'Once before,' she thought, 'have I gone out of the beaten track upon impulse. Cruel consequences! Yet do I repent? Not of the act, but of the error that ensued. Then I was eager, young, romantic. Now I would rather abstain: I am old and sluggish. If it is to be, it will be made plain. I do not distrust my feeling for Phoebe—it is not the jealous, hungering love of old; and I hope to be able to discern whether this be an act of charity! At least, I will not take the initiative. I did so last time.'

Honor's thoughts and speculations were all at Beauchamp throughout the evening and the early morning, till her avocations drove it out of her mind. She was busy, trying hard to get her own way with her bailiff as to the crops, when she was interrupted by tidings that Mr. Fulmort was in the drawing-room; and concluding it to be Robert, she did not hurry her argument upon guano. On entering the room, however, she was amazed at beholding not Robert, but his brother, cast down in an armchair, and looking thoroughly tired out.

'Mervyn! I did not expect to see you!'

'Yes, I just walked over. I thought I would report progress. I had no notion it was so far.'

And in fact he had not been at the Holt since, as a pert boy, he had found it 'slow.' Honor was rather alarmed at his fatigue, and offered varieties of sustenance, which he declined, returning with eager nervousness to the subject in hand.

The Bannermans, he said, had offered to go with Bertha and Phoebe, but only on condition that Maria was left at a boarding-house, and a responsible governess taken for Bertha. Moreover, Augusta had told Bertha herself what was impending, and the poor child had laid a clinging, trembling grasp on his arm, and hoarsely whispered that if a stranger came to hear her story, she would die. Alas! it might be easier than before. He had promised never to consent. 'But what can I do?' he said, with a hand upon either temple; 'they heed me no more than Maria!'

Robert had absolutely half consented to leave his cure in the charge of another, and conduct his brother and sisters, but this plan did not satisfy the guardian, who could not send out his wards without some reliable female.

He swung the tassel of the sofa-cushion violently as he spoke, and looked imploringly at Honora, but she, though much moved, felt obliged to keep her resolution of not beginning.

'Very hard,' he said, 'that when there are but two women in the world that that poor child likes, she can have neither!' and then, gaining hope from something in her face, he exclaimed, 'After all, I do believe you will take pity on her!'

'I thought you in joke yesterday.'

'I thought it too good to be true! I am not so cool as Phoebe thought me. But really,' he said, assuming an earnest, rational, gentlemanly manner, 'you have done so much for us that perhaps it makes us presume, and though I know it is preposterous, yet if it were possible to you to be long enough with poor Bertha to bring her round again, I do believe it would make an infinite difference.'

'What does Phoebe say?' asked Honor.

'Phoebe, poor child, she does not know I am come. She looks as white as death, and got up a smile that was enough to make one cry, but she told me not to mind, for something would be sure to bring it right; and so it will, if you will come.'

'But, Mervyn, you don't consider what a nuisance I shall be to you.'

Mervyn looked more gallant than Robert ever could have done, and said something rather foolish; but anxiety quickly made him natural again, and he proceeded, 'After all, they need not bother you much. Phoebe is of your own sort, and Maria is inoffensive, and Bertha will have Lieschen, and I—I'll take my own line, and be as little of a bore as I can. You'll go?'

'If—if it will do.'

That odd answer was enough. Mervyn, already leaning forward with his arms on his knees, held out one hand, and shaded his eyes with the other, as, half with a sob, he said, 'There, then, it is all right! Miss Charlecote, you can't guess what it is to a man not to be trusted with his own sisters!'

These words made that bete noire, John Mervyn Fulmort, nearly as much a child of her own as his brother and sister; for they were in a tone of self-blame—not of resentment.

She was sufficiently afraid of him to respect his reserve; moreover, he looked so ill and harassed that she dreaded his having an attack, and heartily wished for Phoebe, so she only begged him to rest till after her early dinner, when she would convey him back to Beauchamp; and then left him alone, while she went to look her undertaking in the face, rather amused to find herself his last resource, and surprised to find her spirit of enterprise rising, her memories of Alps, lakes, cathedrals, and pictures fast assuming the old charm that had erst made her long to see them again. And with Phoebe! Really it would be almost a disappointment if the scheme failed.

When she again met her unwonted guest he plunged into plans, routes, and couriers, treating her as far more completely pledged than she chose to allow; and eating as heartily as he dared, and more so than she thought Phoebe would approve. She was glad to have him safe at his own door, where Phoebe ran to meet them, greatly relieved, for she had been much disturbed by his absence at luncheon.

'Miss Charlecote! Did you meet him?'

'I went after her'—and Mervyn boyishly caught his sister round the waist, and pushed her down into a curtsey—'make your obedience; she is going to look after you all.'

'Going with us!' cried Phoebe, with clasped hands.

'To see about it,' began Honor, but the words were strangled in a transported embrace.

'Dearest, dearest Miss Charlecote! Oh, I knew it would all come right if we were patient; but, oh! that it should be so right! Oh! Mervyn, how could you?'

'Ah! you see what it is not to be faint-hearted.' And Phoebe, whose fault was certainly not a faint heart, laughed at this poor jest, as she had seldom laughed before, with an abandon of gaiety and joyousness. The quiet girl was absolutely thrown off her balance, laughed and cried, thanked and exclaimed, moved restlessly, and spoke incoherently.

'Oh! may I tell Bertha?' she asked.

'No, I'll do that,' said Mervyn. 'It is all my doing.'

'Run after him, Phoebe,' said Honor. 'Don't let Bertha think it settled!'

And Bertha was, of course, disappointingly indifferent.

Lady Bannerman's nature was not capable of great surprise, but Miss Charlecote's proposal was not unwelcome. 'I did not want to go,' she said; 'though dear Sir Nicholas would have made any sacrifice, and it would have looked so for them to have gone alone. Travelling with an invalid is so trying, and Phoebe made such a rout about Maria, that Mr. Crabbe insisted on her going. But you like the kind of thing.'

Honor undertook for her own taste for the kind of thing, and her ladyship continued, 'Yes, you must find it uncommonly dull to be so much alone. Where did Juliana tell me she had heard of Lucy Sandbrook?'

'She is in Staffordshire,' answered Honor, gravely.

'Ah, yes, with Mrs. Willis Beaumont; I remember. Juliana made a point of letting her know all about it, and how you were obliged to give her up.'

'I hope not,' exclaimed Honor, alarmed. 'I never gave her up! There is no cause but her own spirit of independence that she should not return to me to-morrow.'

'Oh, indeed,' said Augusta, carelessly letting the subject drop, after having implanted anxiety too painful to be quelled by the hope that Lady Acton's neighbourhood might have learnt how to rate her words.

Mr. Crabbe was satisfied and complimentary; Robert, rejoiced and grateful; and Bertha, for the first time, set her will upon recovering, and made daily experiments on her strength, thus quickly amending, though still her weakness and petulance needed the tenderest management, and once when a doubt arose as to Miss Charlecote's being able to leave home, she suddenly withered up again, with such a recurrence of unfavourable symptoms as proved how precarious was her state.

It was this evidence of the necessity of the arrangement that chiefly contributed to bring it to pass. When the pressure of difficulty lessened, Mervyn was half ashamed of his own conquest, disliked the obligation, and expected to be bored by 'the old girl,' as, to Phoebe's intense disgust, he would speak of Miss Charlecote. Still, in essentials he was civil and considerate, and Honor carefully made it evident that she did not mean to obtrude herself, and expected him to sit loose to the female part of the company. Divining that he would prefer the start from home not to be simultaneous, and also favouring poor Bertha's shuddering horror of the direct line of railway to London, she proposed that the ladies should work their way by easy journeys on cross lines to Southampton, whilst Mervyn settled his affairs at the office, and then should come to them with Robert, who had made it possible to take an Easter holiday in which to see them safe to their destination in Switzerland.

Phoebe tried to acquiesce in Miss Charlecote's advice to trust Mervyn's head to Robert's charge, and not tease him with solicitude; but the being debarred from going to London was a great disappointment. She longed for a sight of St. Matthew's; and what would it not have been to see the two brothers there like brothers indeed? But she must be content with knowing that so it was. Mervyn's opposition was entirely withdrawn, and though he did not in the least comprehend and was far from admiring his brother's aims, still his name and his means were no longer withheld from supporting Robert's purposes, 'because he was such a good fellow, it was a shame to stand in his way.' She knew, too, rather by implication than confession, that Mervyn imagined his chief regrets for the enormous extravagance of the former year, were because he had thus deprived himself of the power of buying a living for his brother, as compensation for having kept him out of his father's will. Whether Mervyn would ever have made the purchase, and still more whether Robert would have accepted it, was highly doubtful, but the intention was a step for which to be thankful; and Phoebe watched the growing friendliness of the long estranged pair with constantly new delight, and anticipated much from Mervyn's sight of St. Matthew's with eyes no longer jaundiced.

She would gladly, too, have delayed the parting with Miss Fennimore, who had made all her arrangements for a short stay with her relatives in London, and then for giving lessons at a school. To Phoebe's loyal spirit, it seemed hard that even Miss Charlecote's care should be regarded as compensating for the loss of the home friend of the last seven years, and the closer, dearer link was made known as she sat late over the fire with the governess on Easter Sunday evening, their last at Beauchamp. Silent hitherto, Miss Fennimore held her peace no longer, but begged Phoebe to think of one who on another Sunday would no longer turn aside from the Altar. Phoebe lifted her eyes, full of hope and inquiry, and as she understood, exclaimed, 'O, I am glad! I knew you must have some deep earnest reason for not being with us.'

'You never guessed?'

'I never tried. I saw that Robert knew, so I hoped.'

'And prayed?'

'Yes, you belonged to me.'

'Do I belong to you now?'

'Nay, more than ever now.'

'Then, my child, you never traced my unsettled faith?—my habit of testing mystery by reason never perplexed you?'

Phoebe thought a moment, and said, 'I knew that Robert distrusted, though I never asked why. There was a time when I used to try to sift the evidence and logic of all I learnt, and I was puzzled where faith's province began and reasoning ended. But when our first sorrow came, all the puzzles melted, and it was not worth while to argue on realities that I felt. Since that, I have read more, and seen where my own ignorance made my difficulties, and I have prized—yes, adored, the truths all the more because you had taught me to appreciate in some degree their perfect foundation on reasoning.'

'Strange,' said Miss Fennimore, 'that we should have lived together so long, acting on each other, yet each unconscious of the other's thoughts. I see now. What to you was not doubt, but desire for a reason for your hope, became in poor Bertha, not disbelief, but contempt and carelessness of what she did not feel. I shall never have a sense of rest, till you can tell me that she enters into your faith. I am chiefly reconciled to leaving her, because I trust that in her enfeebled, dependent state, she may become influenced by Miss Charlecote and by you.'

'I cannot argue with her,' said Phoebe. 'When she is well, she can always puzzle me; I lose her when she gets to her ego. You are the only one who can cope with that.'

'The very reason for keeping away. Don't argue. Live and act. That was your lesson to me.'

Phoebe did not perceive, and Miss Fennimore loved her freedom from self-consciousness too well even for gratitude's sake to molest her belief that the conversion was solely owing to Robert's powers of controversy.

That one fleeting glimpse of inner life was the true farewell. The actual parting was a practical matter of hurry of trains, and separation of parcels, with Maria too busy with the Maltese dog to shed tears, or even to perceive that this was a final leave-taking with one of those whom she best loved.



CHAPTER XXIII

Tak down, tak down the mast of gowd, Set up the mast of tree, It sets not a forsaken lady To sail so gallantly.—Annie of Lochroyan

'Quaint little white-capped objects! The St. Wulstan's girls marching to St. Paul's! Ah! the banner I helped to work! How well I remember the contriving that crozier upon it! How well it has worn! Sweet Honey must be in London; it was the sight she most grudged missing!'

So thought Lucilla Sandbrook as a cab conveyed her through the Whittingtonian intricacies.

Her residence with Mrs. Willis Beaumont was not a passage in her life on which she loved to dwell. Neither party had been well content with the other, though deference to Mrs. Prendergast had held them together. The lady herself was worthy and kind-hearted, but dull and tedious; and Lucilla, used to animation and intellect, had wearied excessively of the platitudes which were meant as friendly conversation, while her keen remarks and power of drollery and repartee were just sufficiently perceived to be dreaded and disliked. The children were like their mother, and were frightened and distressed by her quickness and unreasonable expectations. Their meek, demure heaviness and complacency, even at their sports, made her positively dislike them, all but one scapegrace boy, in favour with no one, and whom she liked more from perverseness and compassion than from any merits of his own. Lady Acton's good offices gave the widow a tangible cause, such as was an absolute satisfaction, for her antipathy, and shook the implicit trust in Mrs. Prendergast's recommendation that had hitherto overridden her private sentiments; yet still, habitual awe of her sister-in-law, and her own easiness and dread of change, left things in the same state until a crisis caused by a grand disturbance among the children. In the nice matter of meting out blame, mamma's partiality and the children's ungenerosity left an undue share upon the scapegrace; his indignant partisan fought his battles 'not wisely but too well,' lost temper, and uttered sarcastic home truths which startled and stung the lady into the request for which she could hardly have nerved herself in cooler moments, namely, that they might part.

This settled, each secretly felt that there was something to be regretted, and both equally wished that a new engagement should be made before the termination of the present should be made known at Southminster. For this purpose, every facility had been given for Miss Sandbrook's coming to town personally to answer two ladies to whom she had been mentioned. A family in the neighbourhood had already been tried, but had declined her, and Mrs. Beaumont had shown her the note; 'so stylish, such strange stories afloat.' Lucilla felt it best to break upon new ground, and wounded and depressed, had yet resentment enough to bear her through boldly. She wished to inspect Owen's child, and wrote to ask Mrs. Murrell to give her a bed for a couple of nights, venturing on this measure because, in the old woman's monthly report, she had mentioned that Mr. Fulmort had gone abroad for a fortnight.

It had not been an exhilarating evening. Small children were not much to Lucilla's taste, and her nephew was not a flattering specimen. He had the whitened drawn-up appearance of a child who had spent most of his life in a London cellar, with a pinched little visage and preternatural-looking black eyes, a squeaky little fretful voice, and all the language he had yet acquired decidedly cockney. Moreover, he had the habits of a spoilt child, and that a vulgar one, and his grandmother expected his aunt to think him a prodigy. There was a vacant room where Lucilla passed as much of her time as she could without an assumption of superiority, but she was obliged to spend the evening in the small furniture-encumbered parlour, and hear by turns of her nephew's traits of genius, of the merits of the preachers in Cat-alley, and the histories of the lodgers. The motherly Mrs. Murrell had invited any of the young men whose 'hearts might be touched' to attend her 'simple family worship;' and to Lucilla's discomfiture and her triumph, a youth appeared in the evening, and the young lady had her doubts whether the expounding were the attraction.

It was a relief to quit the close, underground atmosphere even for a cab; and 'an inspecting lady must be better than that old woman,' thought poor Lucy, as, heartily weary of Mrs. Murrell's tongue and her own graciousness, she rattled through the streets. Those long ranks of charity children renewed many an association of old. The festival which had been the annual event of Honor Charlecote's youth, she had made the same to her children, and Cilla had not despised it till recently. Thoughts of better days, of home-feelings, of tenderness, began to soften her. She had spent nearly two years without the touch of a kindred hand, and for many months past had been learning what it was to be looked at by no loving eye. She was on her way to still greater strangers! No wonder her heart yearned to the gentle voice that she had once spurned, and well-nigh in spite of herself, she muttered,

'Really I do think a kiss of poor Honor's would do me good! I have a great mind to go to her when I come back from Kensington. If I have taken a situation she cannot suppose that I want anything from her. It would be very comfortable; I should hear of Owen! I will go! Even if she be not in town, I could talk to Mrs. Jones, and sit a quarter of an hour in the cedar room! It would be like meeting Owen; it would be rest and home!'

She felt quite happy and pleased with herself under this resolution, but it was late before she could put it in practice. The lady at Kensington rather started on entering the room where she had been waiting nearly an hour. 'I thought—' she said, apologetically, 'Did my servant say Miss Sandbrook?'

Lucilla assented, and the lady, a little discomposed, asked a few questions, furtively surveying her all the time, seemed confused, then begged her to take some luncheon. It was so long since Mrs. Murrell's not very tempting breakfast, that the invitation was welcome, even though the presence of a gentleman and an elderly lady showed that it was a pretext for a family inspection, and again she detected the same start of surprise, and a glance passing round the circle, such as made her glad when afterwards an excuse was made for leaving her alone, that she might apply to the glass to see whether anything were amiss in her dress.

Then first she remarked that hers was not the governess air. She had long felt very virtuous for having spent almost nothing on her clothes, eking out her former wardrobe to the utmost; and the loose, dove-coloured jacket over her black silk skirt betrayed Parisian make, as did the exquisite rose, once worn in her hair, and now enlivening the white ribbon and black lace of the cheap straw bonnet, far back upon the rippling hair turned back from her temples, and falling in profuse ringlets. It was her ordinary unpremeditated appearance, but she perceived that to these good people it was startlingly stylish, and she was prepared for the confused intimation that there was no need for entering upon the discussion of terms.

She had been detained too late to make her other call, and the processions of tired children showed her that the service at St. Paul's was over. The depression of disappointment inclined her the more to the loving old face; and she caused herself to be set down at the end of Woolstone-lane, feeling as if drawn by a magnet as she passed the well known warehouse walls, and as if it were home indeed when she reached the court door.

It would not yield to her intimate manipulation of the old latch—a bad sign, and the bell re-echoed in vacancy. Again and again she rang, each moment of exclusion awakening a fresh yearning towards the cedar fragrance, every stare of passer-by making her long for the safe shelter of the bay-windowed parlour. At last a step approached, and a greeting for the friendly old servant was on her tongue's end. Alas! a strange face met her eye, elderly, respectable, but guarded. Miss Charlecote was not at home, not in town, not at Hiltonbury—gone abroad, whither was not known. Mrs. Jones? Dead more than a year ago. Every reply was followed by an attempt to close the door, and it needed all Lucy's native hardihood, all her ardent craving for her former home, to venture on an entreaty to be admitted for a few minutes. She was answered, that the house might be shown to no one without orders from Mr. Parsons.

Her heart absolutely fainted within her, as the heavy door was closed on her, making her thoroughly realize her voluntary renunciation of home and protection, and the dreariness of the world on which she had cast herself. Anxiety on Honor's behalf began to awaken. Nothing but illness could have induced her to leave her beloved Holt, and in the thought of her sick, lonely, and untended by the children she had fostered, Cilla forgave her adoption, forgave her forgiveness, forgave everything, in the impulse to hasten to her to requite the obligation by the tenderest care.

She had actually set off to the parsonage in quest of intelligence, when she recollected that she might appear there as a discarded governess in quest of her offended patroness; and her pride impelled her to turn back, but she despatched Mrs. Murrell's little maid with a note, saying that, being in town for a day, and hearing of Miss Charlecote's absence on the continent, she could not help begging to be certified that illness was not the cause. The reply was brief and formal, and it only altered Lucilla's uneasiness, for Mrs. Parsons merely assured her of Miss Charlecote's perfect health, and said she was gone abroad with the Fulmort family, where there had been a good deal of illness.

In her displeasure and desire to guard Honora from becoming a prey to the unworthy Sandbrooks, Mrs. Parsons never guessed at the cruelty of her own words, and at the conclusion drawn from them. Robert Fulmort likewise absent! No doubt his health had broken down, and Honor was taking Phoebe to be with him! She examined Mrs. Murrell, and heard of his activity, indeed, but of his recent absences from his parish, and by and by the good woman bethought her of a report that Mr. Fulmort was from home on account of his health. Oh, the misery of not daring to make direct inquiry!

But the hard practical world was before her, and the new situation was no longer a matter of wilful choice, but of dire necessity. She would not be hastily thrust from her present post, and would be lovingly received at Southminster in case of need, but she had no dependence save on her own exertions, and perverse romance had died away into desolateness. With strange, desperate vehemence, and determination not again to fail, she bought the plainest of cap-fronts, reduced her bonnet to the severest dowdiness, hid, straightened, tightened the waving pale gold of her hair, folded her travelling-shawl old-womanishly, cast aside all the merely ornamental, and glancing at herself, muttered, 'I did not know I could be so insignificant!' Little Owen stared as if his beautiful aunt had lost her identity, and Mrs. Murrell was ready to embrace her as a convert to last night's exposition.

Perhaps the trouble was wasted, for the lady, Mrs. Bostock, did not seem to be particular. She was quite young, easily satisfied, and only eager to be rid of an embarrassing interview of a kind new to her; the terms were fixed, and before many weeks had passed Lucilla was settled at a cottage of gentility, in sight of her Thames, but on the Essex side, where he was not the same river to her, and she found herself as often thinking that those tainted waters had passed the garden in Woolstone-lane as that they had sparkled under Wrapworth Bridge.

It was the greatest change she had yet undergone. She was entirely the governess, never the companion of the elders. Her employers were mercantile, wrapped up in each other, busy, and gay. The husband was all day in London, and, when the evenings were not given to society, preferred spending them alone with his wife and children. In his absence, the nursery absorbed nearly all the time the mother could spare from her company and her household. The children, who were too old for playthings, were consigned to the first-rate governess, and only appeared in the evening. Lucilla never left her schoolroom but for a walk, or on a formal request to appear in the drawing-room at a party; a solitude which she at first thought preferable to Mrs. Willis Beaumont's continued small chatter, especially as the children were pleasant, brisk, and lovable, having been well broken in by their Swiss bonne.

Necessity had trained Cilly in self-restraint, and the want of surveillance made her generous nature the more scrupulous in her treatment of her pupils; she taught them diligently, kept good order, won their affection and gave them some of her own, but nothing could obviate her growing weariness of holding intercourse with no mind above eleven years old. Trouble and anxiety she had known before, and even the terrible heartache that she carried about with her might have failed to wear down a being constituted as she was, without the long solitary evenings, and the total want of companionship. The first shock had been borne by the help of bustle and change, and it was only as weeks passed on, that care and depression grew upon her. Lessons, walks, children's games were oppressive in turn, and though the last good-night was a welcome sound, yet the solitude that ensued was unspeakably forlorn. Reading she had never loved, even had this been a house of books; the children were too young to need exertion on her part to keep in advance of them, and their routine lessons wore out her energies too much for her to turn to her own resources. She did little but repair her wardrobe, work for the boy in Whittington-street, and let thoughts drift through her mind. That death-bed scene at Hyeres, which had so often risen unbidden to her mind as she lay on her crib, was revived again, but it was not her father whose ebbing life she watched. It was one for whom she durst not ask, save by an inquiry from her brother, who had never dropped his correspondence with Honora; but Owen was actively employed, and his locality and habits were so uncertain that his letters were often astray for long together. His third year of apprenticeship had begun, and Lucilla's sole hope of a change from her present dreary captivity was in his either returning with Mr. Currie, or finding employment and sending for her and his child to Canada. 'By that time,' she thought, 'Europe will contain nothing to me. Nay, what does it contain that I have a right to care for now? I don't delude myself. I know his look and manner. His last thought will be for his flock at St. Matthew's, not for her who drove him to the work that has been killing him. Oh, no, he won't even forgive me, for he will think it the greatest service I could have done him.' Her eyes were hot and dry; what a relief would tears have been!



CHAPTER XXIV

Enid, my early and my only love, I thought, but that your father came between, In former days you saw me favourably, And if it were so, do not keep it back, Make me a little happier, let me know it.—TENNYSON

The foreign tour proved a great success. The summer in the Alps was delightful. The complete change gave Bertha new life, bodily strength first returning, and then mental activity. The glacier system was a happy exchange for her ego, and she observed and enjoyed with all the force of her acute intelligence and spirit of inquiry, while Phoebe was happy in doing her duty by profiting by all opportunities of observation, in taking care of Maria and listening to Mervyn, and Miss Charlecote enjoyed scenery, poetry, art, and natural objects with relish keener than even that of her young friends, who were less impressible to beauty in every shape.

Mervyn behaved very well to her, knowing himself bound to make the journey agreeable to her; he was constantly kind to Bertha, and in the pleasure of her revival submitted to a wonderful amount of history and science. All his grumbling was reserved for the private ear of Phoebe, whose privilege it always was to be his murmuring block, and who was only too thankful to keep to herself his discontents whenever his route was not chosen (and often when it was), his disgusts with inns, railroads, and sights and his impatience of all pursuits save Bertha's. Many a time she was permitted to see and hear nothing but how much he was bored, but on the whole the growls were so mitigated compared with what she had known, that it was almost contentment; and that he did not absolutely dislike their habits was plain from his adherence to the ladies, though he might have been quite independent of them.

Bertha's distortion of eye and hesitation of speech, though much modified, always recurred from fatigue, excitement, or meeting with strangers, or—still worse—with acquaintance. The difficulty of utterance distressed her far more than if she had been subject thereto from infancy, and increased her exceeding repugnance to any sort of society beyond her own party. The question whether she were fit to return home for the winter was under debate, when at Geneva, early in September, tidings reached the travellers that produced such a shock as to settle the point.

Juliana Acton was dead! It had been a very short attack of actual illness, but disease had long been secretly preying on her—and her asperity of disposition might be accounted for by constant unavowed suffering. It was a great blow. Her unpleasant qualities were all forgiven in the dismay of learning what their excuse had been; for those who have so lived as to make themselves least missed, are perhaps at the first moment the more mourned by good hearts for that very cause.

Augusta was so much terrified on her own account, that she might almost have been made a hydropathist on the spot; and Robert wrote that poor Sir Bevil was perfectly overwhelmed with grief and self-reproach, giving himself no credit for his exemplary patience and forbearance, but bitterly accusing himself of hardness and neglect. These feelings were shared in some degree by all the others, and Mervyn was especially affected. There had been much to soften him since his parents' death, and the sudden loss of the sister with whom he had always been on terms of scorn and dislike, shocked him excessively, and drew him closer to the survivors, sobering him, and silencing his murmurs for the time in real grief and awe. Bertha likewise was thoroughly overcome, not so much by these feelings, as by the mere effect of the sudden tidings on her nervous temperament, and the overclouding of the cheerfulness that had hitherto surrounded her. This, added to a day of over-fatigue and exposure, brought back such a recurrence of unfavourable symptoms, that a return to an English winter was not to be thought of. The south of France was decided upon at once, and as Lucilla had truly divined, Honor Charlecote's impulse led them to Hyeres, that she might cast at least one look at the grave in the Stranger's corner of the cypress-grown burial-ground, where rested the beloved of her early days, the father of the darlings of her widowed heart—loved and lost.

She endured her absence from home far better than she had expected, so much easier was it to stay away than to set off, and so completely was she bound up with her companions, loving Phoebe like a parent, and the other two like a nurse, and really liking the brother. All took delight in the winter paradise of Hyeres, that fragment of the East set down upon the French coast, and periodically peopled with a motley multitude of visitors from all the lands of Europe, all invalids, or else attendants on invalids.

Bertha still shrank from all contact with society, and the ladies, for her sake, lived entirely apart; but Mervyn made acquaintance, and sometimes went out on short expeditions with other gentlemen, or to visit his mercantile correspondents at Marseilles, or other places on the coast.

It was while he was thus absent that the three sisters stood one afternoon on the paved terrace of the Hotel des Isles d'Or, which rose behind them, in light coloured stone, of a kind of Italian-looking architecture, commanding a lovely prospect, the mountains on the Toulon side, though near, melting into vivid blue, and white cloud wreaths hanging on their slopes. In front lay the plain, covered with the peculiar gray-tinted olive foliage, overtopped by date palms, and sloping up into rounded hills covered with dark pines, the nearest to the sea bearing on its crest the Church de l'Ermitage. The sea itself was visible beyond the olives, bordered by a line of etangs or pools, and white heaps of salt, and broken by a peninsula and the three Isles d'Or. It was a view of which Bertha seemed never able to have enough, and she was always to be found gazing at it when the first ready for a walk.

'What are you going to sketch, Phoebe?' she said, as the sisters joined her. 'How can you, on such a day as this, with the air, as it were, loaded with cheiranthus smell? It makes one lazy to think of it!'

'It seems to be a duty to preserve some remembrance of this beautiful place.'

'It may be a pity to miss it, but as for the duty!'

'What, not to give pleasure at home, and profit by opportunities?'

'It is too hard to carry about an embodiment of Miss Fennimore's rules! Why, have you no individuality, Phoebe?'

'Must I not sketch, then?' said Phoebe, smiling.

'You are very welcome, if you would do it for your pleasure, not as an act of bondage.'

'Not as bondage,' said Phoebe; 'it is only because I ought that I care to do so at all.'

'And that's the reason you only make maps of the landscape.'

It was quite true that Phoebe had no accomplished turn, and what had been taught her she only practised as a duty to the care and cost expended on it, and these were things where 'all her might' was no equivalent for a spark of talent. 'Ought' alone gave her the zest that Bertha would still have found in 'ought not.'

'It is all I can do,' she said, 'and Miss Fennimore may like to see them; so, Bertha, I shall continue to carry the sketchbook by which the English woman is known like the man by his "Murray." Miss Charlecote has letters to write, so we must go out by ourselves.'

The Provencal natives of Hyeres had little liking for the foreigners who thronged their town, but did not molest them, and ladies walked about freely in the lovely neighbourhood, so that Honor had no scruple in sending out her charges, unaccompanied except by Lieschen, in case the two others might wish to dispose of Maria, while they engaged in some pursuit beyond her powers.

Poor Lieschen, a plump Prussian, grown portly on Beauchamp good living, had little sympathy with the mountain tastes of her frauleins, and would have wished all Hyeres like the shelf on the side of the hill where stood their hotel, whence the party set forth for the Place des Palmiers, so called from six actual palms bearing, but not often ripening, dates. Two sides were enclosed by houses, on a third an orange garden sloped down the descent; the fourth, where the old town climbed straight up the hill, was regarded by poor Lieschen with dread, and she vainly persuaded Maria at least to content herself with joining the collection of natives resting on the benches beneath the palms. How willingly would the good German have produced her knitting, and sought a compatriot among the nurses who sat gossiping and embroidering, while Maria might have played among their charges, who were shovelling about, or pelting each other with the tiny white sea-washed pebbles that thickly strewed the place.

But Maria, with the little Maltese dog in her arms, to guard him from a hailstorm of the pebbles, was inexorably bent on following her sisters; and Bertha had hurried nervously across from the strangers, so that Lieschen must pursue those light steps through the winding staircase streets, sometimes consisting of broad shallow steps, sometimes of actual flights of steep stairs hewn out in the rock, leading to a length of level terrace, where, through garden gates, orange trees looked out, dividing the vantage ground with houses and rocks—up farther, past the almost desolate old church of St. Paul—farther again—till, beyond all the houses, they came forth on the open mountainside, with a crest of rock far above, surmounted by the ruins of a castle, said to have been fortified by the Saracens, and taken from them by Charles Martel. It was to this castle that Phoebe's sketching duty was to be paid, and Maria and Bertha expressed their determination of climbing up to it, in hopes, as the latter said, of finding Charles Martel's original hammer. Lieschen, puffing and panting already, looked horrified, and laughingly they bade her sit down and knit, whilst they set out on their adventure. Phoebe smiled as she looked up, and uttered a prognostic that made Bertha the more defiant, exhilarated as she was by the delicious compound of sea and mountain breeze, and by the exquisite view, the roofs of the town sloping rapidly down, and the hills stretching round, clothed in pine woods, into which the gray olivettes came stealing up, while beyond lay the sea, intensely blue, and bearing on its bosom the three Isles d'Or flushed with radiant colour.

The sisters bravely set themselves to scramble among the rocks, each surface turned to the sea-breeze exquisitely and fantastically tinted by coloured lichens, and all interspersed with the classical acanthus' noble leaves, the juniper, and the wormwood. On they went, winding upwards as Bertha hoped, but also sideways, and their circuit had lasted a weary while, and made them exhausted and breathless, when looking round for their bearings, they found themselves in an enchanted maze of gray rocks, half hidden in myrtle, beset by the bristly battledores of prickly pear, and shaded by cork trees. Above was the castle, perched up, and apparently as high above them as when they began their enterprise; below was a steep descent, clothed with pines and adorned with white heaths. The place was altogether strange; they had lost themselves; Bertha began to repent of her adventure, and Maria was much disposed to cry.

'Never mind, Maria,' said Bertha, 'we will not try to go any higher. See, here is the dry bed of a torrent that will make a famous path down. There, that's right. What a picture it is! what an exquisite peep of the sea between the boughs! What now, what frightens you?'

'The old woman, she looks so horrid.'

'The witch for the lost children? No, no, Maria, she is only gathering fir cones, and completing the picture in her red basquine, brown jacket, and great hat. I would ask her the way, but that we could not understand her Provencal.'

'Oh, dear! I wish Phoebe was here! I wish we were safe!'

'If I ever come mountain-climbing again with you at my heels! Take care, there's no danger if you mind your feet, and we must come out somewhere.'

The somewhere, when the slope became less violent, was among vineyards and olivettes, no vestige of a path through them, only a very small cottage, picturesquely planted among the rocks, whence proceeded the sounds of a cornet-a-piston. As Bertha stood considering which way to take, a dog flew out of the house and began barking. This brought out a man, who rudely shouted to the terrified pair that they were trespassing. They would have fled at once up the torrent-bed, bad as it was for ascent, but there was a derisive exclamation and laugh, and half-a-dozen men, half-tipsy, came pouring out of the cottage, bawling to Colibri, the rough, shaggy white dog, that seemed disposed to spring at the Maltese in Bertha's arms.

The foremost, shouting in French for the sisters to stop, pointed to what he called the way, and Bertha drew Maria in that direction, trusting that they should escape by submission, but after going a little distance, she found herself at the edge of a bare, deep, dry ravine, steep on each side, almost so as to be impassable. The path only ran on the other side. There was another shout of exultation and laughter at the English girls' consternation. At this evident trick of the surly peasants, Maria shook all over, and burst into tears, and Bertha, gathering courage, turned to expostulate and offer a reward, but her horrible stammer coming on worse than ever, produced nothing but inarticulate sounds.

'Monsieur, there is surely some mistake,' said a clear voice in good French from the path on the other side, and looking across, the sisters were cheered by an unmistakable English brown hat. The peasants drew back a little, believing that the young ladies were not so unprotected as they had supposed, and the first speaker, with something like apology, declared that this was really the path, and descending where the sides were least steep, held out his hand to help Bertha. The lady, whose bank was more practicable, came down to meet them, saying in French, with much emphasis, that she would summon 'those gentlemen' to their assistance if desired; words that had considerable effect upon the enemy.

Poor Maria was in such terror that she could hardly keep her footing, and the hands both of Bertha and the unknown friend were needed to keep her from affording still more diversion to the peasants by falling prostrate. The lady seemed intuitively to understand what was best for both, and between them they contrived to hush her sobs, and repress her inclination to scream for Phoebe, and thus to lead her on, each holding a hand till they were at a safe distance; and Bertha, whose terror had been far greater than at the robbery at home, felt that she could let herself speak, when she quivered out an agony of trembling thanks. 'I am glad you are safe from these vile men,' said the lady, kindly, 'though they could hardly have done anything really to hurt you!'

'Frenchmen should not laugh at English girls,' cried Bertha. 'Oh, I wish my brothers were here,' and she turned round with a fierce gesture.

'Phoebe, Phoebe; I want Phoebe and Lieschen!' was Maria's cry.

'Can I help you find your party?' was the next question; and the voice had a gentle, winning tone that reassured Maria, who clung tight to her hand, exclaiming, 'Don't go away;' and though for months past the bare proposal of encountering a stranger would have made Bertha almost speechless, she felt a soothing influence that enabled her to reply with scarcely a hesitation. On comparing notes, it was discovered that the girls had wandered so far away from their sister that they could only rejoin her by re-entering the town and mounting again; and their new friend, seeing how nervous and agitated both still were, offered to escort them, only giving notice to her own party what had become of her.

She had come up with some sketching acquaintance, and not drawing herself, had, like the sisters, been exploring among the rocks, when she had suddenly come on them in the distress which had so much shaken them, that, reluctant to lose sight of their guardian, they accompanied her till she saw one of her friends, and then waited while she ran down with the announcement. 'How ridiculous it is in me,' muttered Bertha to herself, discontentedly; 'she will think us wild creatures. I wish we were not both so tall.'

And embarrassment, together with the desire to explain, deprived her so entirely of utterance, that Maria volunteered, 'Bertha always speaks so funnily since she was ill.' Rather a perplexing speech for the lady to hear; but instead of replying, she asked which was their hotel; and Bertha answering, she turned with a start of surprise and interest, as if to see their faces better, adding, 'I have not seen you at the table d'hote;' and under the strange influence of her voice and face, Bertha was able to answer, 'No. As Maria says, I have been very silly since my illness in the winter, and—and they have given way to me, and let me see no one.'

'But we shall see you; you are in our hotel,' cried Maria. 'Do come and let me show you all my Swiss costumes.'

'Thank you; if—' and she paused, perhaps a little perplexed by Maria; and Bertha added, in the most womanly voice that she could muster, 'My sister and Miss Charlecote will be very glad to see you—very much obliged to you.'

Then Maria, who was unusually demonstrative, put another question—

'Are you ill? Bertha says everybody here is ill. I hope you are not.'

'No, thank you,' was the reply. 'I am here with my uncle and aunt. It is my uncle who has been unwell.'

Bertha, afraid that Maria might blunder into a history of her malady, began to talk fast of the landscape and its beauties. The stranger seemed to understand her desire to lead away from herself, and readily responded, with a manner that gave sweetness to all she said. She was not very young-looking, and Maria's notion might be justified that she was at Hyeres on her own account, for there was hardly a tint of colour on her cheek; she was exceedingly spare and slender, and there was a wasted, worn look about the lower part of her face, and something subdued in her expression, as if some great, lasting sorrow had passed over her. Her eyes were large, brown, soft, and full of the same tender, pensive kindness as her voice and smile; and perhaps it was this air of patient suffering that above all attracted Bertha, in the soreness of her wounded spirit, just as the affectionateness gained Maria, with the instinct of a child.

However it might be, Phoebe, who had become uneasy at their absence, and only did not go to seek them from the conviction that nothing would set them so completely astray as not finding her at her post, was exceedingly amazed to be hailed by them from beneath instead of above, and to see them so amicably accompanied by a stranger. Maria went on in advance to greet the newly-recovered sister, and tell their adventure; and Bertha, as she saw Phoebe's pretty, grateful, self-possessed greeting, rejoiced that their friend should see that one of the three, at least, knew what to say, and could say it. As they all crept down together through the rugged streets, Phoebe felt the same strange attraction as her sisters, accompanied by a puzzling idea that she had seen the young lady before, or some one very like her. Phoebe was famous for seeing likenesses; and never forgetting a face she had once seen, her recognitions were rather a proverb in the family; and she felt her credit almost at stake in making out the countenance before her; but it was all in vain, and she was obliged to resign herself to discuss the Pyrenees, where it appeared that their new friend had been spending the summer.

At the inn-door they parted, she going along a corridor to her aunt's rooms, and the three Fulmorts hurrying simultaneously to Miss Charlecote to narrate their adventure. She was as eager as they to know the name of their rescuer, and to go to thank her; and ringing for the courier, sent him to make inquiries. 'Major and Mrs. Holmby, and their niece,' was the result; and the next measure was Miss Charlecote's setting forth to call on them in their apartments, and all the three young ladies wishing to accompany her—even Bertha! What could this encounter have done to her? Phoebe withdrew her claim at once, and persuaded Maria to remain, with the promise that her new friend should be invited to enjoy the exhibition of the book of Swiss costumes; and very soon she was admiring them, after having received an explanation sufficient to show her how to deal with Maria's peculiarities. Mrs. Holmby, a commonplace, good-natured woman, evidently knew who all the other party were, and readily made acquaintance with Miss Charlecote, who had, on her side, the same strange impression of knowing the name as Phoebe had of knowing the face.

Bertha, who slept in the same room with Phoebe, awoke her in the morning with the question, 'What do you think is Miss Holmby's name?'

'I did not hear it mentioned.'

'No, but you ought to guess. Do you not see how names impress their own individuality? You need not laugh; I know they do. Could you possibly have been called Augusta, and did not Katherine quite pervade Miss Fennimore?'

'Well, according to your theory, what is her name?'

'It is either Eleanor or Cecily.'

'Indeed!' cried Phoebe; 'what put that into your head?'

'Her expression—no, her entire Wesen. Something homely, simple, a little old-fashioned, and yet refined.'

'It is odd,' said Phoebe, pausing.

'What is odd?'

'You have explained the likeness I could not make out. I once saw a photograph of a Cecily, with exactly the character you mention. It was that of which she reminded me.'

'Cecily? Who could it have been?'

'One of the Raymond cousinhood. What o'clock is it?'

'Oh, don't get up yet, Phoebe; I want to tell you Miss Holmby's history, as I make it out. She said she was not ill, but I am convinced that her uncle and aunt took her abroad to give her change, not after illness, but sorrow.'

'Yes, I am sure she has known trouble.'

'And,' said Bertha, stifling her voice, so that her sister could hardly hear, 'that sorrow could have been only of one kind. Patient waiting is stamped on her brow. She is trying to lift up her head after cruel disappointment. Oh, I hope he is dead!'

And, to Phoebe's surprise and alarm, the poor little fortune-teller burst into tears, and sobbed violently. There could be no doubt that her own disappointment, rather than that which she ascribed to a stranger, prompted this gush of feeling; but it was strange, for in all the past months the poor child's sorrow and shame had been coldly, hardly, silently borne. The new scenes had thrust it into abeyance, and spirits and strength had forced trouble aside, but this was the only allusion to it since her conversation with Miss Charlecote on her sick bed, and the first sign of softening. Phoebe durst not enter into the subject, but soothed and composed her by caresses and cheerfulness; but either the tears, or perhaps their original cause—the fatigue and terror of the previous day—had entirely unhinged her, and she was in such a nervous, trembling state, and had so severe a headache, that she was left lying down, under Lieschen's charge, when the others went to the English chapel. Her urgent entreaty was that they would bring Miss Holmby to her on their return. She had conceived almost a passion for this young lady. Secluded as she had been, no intercourse beyond her own family had made known to her the pleasure of a friendship; and her mind, in its revival from its long exhaustion, was full of ardour, in the enthusiasm of a girl's adoration of a full-grown woman. The new and softening sensation was infinite gain, even by merely lessening her horror of society; and when the three churchgoers joined the Holmby party on their way back from the chapel, they begged, as a kindness to an invalid, for a visit to Bertha.

It was granted most readily, as if equally pleasant to the giver of the kindness and to the receiver, and the two young maidens walked home together. Phoebe could not but explain their gratitude to any one who could rouse Bertha, saying that her spirits had received a great shock, and that the effects of her illness on her speech and her eyes had made her painfully bashful.

'I am so glad,' was the hurried, rather quivering answer. 'I am glad if I can be of any use.'

Phoebe was surprised, while gratified, by the eager tenderness of her meeting with Bertha, who, quite revived, was in the sitting-room to greet her, and seemed to expand like a plant in the sunshine, under the influence of those sweet brown eyes. Her liveliness and drollery awoke, and her sister was proud that her new friend should see her cleverness and intelligence; but all the time the likeness to that photograph continued to haunt Phoebe's mind, as she continued to discover more resemblances, and to decide that if such were impressed by the Christian name, Bertha was a little witch to detect it.

Afternoon came, and as usual they all walked seawards. As Bertha said, they had had enough of the heights, and tried going towards the sea, as their new friend wished, although warned by the Fulmorts that it was a long walk, the etangs, or great salt-pools, spoiling the coast as a beach. But all were brave walkers, and exercise always did Bertha good. They had lovely views of the town as they wound about the hills, and admired its old streets creeping up the hill, and the two long wings stretching on either side. An iron cross stood up before the old church, relieved by the exquisite radiance of the sunset sky. 'Ah!' said Honor, 'I always choose to believe that is the cross to which the legend belongs.' 'Tell it, please, Miss Charlecote,' cried Maria.

And Honor told a veritable legend of Hyeres:—A Moorish princess, who had been secretly baptized and educated as a Christian by her nurse, a Christian slave, was beloved by a genie. She regarded him with horror, pined away, and grew thin and pale. Her father thought to raise her spirits by marrying her, and bestowed her on the son of a neighbouring king, sending her off in full procession to his dominions. On the way, however, lay a desert, where the genie had power to raise a sand-storm, with which he overwhelmed the suite, and flew away with the princess. But he could not approach her; she kept him at bay with the sign of the cross, until, enraged, he drove her about on a whirlwind for three days, and finally dashed her dead upon this coast. There she lay, fair as an almond blossom, and royally robed, and the people of Hyeres took her up and gave her honourable burial. When the king her father heard of it, he offered to reward them with a cross of gold of the same weight as his daughter; but, said the townsmen, 'Oh, king, if we have a cross of gold, the Moors will come and slay us for its sake, therefore give us the gold in coin, and let the cross be of iron.'

'And there it stands,' said the guest, looking up.

'I hope it does,' said Honor, confronting, as usual, the common-sense led pupils of Miss Fennimore, with her willing demi-credulity.

'It is a beautiful story!' was the comment; 'and, like other traditions, full of unconscious meaning.'

A speech this, as if it had been made to delight Honor, whose eyes were met by a congratulatory glance from Phoebe. At the farther words, 'It is very striking—the evil spirit's power ending with the slaying the body, never harming the soul, nor bending the will—'

'Bending the will is harming the soul,' said Phoebe.

'Nay,' was her companion's answer, 'the fatal evil is, when both wills are bent.'

Phoebe was too single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul's words of deep experience, 'To will is present with me.'

'I see,' she said; 'she might even have preferred the genie, but as long as her principle and better will resisted, she was safe from herself as well as from him.'

'Liked the nasty genie?' said Maria, who had listened only as to a fairy tale. 'Why, Phoebe, genies come out of bottles, and go away in smoke, Lieschen told me.'

'No, indeed,' said Bertha, in a low voice of feeling, piteous in one of her years, 'if so, it needed no outward whirlwind to fling her dead on the coast!'

'And there she found peace,' answered the guest, with a suppressed, but still visible sign of weariness. 'Oh! it was worth the whirlwind!'

Phoebe was forced to attend to Maria, whose imagination had been a good deal impressed, and who was anxious to make another attempt on a pilgrimage to castle and cross.

'When Mervyn comes back, Maria, we may try.'

The guest, who was speaking, stopped short in the midst. Had she been infected by Bertha's hesitation? She began again, and seemed to have forgotten what she meant to have said. However, she recovered herself; and there was nothing remarkable through the rest of the walk, but, on coming indoors, she managed to detain Phoebe behind the others, saying, lightly, 'Miss Fulmort, you have not seen the view from my window.' Phoebe followed to her little bed-room, and gazed out at the lovely isles, bathed in light so as to be almost transparent, and the ship of war in the bay, all shadowy and phantom-like. She spoke her admiration warmly, but met with but a half assent. The owner of the room was leaning her head against the glass, and, with an effort for indifference said, 'Did I hear that—that you were expecting your brother?'

'You are Cecily!' exclaimed Phoebe, instead of answering.

And Cecily, turning away from the window, leant against the wall for support, and her pale face crimsoning, said, 'I thought you did not know.'

'My sisters do not,' said Phoebe; 'but he told me, when—when he hoped—'

'And now you will help me?' said Cecily, hurrying out her words, as if overpowering one of her wills. 'You will, I know! I have promised my father and uncle to have nothing to do with him. Do not let me be taken by surprise. Give me notice, that I may get Aunt Holmby away before he comes.'

'Oh! must it be so?' cried Phoebe. 'He is not like what he used to be.'

'I have promised,' repeated Cecily; and grasping Phoebe's wrist, she added, 'you will help me to keep my promise.'

'I will,' said Phoebe, in her grave, reliable voice, and Cecily drew a long breath.

There were five minutes of silence, while Phoebe stood studying Cecily, and thinking how much injustice she had done to her, how little she had expected a being so soft and feeling in her firmness, and grieving the more at Mervyn's loss. Cecily at last spoke, 'When will he come?'

'We cannot tell; most likely not for a week, perhaps not for a fortnight. It depends on how he likes Corsica.'

'I think my aunt will be willing to go,' said Cecily. 'My uncle has been talking of Nice.'

'Then must we lose you,' said Phoebe, 'when you are doing Bertha so much good?'

'I should like to be with you while I can, if I may,' said Cecily, her eyes full of tears.

'Did you know us at first?' said Phoebe.

'I knew you were in this hotel; and after your sisters had spoken, and I saw Bertha's face, I was sure who she was. I thought no one was with you but Miss Charlecote, and that no one knew, so that I might safely indulge myself.' The word was out before she could recall it, and trying, as it were, to hide it, she said, 'But how, if you knew what had passed, did you not sooner know it was I?'

'Because we thought your name was Holmby.'

'Did you, indeed. You did not know that my aunt Holmby is my mother's sister? She kindly took me when my uncle was ordered to spend this winter abroad.'

'You were ill and tried. Bertha read that in your face. Oh! when you see how much difference—'

'I must not see. Do not talk of it, or we must not be together; and indeed it is very precious to me.' She rested her head on Phoebe's shoulder, and put an arm round her waist. 'Only one thing I must ask,' she said, presently; 'is he well?'

'Quite well,' said Phoebe. 'He has been getting better ever since we left home. Then you did not know he was with us?'

'No. It is not right for me to dwell on those things, and they never mention any of you to me.'

'But you will write to us now? You will not desert Bertha? You do not know how much you are doing for her.'

'Dear child! She is so like what he was when first he came.'

'If you could guess what she has suffered, and how fond he is of her, you would not turn away from her. You will let her be your friend?'

'If it be right,' said Cecily, with tearful eyes, but her mouth set into a steadfast expression, as resolute as sweetly sad.

'You know better what is right than I do,' said Phoebe; 'I who feel for him and Bertha. But if you have not heard from him for so long, I think there are things you ought to know.'

'At home, at home,' said Cecily; 'there it may be right to listen. Here I am trusted alone, and I have only to keep my promise. Tell me when I am at home, and it will make me happy. Though, nonsense! my wizened old face is enough to cure him,' and she tried to laugh. Phoebe regretted what she had said of Bertha's impression, and believed that the gentle, worn face ought to be far more touching than the most radiant charms, but when she strove to say that it was not beauty that Mervyn loved, she was hushed at once, and by the same mild authority turned out of the room.

Well for her that she could tell her story to Miss Charlecote without breach of confidence! Honor's first impulse was displeasure with the aunt, who she was sure had let her speak of, though not to, Miss Holmby without correcting her, and must purposely have kept the whole Raymond connection out of sight. 'Depend upon it, Phoebe,' she said, 'she will keep her niece here.'

'Poor Cecily, what will she do? I wish they would go, for I feel sure that she will think it her duty to hold out against him, till she has her father's sanction; she will seem hard, and he—'

'Do not reckon too much on him, Phoebe. Yes, it is a hard saying, but men care so much for youth and beauty, that he may find her less attractive. He may not understand how superior she must have become to what she was when he first knew her. Take care how you plead his cause without being sure of his sentiments.'

In fact, Honor thought Cecily Raymond so infinitely above Mervyn Fulmort, at his very best, that she could not regard the affair as hopeful under any aspect; and the parties concerned being just at the time of life when a woman becomes much the elder of a man of the same years, she fully expected that Cecily's loss of bloom would entirely take away his desire to pursue his courtship.

The next event was a diplomatic call from Mrs. Holmby, to sound Miss Charlecote, whose name she knew as a friend both of the Fulmorts and Moorcroft Raymonds, and who, she had feared, would use her influence against so unequal a match for the wealthy young squire. When convinced of her admiration of Cecily, the good aunt proceeded to condemn the Raymond pride. They called it religion, but she was not so taken in. What reasonable person heeded what a young man might have done when he was sowing his wild oats? No, it was only that the Baronet blood disdained the distillery, whereas the Fulmorts represented that good old family, the Mervyns, and it was a very fine estate, was not it? She had no patience with such nonsense, not she! All Sir John's doing; for, between themselves, poor dear George Raymond had no spirit at all, and was quite under his brother's thumb. Such a family, and such a thing as it would be for them to have that girl so well married. She would not take her away. The place agreed with the Major, and she had told Cecily she could not think of leaving it.

Phoebe saw how close a guard Cecily must have learnt to keep on herself, for not a tone nor look betrayed that she was suffering unusual emotion. She occupied herself quietly, and was most tenderly kind to Bertha and Maria, exerting herself to converse with Bertha, and to enter into her pursuits as cheerfully as if her mind was disengaged. Sometimes Phoebe fancied that the exceeding gentleness of her voice indicated when she was most tried, but she attempted no more tete-a-tetes, and Miss Charlecote's conjecture that in the recesses of her heart she was rejoiced to be detained by no fault of her own, remained unverified. Phoebe resigned Cecily for the present to Bertha's exclusive friendship. Competition would have been unwise, even if the forbidden subject had not been a restraint where the secret was known, while to soothe and cherish Bertha and settle her mind to begin life again was a welcome and fitting mission for Cecily, and inclination as well as discretion therefore held Phoebe aloof, preventing Maria from interfering, and trusting that Cecily was becoming Bertha's Mr. Charlecote.

Mervyn came back sooner than she had expected him, having soon tired of Corsica. His year of ill-health and of her attendance had made him dependent on her; he did not enter into novelty or beauty without Bertha; and his old restless demon of discontent made him impatient to return to his ladies. So he took Phoebe by surprise, walking in as she was finishing a letter to Augusta before joining the others in the olivettes.

'Well, Phoebe, how's Bertha? Ready to leave this hot-vapour-bath of a hole?'

'I don't know what you will say to it now,' she answered looking down, and a little tremulous. 'Who do you think is here?'

'Not Hastings? If he dares to show his nose here, I'll get him hissed out of the place.'

'No, no, something very different.'

'Well, make haste,' he said, in the grim voice of a tired man.

'She is here—Cecily Raymond.'

'What of that?' He sat down, folded his arms, and crossed his ankles, the picture of dogged indifference.

'Mervyn!'

'What does it matter to me who comes or goes? Don't stop to rehearse arrivals, but ring for something to eat. An atrocious mistral! My throat is like a turnpike road? Call it January? It is a mockery!'

Phoebe obeyed him; but she was in a ferment of wrath and consternation, and clear of nothing save that Cecily must be prepared for his appearance. She was leaving the room when he called her to ask what she was doing.

'I am going to tell the others that you are come.'

'Where are they?'

'In the olive yards behind the hotel.'

'Don't be in such a hurry, and I'll come.'

'Thank you, but I had better go on before. Miss Raymond is with them.'

'It makes no odds to her. Stop a minute, I tell you. What is the matter with her?' (Said with some uneasiness, hidden by gruffness.)

'She is not here for her own health, but Major Holmby is rheumatic.'

'Oh! that intolerable woman is here, is she? Then you may give Miss Charlecote notice to pack up her traps, and we'll set off to-morrow!'

If a desire to box a man's ears ever tingled in Phoebe's fingers, it was at that moment. Not trusting herself to utter a word, she went up-stairs, put on her hat, and walked forth, feeling as if the earth had suddenly turned topsy-turvy with her, and as if she could look no one in the face. Set off to-morrow! He might tell Miss Charlecote himself, she would not! Yet, after all, he had been rejected. His departure might not torture Cecily like the sight of his indifference. But what despair for Bertha, thought Phoebe, as she saw the friends pacing the paths between the rows of olives, while Miss Charlecote and Maria were gathering magnificent blue violets. At the first hint, Miss Charlecote called to Bertha, who came reluctantly, while Phoebe, with almost sickening pity, murmured her tidings to Cecily—adding, 'I do not think he is coming out. He is having something to eat,' in hopes that this tardiness might be a preparation. She was relieved that Bertha rushed back again to monopolize Miss Raymond, and overwhelm her with schemes for walks under Mervyn's escort. Cecily let her talk, but made no promises, and the soft gentleness of those replies thrilled as pangs of pain on Phoebe's pitying heart.

As they walked homewards, Mervyn himself appeared, slowly sauntering towards them. The younger sisters sprang to meet him, Cecily fell back to Miss Charlecote. Phoebe held her breath, and scarcely durst look. There was a touch of the hand, a greeting, then Bertha pounced on her brother to tell the adventure of the ravine; and Cecily began to set Maria off about the flowers in her nosegay. Phoebe could only come close to Miss Charlecote and squeeze her hand vehemently.

The inn-door was reached, and Mervyn waiting till Cecily came up, said with grave formality, 'I hear my sisters are indebted to you for your assistance in a very unpleasant predicament.

She bowed, and he bowed. That was all, and they were in their several apartments. Phoebe had never felt in such a fever. She could discern character, but love was but an external experience to her, and she could not read the riddle of Mervyn's repudiation of intercourse with their fellow-inmates, and his restlessness through the evening, checking Bertha for boring about her friend, and then encouraging her to go on with what she had been saying. At last, however, Bertha voluntarily ceased her communications and could be drawn out no farther; and when the candle was put out at night, she electrified Phoebe with the remark, 'It is Mervyn, and you know it; so you may as well tell me all about it.'

Phoebe had no choice but compliance; advising Bertha not to betray her knowledge, and anxious to know the conclusions which this acute young woman would draw from the present conjuncture. But Bertha was too fond of both parties not to be full of unmitigated hope. 'Oh, Phoebe!' she said, 'with Cecily there, I shall not mind going home, I shall not mind anything.'

'If only she will be there.'

'Stuff, Phoebe! The more Mervyn sulks, the more it shows that he cares for her; and if she cares for him, of course it will come right.'

'Do you remember what she said about the two wills contending?'

'Well, if she ever did think Mervyn the genie, she has crossed him once, twice, thrice, till she may turn him from Urgan into Ethert Brand.'

'She thinks it her duty not to hear that she has.'

'Oh, oh! from you who know all about it; but didn't I tell her plenty about Mervyn's kindness to me? Yes, indeed I did. I couldn't help it, you know. It did not seem true to let anybody begin to be my friend unless she knew—all that. So I told her—and oh! Phoebe, she was so dear and nice, better than ever after that,' continued Bertha, with what sounded like sobs; 'and then you know she could not help hearing how good and patient he was with me—only growing kinder and kinder the more tiresome I was. She must feel that, Phoebe, must not she? And then she asked about Robert, and I told her how Mervyn has let him get a chaplain to look after the distillery people, and the Institute that that old gin-palace is to be made into.'

'Those were just the things I was longing to tell her.'

'She could not stop me, you know, because I knew nothing,' cried Bertha, triumphantly. 'Are not you satisfied, Phoebe?'

'I ought to be, if I were sure of his feelings. Don't plunge about so, Bertha,—and I am not sure either that she will believe him yet to be a religious man.'

'Don't say that, Phoebe. I was just going to begin to like religion, and think it the only true key to metaphysics and explanation of existence, but if it sticks between those two, I shall only see it as a weak, rigid superstition, parting those who were meant for one another.'

Phoebe was strongly tempted to answer, but the little travelling clock struck, and thus acted as a warning that to let Bertha pursue an exciting discussion at this time of night would be ruinous to her nerves the next day. So with a good-night, the elder sister closed her ears, and lay pondering on the newly disclosed stage in Bertha's mind, which touched her almost as closely as the fate of her brother's attachment.

The ensuing were days of suppressed excitement, chiefly manifested by the yawning fits that seized on Bertha whenever no scene in the drama was passing before her. In fact, the scenes presented little. Cecily was not allowed to shut herself up, and did nothing remarkable, though avoiding the walks that she would otherwise have taken with the Fulmort party; and when she found that Bertha was aware of her position, firmly making silence on that head the condition of their interviews. Mervyn let her alone, and might have seemed absolutely indifferent, but for the cessation of all complaints of Hyeres, and for the noteworthy brightness, obligingness, and good humour of his manners. Even in her absence, though often restless and strangely watchful, he was always placable and good-tempered, never even scolding Phoebe; and in her presence, though he might not exchange three words, or offer the smallest service, there was a repose and content on his countenance that gave his whole expression a new reading. He was looking particularly well, fined down into alertness by his disciplined life and hill climbing, his complexion cleared and tanned by mountain air, and the habits and society of the last year leaving an unconscious impress unlike that which he used to bring from his former haunts. Phoebe wondered if Cecily remarked it. She was not aware that Cecily did not know him without that restful look.

Phoebe came to the conclusion that Cecily was persuaded of the cessation of his attachment, and was endeavouring to be thankful, and to accustom herself to it. After the first, she did not hide herself to any marked degree; and, probably to silence her aunt, allowed that lady to take her on one of the grand Monday expeditions, when all the tolerably sound visiting population of Hyeres were wont to meet, to the number of thirty or forty, and explore the scenery. Exquisite as were the views, these were not romantic excursions, the numbers conducing to gossip and chatter, but there were some who enjoyed them the more in consequence; and Mervyn, who had been loudest in vituperation of his first, found the present perfectly delightful, although the chief of his time was spent in preventing Mrs. Holmby's cross-grained donkey from lying down to roll, and administering to the lady the chocolate drops that he carried for Bertha's sustenance; Cecily, meantime, being far before with his sisters, where Mrs. Holmby would gladly have sent him if bodily terror would have permitted her to dismiss her cavalier.

Miss Charlecote and Phoebe, being among the best and briskest of the female walkers, were the first to enter the town, and there, in the Place des Palmiers, looking about him as if he were greatly amazed at himself, they beheld no other than the well-known figure of Sir John Raymond, standing beside the Major, who was sunning himself under the palm-trees.

'Miss Charlecote, how are you? How d'ye do, Miss Fulmort? Is your sister quite well again? Where's my little niece?'

'Only a little way behind with Bertha.'

'Well, we never thought to meet in such a place, did we? What a country of stones I have come over to-day, enough to break the heart of a farmer; and the very sheep are no better than goats! Vineyards? What they call vineyards are old black stumps that ought to be grubbed up for firewood!'

'Nay, I was struck by the wonderful cultivation of every available inch of ground. It speaks well for the Provencals, if we judge by the proverb, "Autant vaut l'homme que vaut sa terre."'

'Ah! there she comes;' and he hastened to join Cecily, while the deserted Bertha, coming up to her sister, muttered, 'Wretched girl! I hear she had written to him to fetch her home. That was what made her stay so quietly, was it?'

No one could accuse Mervyn of indifference who saw the blank look that overspread his face on hearing of Sir John's arrival, but he said not a word, only hurried away to dress for the table d'hote. The first notice the anxious ladies had that the tedious dinner was broken up, was a knock at their door, and Cecily's entrance, looking exceedingly white, and speaking very low. 'I am come to wish you good-bye,' she said. 'Uncle John has been so kind as to come for me, and I believe we shall set out to-morrow.'

Maria alone could dare to shriek out, 'Oh! but you promised to show me how to make a crown of my pink heaths, and I have been out with Lieschen, and gathered such beauties!'

'If you will come with me to my room I will show you while I pack up,' said Cecily, reducing Bertha to despair by this most effectual barrier to confidence; but she entreated leave to follow, since seeing Cecily playing with Maria was better than not seeing her at all.

After some time, Mervyn came in, flushed and breathless, and Honor kindly made an excuse for leaving him alone with Phoebe. After diligently tossing a book from one hand to the other for some minutes, he observed, sotto voce, 'That's a more decent old fellow than I gave him credit for.'

'Who, Sir John?'

'Aye.'

And that was the whole result of the tete-a-tete. He was in no mood for questions, and marched out of the room for a moonlight cigar. Phoebe only remained with the conviction that something had happened.

Miss Charlecote was more fortunate. She had met the Baronet in the passage, and was accosted by him with, 'Do you ever do such a thing as take a turn on that terrace?'

It was a welcome invitation, and in no more time than it took to fetch a shawl, the two old friends were pacing the paved terrace together.

'Well, what do you think of him?' began Sir John. 'There must be more good in him than I thought.'

'Much more than I thought.'

'He has been speaking to me, and I can't say but that I was sorry for him, though why it should have gone so hard with so sensible and good a girl as Cecily to give up such a scamp, I never could guess! I told George that seeing what I saw of him, and knowing what I knew, I could think it nothing better than a sacrifice to give her to him!'

'Exactly what I thought!'

'After the way he had used her, too—talking nonsense to her, and then playing fast and loose, trying his luck with half the young ladies in London, and then fancying she would be thankful to him as soon as he wanted a wife to keep house! Poor child, that would not have weighed with her a moment though—it puts me out of patience to know how fond she is of him—but for his scampishness, which made it a clear duty to refuse him. Very well she behaved, poor thing, but you see how she pined away—though her mother tells me that not a fretful word was ever heard from her, as active and patient and cheerful as ever. Then the Holmbys took her abroad, the only thing to save her health, but I never trusted the woman, and when by and by she writes to her father that Fulmort was coming, and her aunt would not take her away, "George," I said, "never mind; I'll go at once, and bring her home—she shall not be kept there to be torn to pieces between her feelings and her duty." And now I am come, I declare I don't know what to be at—I should think nothing of it if the lad only talked of reforming—but he looks so downcast, and owns so honestly that we were quite right, and then that excellent little sister of his is so fond of him, and you have stood his company this whole year—that I declare I think he must be good for something! Now you who have looked on all his life, just say what you think of him—such a way as he went on in last year, too—the crew that he got about him—'

'Phoebe thinks that was the consequence of his disappointment.'

'A man that could bring such a lot into the same house with that sister of his, had no business to think of Cecily.'

'He has suffered for it, and pretty severely, and I do think it has done him good. You must remember that he had great disadvantages.'

'Which didn't hinder his brother from turning out well.'

'Robert went to a public school—' and there she perceived she was saying something awkward, but Sir John half laughed, and assented.

'Quite right, Miss Charlecote; private pupils are a delusion? George never had one without a screw loose about him. Parish priests were never meant for tutors—and I've told my boy, Charlie, that the one thing I'll never consent to is his marrying on pupils—and doing two good things by halves. It has well nigh worried his uncle to death, and Cecily into the bargain.'

'Robert was younger, and the elders were all worse managed. Besides, Mervyn's position, as it was treated, made him discontented and uncomfortable; and this attachment, which he was too—too—I can find no word for it but contemptible—to avow, must have preyed on his temper and spirits all the time he was trying to shake it off. He was brought up to selfishness, and nothing but what he underwent last year could have shaken him out of it.'

'Then you think he is shaken out of it?'

'Where Bertha is concerned I see that he is—therefore I should hope it with his wife.'

'Well, well, I suppose what must be must be. Not that I have the least authority to say anything, but I could not help telling the poor fellow thus much—that if he went on steadily for a year or so, and continued in the same mind, I did not see why he should not ask my brother and Cecily to reconsider it. Then it will be for them to decide, you know.'

For them! As if Sir John were not in character as well as name the guiding head of the family.

'And now,' he added, 'you will let me come to your rooms this evening, for Mrs. Holmby is in such displeasure with me, that I shall get nothing but black looks. Besides, I want to see a little more of that nice girl, his sister.'

'Ah! Sir John, if ever you do consent, it will be more than half for love of Phoebe!'

'Well, for a girl like that to be so devoted to him—her brother though he be—shows there must be more in him than meets the eye. That's just the girl that I would not mind John's marrying.'



CHAPTER XXV

Turn again, Whittington!—Bow Bells

May had come round again before Robert Fulmort stood waiting at the Waterloo Station to welcome the travellers, who had been prohibited from putting Bertha's restored health to the test of east winds. It was a vista of happy faces that he encountered as he looked into the carriage window, yet the first questions and answers were grave and mournful.

'Is Mr. Henderson still alive?' asked Honora.

'No, he sank rapidly, and died on Sunday week. I was at the funeral on Saturday.'

'Right; I am glad you went. I am sorry I was away.'

'It was deeply felt. Nearly all the clergy in the archdeaconry, and the entire parish, were present.'

'Who is taking care of the parish?'

'Charlecote Raymond has been coming over for the Sundays, and giving great satisfaction.'

'I say, Robert, where's the Bannerman carriage? Phoebe is to be victimized there—more's the pity,' interposed Mervyn.

'There is their brougham. I meant to drive to Albury-street with her,' said Robert, gazing at his brother as if he scarcely knew him without the characteristic knitting of the brow under a grievance, the scowl, or the half-sneering smile; and with the cleared and lightened air that he had worn ever since that little spark of hope had been left to burn and shine undamped by dissipation or worldly policy. Bertha also was changed. She had grown tall and womanly, her looks beyond her age, and if her childish vivacity were gone, the softened gravity became her much better. It was Phoebe's report, however, for which he chiefly longed, and he was soon seated beside her on the way to Albury-street, while the others betook themselves Citywards.

'So, Phoebe, it is all right, and you are satisfied?'

'Satisfied, grateful, thankful to the utmost,' said Phoebe, fervently. 'I think I never was so happy as all through the latter part of the journey.'

'You think well of Bertha?'

'I cannot call her restored, for she is far more than she was before. That meeting with Cecily Raymond did for her what we could not do, and she is growing to be more than we knew how to wish for.'

'Her spirits?'

'Never high, and easily shaken. Her nerves are not strong yet, and she will never, I fear, be quite girlishly careless and merry, but she is grave and sweet. She does not shrink from people now, and when I saw her among other girls at Paris, she seemed older, much deeper, and altogether superior.'

'Does she think seriously?'

'She thinks and reads, but it is not easy to guess what she thinks, for she keeps silence, and has happily quite left off arguing with Miss Charlecote. I believe Cecily has great influence over her, and I think she will talk a great deal to Miss Fennimore. Robin, do you think we could have dear Miss Fennimore again?'

'I do not know what Mr. Parsons would say to you. As you know, she told him that she wanted to do the most useful work he could trust to her, so he has made her second mistress at the day-school for his tradesmen's daughters; and what they would do without her I cannot think!'

'She must have very insufficient pay.'

'Yes, but I think she is glad of that, and she had saved a good deal.'

'I give you notice that I shall try hard to get her, if Mr. Crabbe will only let us be as we were before. Do you think there is any hope for us?'

'I cannot tell. I suspect that he will not consent to your going home till Mervyn is married; and Augusta wants very much to have you, for the season at least.'

'Mervyn and Miss Charlecote both say I ought to see a little of the London world, and she promises to keep Maria and Bertha till we see our way. I should not like them to be without me anywhere else. You have not told me of poor Bevil. You must have seen him often.'

'Yes, he clings very much to me, poor fellow, and is nearly as much cast down as at first. He has persuaded himself that poor Juliana always continued what he thought her when they met in their youth. Perhaps she had the germs of it in her, but I sometimes hardly know which way to look when he is talking about her, and then I take shame to myself for the hard judgments I cannot put away even now!'

'Poor Juliana!' said Phoebe, saddened by her own sense that the difficulties of her present position were lessened by the removal of this sister. 'And little Elizabeth?'

'She is a nice little thing, and her father hardly lets her out of his sight. I have sometimes speculated whether he might not ask you to keep house for him, but last time I saw him, I fancied that he was inclined to hold aloof from you.'

'I had rather he did not ask us,' said Phoebe.

'Why so?'

'Because I am afraid Bertha would not look up to him if she lived with him,' said Phoebe.

Robert smiled, having himself become conscious of that weakness in his good brother-in-law which Phoebe felt, but did not name.

'And now, Phoebe,' said Robert, suddenly changing the subject, 'I have something for you to do; I want you to call on Miss Sandbrook.'

On her astonished look, he explained that he had made it his business frequently to see Owen Sandbrook's child, and of late to give it some religious teaching. While thus engaged, he had been surprised by the entrance of Lucilla, looking wretchedly ill and exhausted, and though she had rallied her spirits after the first moment, talked of having come up from Essex for a day's holiday of shopping and seeing her nephew, and had inquired eagerly and warmly for Miss Charlecote, he had been sufficiently uneasy about her to go afterwards to Mrs. Murrell, from whom he had learnt that she had avowed having consulted a physician in the morning, and had procured her address.

'And now,' said Robert, 'I want you, with whom she has never quarrelled, to call on her as an old friend just come into her neighbourhood, and find out what was the doctor's opinion. I am sure she is destroying herself.'

The whole was said with perfect simplicity, without shrinking from Phoebe's eye, as though he had absolutely forgotten what sentiments he had once entertained; and Phoebe could, neither in kindness nor humanity, refuse to be the means of reopening communication with the voluntary exile. She proposed to write and offer a call, but Robert, fearing to rouse the old perverse pride, recommended that there should be no preparation. Indeed, the chances of an independent expedition seemed likely to be scanty, for Lady Bannerman pounced on her sister as a truant bond-slave, who, when captured, was to be useful all day, and go to parties all night.

'I have told all my friends that I was going to introduce my sister, and what expectations you have,' she said. 'See, here are two cards for to-morrow night, Lady Jane Hewett and Mrs. Gosling, the young widow that I want Mervyn to meet, you know. Clear 5000 pounds a year, and such a charming house. Real first-rate suppers; not like Lady Jane's bread-and-butter and cat-lap, as Sir Nicholas says, just handed round. We would never go near the place, but as I said to Sir Nicholas, any sacrifice for my sister; and she has a son, you know, a fine young man; and if we manage well, we shall be in time for Carrie Gosling's supper. So mind that, Phoebe, and don't get engaged to too many dances.'

'Is there to be dancing?'

'Most likely. I hope you have something to wear.'

'I provided myself at Paris, thank you.'

'Not mourning, I trust! That will never do! Nobody thinks of mourning for a sister more than six months, and it makes me so low to think of poor Juliana, and this horrid complaint being in the family. It is quite a duty to keep one's spirits up. But there's Robert always so lugubrious; and poor Sir Bevil looks as deplorable, and comes up to town with that poor little girl all in crape, and won't eat any luncheon! I declare it gave me such a turn that I was obliged to have my little cordial before I could swallow a mouthful! And now you come in black! It is quite provoking! You must and shall get some colours to-morrow.'