"And at this period," continued Dr. Wycherley, "my experience leads me to believe that some latent delusion is generally germinating in the mind, though often concealed with consummate craft by the patient: the open development of this delusion is the next stage, and, with this last morbid phenomenon, Incubation ceases and Insanity begins. Sometimes, however, the illusion is physical rather than psychical, of the sense rather than of the intelligence. It commences at night: the incubator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a photopsic* character, or hearing nocturnal sounds, neither of which have any material existence, being conveyed to his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, the judgment succumbs under the morbid impression produced so repeatedly. These are the ordinary antecedent symptoms characteristic of the incubation of insanity; to which are frequently added somatic exaltation, or, in popular language, physical excitability—a disposition to knit the brows—great activity of the mental faculties—or else a well-marked decline of the powers of the understanding—an exaggeration of the normal conditions of thought—or a reversal of the mental habits and sentiments, such as a sudden aversion to some person hitherto beloved, or some study long relished and pursued."

* Luminous.

Jane asked leave to note these all down in her note-book.

Mr. Hardie assented adroitly; for he was thinking whether he could not sift some grain out of all this chaff. Should Alfred blab his suspicions, here were two gentlemen who would at all events help him to throw ridicule on them.

Dr. Wycherley having politely aided Jane Hardie to note down the "preliminary process of the Incubation of disorders of the Intellect," resumed: "Now, sir, your son appears to be in a very inchoate stage of the malady: he has cerebral Kephalalgia and Insomnia——"

"And, oh, doctor," said Jane, "he knits his brows often and has given up his studies; won't go back to Oxford this term."

"Exactly; and seeks isolation, and is a prey to morbid distraction and reverie: but has no palpable illusions, has he?"

"Not that I know of," said Mr. Hardie.

"Well, but," objected Jane, "did not he say something to you very curious the other night about Captain Dodd and fourteen thousand pounds?"

Mr. Hardie's blood ran cold. "No," he stammered, "not that I remember."

"Oh, yes, he did, papa: you have forgotten it: but at the time you were quite puzzled what he could meant: and you did so." She put her finger to her forehead, and the doctors interchanged a meaning glance.

"I believe you are right, Jenny," said Mr. Hardie, taking the cue so unexpectedly offered him: "he did say some nonsense I could not make head nor tail of; but we all have our crotchets. There, run away, like a good girl, and let me explain all this to our good friends here: and mind, not a word about it to Alfred."

When she was gone, he said, "Gentlemen, my son is over head and ears in love; that is all."

"Ay, Erotic monomania is a very ordinary phase of insanity," said Dr. Wycherley.

"His unreasonable passion for a girl he knows he can never marry makes him somewhat crotchety and cranky: that, and over-study, may have unhinged his mind a little. Suppose I send him abroad? My good brother will find the means; or we could advance it him, I and the other trustees; he comes into ten thousand pounds in a month or two."

The doctors exchanged a meaning look. They then dissuaded him earnestly from the idea of Continental travel.

"Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt," said Wycherley, and Osmond explained that Alfred would brood abroad as well as at home, if he went alone; and Dr. Wycherley summed up thus: "The most advisable course is to give him the benefit of the personal superintendence of some skilful physician possessed of means and appliances of every sort for soothing and restraining the specific malady.

Mr. Hardie did not at first see the exact purport of this oleaginous periphrasis. Presently he caught a glimpse; but said he thought confinement was hardly the thing to drive away melancholy.

"Not in all respects," replied Dr. Wycherley; "but, on the other hand, a little gentle restraint is the safest way of effecting a disruption of the fatal associations that have engendered and tend to perpetuate the disorder. Besides, the medicinal appliances are invaluable, including, as they do, the nocturnal and diurnal attendance of a Psycho-physical physician, who knows the Psychosomatic relation of body and mind, and can apply physical remedies, of the effect of which on the physical instrument of intelligence, the grey matter of the brain, we have seen so many examples."

The good doctor then feelingly deplored the inhumanity of parents and guardians in declining to subject their incubators to opportune and salutary restraint under the more than parental care of a Psychosomatic physician. On this head he got quite warm, and inveighed against the abominable cruelty of the thing. "It is contrary," said he, "to every principle of justice and humanity, that a fellow-creature, deranged perhaps only on one point, should, for the want of the early attention of those whose duty it is to watch over him, linger out his existence separated from all who are dear to him, and condemned without any crime to be a prisoner for life."

Mr. Hardie was puzzled by this sentence, in which the speaker's usual method was reversed, and the thought was bigger than the words.

"Oh," said he at last, "I see. We ought to incarcerate our children to keep them from being incarcerated."

"That is one way of putting it with a vengence," said Mr. Osmond staring. "No; what my good friend means——"

"Is this; where the patient is possessor of an income of such a character as to enable his friends to show a sincere affection by anticipating the consequences of neglected morbid phenomena of the brain, there a lamentable want of humanity is exhibited by the persistent refusal to the patient, on the part of his relatives, of the incalculable advantage of the authoritative advice of a competent physician accompanied with the safeguards and preventives of——"

But ere the mellifluous pleonast had done oiling his paradox with fresh polysyllables, to make it slip into the banker's narrow understanding, he met with a curious interruption. Jane Hardie fluttered in to say a man was at the door accusing himself of being deranged.

"How often this sort of coincidence occurs," said Osmond philosophically.

"Do not refuse him, dear papa; it is not for money: he only wants you to give him an order to go into a lunatic asylum."

"Now, there is a sensible man," said Dr. Wycherley.

"Well, but," objected Mr. Hardie, "if he is a sensible man, why does he want to go to an asylum?"

"Oh, they are all sensible at times," observed Mr. Osmond.

"Singularly so," said Dr. Wycherley, warmly. And he showed a desire to examine this paragon, who had the sense to know he was out of his senses.

"It would be but kind of you, sir," said Jane; "poor, poor man!" She added, he did not like to come in, and would they mind just going out to him?

"Oh no, not in the least: especially as you seem interested in him."

And they all three rose and went out together, and found the petitioner at the front door. Who should it be but James Maxley!

His beard was unshaven, his face haggard, and everything about him showed a man broken in spirit as well as fortune: even his voice had lost half its vigour, and, whenever he had uttered a consecutive sentence or two, his head dropped on his breast pitiably: indeed, this sometimes occurred in the middle of a sentence, and then the rest of it died on his lips.

Mr. Richard Hardie was not prepared to encounter one of his unhappy creditors thus publicly, and, to shorten the annoyance, would have dismissed him roughly: but he dared not; for Maxley was no longer alone nor unfriended. When Jane left him to intercede for him, a young man joined him, and was now comforting him with kind words, and trying to get him to smoke a cigar; and this good-hearted young gentleman was the banker's son in the flesh, and his opposite in spirit, Mr. Alfred Hardie.

Finding these two in contact, the Doctors interchanged demurest glances.

Mr. Hardie asked Maxley sullenly what he wanted of them.

"Well, sir," said Maxley despondingly, "I have been to all the other magistrates in the borough; for what with losing my money, and what with losing my missus, I think I bain't quite right in my head; I do see such curious things, enough to make a body's skin creep at times." And down went his head on his chest

"Well?" said Mr. Hardie, peevishly: "go on: you went to the magistrates, and what then?"

Maxley looked up, and seemed to recover the thread: "Why they said 'no,' they couldn't send me to the 'sylum, not from home: I must be a pauper first. So then my neighbours they said I had better come to you." And down went his head again.

"Well, but," said Mr. Hardie, "you cannot expect me to go against the other magistrates."

"Why not, sir? You have had a hatful o' money of me: the other gentlemen han't had a farthing. They owes me no service, but you does: nine hundred pounds' worth, if ye come to that."

There was no malice in this; it was a plain broken-hearted man's notion of give and take; but it was a home-thrust all the same; and Mr. Hardie was visibly discountenanced, and Alfred more so.

Mr. Osmond, to relieve a situation so painful, asked Maxley rather hastily what were the curious things he saw.

Maxley shuddered. "The unreasonablest beasts, sir, you ever saw or heard tell on: mostly snakes and dragons. Can't stoop my head to do no work for them, sir. Bless your heart, if I was to leave you gentlemen now, and go and dig for five minutes in my garden, they would come about me as thick as slugs on cabbage. Why 'twas but yester'en I tried to hoe a bit, and up come the fearfullest great fiery sarpint: scared me so I heaved my hoe and laid on un' properly: presently I seemed to come out of a sort of a kind of a red mist into the clear: and there laid my poor missus's favourite hen; I had been and killed her for a sarpint!" He sighed, then, after a moment's pause, lowered his voice to a whisper: "Now suppose I was to go and take some poor Christian for one of these gre-at bloody dragons I do see at odd times, I might do him a mischief, you know, and not mean him no harm neither. Oh, dooee take and have me locked up, gentlemen, dooee now: tellee I ain't fit to be about, my poor head is so mazed."

"Well, well," said Mr. Hardie, "I'll give you an order for the Union."

"What, make a pauper of me?"

"I cannot help it," said the magistrate: "it is the routine; and it was settled at a meeting of the bench last month that we must adhere to the rule as strictly as possible; the asylum is so full: and you know, Maxley, it is not as if you were dangerous."

"That I be, sir: I don't know what I'm a looking at or a doing. Would I ha' gone and killed my poor Susan's hen if I hadn't a been beside myself? and she in her grave, poor dear: no, not for untold gold: and I be fond of that too—used to be, however: but now I don't seem to care for money nor nothing else." And his head dropped.

Look here, Maxley, old fellow," said Alfred sarcastically, "you must go to the workhouse, and stay there till you hoe a pauper; take him for a crocodile and kill him; then you will get into an asylum whether the Barkington magistrates like it or not: that is the routine, I believe; and as reasonable as most routine."

Dr. Wycherley admired Alfred for this, and whispered Mr. Osmond, "How subtly they reason."

Mr. Hardie did not deign to answer his son, who indeed had spoken at him, and not to him.

As for poor Maxley, he was in sad and sober earnest, and could not relish nor even take in Alfred's irony. He lifted his head and looked Mr. Hardie in the face.

"You be a hard man," said he, trembling with emotion. "You robbed me and my missus of our all; you ha' broke her heart, and turned my head, and if I was to come and kill you, 'twould only be clearing scores. 'Stead of that, I comes to you like a lamb, and says give me your name on a bit of paper, and put me out of harm's way. 'No,' says you, 'go to the workhouse!' Be you in the workhouse—you that owes me nine hundred pounds and my dead missus?" With this he went into a rage, took a packet out of his pocket, and flung L. 900 of Mr. Hardie's paper at Mr. Hardie's head before any one could stop him.

But Alfred saw his game, stepped forward, and caught it with one hand, and with the dexterity of a wicket-keeper, within a foot of his father's nose. "How's that, Umpire?" said he: then, a little sternly, "Don't do that again, Mr. Maxley, or I shall have to give you a hiding—to keep up appearances. He then put the notes in his pocket, and said quietly, "I shall give you your money for these before the year ends."

"You won't be quite so mad as that, I hope," remonstrated his father. But he made no reply: they very seldom answered one another now.

"Oh," said Dr. Wycherley, inspecting him like a human curiosity, "nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae."

"Nec parvum sine mixtura stultitiae," retorted Alfred in a moment and met his offensive gaze with a point-blank look of supercilious disdain.

Then having shut him up, he turned to Osmond: "Come," said he, "prescribe for this poor fellow, who asks for a hospital, so Routine gives him a workhouse. Come, you know there is no limit to your skill and good nature: you cured Spot of the worms, cure poor old Maxley of his snakes: oblige me."

"That I will, Mr. Alfred," said Osmond heartily: and wrote a prescription on a leaf of his memorandum-book, remarking that though a simple purgative, it had made short work of a great many serpents and dragons, and not a few spectres and hobgoblins into the bargain.

The young gentleman thanked him graciously, and said kindly to Maxley, "Get that made up—here's a guinea—and I'll send somebody to see how you are to-morrow."

The poor man took the guinea, and the prescription, and his head drooped again, and he slouched away.

Dr. Wycherley remarked significantly that his conduct was worth imitating by all persons similarly situated: and concluded oracularly: "Prophylaxis is preferable to therapeusis."

"Or, as Porson would say, 'Prevention is better than cure.'"

With this parting blow the Oxonian suddenly sauntered away, unconscious, it seemed, of the existence of his companions.

"I never saw a plainer case of Incubation," remarked Dr. Wycherley with vast benevolence of manner.

"Maxley's?"

"Oh, no; that is parochial. It is your profoundly interesting son I alluded to. Did you notice his supercilious departure? And his morbid celerity of repartee?"

Mr. Hardie replied with some little hesitation, "Yes; and, excuse me, I thought he had rather the best of the battle with you."

"Indubitably so," replied Dr. Wycherley: "they always do: at least such is my experience. If ever I break a lance of wit with an incubator! I calculate with confidence on being unhorsed with abnormal rapidity, and rare, indeed, are the instances in which my anticipations are not promptly and fully realised. By a similar rule of progression the incubator is seldom a match for the confirmed maniac, either in the light play of sarcasm, the coruscations of wit or the severer encounters of dialectical ratiocination."

"Dear, dear, dear! Then how is one to know a genius from a madman?" inquired Jane.

"By sending for a psychological physician."

"If I understand the doctor right, the two things are not opposed," remarked Mr. Hardie.

Dr. Wycherley assented, and made a remarkable statement in confirmation: "One half of the aggregate of the genius of the country is at present under restraint; fortunately for the community; and still more fortunately for itself."

He then put on his gloves, and, with much kindness but solemnity, warned Mr. Hardie not to neglect his son's case, nor to suppose that matters could go on like this without "disintegrating or disorganising the grey matter of the brain. I admit" said he, "that in some recorded cases of insanity the brain on dissection has revealed no signs of structural or functional derangement, and, that, on the other hand, considerable encephalic disorganisation has been shown to have existed in other cases without aberration or impairment of the reason: but such phenomena are to be considered as pathological curiosities, with which the empiric would fain endeavour to disturb the sound general conclusions of science. The only safe mode of reasoning on matters so delicate and profound is a priori: and, as it may safely be assumed as a self-evident proposition, that disturbed intelligence bears the same relation to the brain as disordered respiration does to the lungs, it is not logical, reasoning a priori, to assume the possibility that the studious or other mental habits of a Kephalalgic, and gifted youth, can be reversed, and erotic monomania germinate, with all the morbid phenomena of isolation, dejection of the spirits, and abnormal exaltation of the powers of wit and ratiocination, without some considerable impairment, derangement, disturbance, or modification, of the psychical, motorial, and sensorial functions of the great cerebral ganglion. But it would be equally absurd to presuppose that these several functions can be disarranged for months, without more or less disorganisation of the medullary, or even of the cineritious, matter of the encephialon. Therefore—dissection of your talented son would doubtless reveal at this moment either steatonatous or atheromatous deposits in the cerebral blood-vessels, or an encysted abscess, probably of no very recent origin, or, at the least, considerable inspissation, and opacity, of the membranes of the encephalon, or more or less pulpy disorganisation of one or other of the hemispheres of the brain: good morning!!"

"Good morning, sir: and a thousand thanks for your friemidly interest in my unhappy boy."

The Psycho-cerebrals "took their departure" (Psycho-cerebral for "went away"), and left Jane Hardie brimful of anxiety. Alfred was not there to dispose of the tirade in two words "Petitio principii," and so smoke on; and, not being an university woman, she could not keep her eye on the original assumption while following the series of inferences the learned doctor built so neatly, story by story, on the foundation of the quicksand of a loose conjecture.*

—— * So novices sitting at a conjuror see him take a wedding-ring, and put it in a little box before a lady; then cross the theatre with another little box, and put that before another lady: "Hey! presto! pass!" in box 2 is discovered a wedding-ring, which is instantly assumed to be the ring: on this the green minds are fixed, and with this is sham business done: Box 1, containing the real ring all the time, is overlooked: and the confederate, in livery or not, does what he likes with it; imprisons it in an orange—for the good of its health.

So poor Argan, when Fleurant enumerates the consequences of his omitting a single—dose shall I say?—is terrified by the threatened disorders, which succeed to each other logically enough: all the absurdity being in the first link of the chain; and from that his mind is diverted. ——

"Now not a word of this to Alfred," said Mr. Hardie. "I shall propose him a little foreign tour, to amuse his mind."

"Yes, but papa, if some serious change is really going on inside his poor head."

Mr. Hardie smiled sarcastically. "Don't you see that if the mind can wound the brain, the mind can cure it?" Then, after a while, he said parentally, "My child, I must give you a lesson: men of the world use enthusiasts—like those two I have just been drawing out—for their tools; we don't let them make tools of us. Osmond, you know, is jackal to an asylum in London; Dr. Wycherley, I have heard, keeps two or three such establishments by himself or his agents: blinded by self-interest and that of their clique—what an egotistical world it is, to be sure!—they would confine a melancholy youth in a gloomy house, among afflicted persons, and give him nothing to do but brood; and so turn the scale against his reason. But I have my children's interest at heart more than my own: I shall send him abroad, and so amuse his mind with fresh objects, break off sad associations, and restore him to a brilliant career. I count on you to second me in my little scheme for his good."

"That I will, papa."

"Somehow, I don't know why, he is coolish to me."

"He does not understand you as I do, my own papa."

"But he is affectionate with you, I think."

"Oh yes, more than ever: trouble has drawn us closer. Papa, in the midst of our sorrow, how much we have to be thankful for to the Giver of all good things!"

"Yes, little angel: and you must improve Heaven's goodness by working on your brother's affection, and persuading him to this continental tour."

Thus appealed to, Jane promised warmly: and the man of the world, finding he had a blind and willing instrument in the one creature he loved, kissed her on the forehead, and told her to run away, for here was Mr. Skinner, who no doubt wanted to speak on business.

Skinner, who had in fact been holding respectfully aloof for some time, came forward on Jane's retiring, and in a very obsequious tone requested a private interview. Mr. Hardie led the way into the little dining-room.

They were no sooner alone than Skinner left off fawning, very abruptly; and put on a rugged resolute manner that was new to him: "I am come for my commission," said he sturdily.

Mr. Hardie looked an inquiry.

"Oh, you don't know what I mean, of course," said the little clerk almost brutally: "I've waited, and waited, to see if you would have the decency, and the gratitude, and the honesty, to offer me a trifle out of It; but I see I might wait till dooms-day before you would ever think of thinking of anybody but yourself. So now shell out without more words or I'll blow the gaff" The little wretch raised his voice louder and louder at every sentence.

"Hush! hush! Skinner," said Mr. Hardie anxiously, "you are under some delusion. When did ever I decline to recognise your services? I always intended to make you a present, a handsome present."

"Then why didn't ye do it without being forced? Come, sir, you can't draw the wool over Noah Skinner's eyes. I have had you watched, and you are looking towards the U. S., and that is too big a country for me to hunt you in. I'm not to be trifled with: I'm not to be palavered: give me a thousand pounds of It this moment or I'll blow the whole concern and you along with it."

"A thousand pounds!"

"Now look at that!" shrieked Skinner. "Serves me right for not saying seven thousand. What right have you to a shilling of it more than I have? If I had the luck to be a burglar's pal instead of a banker's, I should have half. Give it me this moment, or I'll go to Albion Villa and have you took up for a thief; as you are."

"But I haven't got it on me."

"That's a lie: you carry it where he did; close to your heart: I can see it bulge: there, Job was a patient man, but his patience went at last." With this he ran to the window and threw it open.

Hardie entreated him to be calm. "I'll give it you, Skinner," said he, "and with pleasure, if you will give me some security that you will not turn round, as soon as you have got it, and be my enemy."

"Enemy of a gent that pays me a thousand pounds? Nonsense! Why should I? We are in the same boat: behave like a man, and you know you have nothing to fear from me: but I will—not—go halves in a theft for nothing: would you? Come, how is it to be, peace or war? Will you be content with thirteen thousand pounds that don't belong to you, not a shilling of it, or will you go to jail a felon, and lose it every penny?"

Mr. Hardie groaned aloud, but there was no help for it. Skinner was on sale: and must be bought.

He took out two notes for five hundred pounds each, and laid them on the table, after taking their numbers.

Skinner's eyes glistened: "Thank you, sir," said he. He put them in his pocket. Then he said quietly, "Now you have taken the numbers, sir; so I'll trouble you for a line to make me safe against the criminal law. You are a deep one; you might say I robbed you."

"That is a very unworthy suspicion, Skinner, and a childish one."

"Oh, it is diamond cut diamond. A single line, sir, just to say that in return for his faithful services, you have given Noah Skinner two notes for L. 500, Nos. 1084 and 85."

"With all my heart—on your giving me a receipt for them."

It was Skinner's turn to hesitate. After reflecting, however, on all the possible consequences, he saw nothing to fear; so he consented.

The business completed, a magic change took place in the little clerk. "Now we are friends again, sir: and I'll give you a piece of advice. Mind your eye with Mr. Alfred: he is down on us."

"What do you mean?" inquired Mr. Hardie with ill-disguised anxiety.

"I'll tell you, sir. He met me this morning: and says he to me, 'Skinner, old boy, I want to speak a word to you.' He puts his hands on my shoulder, and turns me round, and says he all at one time, 'The fourteen thousand pounds!' You might have knocked me down with a feather. And he looked me through like a gimlet mind ye. 'Come now,' says he, 'you see I know all; make a clean breast of it.' So then I saw he didn't know all, and I brazened up a bit: told him I hadn't a notion what he meant. 'Oh yes, I did,' he said, 'Captain Dodd's fourteen thousand pounds! It had passed through my hands.' Then I began to funk again at his knowing that: perhaps he only guessed it after all: but at the time I thought he knew it; I was flustered, ye see. But I said, 'I'd look at the books; but I didn't think his deposit was anything like that.' 'You little equivocating humbug,' says he: 'and which was better, to tell the truths at once and let Captain Dodd, who never did me any harm, have his own, or to hear it told me in the felon's dock?' Those were his words, sir: and they made my blood run cold; and if he had gone on at me like that, I should have split, I know I should: but he just said, 'There, your face has given your tongue the lie: you haven't brains enough to play the rogue.' Oh, and another thing—he said he wouldn't talk to the sparrow-hawk any more, when there was the kite hard by: so by that I guess your turn is coming, sir; so mind your eye. And then he turned his back on me with a look as if I was so much dirt. But I didn't mind that; I was glad to be shut of him at any price."

This intelligence discomposed Mr. Hardie terribly; it did away with all hope that Alfred meant to keep his suspicions to himself. "Why did you not tell me this before?" said he reproachfully.

Skinner's sharp visage seemed to sharpen as he replied, "Because I wanted a thousand pounds first."

"Curse your low cunning!"

Skinner laughed. "Good-bye, sir: take care of yourself and I'll take care of mine. I'm afraid of Mr. Alfred and the stone jug, so I'm off to London, and there I'll un-Skinner myself into Mr. Something or other, and make my thousand pounds breed ten." And he whipped out, leaving his master filled with rage and dismay.

"Outwitted even by this little wretch!"

He was now accountable for fourteen thousand pounds, and had only thirteen thousand left, if forced to reimburse; so that it was quite on the cards for him to lose a thousand pounds by robbing his neighbour and risking his own immortal jewel. This galled him to the quick; and altogether his equable temper began to give way; it had already survived half the iron of his nerves. He walked up and down the parlour chafing like an irritated lion. In which state of his mind the one enemy he now feared and hated walked quietly into the room, and begged for a little serious conversation with him.

"It is like your effrontery," said Mr. Hardie: "I wonder you are not ashamed to look your father in the face."

"Having wronged nobody I can look anybody in the face," replied Alfred, looking him in the face point-blank.

At this swift rejoinder, Mr. Hardie felt like a too confident swordsman, who, attacking in a passion suddenly receives a prick that shows him his antagonist is not one to be trifled with. He was on his guard directly, and said coldly, "You have been belying me to my very clerk."

"No, sir: you are mistaken; I have never mentioned your name to your clerk."

Mr. Hardie reflected on what Skinner had told him, and found he had made another false move. He tried again: "Nor to the Dodds?" with an incredulous sneer.

"Nor to the Dodds," replied Alfred calmly.

"What, not to Miss Julia Dodd?"

"No, sir, I have seen her but once, since—I discovered about the fourteen thousand pounds."

"What fourteen thousand pounds?" inquired Mr. Hardie innocently.

"What fourteen thousand pounds!" repeated the young man disdainfully. Then suddenly turning on his father, with red brow and flashing eyes: "The fourteen thousand pounds Captain Dodd brought home from India: the fourteen thousand pounds I heard him claim of you with curses: ay, miserable son, and miserable man, that I am, I heard my own father called a villain; and what did my father reply? Did you hurl the words back into your accuser's throat? No: you whispered, 'Hush! hush! I'll bring it you down.' Oh, what a hell Shame is!"

Mr. Hardie turned pale, and almost sick: with these words of Alfred's fled all hope of ever deceiving him.

"There, there," said the young man, lowering his voice from rage to profound sorrow: "I don't come here to quarrel with my father, nor to insult him, God knows: and I entreat you for both our sakes not to try my temper too hard by these childish attempts to blind me: and, sir, pray dismiss from your mind the notion that I have disclosed to any living soul my knowledge of this horrible secret: on the contrary, I have kept it gnawing my heart and almost maddening me at times. For my own personal satisfaction I have applied a test both to you and Skinner; but that is all I have done: I have not told dear Julia, nor any of her family; and now, if you will only listen to me, and do what I entreat you to do, she shall never know; oh, never."

"Oho!" thought Mr. Hardie, "he comes with a proposal: I'll hear it, anyway."

He then took a line well known to artful men: he encouraged Alfred to show his hand; maintaining a complete reserve as to his own; "You say you did not communicate your illusion about this fourteen thousand pounds to Julia Dodd that night: May I ask then (without indiscretion) what did pass between you two?"

"I will tell you, sir. She saw me standing there, and asked me in her own soft angel voice if I was unhappy. I told her I must be a poor creature if I could be happy. Then she asked me, with some hesitation I thought, why I was unhappy. I said, because I could not see the path of honour and duty clear: that at least was the purport. Then she told me that in all difficulties she had found the best way was to pray to God to guide her; and she begged me to lay my care before Him and ask His counsel. And then I thanked her; and bade her good-night, and she me; and that was all that passed between us two unhappy lovers, whom you have made miserable; and even cool to one another; but not hostile to you. And you played the spy on us, sir; and misunderstood us, as spies generally do. Ah, sir! a few months ago you would not have condescended to that."

Mr. Hardie coloured, but did not reply. He had passed from the irritable into the quietly vindictive stage.

Alfred then deprecated further discussion of what was past, and said abruptly, "I have an offer to make you: in a very short time I shall have ten thousand pounds; I will not resign my whole fortune; that would be unjust to myself, and my wife; and I loathe and despise Injustice in all its forms, however romantic or plausible. But, if you will give the Dodds their L. 14,000, I will share my little fortune equally with you: and thank you, and bless you. Consider, sir, with your abilities and experience five thousand pounds may yet be the nucleus of a fortune; a fortune built on an honourable foundation. I know you will thrive with my five thousand pounds ten times more than with their fourteen thousand; and enjoy the blessing of blessings, a clear conscience."

Now this offer was no sooner made than Mr. Hardie shut his face, and went to mental arithmetic, like one doing a sum behind a thick door. He would have taken ten thousand: but five thousand did not much tempt him: besides, would it be five thousand clear? He already owed Alfred two thousand five hundred. It flashed through him that a young man who loathed and despised Injustice—even to himself—would not consent to be diddled by him out of one sum while making him a present of another: and then there was Skinner's thousand to be reimbursed. He therefore declined in these terms:

"This offer shows me you are sincere in these strange notions you have taken up. I am sorry for it: it looks like insanity. These nocturnal illusions, these imaginary sights and sounds, come of brooding on a single idea, and often usher in a calamity one trembles to think of. You have made me a proposal: I make you one: take a couple of hundred pounds (I'll get it from your trustees) and travel the Continent for four months; enlarge and amuse your mind with the contemplation of nature and manners and customs; and if that does not clear this phantom L. 14,000 out of your head, I am much mistaken."

Alfred replied that foreign travel was his dream: but he could not leave Barkington while there was an act of justice to be done.

"Then do me justice, boy," said Mr. Hardie, with wonderful dignity, all things considered. "Instead of brooding on your one fantastical idea, and shutting out all rational evidence to the contrary, take the trouble to look through my books: and they will reveal to you a fortune, not of fourteen thousand, but of eighty thousand pounds, honourably sacrificed in the vain struggle to fulfil my engagements: who, do you think, will believe, against such evidence, the preposterous tale you have concocted against your poor father? Already the tide is turning, and all who have seen the accounts of the Bank pity me; they will pity me still more if ever they hear my own flesh and blood insults me in the moment of my fall; sees me ruined by my honesty and living in a hovel, yet comes into that poor but honest abode, and stabs me to the heart by accusing me of stealing fourteen thousand pounds: a sum that would have saved me, if I could only have laid my hands on it."

He hid his face, to conceal its incongruous expression: and heaved a deep sigh.

Alfred turned his head away and groaned.

After a while he rose from his seat and went to the door; but seemed reluctant to go: he cast a longing, lingering look on his father, and said beseechingly: "Oh think! you are not my flesh and blood more than I am yours; is all the love to be on my side? Have I no influence even when right is on my side?" Then he suddenly turned and threw himself impetuously on his knees: "Your father was the soul of honour; your son loathed fraud and injustice from his cradle; you stand between two generations of Hardies, and belong to neither; do but reflect one moment how bright a thing honour is, how short and uncertain a thing life is, how sure a thing retribution is, in this world or the next: it is your guardian angel that kneels before you now, and not your son: oh, for Christ's sake, for my mother's sake, listen to my last appeal. You don't know me: I cannot compound with injustice. Pity me, pity her I love, pity yourself!"

"You young viper!" cried the father, stung with remorse, but not touched with penitence. "Get away, you amorous young hypocrite; get out of my house, get out of my sight, or I shall spurn you and curse you at my feet."

"Enough!" said Alfred, rising and turning suddenly calm as a statue: "let us be gentlemen, if you please, even though we must be enemies. Good-bye, my father that was."

And he walked gently out of the room, and, as he passed the window Mr. Hardie heard his great heart sob.

He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "A hard tussle," thought he, "and with my own unnatural, ungrateful flesh and blood, but I have won it: he hasn't told the Dodds; he never will; and, if he did, who would believe him, or them?"

At dinner there was no Alfred; but after dinner a note to Jane informing her he had taken lodgings in the town, and requesting her to send his books and clothes in the evening. Jane handed the note to her father: and sighed deeply. Watching his face as he read it, she saw him turn rather pale, and look more furrowed than ever.

"Papa!" said she, "what does it all mean!"

"I am thinking."

Then, after a long pause, he ground his teeth and said, "It means—War: War between my own son and me."

CHAPTER XXVI

LONG before this open rupture Jane Hardie had asked her father sorrowfully, whether she was to discontinue her intimacy with the Dodds: she thought of course he would say "Yes;" and it cost her a hard struggle between inclination and filial duty to raise the question. But Mr. Hardie was anxious her friendship with that family should continue; it furnished a channel of news, and in case of detection might be useful to avert or soften hostilities; so he answered rather sharply, "On no account: the Dodds are an estimable family: pray be as friendly with them as ever you can." Jane coloured with pleasure at this most unexpected reply; but her wakeful conscience reminded her, this answer was given in ignorance of her attachment to Edward Dodd, and urged her to confession. But at that Nature recoiled: Edward had not openly declared his love to her; so modest pride, as well as modest shame, combined with female cowardice to hold back the avowal.

So then Miss Tender Conscience tormented herself; and recorded the struggle in her diary; but briefly, and in terms vague and typical; not a word about "a young man"—or "crossed in love"—but one obscure and hasty slap at the carnal affections, and a good deal about "the saints in prison," and "the battle of Armageddon."

Yet, to do her justice, laxity of expression did not act upon her conduct and warp that as it does most mystical speakers.

To obey her father to the letter, she maintained a friendly correspondence with Julia Dodd, exchanging letters daily; but, not to disobey him in the spirit, she ceased to visit Albion Villa. Thus she avoided Edward, and extracted from the situation the utmost self-denial, and the least possible amount of "carnal pleasure," as she naively denominated an interchange of worldly affection, however distant and respectful.

One day she happened to mention her diary, and say it was a present comfort to her, and instructive to review. Julia, catching at every straw of consolation, said she would keep one too, and asked a sight of Jane's for a model. "No, dear friend," said Jane: "a diary should be one's self on paper."

This was fortunate: it precluded that servile imitation, in which her sex excels even mine; and consequently the two records reflect two good girls, instead of one in two skins; and may be trusted to conduct this narrative forward, and relieve its monotony a little: only, of course, the reader must not expect to see the plot of a story carried minutely out in two crude compositions written with an object so distinct: he must watch for glimpses and make the most of indications. Nor is this an excessive demand upon his intelligence; for, if he cannot do this with a book, how will he do it in real life, where male and female characters reveal their true selves by glimpses only, and the gravest and most dramatic events give the diviner so few and faint signs of their coming?

Extracts from Julia Dodd's Diary.

"Dec. 5th.—It is all over; they have taken papa away to an asylum: and the house is like a grave, but for our outbursts of sorrow. Just before he went away the medal came—oh no, I cannot. Poor, poor mamma!

"8 P. M. In the midst of our affliction Heaven sent us a ray of comfort: the kindest letter from a lady, a perfect stranger. It came yesterday; but now I have got it to copy: oh, bless it; and the good, kind writer.

"'DEAR MADAM,—I scarcely know whether to hope or to fear that your good husband may have mentioned my name to you: however, he is just the man to pass over both my misbehaviour and his own gallantry; so I beg permission to introduce myself. I and my little boy were passengers by the Agra; I was spoiled by a long residence in India, and gave your husband sore trouble by resisting discipline, refusing to put out my light at nine o'clock, and in short by being an unreasonable woman, or rather a spoiled child. Well, all my little attempts at a feud failed; Captain Dodd did his duty, and kept his temper provokingly; the only revenge he took was a noble one; he jumped into the sea after my darling Freddy, and saved him from a watery grave, and his mother from madness or death; yet he was himself hardly recovered from a wound he had received in defending us all against pirates. Need I say more to one who is herself a mother? You will know how our little misunderstanding ended after that. As soon as we were friends I made him talk of his family; yourself, Edward, Julia, I seem to know you all.

"'When the ruffian, who succeeded our good captain, had wrecked poor us, and then deserted us, your husband resumed the command, and saved Freddy and me once more by his courage, his wonderful coolness, and his skill. Since then the mouse has been at work for the lion: I despair of conveying any pleasure by it to a character so elevated as Captain Dodd; his reward must be his own conscience; but we poor little women like external shows, do we not? and so I thought a medal of the Humane Society might give some pleasure to you and Miss Dodd. Never did medal nor order repose on a nobler heart. The case was so strong, and so well supported, that the society did not hesitate: and you will receive it very soon after this.

"'You will be surprised, dear madam, at all this from a stranger to yourself, and will perhaps set it down to a wish to intrude on your acquaintance. Well, then, dear madam, you will not be far wrong. I should like much to know one, whose character I already seem acquainted with; and to convey personally my gratitude and admiration of your husband: I could pour it out more freely to you, you know, than to him.—I am, dear Madam, Yours very faithfully,

'LOUISA BERESFORD.'

"And the medal came about an hour before the fly to take him away. His dear name was on it and his brave courageous acts.

"Oh, shall I ever be old enough and hard enough to speak of this without stopping to cry?

"We fastened it round his dear neck with a ribbon. Mamma would put it inside his clothes for fear the silver should tempt some wretch; I should never have thought of that: is there a creature so base? And we told the men how he had gained it (they were servants of the asylum), and we showed them how brave and good he was, and would be again if they would be kind to him and cure him. And mamma bribed them with money to use him kindly: I thought they would be offended and refuse it: but they took it, and their faces showed she was wiser than I am. He keeps away from us too. It is nearly a fortnight now."

"Dec. 7th.—Aunt Eve left to-day. Mamma kept her room and could not speak to her; cannot forgive her interfering between papa and her. It does seem strange that any one but mamma should be able to send papa out of the house, and to such a place; but it is the law: and Edward, who is all good sense, says it was necessary. He says mamma is unjust; grief makes her unreasonable. I don't know who is in the right: and I don't much care; but I know I am sorry for Aunt Eve, and very, very sorry for mamma.

"Dec. 8th.—I am an egotist: found myself out this morning; and it is a good thing to keep a diary. It* was overpowered at first by grief for mamma: but now the house is sad and quiet I am always thinking of him; and that is egotism.

* Egotism. The abstract quality evolved from the concrete term egotist by feminine art, without the aid of grammar.

"Why does he stay away so? I almost wish I could think it was coldness or diminished affection; for I fear something worse; something to make him wretched. Those dreadful words papa spoke before he was afflicted! words I will never put on paper; but they ring in my ears still; they appal me: and then found at their very door! Ah! and I knew I should find him near that house. And now he keeps away."

"Dec. 9th.—All day trying to comfort mamma. She made a great effort and wrote to Mrs. Beresford."

POOR MAMMA'S LETTER

"DEAR MADAM,—Your kind and valued letter reached us in deep affliction; and I am little able to reply to you as you deserve. My poor husband is very ill; so ill that he no longer remembers the past, neither the brave acts that have won him your esteem, nor even the face of his loving and unhappy wife, who now thanks you with many tears for your sweet letter. Heart-broken as my children and I are, we yet derive some consolation from it. We have tied the medal round his neck, madam, and thank you far more than we can find words to express.

"In conclusion, I pray Heaven that, in your bitterest hour, you may find the consolation you have administered to us: no, no, I pray you may never, never stand in such need of comfort—I am dear madam, yours gratefully and sincerely,

"LUCY DODD."

"Dec. 10th, Sunday.—At St. Anne's in the morning. Tried hard to apply the sermon. He spoke of griefs, but so coldly; surely he never felt one; he was not there. Mem.: always pray against wandering thoughts on entering church."

"Dec. 11th.—A diary is a dreadful thing. Everything must go down now, and, amongst the rest that the poor are selfish. I could not interest one of mine in mamma's sorrows; no, they must run back to their own little sordid troubles, about money and things. I was so provoked with Mrs. Jackson (she owes mamma so much) that I left her hastily; and that was Impatience. I had a mind to go back to her; but would not; and that was Pride. Where is my Christianity?

"A kind letter from Jane Hardie. But no word of him."

"Dec. 12th.—To-day Edward told me plump I must not go on taking things out of the house for the poor: mamma gave me the reason. 'We are poor ourselves, thanks to——' And then she stopped. Does she suspect? How can she? She did hear not those two dreadful words of papa's? They are like two arrows in my heart. And so we are poor: she says we have scarcely anything to live upon after paying the two hundred and fifty pounds a year for papa.

"Dec. 13th.—A comforting letter from Jane. She sends me Hebrews xii. 11, and says, 'Let us take a part of the Bible, and read two chapters prayerfully at the same hour of the day: will ten o'clock in the morning suit you? and, if so, will you choose where to begin?' I will, sweet friend, I will; and then, though some cruel mystery keeps us apart, our souls will be together over the sacred page, as I hope they will one day be together in heaven; yours will, at any rate. Wrote back, yes, and a thousand thanks, and should like to begin with the Psalms; they are sorrowful, and so are we. And I must pray not to think too much of him.

"If everything is to be put down one does, I cried long and bitterly to find I had written that I must pray to God against him."

"Dec. 14th.—It is plain he never means to come again. Mamma says nothing, but that is out of pity for me: I have not read her dear face all these years for nothing. She is beginning to think him unworthy, when she thinks of him at all.

There is a mystery; a dreadful mystery; may he not be as mystified, too, and perhaps tortured like me with doubts and suspicions? They say he is pale and dejected. Poor thing!

But then, oh why not come to me and say so? Shall I write to him? No, I will cut my hand off sooner."

"Dec. 16th.—A blessed letter from Jane. She says, 'Letter writing on ordinary subjects is a sad waste of time and very unpardonable among His people.' And so it is; and my weak hope, daily disappointed, that there may be something in her letter, only shows how inferior I am to my beloved friend. She says, 'I should like to fix another hour for us two to meet at the Throne together: will five o'clock suit you? We dine at six; but I am never more than half an hour dressing.'

"The friendship of this saint, and her bright example, is what Heaven sends me in infinite mercy and goodness to sooth my aching heart a little: for him I shall never see again.

"I have seen him this very evening."

"It was a beautiful night: I went to look at—the world to come I call it—for I believe the redeemed are to inhabit those very stars hereafter, and visit them all in turn—and this world I now find is a world of sorrow and disappointment—so I went on the balcony to look at a better one: and oh it seemed so holy, so calm, so pure, that heavenly world I gazed and stretched my hands towards it for ever so little of its holiness and purity; and, that moment I heard a sigh. I looked, and there stood a gentleman just outside our gate, and it was him. I nearly screamed, and my heart beat so. He did not see me: for I had come out softly, and his poor head was down, down upon his breast; and he used to carry it so high, a little, little, while ago—too high some said; but not I. I looked, and my misgivings melted away, it flashed on me as if one of those stars had written it with its own light in my heart—'There stands Grief; not Guilt.' And before I knew what I was about I had whispered 'Alfred!' The poor boy started and ran towards me: but stopped short and sighed again. My heart yearned; but it was not for me to make advances to him, after his unkindness: so I spoke to him as coldly as ever I could, and I said, 'You are unhappy.'

"He looked up to me, and then I saw even by that light that he is enduring a bitter, bitter struggle: so pale, so worn, so dragged!—Now how many times have I cried, this last month? more than in all the rest of my life a great deal.—'Unhappy!' he said; 'I must be a contemptible thing if I was not unhappy.' And then he asked me should not I despise him if he was happy. I did not answer that: but I asked him why he was unhappy. And when I had, I was half frightened; for he never evades a question the least bit.

"He held his head higher still, and said, 'I am unhappy because I cannot see the path of honour.'

"Then I babbled something, I forget what: then he went on like this—ah, I never forget what he says—he said Cicero says 'AEquitas ipsa lucet per se; something significat* something else:' and he repeated it slowly for me—he knows I know a little Latin; and told me that was as much as to say 'Justice is so clear a thing, that whoever hesitates must be on the road of wrong. And yet,' he said bitterly, 'I hesitate and doubt, in a matter of right and wrong, like an Academic philosopher weighing and balancing mere speculative straws.' Those were his very words. 'And so,' said he, 'I am miserable; deserving to be miserable.'

*Dubitatio cogitationem significat injuriae.

"Then I ventured to remind him that he, and I, and all Christian souls, had a resource not known to heathen philosophers, however able. And I said, 'Dear Alfred, when I am in doubt and difficulty, I go and pray to Him to guide me aright: have you done so?' No, that had never occurred to him: but he would, if I made a point of it; and at any rate he could not go on in this way. I should soon see him again, and, once his mind was made up, no shrinking from mere consequences, he promised me. Then we bade one another good night and he went off holding his head as proudly as he used: and poor silly me fluttered, and nearly hysterical, as soon as I quite lost sight of him."

"Dec. 17th.—At church in the morning: a good sermon. Notes and analysis. In the evening Jane's clergyman preached. She came. Going out I asked her a question about what we had heard; but she did not answer me. At parting she told me she made it a rule not to speak coming from church, not even about the sermon. This seemed austere to poor me. But of course she is right. Oh, that I was like her."

"Dec. 18th.—Edward is coming out. This boy, that one has taught all the French, all the dancing, and nearly all the Latin he knows, turns out to be one's superior, infinitely: I mean in practical good sense. Mamma had taken her pearls to the jeweller and borrowed two hundred pounds. He found this out and objected. She told him a part of it was required to keep him at Oxford. 'Oh indeed,' said he: and we thought of course there was an end: but next morning he was off before breakfast and the day after he returned from Oxford with his caution money, forty pounds, and gave it mamma; she had forgotten all about it. And he had taken his name off the college books and left the university for ever. The poor, gentle tears of mortification ran down his mother's cheeks, and I hung round her neck, and scolded him like a vixen—as I am. We might have spared tears and fury both, for he is neither to be melted nor irritated by poor little us. He kissed us and coaxed us like a superior being, and set to work in his quiet, sober, ponderous way, and proved us a couple of fools to our entire satisfaction, and that without an unkind word! for he is as gentle as a lamb, and as strong as ten thousand elephants. He took the money back and brought the pearls home again, and he has written 'SOYEZ DE VOTRE SIECLE' in great large letters, and has pasted it on all our three bed-room doors, inside. And he has been all these years quietly cutting up the Morning Advertiser, and arranging the slips with wonderful skill and method. He calls it 'digesting the Tiser!' and you can't ask for any modern information, great or small, but he'll find you something about it in this digest. Such a folio! It takes a man to open and shut it. And he means to be a sort of little papa in this house, and mamma means to let him. And indeed it is so sweet to be commanded; besides, it saves thinking for oneself, and that is such a worry.

"Dec. 19th.—Yes, they have settled it: we are to leave here, and live in lodgings to save servants. How we are to exist even so, mamma cannot see; but Edward can: he says we two have got popular talents, and he knows the markets (what does that mean, I wonder), and the world in general. I asked him wherever he picked it up, his knowledge: he said, 'In the 'Tiser.' I asked him would he leave the place where she lives. He looked sad, but said, 'Yes: for the good of us all.' So he is better than I am; but who is not? I wasted an imploring look on him; but not on mamma: she looked back to me, and then said sadly, 'Wait a few days, Edward, for—my sake.' That meant for poor credulous Julia's, who still believes in him. My sweet mother!"

"Dec. 21st.—Told Mamma to-day I would go for a governess, to help her, since we are all ruined. She kissed me and trembled; but she did not say 'No;' so it will come to that. He will be sorry. When I do go, I think I shall find courage to send him a line: just to say I am sure he is not to blame for withdrawing. Indeed how could I ever marry a man whose father I have heard my father call——" (the pen was drawn through the rest).

"Dec. 22nd.—A miserable day: low spirited and hysterical. We are really going away. Edward has begun to make packing-cases: I stood over him and sighed, and asked him questions: he said he was going to take unfurnished rooms in London, send up what furniture is absolutely necessary, and sell the rest by auction, with the lease of our dear, dear house, where we were all so happy once. So, what with his 'knowledge of the markets, and the world,' and his sense, and his strong will, we have only to submit. And then he is so kind, too: 'Don't cry, little girl,' he said. 'Not but what I could turn on the waters myself if there was anything to be gained by it. Shall I cry, Ju,' said he, 'or shall I whistle? I think I'll whistle.' And he whistled a tune right through while he worked with a heart as sick as my own, perhaps. Poor Edward!"

"Dec. 23rd.—My Christian friend has her griefs, too. But then she puts them to profit: she says today, 'We are both tasting the same flesh-crucifying but soul-profiting experience.' Her every word is a rebuke to me: torn at this solemn season of the year with earthly passions. Went down after reading her letter, and played and sang the Gloria in Excelsis of Pergolesi, with all my soul. So then I repeated it, and burst out crying in the middle. Oh shame! shame!"

"Dec. 24th.—Edward started for London at five in the morning to take a place for us. The servants were next told, and received warning; the one we had the poorest opinion of, she is such a flirt, cried, and begged mamma to let her share our fallen fortunes, and said she could cook a little and would do her best. I kissed her violently, and quite forgot I was a young lady till she herself reminded me; and she looked frightened at mamma. But mamma only smiled through her tears and said, 'Think of it quietly, Sarah, before you commit yourself.'"

"I am now sitting in my old room, cold as a stone: for I have packed up some things: so the first step is actually taken. Oh, if I but knew that he was happy! Then I could endure anything. But how can I think so? Well, I will go, and never tell a soul what I suspect, and he cannot tell, even if he knows: for it is his father. Jane, too, avoids all mention of her own father and brother more than is natural. Oh, if I could only be a child again!

"Regrets are vain; I will cease even to record them; these diaries feed one's selfishness, and the unfortunate passion, that will make me a bad daughter and an ungrateful soldier of Him who was born as to-morrow: to your knees, false Christian! to your knees!"

"I am calmer now; and feel resigned to the will of Heaven; or benumbed; or something. I will pack this box and then go down and comfort my mother; and visit my poor people, perhaps for the last time: ah me!

"A knock at the street door! his knock! I know every echo of his hand, and his foot. Where is my composure now? I flutter like a bird. I will not go down. He will think I love him so.

"At least I will wait till he has nearly gone.

"Elizabeth has come to say I am wanted in the drawing-room.

"So I must go down whether I like or no.

"Bedtime. Oh that I had the pen of a writer to record the scene I have witnessed, worthily. When I came in, I found mamma and him both seated in dead silence. He rose and looked at me and I at him: and years seemed to have rolled over his face since last I saw it. I was obliged to turn my head away; I curtseyed to him distantly, and may Heaven forgive me for that: and we sat down, and presently turned round and all looked at one another like the ghosts of the happy creatures we once were altogether.

"Then Alfred began, not in his old imperative voice, but scarce above a whisper; and oh the words such as none but himself in the wide world would have spoken—I love him better than ever; I pity him; I adore him; he is a scholar; he is a chevalier; he is the soul of honour; he is the most unfortunate and proudest gentleman beneath the sun; oh, my darling! my darling!!

"He said, 'Mrs. Dodd, and you Miss Dodd, whom I loved before I lost the right to ask you to be mine, and whom I shall love to the last hour of my miserable existence, I am come to explain my own conduct to you, and to do you an act of simple justice, too long delayed. To begin with myself, you must know that my understanding is of the Academic School: I incline to weigh proofs before I make up my mind. But then I differ from that school in this, that I cannot think myself to an eternal standstill; (such an expression! but what does that matter, it was his;) I am a man of action: in Hamlet's place I should have either turned my ghost into ridicule, or my uncle into a ghost; so I kept away from you while in doubt, but now I doubt no longer. I take my line: ladies, you have been swindled out of a large sum of money.

"My blood ran cold at these words. Surely nothing on earth but a man could say this right out like that.

"Mamma and I looked at one another; and what did I see in her face, for the first time ? Why that she had her suspicions too, and had been keeping them from me. Pitying angel!

"He went on: 'Captain Dodd brought home several thousand pounds?'

"Mamma said 'Yes.' And I think she was going to say how much, but he stopped her and made her write the amount in an envelope, while he took another and wrote in it with his pencil. He took both envelopes to me, and asked me to read them out in turn: I did, and mamma's said fourteen thousand pounds: and his said fourteen thousand pounds. Mamma looked such a look at me.

"Then he turned to me: 'Miss Dodd, do you remember that night you and I met at Richard Hardie's door? Well, scarce five minutes before that, your father was standing on our lawn and called to the man, who was my father, in a loud voice—it rings in my ears now—"Hardie, Villain! give me back my money, my fourteen thousand pounds! give me my children's money, or may your children die before your eyes." Ah, you wince to hear me whisper these dreadful words: what if you had been where I was and heard them spoken, and in a terrible voice; the voice of Despair; the voice of Truth! Soon a window opened cautiously, and a voice whispered, "Hush! I'll bring it you down." And this voice was the voice of fear, of dishonesty, and of Richard Hardie.'

"He turned deadly white when he said this, and I cried to mamma, 'Oh, stop him! stop him!' And she said, 'Alfred, think what you are saying. Why do you tell us what we had better never know?' He answered directly.

"'Because it is the truth: and because I loathe injustice. Some time afterwards I taxed Mr. Richard Hardie with this fourteen thousand pounds: and his face betrayed him. I taxed his clerk, Skinner: and Skinner's face betrayed him: and he fled the town that very night.

"My mother looked much distressed and said, 'To what end do you raise this pitiable subject? Your father is a bankrupt, and we but suffer with the rest.'

"'No, no,' said he, 'I have looked through the bankrupt's books, and there is no mention of the sum. And then who brought Captain Dodd here? Skinner? and Skinner is his detected confederate. It is clear to me poor Captain Dodd trusted that sum to us before he had the fit; beyond this all is conjecture.'

"Mamma looked at me again, and said, 'What am I to do; or say?'

'I screamed, 'Do nothing, say nothing: oh pray, pray make him hold his tongue, and let the vile money go. It is not his fault.'

"'Do?' said the obstinate creature: 'why tell Edward, and let him employ a sharp attorney: you have a supple antagonist and a daring one. Need I say I have tried persuasion, and even bribes: but he defies me. Set an attorney on him, or the police. Fiat Justitia, ruat coelum.' I put both hands out to him and burst out 'Oh, Alfred, why did you tell? A son expose his own father? For shame; for shame! I have suspected it all long ago: but I would never have told.'

"He started a little; but said, 'Miss Dodd, you were very generous to me: but that is not exactly a reason why I should be a cur to you; and an accomplice in a theft by which you suffer. I have no pretensions to religion like my sister: so I can't afford to tamper with plain right and wrong. What, look calmly on and see one man defraud another? I can't do it. See you defrauded? you, Mrs. Dodd, for whom I profess affection and friendship? You, Miss Dodd, for whom I profess love and constancy? Stand and see you swindled into poverty? Of what do you think I am made? My stomach rises against it, my blood boils against it, my flesh creeps at it, my soul loathes it:' then after this great burst he seemed to turn so feeble: 'Oh,' said he, faltering, 'I know what I have done; I have signed the death warrant of our love, dear to me as life. But I can't help it. Oh, Julia, Julia, my lost love, you can never look on me again; you must not love a man you cannot marry. Cheat Hardie's wretched son. But what could I do? Fate offers me but the miserable choice of desolation or cowardly rascality. I choose desolation and I mean to stand by my choice like a man. So good-bye, ladies.'

"The poor proud creature rose from his seat, and bowed stiffly and haughtily to us both, and was going away without another word, and I do believe for ever. But his soul had been too great for his body; his poor lips turned pale and he staggered; and would have fallen, but mamma screamed to me, and she he loves so dearly, and abandons so cruelly, woke from a stupor of despair, and flew and caught him fainting in these arms."



CHAPTER XXVII

"WE laid the poor proud creature on the sofa, and bathed his face with eau de Cologne. He spoke directly, and said that was nice, and 'His head! his head!' And I don't think he was ever quite insensible, but he did not know what was going on, for presently he opened his eyes wide, and stared at us so, and then closed them with, oh such a sigh; it swelled my heart almost to bursting. And to think I could say nothing: but mamma soothed him and insisted on his keeping quiet; for he wanted to run away from us. She was never so good to him before: she said, 'My dear child, you have my pity and my esteem; alas! that at your age you should be tried like this. How few in this sorry world would have acted like you: I should have sided with my own flesh and blood, for one.'

"'What, right or wrong?' he asked.

"'Yes,' said she, 'right or wrong.' Then she turned to me: 'Julia, shall all the generosity be on his side?'

"I kissed her and clung to her, but dared not speak; but I was mad enough to hope, I scarcely know what, till she said in the same kind, sorrowful voice, 'I agree with you; you can never be my son; nor Julia's husband. But as for that money, it revolts me to proceed to extremes against one, who after all is your father, my poor, poor, chivalrous boy.' But she would decide nothing without Edward; he had taken his father's place in this house. So then I gave all up, for Edward is made of iron. Alfred was clearer sighted than I, and never had a hope: he put his arm round mamma and kissed her, and she kissed him: and he kissed my hand, and crept away, and I heard his step on the stair, and on the road ever so far, and life seemed ended for me when I heard it no more.

"Edward has come home. Mamma told him all: he listened gravely: I hung upon his hips; and at last the oracle spoke; and said 'This is a nice muddle.'

"More we could not get from him; he must sleep on it. O suspense! you torture! He had seen a place he thinks will suit us: it is a bad omen his saying that so soon after. As I went to bed I could not help whispering, 'If he and I are parted, so will you and Jane.' The cruel boy answered me out loud, 'Thank you, little girl: that is a temptation; and you have put me on my guard.'

"Oh, how hard it is to understand a man! they are so impracticable with their justice and things. I came away with my cheeks burning, and my heart like a stone; to bed, but not to sleep. My poor, poor unhappy, noble Alfred!"

"Dec. 27th.—Mamma and Edward have discussed it: they say nothing to me. Can they have written to him? I go about my duties like a ghost; and pray for submission to the Divine will."

"Dec. 28th—To-day as I was reading by main force to Mrs. Eagleton's sick girl, came Sarah all in a hurry with, I was wanted, Miss. But I would finish my chapter, and O how hard the devil tried to make me gabble it; so I clenched my teeth at him, and read it as if I was spelling it; and then didn't I fly?

"He was there; and they all sat waiting for me. I was hot and cold all at the same time, and he rose and bowed to me, and I curtseyed to him, and sat down and took my work, and didn't know one bit what I was doing.

"And our new oracle, Edward, laid down the law like anything. 'Look here, Hardie,' said he, 'if anybody but you had told us about this fourteen thousand pounds, I should have set the police on your governor before now. But it seems to me a shabby thing to attack a father on the son's information, especially when it's out of love for one of us he has denounced his own flesh and blood.'

"'No, no,' said Alfred eagerly, 'out of love of justice.'

"'Ah, you think so, my fine fellow, but you would not have done it for a stranger,' said Edward. Then he went on: 'Of all blunders, the worst is to fall between two stools. Look here, mamma: we decide, for the son's sake, not to attack the father: after that it would be very inconsistent to turn the cold shoulder to the son. Another thing, who suffers most by this fraud? Why the man that marries Julia.' Alfred burst out impetuously, 'Oh, prove that to me, and let me be that sufferer.' Edward turned calmly to mamma: 'If the fourteen thousand pounds was in our hands, what should you do with it?'

"The dear thing said she should settle at least ten thousand of it on Me, and marry Me to this poor motherless boy, 'whom I have learned to love myself,' said she.

"'There,' said Edward, 'you see it is you who lose by your governor's—I won't say what—if you marry my sister.'

"Alfred took his hand, and said, 'God bless you for telling me this.'

"Then Edward turned to mamma and me; and said, 'This poor fellow has left his father's house because he wronged us: then this house ought to open its arms to him: that is only justice. But now to be just to our side; I have been to Mr. Crawford, the lawyer, and I find this Hardie junior has ten thousand pounds of his own. That ought to be settled on Julia, to make up for what she loses by Hardie senior's—I won't say what.'

"'If anybody settles any of their trash on me, I'll beat them, and throw it in the fire,' said I; 'and I hated money.'

"The oracle asked me directly did I hate clothes and food, and charity to the poor, and cleanliness, and decency? Then I didn't hate money, 'for none of these things can exist without money, you little romantic humbug; you shut up!'

"Mamma rebuked him for his expressions, but approved his sentiments. But I did not care for his sentiments: for he smiled on me, and said, 'We two are of one mind; we shall transfer our fortune to Captain Dodd, whom my father has robbed. Julia will consent to share my honest poverty.'

"'Well, we will talk about that,' said Edward pompously.

"'Talk about it without me, then,' I cried, and got up, and marched out indignant: only it was partly my low cunning to hide my face that I could not keep the rapture out of. And, as soon as I had retired with cold dignity, off I skipped into the garden to let my face loose, and I think they sent him after me; for I heard his quick step behind me; so I ran away from him as hard as I could; so of course he soon caught me; in the shrubbery where he first asked me to be his; and he kissed both my hands again and again like wildfire, as he is, and he said, 'You are right, dearest; let them talk of their trash while I tell you how I adore you; poverty with you will be the soul's wealth; even misfortune, by your side, would hardly be misfortune: let all the world go, and let you and I be one, and live together; and die together; for now I see I could not have lived without you, nor without your love.' And I whispered something on his shoulder—no matter what; what signifies the cackle of a goose? And we mingled our happy tears, and our hearts, and our souls. Ah, Love is a sweet a dreadful passion: what we two have gone through for one another in a few months! He dined with us, and Edward and he sat a long, long time talking; I dare say it was only about their odious money; still I envied Edward having him so long. But at last he came up, and devoured me with his lovely grey eyes, and I sang him Aileen Aroon, and he whispered things in my ear, oh, such sweet sweet, idiotic, darling things; I will not part with even the shadow of one of them by putting it on paper, only I am the blessedest creature in all the world; and I only hope to goodness it is not very wicked to be so happy as I am."

"Dec. 31st.—It is all settled. Alfred returns to Oxford to make up for lost time; the time spent in construing me instead of Greek: and at the end of term he is to come of age and marry—somebody. Marriage! what a word to put down! it makes me tingle; it thrills me; it frightens me deliciously: no, not deliciously; anything but: for suppose, being both of us fiery, and they all say one of them ought to be cold blooded for a pair to be happy, I should make him a downright bad wife. Why then I hope I shall die in a year or two out of my darling's way, and let him have a good one instead. I'd come back from the grave and tear her to pieces.

"Jan. 4th.—Found a saint in a garret over a stable. Took her my luncheon clandestinely; that is lady-like for 'under my apron:' and was detected and expostulated by Ned. He took me into his studio—it is carpeted with shavings—and showed me the 'Tiser digest, an enormous book he has made of newspaper cuttings all in apple-pie order; and out of this authority he proved vice and poverty abound most wherever there are most charities. Oh, 'and the poor' a set of intoxicated sneaks, and me a Demoralising Influence. It is all very fine: but why are there saints in garrets, and half-starved? That rouses all my evil passions, and I cannot bear it; it is no use.

"Jan. 6th.—Once a gay day; but now a sad one. Mamma gone to see poor papa, where he is. Alfred found me sorrowful, and rested my forehead on his shoulder; that soothed me, while it lasted. I think I should like to grow there. Mem! to burn this diary; and never let a creature see a syllable.

"As soon as he was gone, prayed earnestly on my knees not to make an idol of him. For it is our poor idols that are destroyed for our weakness. Which really I cannot quite see the justice of."

"Jan. 8th.—Jane does not approve my proposal that we should praise now and then at the same hour instead of always praying. The dear girl sends me her unconverted diary 'to show me she is "a brand."' I have read most of it. But really it seems to me she was always goodish: only she went to parties, and read novels, and enjoyed society.

"There, I have finished it. Oh dear, how like her unconverted diary is to my converted one!"

"Jan. 14th.—A sorrowful day: he and I parted, after a fortnight of the tenderest affection, and that mutual respect without which neither of us, I think, could love long. I had resolved to be very brave; but we were alone, and his bright face looked so sad; the change in it took me by surprise, and my resolution failed; I clung to him. If gentlemen could interpret, as we can, he would never have left me. It is better as it is. He kissed my tears away as fast as they came: it was the first time he had ever kissed more than my hand; so I shall have that to think of, and his dear promised letters: but it made me cry more at the time, of course. Some day, when we have been married years and years, I shall tell him not to go and pay a lady for every tear; if he wants her to leave off.

"The whole place so gloomy and vacant now.

"Jan. 20th.—Poverty stares us in the face. Edward says we could make a modest living in London; and nobody be the wiser: but here we are known, and 'must be ladies and gentlemen, and fools,' he says. He has now made me seriously promise not to give money and things out of the house to the poor: it is robbing my mother and him. Ah, now I see it is nonsense to despise money: here I come home sad from my poor people; and I used to return warm all over. And the poor old souls do not enjoy my sermons half so much as when I gave them nice things to eat along with them.

"The dear boy, that I always loved dearly, but admire and love now that he has turned an intolerable tyrant and he used to be Wax, has put down two maids out of our three, and brings our dinner up himself in a jacket, then puts on his coat and sits down with us, and we sigh at him and he grins and derides us; he does not care one straw for Pomp. And mamma and I have to dress one another now. And I like it."

"Jan. 30th.—He says we may now, by great economy, subsist honestly till my wedding-day; but then mamma and he must 'absquatulate.' Oh, what stout hearts men have. They can jest at sorrow even when, in spite of their great thick skins, they feel it. Ah, the real poor are happy: they marry, and need not leave the parish where their mother lives."

"Feb. 4th.—A kind and most delicate letter from Jane. She says, 'Papa and I are much grieved at Captain Dodd's affliction, and deeply concerned at your loss by the Bank. Papa has asked Uncle Thomas for two hundred pounds, and I entreat you to oblige me by receiving it at my hands and applying it according to the dictates of your own affectionate heart."

"Actually our Viceroy will not let me take it: he says he will not accept a crumb from the man who owes us a loaf."

"Feb. 8th.—Jane mortified, and no wonder. If she knew how very poor we are, she would be surprised as well. I have implored her not to take it to heart, for that all will be explained one day, and she will see we could not.

"His dear letters! I feed on them. We have no secrets, no two minds. He is to be a first class and then a private tutor. Our money is to go to mamma: it is he and I that are to work our fingers to the bone (I am so happy!), and never let them be driven by injustice from their home. But all this is a great secret. The Viceroy will be defeated, only I let him talk till Alfred is here to back me. No; it is not just the rightful owner of fourteen thousand pounds should be poor.

"How shallow female education is: I was always led to suppose modesty is the highest virtue. No such thing! Justice is the queen of the virtues: He is justice incarnate."

"March 10th.—On reperusing this diary, it is demoralising; very: it feeds self. Of all the detestable compositions: Me, Me, Me, from one end to another: for when it is not about myself, it is about Alfred, and that it is my he-Me though not my she-one. So now to turn over a new leaf: from this day I shall record only the things that happen in this house and what my betters say to me, not what I say; and the texts; and outline of the sermons; and Jane's Christian admonitions."

Before a resolve so virtuous all impure spirits retire, taking off their hats, and bowing down to the very ground, but apprehending Small Beer.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Extracts from Jane Hardie's Diary.

"March 3rd.—In my district again, the first time since my illness, from which I am indeed but half recovered. Spoke faithfully to Mrs. B. about her infidel husband: told her not to try and talk to him, but to talk to God about him. Gave her my tract 'A quiet heart.' Came home tired. Prayed to be used to sharpen the sickles of other reapers.

"March 4th.—At St. Philip's to hear the Bishop. In the midst of an excellent sermon on Gen. i. 2, he came out with the waters of baptism, to my horror: he disclaimed the extravagant views some of them take, then hankered after what he denied, and then partly unsaid that too. While the poor man was trimming his sails, I slunk behind a pillar in the corner of my pew, and fell on my knees, and prayed (a) against the stream of poison flowing on the congregation. Oh, I felt like Jeremiah in his dungeon.

"In the evening papa forbade me to go to church again: said the wind was too cold: I kissed him, and went up to my room and put my head between the pillows not to hear the bells. Prayed for poor (b) Alfred."

"March 5th.—Sadly disappointed in J. D. I did hope he was embittering the world to her by degrees. But for some time past she writes in ill-concealed spirits.

"Another friend, after seeking rest in the world, is now seeking it in ritualism. May both be drawn from their rotten reeds to the cross

'And oh this moral may my heart retain, All hopes of happiness on earth are vain.'"

"March 6th.—The cat is out of the bag. She is corresponding with Alfred: indeed she makes no secret of it. Wrote her a (c) faithful letter. Received a short reply, saying I had made her unhappy, and begging me to suspend my judgment till she could undeceive me without giving me too much pain. What mystery is this?"

March 7th.—Alfred announces his unalterable determination to marry Julia. I read the letter to papa directly. He was silent for a long time: and then said: 'All the worse for both of them.' It was all I could do to suppress a thrill of carnal complacency at the thought this might in time pave the way to another union. Even to think of that now is a sin. 1 Cor. vii. 20-4, plainly shows that whatever position (d) of life we are placed in, there it is our duty to abide. A child, for instance, is placed in subjection to her parents; and must not leave them without their consent."

"March 8th.—Sent two cups of cold water to two fellow-pilgrims of mine on the way to Jerusalem, viz: to E. H., Rom. viii. 1; to Mrs. M., Philipp. ii. 27.

"Prayed for increase of humility. I am so afraid my great success in His vineyard has seduced me into feeling as if there was a spring of living water in myself, instead of every drop being derived from the true fountain."

"March 9th.—Dr. Wycherley closeted two hours with papa—papa had sent for him, I find. What is it makes me think that man is no true friend to Alfred in his advice? I don't like these roundabout speakers: the lively oracles are not roundabout."

"March 10th.— My beloved friend and fellow-labourer, Charlotte D——, ruptured a blood-vessel (x) at three P. M., and was conveyed in the chariots of angels to the heavenly banqueting-house, to go no more out. May I be found watching.

"March 11th.— Dreadfully starved with these afternoon sermons. If they go on like this, I really must stay at home, and feed upon the word."

"March 12th.— Alfred has written to his trustees, and announced his coming marriage, and told them he is going to settle all his money upon the Dodds. Papa quite agitated by this news: it did not come from Alfred; one of the trustees wrote to papa. Oh, the blessing of Heaven will never rest on this unnatural marriage. Wrote a faithful letter to Alfred while papa was writing to our trustee."

"March 13th.—My book on Solomon's Song now ready for publication. But it is so difficult now-a-days to find a publisher for such a subject. The rage is for sentimental sermons, or else for fiction (f) under a thin disguise of religious biography."

"March l4th.—Mr. Plummer, of whose zeal and unction I had heard so much, was in the town and heard of me, and came to see me by appointment just after luncheon. Such a sweet meeting. He came in and took my hand, and in that posture prayed that the Holy Spirit might be with us to make our conversation profitable to us, and redound to His glory. Poor man, his wife leads him a cat and dog life, I hear, with her jealousy. We had a sweet talk; he admires Canticles almost as much as I do (z): and has promised to take my book and get it cast on the Lord (g) for me.

"March 15th.—To please, one must not be faithful. (h) Miss L., after losing all her relations, and at thirty years of age, is to be married next week. She came to me and gushed out about the blessing of having at last one earthly friend to whom she could confide everything. On this I felt it my duty to remind her she might lose him by death, and then what a blank; and I was going on to detach her from the arm of flesh, when she burst out crying, and left me abruptly; couldn't bear the truth, poor woman.

"In the afternoon met him and bowed, and longed to speak, but thought it my duty not to: cried bitterly on reaching home."

"March l7th.—Transcribed all the (i) texts on Solomon's Song. It seems to be the way He (j) has marked out for me to serve him."

"March 19th.—Received this letter from Alfred:

'DEAR JANE,—I send you a dozen kisses and a piece of advice; learn more; teach less: study more; preach less: and don't be in such a hurry to judge and condemn your intellectual and moral superiors, on insufficient information.—Your affectionate brother,

ALFRED.'

A poor return for me loving his soul as my own. I do but advise him the self-denial I myself pursue. Woe be to him if he rejects it."

"March 20th.—A perverse reply from J. D. I had proposed we should plead for our parents at the Throne. She says she fears that might seem like assuming the office of the mediator: and besides her mother is nearer Heaven than she is. What blindness! I don't know a more thoroughly unhealthy mind than poor Mrs. (k) Dodd's. I am learning to pray walking. Got this idea from Mr. Plummer. How closely he walks! his mind so exactly suits mine.

"March 22nd.—Alfred returned. Went to meet him at the station. How bright and handsome he looked! He kissed me so affectionately; and was as kind and loving as could be: I, poor unfaithful wretch, went hanging (m) on his arm, and had not the heart to dash his carnal happiness just then.

"He is gone there."

"March 24th.—Stole into Alfred's lodging when he was out; and, after prayer, pinned Deuteronomy xxvii. 16, Proverbs xiii. 1, and xv. 5, and Mark vii. 10, upon his bed-curtains."

"March 25th.—Alfred has been in my room, and nailed Matthew vii. 1, Mark x. 7, and Ezek. xviii. 20, on my wall. He found my diary, and has read it, not to profit by, alas! but to scoff."

[Specimen of Alfred's comments. N.B. Fraternal criticism:

A. Nolo Episcopari.

B. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.

D. The old trick; picking one text, straining it; and ignoring six. So then nobody who is not born married, must get married.

E. Recipe. To know people's real estimate of themselves, study their language of self-depreciation. If, even when they undertake to lower themselves, they cannot help insinuating self-praise, be sure their humility is a puddle, their vanity is a well. This sentence is typical of the whole Diary or rather Iary; it sounds Publican, smells Pharisee.

X. How potent a thing is language in the hand of a master: Here is sudden death made humorous by a few incongruous phrases neatly disposed.

F. Excuse me; there is still a little market for the Liquefaction of Holy Writ, and the perversion of Holy Writ; two deathless arts, which meet in your comment on the song you ascribe to Solomon.

Z. More than Mrs. Plummer does, apparently.

G. Apotheosis of the British public. How very like profaneness some people's piety is!

C. H. Faith, with this school, means anything the opposite of Charity.

I. You are morally truthful: but intellectually mendacious. The texts on Solomon's Song! You know very well there is not one. No grave writer in all Scripture has ever deigned to cite, or notice, that coarse composition; puellarum deliciae.

J. Modest periphrasis for "I like it." Motto for this Diary; "Ego, et Deus meus."

K. In other words, a good, old-fashioned, sober, humble Christian, to whom the daring familiarities of your school seem blasphemies.

M. Here I recognise my sister; somewhat spoiled by a detestable sect; but lovable by nature (which she is for ever abusing); and therefore always amiable, when off her guard.]

"March 28th.—Mr. Crawford the attorney called and told papa his son had instructed him to examine the trust-deed, and to draw his marriage settlement. Papa treated him with the greatest civility, and brought him the deed. He wanted to take it away to copy; but papa said he had better send a clerk here. Poor papa hid his distress from this gentleman, though not from me; and gave him a glass of wine.

"Then Mr. Crawford chatted, and let out Alfred had asked him to advance a hundred pounds for the wedding presents, &c. Papa said he might do so with perfect safety.

"But the moment he was gone, his whole manner changed. He walked about in terrible anger and agitation: and then sat down and wrote letters; one was to uncle Thomas; and one to a Mr. Wycherley; I believe a brother of the doctor's. I never knew him so long writing two letters before.

"Heard a noise in the road, and it was Mr. Maxley, and the boys after him hooting; they have found out his infirmity: what a savage animal is man, till grace changes him! The poor soul had a stick, and now and then turned and struck at them but his tormentors were too nimble. I drew papa to the window, and showed him, and reminded him of the poor man's request. He answered impatiently what was that to him? 'We have a worse case nearer hand. Charity begins at home.' I ventured to say yes, but it did not begin and end at home."

"March 31st.—Mr. Osmond here to-day; and over my work I heard papa tell him Alfred is blackening his character in the town with some impossible story about fourteen thousand pounds. Mr. Osmond very kind and sympathising; set it all down to illusion; assured papa there was neither malice nor insincerity in it. 'But what the better am I for that?' said poor papa; 'if I am slandered, I am slandered.' And they went out together.

"Papa seems to feel this engagement more than all his troubles, and, knowing by sad experience it is useless to expostulate with Alfred, I wrote a long and faithful letter to Julia just before luncheon, putting it to her as a Christian whether she could reconcile it to her profession to set a son against his father, and marry him in open defiance.

"She replied, 3 P. M., that her mother approved the marriage, and she owed no obedience, nor affection either, to my parent

"3.30. Sent back a line rebuking her for this quibble.

"At 5 received a note from Mrs. Dodd proposing that the correspondence between myself and her daughter should cease for the present.

5.30. Retorted with an amendment that it should cease for ever. No reply. Such are worldlings! Remonstrance only galls them. And so in one afternoon's correspondence ends one more of my Christian friendships with persons of my own sex. This is the eighth to which a carnal attachment has been speedily fatal.

"In the evening Alfred came in looking very red, and asked me whether it was not self-reliant and uncharitable of me to condemn so many estimable persons, all better acquainted with the circumstances than I am. I replied with the fifth commandment. He bit his lip and said, 'We had better not meet again, until you have found out which is worthiest of honour, your father or your brother.' And with this he left abruptly; and something tells me I shall not see him again. My faithfulness has wounded him to the quick. Alas! Prayed for him and cried myself to sleep."

"April 4th. Met him disguised as a common workman, and carrying a sack full of things. I was so shocked I could not maintain my resolution: I said, 'Oh, Mr. Edward, what are you doing?' He blushed a little, but told me he was going to sell some candlesticks and things of his making: and he should get a better price in that dress; all traders looked on a gentleman as a thing made to be pillaged. Then he told me he was going to turn them into a bonnet and a wreath; and his beautiful brown eyes sparkled with affection. What egotistical creatures they must be! I was quite overcome, and said, Oh why did he refuse our offer? Did he hate me so very much that he would not even take his due from my hand? 'No,' he said, 'nobody in our house is so unjust to you as to hate you; my sister honours you, and is very sorry you think ill of her: and, as for me, I love you; you know how I love you.' I hid my face in my hands; and sobbed out, 'Oh, you must not; you must not; my poor father has one disobedient child already.' He said softly, 'Don't cry, dear one; have a little patience; perhaps the clouds will clear: and, meantime, why think so ill of us? Consider, we are four in number, of different dispositious, yet all of one mind about Julia marrying Alfred. May we not be right; may we not know something we love you too well to tell you?' His words and his rich manly voice were so soothing; I gave him just one hand while I still hid my burning face with the other; he kissed the hand I yielded him, and left me abruptly.

"If Alfred should be right! I am staggered now; he puts it so much more convincingly."

"April 5th. A letter from Alfred, announcing his wedding by special license for the 11th.

"Made no reply. What could I say?

"Papa, on my reading it out left his very breakfast half finished, and packed up his bag and rushed up to London. I caught a side view of his face; and I am miserable. Such a new, such a terrible expression! a vile expression! Heaven forgive me, it seemed the look of one who meditated a crime."



CHAPTER XXIX

THE spirit of dissension in Musgrove Cottage penetrated to the very kitchen. Old Betty sided with Alfred, and combated in her place the creed of the parlour: "Why, according to Miss, the young sparrows are bound never to fly out of the nest; or else have the Bible flung at 'em. She do go on about God's will: seems to me 'tis His will the world should be peopled by body and beast—which they are both His creatures—and, by the same toaken, if they don't marry they does wus. Certainly whilst a young man bides at home, it behoves him to be dutiful; but that ain't to say he is to bide at home for ever. Master Alfred's time is come to leave we, and be master in a house of his own, as his father done before him, which he forgets that now; he is grown to man's estate, and got his mother's money, and no more bound to our master than I be." She said, too, that "parting blights more quarrels than it breeds:" and she constantly invited Peggy to speak up, and gainsay her. But Peggy was a young woman with white eyelashes, and given to looking down, and not to speaking up: she was always watching Mr. Hardie in company, like a cat cream; and hovering about him when alone. Betty went so far as to accuse her of colloguing with him against Alfred, and of "setting her cap at master," which accusation elicited no direct reply, but stinging innuendoes hours after.

Now, if one looks into the thing, the elements of discord had attacked Albion Villa quite as powerfully as Musgrove Cottage; but had hitherto failed signally: the mutual affection of the Dodds was so complete, and no unprincipled person among them to split the good.

And, now that the wedding drew near, there was but one joyful heart within the walls, though the others were too kind and unselfish to throw cold water. Mrs. Dodd's own wedding had ended in a piteous separation, and now to part with her darling child and launch her on the uncertain waves of matrimony! She heaved many a sigh when alone: but as there were no bounds to her maternal love, so there were no exceptions to her politeness: over her aching heart she forced on a wedding face, subdued, but hopeful, for her daughter, as she would for any other young lady about to be married beneath her roof.

It wanted but six days, when one morning after breakfast the bereaved wife, and mother about to be deserted, addressed her son and Viceroy thus: "Edward, we must borrow fifty pounds."

"Fifty pounds! what for? who wants that?"

"Why, I want it," said Mrs. Dodd stoutly.

"Oh, if you want it—what to do, please?"

"Why, to buy her wedding clothes, dear."

"I thought what her 'I' would come to," said Julia reproachfully.

Edward shook his head, and said, "He who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.'

"But she is not a he," objected Mrs. Dodd with the subtlety of a schoolman: "and who ever heard of a young lady being married without some things to be married in?"

"Well, I've heard Nudity is not the cheese on public occasions: but why not go dressed like a lady as she always does, only with white gloves; and be married without any bother and nonsense."

"You talk like a boy," said Mrs. Dodd. "I could not bear it. My poor child!" and she cast a look of tenderest pity on the proposed victim. "Well, suppose we make the poor child the judge," suggested Edward. He then put it to Julia whether, under the circumstances, she would wish them to run in debt, buying her finery to wear for a day. "It was not fair to ask her," said Mrs. Dodd with a sigh.

Julia blushed and hesitated, and said she would be candid; and then stopped.

"Ugh!" ejaculated Edward. "This is a bad beginning. Girl's candour! Now for a masterpiece of duplicity."

Julia inquired how he dared; and Mrs. Dodd said warmly that Julia was not like other people, she could be candid; had actually done it, more than once, within her recollection. The young lady justified the exception as follows: "If I was going to be married to myself, or to some gentleman I did not care for, I would not spend a shilling. But I am going to marry him; and so—oh, Edward, think of them saying, 'What has he married? a dowdy: why she hadn't new things on to go to church with him: no bonnet, no wreath, no new white dress!' To mortify him the very first day of our——" The sentence remained unfinished, but two lovely eyes filled to the very brim without running over, and completed the sense, and did the Viceroy's business, though a brother. "Why you dear little goose," said he: "of course, I don't mean that. I have as good as got the things we must buy; and those are a new bonnet——"

"Ah!"

"A wreath of orange blossoms——"

"Oh you good boy!"

"Four pair of gloves: two white—one is safe to break—two dark; very dark: invisible green, or visible black; last the honeymoon. All the rest you must find in the house."

"What, fit her out with a parcel of old things? so cruel, so unreasonable, dear Edward?"

"Old things! Why, where is all your gorgeous attire from Oriental climes? I see the splendiferous articles arrive, and then they vanish for ever."