girls."

The other of the girls, namely, Gladys, had betrayed just a little shyness, and had left his young allies to go and fetch Crayshaw without her. Emily meeting her in the corridor as she came up-stairs, had stopped and given her a cordial kiss.

"She is so very young," thought the warm-hearted step-mother. "She will soon forget it."

She took Gladys with her, and after their short drive managed that they should be together when young Crayshaw appeared; and she helped her through a certain embarrassment and inclination to contradict herself while answering his reproachful inquiries respecting Blob, his dog.

"Father would not let us bring him," said Barbara, confirming the assurance of the others on that head.