The insult was too much. "Sir, you forget that whatever we may have been, to-night we meet as equals."

"Equals!"

"As guests in the same house—most certainly for the time being, equals."

Richard Brithwood stared, literally dumb with fury. The standers-by were dumb too, though such fracas were then not uncommon even in drawing-rooms, and in women's presence, especially with men of Mr. Brithwood's stamp. His wife seemed quite used to it. She merely shrugged her shoulders and hummed a note or two of "Ca ira." It irritated the husband beyond all bounds.

"Hold your tongue, my lady. What, because a 'prentice-lad once saved my life, and you choose to patronise him as you do many another vagabond, with your cursed liberty and equality, am I to have him at my table, and treat him as a gentleman? By ——, madam, never!"

He spoke savagely, and loud. John was silent; he had locked his hands together convulsively; but it was easy to see that his blood was at boiling heat, and that, did he once slip the leash of his passions, it would go hard with Richard Brithwood.

The latter came up to him with clenched fist. "Now mark me, you—you vagabond!"

Ursula March crossed the room, and caught his arm, her eyes gleaming fire.

"Cousin, in my presence this gentleman shall be treated as a gentleman. He was kind to my father."

"Curse your father!"

John's right hand burst free; he clutched the savage by the shoulder.

"Be silent. You had better."

Brithwood shook off the grasp, turned and struck him; that last fatal insult, which offered from man to man, in those days, could only be wiped out with blood.

John staggered. For a moment he seemed as if he would have sprung on his adversary and felled him to the ground—but—he did it not.

Some one whispered,—"He won't fight. He is a Quaker."

"No!" he said, and stood erect; though he was ghastly pale, and his voice sounded hoarse and strange—"But I am a Christian. I shall not return blow for blow."

It was a new doctrine; foreign to the practice, if familiar to the ear, of Christian Norton Bury. No one answered him; all stared at him; one or two sheered off from him with contemptuous smiles. Then Ursula March stretched out her friendly hand. John took it, and grew calm in a moment.

There arose a murmur of "Mr. Brithwood is going."

"Let him go!" Miss March cried, anger still glowing in her eyes.

"Not so—it is not right. I will speak to him. May I?" John softly unclosed her detaining hand, and went up to Mr. Brithwood. "Sir, there is no need for you to leave this house—I am leaving it. You and I shall not meet again if I can help it."

His proud courtesy, his absolute dignity and calmness, completely overwhelmed his blustering adversary; who gazed open-mouthed, while John made his adieu to his host and to those he knew. The women gathered round him—woman's instinct is usually true. Even Lady Caroline, amid a flutter of regrets, declared she did not believe there was a man in the universe who would have borne so charmingly such a "degradation."

At the word Miss March fired up. "Madam," she said, in her impetuous young voice, "no insult offered to a man can ever degrade him; the only real degradation is when he degrades himself."

John, passing out at the doorway, caught her words. As he quitted the room no crowned victor ever wore a look more joyful, more proud.

After a minute we followed him; the Doctor's wife and I. But now the pride and joy had both faded.

"Mrs. Jessop, you see I am right," he murmured. "I ought not to have come here. It is a hard world for such as I. I shall never conquer it—never."

"Yes—you will." And Ursula stood by him, with crimsoned cheek, and eyes no longer flashing, but fearless still.

Mrs. Jessop put her arm round the young girl. "I also think you need not dread the world, Mr. Halifax, if you always act as you did tonight; though I grieve that things should have happened thus, if only for the sake of this, my child."

"Have I done any harm? oh! tell me, have I done any harm?"

"No!" cried Ursula, with the old impetuosity kindling anew in every feature of her noble face. "You have but showed me what I shall remember all my life—that a Christian only can be a true gentleman."

She understood him—he felt she did; understood him as, if a man be understood by one woman in the world, he—and she too—is strong, safe, and happy. They grasped hands once more, and gazed unhesitatingly into each other's eyes. All human passion for the time being set aside, these two recognized each in the other one aim, one purpose, one faith; something higher than love, something better than happiness. It must have been a blessed moment for both.

Mrs. Jessop did not interfere. She had herself known what true love was, if, as gossips said, she had kept constant to our worthy doctor for thirty years. But still she was a prudent woman, not unused to the world.

"You must go now," she said, laying her hand gently on John's arm.

"I am going. But she—what will she do?"

"Never mind me. Jane will take care of me," said Ursula, winding her arms round her old governess, and leaning her cheek down on Mrs. Jessop's shoulder.

We had never seen Miss March show fondness, that is, caressing fondness, to any one before. It revealed her in a new light; betraying the depths there were in her nature; infinite depths of softness and of love.

John watched her for a minute; a long, wild, greedy minute, then whispered hoarsely to me, "I must go."

We made a hasty adieu, and went out together into the night—the cold, bleak night, all blast and storm.



CHAPTER XVIII

For weeks after then, we went on in our usual way; Ursula March living within a stone's throw of us. She had left her cousin's, and come to reside with Dr. Jessop and his wife.

It was a very hard trial for John.

Neither of us were again invited by Mrs. Jessop. We could not blame her; she held a precious charge, and Norton Bury was a horrible place for gossip. Already tale after tale had gone abroad about Miss March's "ingratitude" to her relations. Already tongue after tongue had repeated, in every possible form of lying, the anecdote of "young Halifax and the 'squire." Had it been "young Halifax and Miss March," I truly believe John could not have borne it.

As it was, though he saw her constantly, it was always by chance—a momentary glimpse at the window, or a passing acknowledgment in the street. I knew quite well when he had thus met her, whether he mentioned it or not—knew by the wild, troubled look, which did not wear off for hours.

I watched him closely, day by day, in an agony of doubt and pain.

For, though he said nothing, a great change was creeping over "the lad," as I still fondly called him. His strength, the glory of a young man, was going from him—he was becoming thin, weak, restless-eyed. That healthy energy and gentle composure, which had been so beautiful in him all his life through, were utterly lost.

"What am I to do with thee, David?" said I to him one evening, when he had come in, looking worse than usual—I knew why; for Ursula and her friend had just passed our house taking their pleasant walk in the spring twilight. "Thou art very ill, I fear?"

"Not at all. There is not the least thing the matter with me. Do let me alone."

Two minutes afterwards he begged my pardon for those sharp-spoken words. "It was not THEE that spoke, John," I said.

"No, you are right, it was not I. It was a sort of devil that lodges here:" he touched his breast. "The chamber he lives in is at times a burning hell."

He spoke in a low tone of great anguish. What could I answer? Nothing.

We stood at the window, looking idly out. The chestnut trees in the Abbey-yard were budding green: there came that faint, sweet sound of children at play, which one hears as the days begin to lengthen.

"It's a lovely evening," he said.

"John!" I looked him in the face. He could not palm off that kind deceit upon me. "You have heard something about her?"

"I have," he groaned. "She is leaving Norton Bury."

"Thank God!" I muttered.

John turned fiercely upon me—but only for a moment. "Perhaps I too ought to say, 'Thank God.' This could not have lasted long, or it would have made me—what I pray His mercy to save me from, or to let me die. Oh, lad, if I could only die."

He bent down over the window-sill, crushing his forehead on his hands.

"John," I said, in this depth of despair snatching at an equally desperate hope, "what if, instead of keeping this silence, you were to go to her and tell her all?"

"I have thought of that: a noble thought, worthy of a poor 'prentice lad! Why, two several evenings I have been insane enough to walk to Dr. Jessop's door, which I have never entered, and—mark you well! they have never asked me to enter since that night. But each time ere I knocked my senses came back, and I went home—luckily having made myself neither a fool nor a knave."

There was no answer to this either. Alas! I knew as well as he did, that in the eye of the world's common sense, for a young man not twenty-one, a tradesman's apprentice, to ask the hand of a young gentlewoman, uncertain if she loved him, was most utter folly. Also, for a penniless youth to sue a lady with a fortune, even though it was (the Brithwoods took care to publish the fact) smaller than was at first supposed—would, in the eye of the world's honour, be not very much unlike knavery. There was no help—none!

"David," I groaned, "I would you had never seen her."

"Hush!—not a word like that. If you heard all I hear of her—daily—hourly—her unselfishness, her energy, her generous, warm heart! It is blessedness even to have known her. She is an angel—no, better than that, a woman! I did not want her for a saint in a shrine—I wanted her as a help-meet, to walk with me in my daily life, to comfort me, strengthen me, make me pure and good. I could be a good man if I had her for my wife. Now—"

He rose, and walked rapidly up and down. His looks were becoming altogether wild.

"Come, Phineas, suppose we go to meet her up the road—as I meet her almost every day. Sometimes she merely bends and smiles, sometimes she holds out her little hand, and 'hopes I am quite well!' And then they pass on, and I stand gaping and staring after them like an idiot. There—look—there they are now."

Ay! walking leisurely along the other side of the road—talking and smiling to one another, in their own merry, familiar way, were Mrs. Jessop and Miss March.

They were not thinking of us, not the least. Only just ere they passed our house Ursula turned slightly round, and looked behind; a quiet, maidenly look, with the smile still lingering on her mouth. She saw nothing, and no one; for John had pulled me from the window, and placed himself out of sight. So, turning back again, she went on her way. They both disappeared.

"Now, Phineas, it is all ended."

"What do you mean?"

"I have looked on her for the last time."

"Nay—she is not going yet."

"But I am—fleeing from the devil and his angels. Hurrah, Phineas, lad! We'll have a merry night. To-morrow I am away to Bristol, to set sail for America."

He wrung my hands with a long, loud, half-mad laugh; and then dropped heavily on a chair.

A few hours after, he was lying on my bed, struck down by the first real sickness he had ever known. It was apparently a low agueish fever, which had been much about Norton Bury since the famine of last year. At least, so Jael said; and she was a wise doctoress, and had cured many. He would have no one else to attend him—seemed terrified at the mere mention of Dr. Jessop. I opposed him not at first, for well I knew, whatever the proximate cause of his sickness might be, its root was in that mental pang which no doctors could cure. So I trusted to the blessed quiet of a sick-room—often so healing to misery—to Jael's nursing, and his brother's love.

After a few days we called in a physician—a stranger from Coltham—who pronounced it to be this Norton Bury fever, caught through living, as he still persisted in doing, in his old attic, in that unhealthy alley where was Sally Watkins's house. It must have been coming on, the doctor said, for a long time; but it had no doubt now reached its crisis. He would be better soon.

But he did not get better. Days slid into weeks, and still he lay there, never complaining, scarcely appearing to suffer, except from the wasting of the fever; yet when I spoke of recovery he "turned his face unto the wall"—weary of living.

Once, when he had lain thus a whole morning, hardly speaking a word, I began to feel growing palpable the truth which day by day I had thrust behind me as some intangible, impossible dread—that ere now people had died of mere soul-sickness, without any bodily disease. I took up his poor hand that lay on the counterpane;—once, at Enderley, he had regretted its somewhat coarse strength: now Ursula's own was not thinner or whiter. He drew it back.

"Oh, Phineas, lad, don't touch me—only let me rest."

The weak, querulous voice—that awful longing for rest! What if, despite all the physician's assurances, he might be sinking, sinking—my friend, my hope, my pride, all my comfort in this life—passing from it and from me into another, where, let me call never so wildly, he could not answer me any more, nor come back to me any more.

Oh, God of mercy! if I were to be left in this world without my brother!

I had many a time thought over the leaving him, going quietly away when it should please the Giver of all breath to recall mine, falling asleep, encompassed and sustained by his love until the last; then, a burden no longer, leaving him to work out a glorious life, whose rich web should include and bring to beautiful perfection all the poor broken threads in mine. But now, if this should be all vain, if he should go from me, not I from him—I slid down to the ground, to my knees, and the dumb cry of my agony went up on high.

How could I save him?

There seemed but one way; I sprung at it; stayed not to think if it were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable. His life hung in the balance, and there was but one way; besides, had I not cried unto God for help?

I put aside the blind, and looked out of doors. For weeks I had not crossed the threshold; I almost started to find that it was spring. Everything looked lovely in the coloured twilight; a blackbird was singing loudly in the Abbey trees across the way; all things were fresh and glowing, laden with the hope of the advancing year. And there he lay on his sick-bed, dying!

All he said, as I drew the curtain back, was a faint moan—"No light! I can't bear the light! Do let me rest!"

In half-an-hour, without saying a word to human being, I was on my way to Ursula March.

She sat knitting in the summer-parlour alone. The doctor was out; Mrs. Jessop I saw down the long garden, bonnetted and shawled, busy among her gooseberry-bushes—so we were safe.

As I have said, Ursula sat knitting, but her eyes had a soft dreaminess. My entrance had evidently startled her, and driven some sweet, shy thought away.

But she met me cordially—said she was glad to see me—that she had not seen either of us lately; and the knitting pins began to move quickly again.

Those dainty fingers—that soft, tremulous smile—I could have hated her!

"No wonder you did not see us, Miss March; John has been very ill, is ill now—almost dying."

I hurled the words at her, sharp as javelins, and watched to see them strike.

They struck—they wounded; I could see her shiver.

"Ill!—and no one ever told me!"

"You? How could it affect you? To me, now"—and my savage words, for they were savage, broke down in a burst of misery—"nothing in this world to me is worth a straw in comparison with John. If he dies—"

I let loose the flood of my misery. I dashed it over her, that she might see it—feel it; that it might enter all the fair and sightly chambers of her happy life, and make them desolate as mine. For was she not the cause?

Forgive me! I was cruel to thee, Ursula; and thou wert so good—so kind!

She rose, came to me, and took my hand. Hers was very cold, and her voice trembled much.

"Be comforted. He is young, and God is very merciful."

She could say no more, but sat down, nervously twisting and untwisting her fingers. There was in her looks a wild sorrow—a longing to escape from notice; but mine held her fast, mercilessly, as a snake holds a little bird. She sat cowering, almost like a bird, a poor, broken-winged, helpless little bird—whom the storm has overtaken.

Rising, she made an attempt to quit the room.

"I will call Mrs. Jessop: she may be of use—"

"She cannot. Stay!"

"Further advice, perhaps? Doctor Jessop—you must want help—"

"None save that which will never come. His bodily sickness is conquered—it is his mind. Oh, Miss March!" and I looked up at her like a wretch begging for life—"Do YOU not know of what my brother is dying?"

"Dying!" A long shudder passed over her, from head to foot—but I relented not.

"Think—a life like his, that might be made a blessing to all he loves—to all the world—is it to be sacrificed thus? It may be—I do not say it will—but it may be. While in health he could fight against this—this which I must not speak of; but now his health is gone. He cannot rally. Without some change, I see clearly, even I, who love him better than any one can love him—"

She stirred a little here.

"Far better," I repeated; "for while John does NOT love me best, he to me is more than any one else in the world. Yet even I have given up hope, unless—But I have no right to say more."

There was no need. She began to understand. A deep, soft red, sun-rise colour, dawned all over her face and neck, nay, tinged her very arms—her delicate, bare arms. She looked at me once—just once—with a mute but keen inquiry.

"It is the truth, Miss March—ay, ever since last year. You will respect it? You will, you shall respect it?"

She bent her head in acquiescence—that was all. She had not uttered a single syllable. Her silence almost drove me wild.

"What! not one word? not one ordinary message from a friend to a friend?—one who is lying ill, too!"

Still silence.

"Better so!" I cried, made desperate at last. "Better, if it must be, that he should die and go to the God who made him—ay, made him, as you shall yet see, too noble a man to die for any woman's love."

I left her—left her where she sat, and went my way.

Of the hours that followed the less I say the better. My mind was in a tumult of pain, in which right and wrong were strangely confused. I could not decide—I can scarcely decide now—whether what I had done ought to have been done; I only know that I did it—did it under an impulse so sudden and impetuous that it seemed to me like the guidance of Providence. All I could do afterwards was to trust the result where we say we trust all things, and yet are for ever disquieting ourselves in vain—we of little faith!

I have said, and I say again, that I believe every true marriage—of which there is probably one in every five thousand of conjugal unions—is brought about by heaven, and heaven only; and that all human influence is powerless either to make or to mar that happy end. Therefore, to heaven I left this marriage, if such it was destined to be. And so, after a season, I calmed myself enough to dare entering that quiet sick-chamber, where no one ever entered but Jael and me.

The old woman met me at the door.

"Come in gently, Phineas; I do think there is a change."

A change!—that awful word! I staggered rather than walked to John's bed-side.

Ay, there was a change, but not THAT one—which made my blood run cold in my veins even to think of. Thank God for evermore for His great mercies—not THAT change!

John was sitting up in bed. New life shone in his eyes, in his whole aspect. Life and—no, not hope, but something far better, diviner.

"Phineas, how tired you look; it is time you were in bed."

The old way of speaking—the old, natural voice, as I had not heard it for weeks. I flung myself by the bed-side—perhaps I wept outright—God knows! It is thought a shame for a man to weep; yet One Man wept, and that too was over His friend—His brother.

"You must not grieve over me any more, dear lad; to-morrow, please God! I mean to be quite well again."

Amidst all my joy I marvelled over what could be the cause of so miraculous a change.

"You would smile if I told you—only a dream."

No, I did not smile; for I believed in the Ruler of all our spirits, sleeping or waking.

"A dream so curious, that I have scarcely lost the impression of it yet. Do you know, Phineas, she has been sitting by me, just where you sit now."

"She?"

"Ursula."

If I could express the tone in which he uttered the word, which had never fallen from his lips before—it was always either "Miss March," or the impersonal form used by all lovers to disguise the beloved name—"URSULA," spoken as no man speaks any woman's name save the one which is the music of his heart, which he foresees shall be the one fireside tune of his life, ever familiar, yet ever sweet.

"Yes, she sat there, talking. She told me she knew I loved her—loved her so much that I was dying for her; that it was very wrong; that I must rise up and do my work in the world—do it for heaven's sake, not for hers; that a true man should live, and live nobly for the woman he loves—it is only a coward who dies for her."

I listened, wonder-struck—for these were the very words that Ursula March might have uttered; the very spirit that seemed to shine in her eyes that night—the last night she and John spoke to one another. I asked him if there was any more of the dream?

"Nothing clear. I thought we were on the Flat at Enderley, and I was following her; whether I reached her or not I cannot tell. And whether I ever shall reach her I cannot tell. But this I know, Phineas, I will do as she bade me; I will arise and walk."

And so he did. He slept quietly as an infant all that night. Next morning I found him up and dressed. Looking like a spectre, indeed; but with health, courage, and hope in his eyes. Even my father noticed it, when at dinner-time, with Jael's help—poor old Jael! how proud she was—John crawled downstairs.

"Why, thee art picking up, lad! Thee'lt be a man again in no time."

"I hope so. And a better man than ever I was before."

"Thee might be better, and thee might be worse. Anyhow, we couldn't do without thee, John. Hey, Phineas! who's been meddling with my spectacles?"

The old man turned his back upon us, and busily read his newspaper upside down.

We never had a happier meal in our house than that dinner.

In the afternoon my father stayed at home—a rare thing for him to do; nay, more, he went and smoked his peaceful pipe in the garden. John lay on an extempore sofa, made of three of our high-backed chairs and the window-sill. I read to him—trying to keep his attention, and mine too, solely to the Great Plague of London and Daniel Defoe. When, just as I was stealthily glancing at his face, fancying it looked whiter and more sunken, that his smile was fading, and his thoughts were wandering—Jael burst in.

"John Halifax, there be a woman asking for thee."

No, John—no need for that start—that rush of impetuous blood to thy poor thin cheek, as if there were but one woman in all the world. No, it was only Mrs. Jessop.

At sight of him, standing up, tall, and gaunt, and pale, the good lady's eyes brimmed over.

"You have been very ill, my poor boy! Forgive me—but I am an old woman, you know. Lie down again."

With gentle force she compelled him, and sat down by his side.

"I had no idea—why did you not let us know—the doctor and me? How long have you been ill?"

"I am quite well now—I am indeed. I shall be about again tomorrow, shall I not, Phineas?" and he looked eagerly to me for confirmation.

I gave it, firmly and proudly. I was glad she should know it—glad she should see that the priceless jewel of his heart would not lie tossing in the mire because a haughty girl scorned to wear it. Glad that she might one day find out there lived not the woman of whom John Halifax was not worthy.

"But you must be very careful—very careful of yourself, indeed."

"He will, Mrs. Jessop. Or, if not, he has many to take care of him. Many to whom his life is most precious and most dear."

I spoke—perhaps more abruptly than I ought to have spoken to that good old lady—but her gentle answer seemed at once to understand and forgive me.

"I well believe that, Mr. Fletcher. And I think Mr. Halifax hardly knows how much we—we all—esteem him." And with a kind motherly gesture she took John's hand. "You must make haste and get well now. My husband will come and see you to-morrow. For Ursula—" here she carefully busied herself in the depths of her pocket—"my dear child sends you this."

It was a little note—unsealed. The superscription was simply his name, in her clear, round, fair hand-writing—"John Halifax."

His fingers closed over it convulsively. "I—she is—very kind." The words died away—the hand which grasped, ay, for more than a minute, the unopened letter, trembled like an aspen leaf.

"Yes, hers is a grateful nature," observed Mrs. Jessop, sedulously looking at and speaking to me. "I would not wish it otherwise—I would not wish her to forget those whose worth she proved in her season of trouble."

I was silent. The old lady's tongue likewise failed her. She took off her glove, wiped a finger across each eyelash, and sat still.

"Have you read your little note, Mr. Halifax?"

No answer.

"I will take your message back. She told me what she had said to you."

Ay, all the world might have read those simple lines:

"MY DEAR FRIEND,

"I did not know till yesterday that you had been ill. I have not forgotten how kind you were to my poor father. I should like to come and see you if you would allow me.

"Yours sincerely, "URSULA MARCH."

This was all the note. I saw it, more than thirty years afterwards, yellow and faded, in the corner of his pocket-book.

"Well, what shall I say to my child?"

"Say"—he half rose, struggling to speak—"ask her to come."

He turned his head towards the window, and the sunshine glittered on two great drops, large as a child's tear.

Mrs. Jessop went away. And now for a long hour we waited—scarcely moving. John lay, his eyes sometimes closed, sometimes fixed dreamily on the bit of blue sky that shone out above the iron railings between the Abbey trees. More than once they wandered to the little letter, which lay buried in his hands. He felt it there—that was enough.

My father came in from the garden, and settled to his afternoon doze; but I think John hardly noticed him—nor I. My poor old father! Yet we were all young once—let youth enjoy its day!

At length Ursula came. She stood at the parlour door, rosy with walking—a vision of youth and candid innocence, which blushed not, nor had need to blush, at any intent or act that was sanctified by the law of God, and by her own heart.

John rose to meet her. They did not speak, but only clasped hands.

He was not strong enough for disguises now—in his first look she might have seen, have felt, that I had told her the truth. For hers—but it dropped down, down, as Ursula March's clear glance had never dropped before. Then I knew how all would end.

Jael's voice broke in sharply. "Abel Fletcher, the doctor's wife is wanting thee down in the kitchen-garden, and she says her green gooseberries bean't half as big as our'n."

My father awoke—rubbed his eyes—became aware of a lady's presence—rubbed them again, and sat staring.

John led Ursula to the old man's chair.

"Mr. Fletcher, this is Miss March, a friend of mine, who, hearing I was ill, out of her great kindness—"

His voice faltered. Miss March added, in a low tone, with downcast eyelids:

"I am an orphan, and he was kind to my dear father."

Abel Fletcher nodded—adjusted his spectacles—eyed her all over—and nodded again; slowly, gravely, with a satisfied inspection. His hard gaze lingered, and softened while it lingered, on that young face, whereon was written simplicity, dignity, truth.

"If thee be a friend of John's, welcome to my house. Wilt thee sit down?"

Offering his hand, with a mixture of kindness and ceremonious grace that I had never before seen in my Quaker father, he placed her in his own arm-chair. How well I remember her sitting there, in her black silk pelisse, trimmed with the white fur she was so fond of wearing, and her riding-hat, the soft feathers of which drooped on her shoulder, trembling as she trembled. For she did tremble very much.

Gradually the old man's perception opened to the facts before him. He ceased his sharp scrutiny, and half smiled.

"Wilt thee stay, and have a dish of tea with us?"

So it came to pass, I hardly remember how, that in an hour's space our parlour beheld the strangest sight it had beheld since—Ah, no wonder that when she took her place at the table's foot, and gave him his dish of tea with her own hand—her pretty ringed lady's hand—my old father started, as if it had been another than Miss March who was sitting there. No wonder that, more than once, catching the sound of her low, quiet, gentlewomanlike speech, different from any female voices here, he turned round suddenly with a glance, half-scared, half-eager, as if she had been a ghost from the grave.

But Mrs. Jessop engaged him in talk, and, woman-hater as he was, he could not resist the pleasantness of the doctor's little wife. The doctor, too, came in after tea, and the old folk all settled themselves for a cosy chat, taking very little notice of us three.

Miss March sat at a little table near the window, admiring some hyacinths that Mrs. Jessop had brought us. A wise present: for all Norton Bury knew that if Abel Fletcher had a soft place in his heart it was for his garden and his flowers. These were very lovely; in colour and scent delicious to one who had been long ill. John lay looking at them and at her, as if, oblivious of past and future, his whole life were absorbed into that one exquisite hour.

For me—where I sat I do not clearly know, nor probably did any one else.

"There," said Miss March to herself, in a tone of almost childish satisfaction, as she arranged the last hyacinth to her liking.

"They are very beautiful," I heard John's voice answer, with a strange trembling in it. "It is growing too dark to judge of colours; but the scent is delicious, even here."

"I could move the table closer to you."

"Thank you—let me do it—will you sit down?"

She did so, after a very slight hesitation, by John's side. Neither spoke—but sat quietly there, with the sunset light on their two heads, softly touching them both, and then as softly melting away.

"There is a new moon to-night," Miss March remarked, appositely and gravely.

"Is there? Then I have been ill a whole month. For I remember noticing it through the trees the night when—"

He did not say what night, and she did not ask. To such a very unimportant conversation as they were apparently holding my involuntary listening could do no harm.

"You will be able to walk out soon, I hope," said Miss March again. "Norton Bury is a pretty town."

John asked, suddenly—"Are you going to leave it?"

"Not yet—I do not know for certain—perhaps not at all. I mean," she added, hurriedly, "that being independent, and having entirely separated from, and been given up by, my cousins, I prefer residing with Mrs. Jessop altogether."

"Of course—most natural." The words were formally spoken, and John did not speak again for some time.

"I hope,"—said Ursula, breaking the pause, and then stopping, as if her own voice frightened her.

"What do you hope?"

"That long before this moon has grown old you will be quite strong again."

"Thank you! I hope so too. I have need for strength, God knows!" He sighed heavily.

"And you will have what you need, so as to do your work in the world. You must not be afraid."

"I am not afraid. I shall bear my burthen like other men. Every one has some inevitable burthen to bear."

"So I believe."

And now the room darkened so fast that I could not see them; but their voices seemed a great way off, as the children's voices playing at the old well-head used to sound to me when I lay under the brow of the Flat—in the dim twilights at Enderley.

"I intend," John said, "as soon as I am able, to leave Norton Bury, and go abroad for some time."

"Where?"

"To America. It is the best country for a young man who has neither money, nor kindred, nor position—nothing, in fact, but his own right hand with which to carve out his own fortunes—as I will, if I can."

She murmured something about this being "quite right."

"I am glad you think so." But his voice had resumed that formal tone which ever and anon mingled strangely with its low, deep tenderness. "In any case, I must quit England. I have reasons for so doing."

"What reasons?"

The question seemed to startle John—he did not reply at once.

"If you wish I will tell you; in order that, should I ever come back—or if I should not come back at all, you who were kind enough to be my friend will know I did not go away from mere youthful recklessness, or love of change."

He waited, apparently for some answer—but it came not, and he continued:

"I am going because there has befallen me a great trouble, which, while I stay here, I cannot get free from or overcome. I do not wish to sink under it—I had rather, as you said, 'Do my work in the world' as a man ought. No man has a right to say unto his Maker, 'My burthen is heavier than I can bear.' Do you not think so?"

"I do."

"Do you not think I am right in thus meeting, and trying to conquer, an inevitable ill?"

"IS it inevitable?"

"Hush!" John answered, wildly. "Don't reason with me—you cannot judge—you do not know. It is enough that I must go. If I stay I shall become unworthy of myself, unworthy of—Forgive me, I have no right to talk thus; but you called me 'friend,' and I would like you to think kindly of me always. Because—because—" and his voice shook—broke down utterly. "God love thee and take care of thee, wherever I may go!"

"John, stay!"

It was but a low, faint cry, like that of a little bird. But he heard it—felt it. In the silence of the dark she crept up to him, like a young bird to its mate, and he took her into the shelter of his love for evermore. At once all was made clear between them; for whatever the world might say, they were in the sight of heaven equal, and she received as much as she gave.

* * * * *

When Jael brought in lights the room seemed to me, at first, all in a wild dazzle. Then I saw John rise, and Miss March with him. Holding her hand, he led her across the room. His head was erect, his eyes shining—his whole aspect that of a man who declares before all the world, "This is MY OWN."

"Eh?" said my father, gazing at them from over his spectacles.

John spoke brokenly, "We have no parents, neither she nor I. Bless her—for she has promised to be my wife."

And the old man blessed her with tears.



CHAPTER XIX

"I hardly like taking thee out this wet day, Phineas—but it is a comfort to have thee."

Perhaps it was, for John was bent on a trying errand. He was going to communicate to Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe, Ursula's legal guardian and trustee, the fact that she had promised him her hand—him, John Halifax, the tanner. He did it—nay, insisted upon doing it—the day after he came of age, and just one week after they had been betrothed—this nineteenth of June, one thousand eight hundred and one.

We reached the iron gate of the Mythe House;—John hesitated a minute, and then pulled the bell with a resolute hand.

"Do you remember the last time we stood here, John? I do, well!"

But soon the happy smile faded from his lips, and left them pressed together in a firm, almost painful gravity. He was not only a lover but a man. And no man could go to meet what he knew he must meet in this house, and on this errand, altogether unmoved. One might foresee a good deal—even in the knowing side-glance of the servant, whom he startled with his name, "Mr. Halifax."

"Mr. Brithwood's busy, sir—better come to-morrow," suggested the man—evidently knowing enough upon his master's affairs.

"I am sorry to trouble him—but I must see Mr. Brithwood to-day."

And John determinedly followed the man into the grand empty dining-room, where, on crimson velvet chairs, we sat and contemplated the great stag's head with its branching horns, the silver flagons and tankards, and the throstles hopping outside across the rainy lawn: at our full leisure, too, for the space of fifteen minutes.

"This will not do," said John—quietly enough, though this time it was with a less steady hand that he pulled the bell.

"Did you tell your master I was here?"

"Yes, sir." And the grin with which the footman came in somehow slid away from his mouth's corners.

"How soon may I have the honour of seeing him?"

"He says, sir, you must send up your business by me."

John paused, evidently subduing something within him—something unworthy of Ursula's lover—of Ursula's husband that was to be.

"Tell your master my business is solely with himself, and I must request to see him. It is important, say, or I would not thus intrude upon his time."

"Very well, sir."

Ere long, the man brought word that Mr. Brithwood would be at liberty, for five minutes only, in the justice-room. We were led out, crossing the court-yard once more—where, just riding out, I saw two ladies, one of whom kissed her hand gaily to John Halifax—to the magistrate's office. There, safely separated from his own noble mansion, Mr. Brithwood administered justice. In the outer room a stout young fellow—a poacher, probably—sat heavily ironed, sullen and fierce; and by the door a girl with a child in her arms, and—God pity her!—no ring on her finger, stood crying; another ill-looking fellow, maudlin drunk, with a constable by him, called out to us as we passed for "a drop o' beer."

These were the people whom Richard Brithwood, Esquire, magistrate for the county of ——, had to judge and punish, according to his own sense of equity and his knowledge of his country's law.

He sat behind his office-table, thoroughly magisterial, dictating so energetically to his clerk behind him, that we had both entered, and John had crossed the room, before he saw us, or seemed to see.

"Mr. Brithwood."

"Oh—Mr. Halifax. Good-morning."

John returned the salutation, which was evidently meant to show that the giver bore no grudge; that, indeed, it was impossible so dignified a personage as Richard Brithwood, Esquire, in his public capacity, too, could bear a grudge against so inferior an individual as John Halifax.

"I should be glad, sir, of a few minutes' speech with you."

"Certainly—certainly; speak on;" and he lent a magisterial ear.

"Excuse me, my business is private," said John, looking at the clerk.

"No business is private here," returned the 'squire, haughtily.

"Then shall I speak with you elsewhere? But I must have the honour of an interview with you, and immediately."

Whether Mr. Brithwood was seized with some indefinite alarm, he himself best knew why, or whether John's manner irresistibly compelled him to civility, as the stronger always compels the weaker, I cannot tell—but he signed to the clerk to leave the room.

"And, Jones, send back all the others to the lock-up house till tomorrow. Bless my life! it's near three o'clock. They can't expect to keep a gentleman's dinner waiting—these low fellows."

I suppose this referred only to the culprits outside; at all events, we chose to take it so.

"Now—you, sir—perhaps you'll despatch your business; the sooner the better."

"It will not take long. It is a mere matter of form, which nevertheless I felt it my duty to be the first to inform you. Mr. Brithwood, I have the honour of bearing a message to you from your cousin—Miss Ursula March."

"She's nothing to me—I never wish to see her face again, the—the vixen!"

"You will be kind enough, if you please, to avoid all such epithets; at least, in my hearing."

"Your hearing! And pray who are you, sir?"

"You know quite well who I am."

"Oh, yes! And how goes the tanning? Any offers in the horseflesh line? Always happy to meet you in the way of business. But what can you possibly have to do with me, or with any member of my family?"

John bit his lip; the 'squire's manner was extremely galling; more so, perhaps, in its outside civility than any gross rudeness.

"Mr. Brithwood, I was not speaking of myself, but of the lady whose message I have the honour to bring you."

"That lady, sir, has chosen to put herself away from her family, and her family can hold no further intercourse with her," said the 'squire, loftily.

"I am aware of that," was the reply, with at least equal hauteur.

"Are you? And pray what right may you have to be acquainted with Miss March's private concerns?"

"The right—which, indeed, was the purport of her message to you—that in a few months I shall become her husband."

John said this very quietly—so quietly that, at first, the 'squire seemed hardly to credit his senses. At last, he burst into a hoarse laugh.

"Well, that is the best joke I ever did hear."

"Pardon me; I am perfectly serious."

"Bah! how much money do you want, fellow? A pretty tale! you'll not get me to believe it—ha! ha! She wouldn't be so mad. To be sure, women have their fancies, as we know, and you're a likely young fellow enough; but to marry you—"

John sprang up—his whole frame quivering with fury. "Take care, sir; take care how you insult my WIFE!"

He stood over the wretch—the cowardly shrinking wretch—he did not touch him, but he stood over him till, terrified out of his life, Richard Brithwood gasped out some apology.

"Sit down—pray sit down again. Let us proceed in our business."

John Halifax sat down.

"So—my cousin is your wife, I think you were saying?"

"She will be, some months hence. We were engaged a week ago, with the full knowledge and consent of Doctor and Mrs. Jessop, her nearest friends."

"And of yours?" asked Mr. Brithwood, with as much sarcasm as his blunt wits could furnish him.

"I have no relatives."

"So I always understood. And that being the case, may I ask the meaning of the visit? Where are your lawyers, your marriage settlements, hey? I say, young man—ha! ha! I should like to know what you can possibly want with me, Miss March's trustee?"

"Nothing whatever. Miss March, as you are aware, is by her father's will left perfectly free in her choice of marriage; and she has chosen. But since, under certain circumstances, I wish to act with perfect openness, I came to tell you, as her cousin and the executor of this will, that she is about to become my wife."

And he lingered over that name, as if its very utterance strengthened and calmed him.

"May I inquire into those 'certain circumstances'?" asked the other, still derisively.

"You know them already. Miss March has a fortune and I have none; and though I wish that difference were on the other side—though it might and did hinder me from seeking her—yet now she is sought and won, it shall not hinder my marrying her."

"Likely not," sneered Mr. Brithwood.

John's passion was rising again.

"I repeat, it shall not hinder me. The world may say what it chooses; we follow a higher law than the world—she and I. She knows me, she is not afraid to trust her whole life with me; am I to be afraid to trust her? Am I to be such a coward as not to dare to marry the woman I love, because the world might say I married her for her money?"

He stood, his clenched hand resting on the table, looking full into Richard Brithwood's face. The 'squire sat dumfoundered at the young man's vehemence.

"Your pardon," John added, more calmly. "Perhaps I owe her some pardon too, for bringing her name thus into discussion; but I wished to have everything clear between myself and you, her nearest relative. You now know exactly how the matter stands. I will detain you no longer—I have nothing more to say."

"But I have," roared out the 'squire, at length recovering himself, seeing his opponent had quitted the field. "Stop a minute."

John paused at the door.

"Tell Ursula March she may marry you, or any other vagabond she pleases—it's no business of mine. But her fortune is my business, and it's in my hands too. Might's right, and possession's nine-tenths of the law. Not one penny shall she get out of my fingers as long as I can keep hold of it."

John bowed, his hand still on the door. "As you please, Mr. Brithwood. That was not the subject of our interview. Good-morning."

And we were away.

Re-crossing the iron gates, and out into the open road, John breathed freely.

"That's over—all is well."

"Do you think what he threatened is true? Can he do it?"

"Very likely; don't let us talk about that." And he walked on lightly, as if a load were taken off his mind, and body and soul leaped up to meet the glory of the summer sunshine, the freshness of the summer air.

"Oh! what a day is this!—after the rain, too! How she will enjoy it!"

And coming home through Norton Bury, we met her, walking with Mrs. Jessop. No need to dread that meeting now.

Yet she looked up, questioning, through her blushes. Of course he had told her where we were going to-day; her who had a right to know every one of his concerns now.

"Yes, dear, all is quite right. Do not be afraid."

Afraid, indeed! Not the least fear was in those clear eyes. Nothing but perfect content—perfect trust.

John drew her arm through his. "Come, we need not mind Norton Bury now," he said, smiling.

So they two walked forward, talking, as we could see, earnestly and rather seriously to one another; while Mrs. Jessop and I followed behind.

"Bless their dear hearts!" said the old lady, as she sat resting on the stile of a bean-field. "Well, we have all been young once."

Not all, good Mrs. Jessop, thought I; not all.

Yet, surely it was most pleasant to see them, as it is to see all true lovers—young lovers, too, in the morning of their days. Pleasant to see written on every line of their happy faces the blessedness of Nature's law of love—love began in youth-time, sincere and pure, free from all sentimental shams, or follies, or shames—love mutually plighted, the next strongest bond to that in which it will end, and is meant to end, God's holy ordinance of marriage.

We came back across the fields to tea at Mrs. Jessop's. It was John's custom to go there almost every evening; though certainly he could not be said to "go a-courting." Nothing could be more unlike it than his demeanour, or indeed the demeanour of both. They were very quiet lovers, never making much of one another "before folk." No whispering in corners, or stealing away down garden walks. No public show of caresses—caresses whose very sweetness must consist in their entire sacredness; at least, I should think so. No coquettish exactions, no testing of either's power over the other, in those perilous small quarrels which may be the renewal of passion, but are the death of true love.

No, our young couple were well-behaved always. She sat at her work, and he made himself generally pleasant, falling in kindly to the Jessop's household ways. But whatever he was about, at Ursula's lightest movement, at the least sound of her voice, I could see him lift a quiet glance, as if always conscious of her presence; her who was the delight of his eyes.

To-night, more than ever before, this soft, invisible link seemed to be drawn closer between them, though they spoke little together, and even sat at opposite sides of the table; but whenever their looks met, one could trace a soft, smiling interchange, full of trust, and peace, and joy. He had evidently told her all that had happened to-day, and she was satisfied.

More, perhaps, than I was; for I knew how little John would have to live upon besides what means his wife brought him; but that was their own affair, and I had no business to make public my doubts or fears.

We all sat round the tea-table, talking gaily together, and then John left us, reluctantly enough; but he always made a point of going to the tan-yard for an hour or two, in my father's stead, every evening. Ursula let him out at the front door; this was her right, silently claimed, which nobody either jested at or interfered with.

When she returned, and perhaps she had been away a minute or two longer than was absolutely necessary, there was a wonderful brightness on her young face; though she listened with a degree of attention, most creditable in its gravity, to a long dissertation of Mrs. Jessop's on the best and cheapest way of making jam and pickles.

"You know, my dear, you ought to begin and learn all about such things now."

"Yes," said Miss March, with a little droop of the head.

"I assure you"—turning to me—"she comes every day into the kitchen—never mind, my dear, one can say anything to Mr. Fletcher. And what lady need be ashamed of knowing how a dinner is cooked and a household kept in order?"

"Nay, she should rather be proud; I know John thinks so."

At this answer of mine Ursula half smiled: but there was a colour in her cheek, and a thoughtfulness in her eyes, deeper than any that our conversation warranted or occasioned. I was planning how to divert Mrs. Jessop from the subject, when it was broken at once by a sudden entrance, which startled us all like a flash of lightning.

"Stole away! stole away! as my husband would say. Here have I come in the dusk, all through the streets to Dr. Jessop's very door. How is she? where is she, ma petite!"

"Caroline!"

"Ah! come forward. I haven't seen you for an age."

And Lady Caroline kissed her on both cheeks in her lively French fashion, which Ursula received patiently, and returned—no, I will not be certain whether she returned it or not.

"Pardon—how do you do, Mrs. Jessop, my dear woman? What trouble I have had in coming! Are you not glad to see me, Ursula?"

"Yes, very." In that sincere voice which never either falsified or exaggerated a syllable.

"Did you ever expect to see me again?"

"No, certainly I did not. And I would almost rather not see you now, if—"

"If Richard Brithwood did not approve of it? Bah! what notions you always had of marital supremacy. So, ma chere, you are going to be married yourself, I hear?"

"Yes."

"Why, how quietly you seem to take it! The news perfectly electrified me this morning. I always said that young man was 'un heros de romans!' Ma foi! this is the prettiest little episode I ever heard of. Just King Cophetua and the beggar-maid—only reversed. How do you feel, my Queen Cophetua?"

"I do not quite understand you, Caroline."

"Neither should I you, for the tale seems incredible. Only you gave me such an honest 'yes,' and I know you never tell even white lies. But it can't be true; at least, not certain. A little affaire de coeur, maybe—ah! I had several before I was twenty—very pleasant, chivalrous, romantic, and all that; and such a brave young fellow, too! Helas! love is sweet at your age!"—with a little sigh—"but marriage! My dear child, you are not surely promised to this youth?"

"I am."

"How sharply you say it! Nay, don't be angry. I liked him greatly. A very pretty fellow. But then he belongs to the people."

"So do I."

"Naughty child, you will not comprehend me. I mean the lower orders, the bourgeoisie. My husband says he is a tanner's 'prenticeboy."

"He was apprentice; he is now partner in Mr. Fletcher's tan-yard."

"That is nearly as bad. And so you are actually going to marry a tanner?"

"I am going to marry Mr. Halifax. We will, if you please, cease to discuss him, Lady Caroline."

"La belle sauvage!" laughed the lady; and, in the dusk, I fancied I saw her reach over to pat Ursula's hand in her careless, pretty way. "Nay, I meant no harm."

"I am sure you did not; but we will change the subject."

"Not at all. I came to talk about it. I couldn't sleep till I had. Je t'aime bien, tu le sais, ma petite Ursule."

"Thank you," said Ursula, gently.

"And I would like well to see you married. Truly we women must marry, or be nothing at all. But as to marrying for love, as we used to think of, and as charming poets make believe—my dear, now-a-days, nous avons change tout cela."

Ursula replied nothing.

"I suppose my friend the young bourgeois is very much in love with you? With 'les beaux yeux de votre cassette,' Richard swears; but I know better. What of that? All men say they love one—but it will not last. It burns itself out. It will be over in a year, as we wives all know. Do we not, Mrs. Jessop? Ah! she is gone away."

Probably they thought I was away too—or else they took no notice of me—and went talking on.

"Jane would not have agreed with you, Cousin Caroline; she loved her husband very dearly when she was a girl. They were poor, and he was afraid to marry; so he let her go. That was wrong, I think."

"How wise we are growing in these things now!" laughed Lady Caroline. "But come, I am not interested in old turtle-doves. Say about yourself."

"I have nothing more to say."

"Nothing more? Mon Dieu! are you aware that Richard is furious; that he vows he will keep every sou he has of yours—law or no law—for as long as ever he can? He declared so this morning. Did young Halifax tell you?"

"Mr. Halifax has told me."

"'MR. Halifax!' how proudly she says it. And are you still going to be married to him?"

"Yes."

"What! a bourgeois—a tradesman? with no more money than those sort of people usually have, I believe. You, who have had all sorts of comforts, have always lived as a gentlewoman. Truly, though I adore a love-marriage in theory, practically I think you are mad—quite mad, my dear."

"Do you?"

"And he, too! Verily, what men are! Especially men in love. All selfish together."

"Caroline!"

"Isn't it selfish to drag a pretty creature down, and make her a drudge, a slave—a mere poor man's wife?"

"She is proud of being such!" burst in the indignant young voice. "Lady Caroline, you may say what you like to me; you were kind always, and I was fond of you; but you shall not say a word against Mr. Halifax. You do not know him—how could you?"

"And you do? Ah! ma petite, we all think that, till we find out to the contrary. And so he urges you to be married at once—rich or poor—at all risks, at all costs? How lover-like—how like a man! I guess it all. Half beseeches—half persuades—"

"He does not!" And the girl's voice was sharp with pain. "I would not have told you, but I must—for his sake. He asked me this afternoon if I was afraid of being poor? if I would like to wait, and let him work hard alone, till he could give me a home like that I was born to? He did, Caroline."

"And you answered—"

"No—a thousand times, no! He will have a hard battle to fight—would I let him fight it alone? when I can help him—when he says I can."

"Ah, child! you that know nothing of poverty, how can you bear it?"

"I will try."

"You that never ruled a house in your life—"

"I can learn."

"Ciel! 'tis wonderful! And this young man has no friends, no connections, no fortune! only himself."

"Only himself," said Ursula, with a proud contempt.

"Will you tell me, my dear, why you marry him?"

"Because"—and Ursula spoke in low tones, that seemed wrung out of her almost against her will—"because I honour him, because I trust him; and, young as I am, I have seen enough of the world to be thankful that there is in it one man whom I can trust, can honour, entirely. Also—though I am often ashamed lest this be selfish—because when I was in trouble he helped me; when I was misjudged he believed in me; when I was sad and desolate he loved me. And I am proud of his love—I glory in it. No one shall take it from me—no one will—no one can, unless I cease to deserve it."

Lady Caroline was silent. Despite her will, you might hear a sigh breaking from some deep corner of that light, frivolous heart.

"Bien! chacun a son gout! But you have never stated one trifle—not unnecessary, perhaps, though most married folk get on quite well without it—'Honour,' 'trust,'—pshaw! My child—do you LOVE Mr. Halifax?"

No answer.

"Nay, why be shy? In England, they say, and among the people—no offence, ma petite—one does sometimes happen to care for the man one marries. Tell me, for I must be gone, do you love him? one word, whether or no?"

Just then the light coming in showed Ursula's face, beautiful with more than happiness, uplifted even with a religious thankfulness, as she said simply:

"John knows."



CHAPTER XX

In the late autumn, John married Ursula March. He was twenty-one, and she eighteen. It was very young—too young, perhaps, prudent folk might say: and yet sometimes I think a double blessing falls on unions like this. A right and holy marriage, a true love-marriage, be it early or late, is—must be—sanctified and happy; yet those have the best chance of happiness, who, meeting on the very threshold of life, enter upon its duties together; with free, fresh hearts, easily moulded the one to the other, rich in all the riches of youth, acute to enjoy, brave and hopeful to endure.

Such were these two—God bless them!

They were married quite privately, neither having any near kindred. Besides, John held strongly the opinion that so solemn a festival as marriage is only desecrated by outward show. And so, one golden autumn morning, Ursula walked quietly up the Abbey aisle in her plain white muslin gown; and John and she plighted their faithful vows, no one being present except the Jessops and I. They then went away for a brief holiday—went away without either pomp or tears, entirely happy—husband and wife together.

When I came home and said what had happened my good father seemed little surprised. He had expressly desired not to be told anything of the wedding till all was over—he hated marriages.

"But since it is done, maybe 'tis as well," said he, grimly. "She seems a kindly young thing; wise, even—for a woman."

"And pleasant too, father?"

"Ay, but favour is deceitful, and beauty vain. So the lad's gone;" and he looked round, as if missing John, who had lived in our house ever since his illness. "I thought as much, when he bade me goodnight, and asked my leave to take a journey. So he's married and gone! Come, Phineas, sit thee down by thy old father; I am glad thee wilt always remain a bachelor."

We settled ourselves, my father and I; and while the old man smoked his meditative pipe I sat thinking of the winter evenings when we two lads had read by the fire-side; the summer days when we had lounged on the garden wall. He was a married man now, the head of a household; others had a right—the first, best, holiest right—to the love that used to be all mine; and though it was a marriage entirely happy and hopeful, though all that day and every day I rejoiced both with and for my brother, still it was rather sad to miss him from our house, to feel that his boyish days were quite over—that his boyish place would know him no more.

But of course I had fully overcome, or at least suppressed, this feeling when, John having brought his wife home, I went to see them in their own house.

I had seen it once before; it was an old dwelling-house, which my father bought with the flour-mill, situated in the middle of the town, the front windows looking on the street, the desolate garden behind shut in by four brick walls. A most un-bridal-like abode. I feared they would find it so, even though John had been busy there the last two months, in early mornings and late evenings, keeping a comical secrecy over the matter as if he were jealous that any one but himself should lend an eye, or put a finger, to the dear task of making ready for his young wife.

They could not be great preparations, I knew, for the third of my father's business promised but a small income. Yet the gloomy outside being once passed, the house looked wonderfully bright and clean; the walls and doors newly-painted and delicately stencilled:—("Master did all that himself," observed the proud little handmaid, Jenny—Jem Watkins's sweetheart. I had begged the place for her myself of Mistress Ursula.) Though only a few rooms were furnished, and that very simply, almost poorly, all was done with taste and care; the colours well mingled, the wood-work graceful and good.

They were out gardening, John Halifax and his wife.

Ay, his wife; he was a husband now. They looked so young, both of them, he kneeling, planting box-edging, she standing by him with her hand on his shoulder—the hand with the ring on it. He was laughing at something she had said, thy very laugh of old, David! Neither heard me come till I stood close by.

"Phineas, welcome, welcome!" He wrung my hand fervently, many times; so did Ursula, blushing rosy red. They both called me "brother," and both were as fond and warm as any brother and sister could be.

A few minutes after, Ursula—"Mrs. Halifax," as I said I ought to call her now—slipped away into the house, and John and I were left together. He glanced after his wife till she was out of sight, played with the spade, threw it down, placed his two hands on my shoulders, and looked hard in my face. He was trembling with deep emotion.

"Art thou happy, David?"

"Ay, lad, almost afraid of my happiness. God make me worthy of it, and of her!"

He lifted his eyes upwards; there was in them a new look, sweet and solemn, a look which expressed the satisfied content of a life now rounded and completed by that other dear life which it had received into and united with its own—making a full and perfect whole, which, however kindly and fondly it may look on friends and kindred outside, has no absolute need of any, but is complete in and sufficient to itself, as true marriage should be. A look, unconsciously fulfilling the law—God's own law—that a man shall leave father and mother, brethren and companions, and shall cleave unto his wife, and "they two shall become one flesh."

And although I rejoiced in his joy, still I felt half-sadly for a moment, the vague, fine line of division which was thus for evermore drawn between him and me of no fault on either side, and of which he himself was unaware. It was but the right and natural law of things, the difference between the married and unmarried, which only the latter feel. Which, perhaps, the Divine One meant them to feel—that out of their great solitude of this world may grow a little inner Eden, where they may hear His voice, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day."

We went round John's garden; there was nothing Eden-like about it, being somewhat of a waste still, divided between ancient cabbage-beds, empty flower-beds, and great old orchard-trees, very thinly laden with fruit.

"We'll make them bear better next year," said John, hopefully. "We may have a very decent garden here in time." He looked round his little domain with the eye of a master, and put his arm, half proudly, half shyly, round his wife's shoulders—she had sidled up to him, ostensibly bringing him a letter, though possibly only for an excuse, because in those sweet early days they naturally liked to be in each other's sight continually. It was very beautiful to see what a demure, soft, meek matronliness had come over the high spirit of the "Nut-browne Mayde."

"May I read?" she said, peeping over him.

"Of course you may, little one." A comical pet name for him to give her, who was anything but small. I could have smiled, remembering the time when John Halifax bowed to the stately and dignified young gentlewoman who stood at Mrs. Tod's door. To think he should ever have come to call Miss Ursula March "little one!"

But this was not exactly a time for jesting, since, on reading the letter, I saw the young wife flush an angry red, and then look grave. Until John, crumpling up the paper, and dropping it almost with a boyish frolic into the middle of a large rosemary-bush, took his wife by both her hands, and gazed down into her troubled face, smiling.

"You surely don't mind this, love? We knew it all before. It can make no possible difference."

"No! But it is so wrong—so unjust. I never believed he dared do it—to you."

"Hear her, Phineas! She thinks nobody dare do anything ill to her husband—not even Richard Brithwood."

"He is a—"

"Hush, dear!—we will not talk about him; since, for all his threats, he can do us no harm, and, poor man! he never will be half as happy as we."

That was true. So Mr. Brithwood's insulting letter was left to moulder harmlessly away in the rosemary-bush, and we all walked up and down the garden, talking over a thousand plans for making ends meet in that little household. To their young hopefulness even poverty itself became a jest; and was met cheerfully, like an honest, hard-featured, hard-handed friend, whose rough face was often kindly, and whose harsh grasp made one feel the strength of one's own.

"We mean," John said gaily, "to be two living Essays on the Advantages of Poverty. We are not going to be afraid of it or ashamed of it. We don't care who knows it. We consider that our respectability lies solely in our two selves."

"But your neighbours?"

"Our neighbours may think of us exactly what they like. Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort, and not for the comments of one's neighbours."

"I should think not," Ursula cried, tossing back her head in merry defiance. "Besides, we are young, we have few wants, and we can easily reduce our wants to our havings."

"And no more grey silk gowns?" said her husband, half-fondly, half-sadly.

"You will not be so rude as to say I shall not look equally well in a cotton one? And as for being as happy in it—why, I know best."

He smiled at her once more,—that tender, manly smile which made all soft and lustrous the inmost depths of his brown eyes; truly no woman need be afraid, with a smile like that, to be the strength, the guidance, the sunshine of her home.

We went in, and the young mistress showed us her new house; we investigated and admired all, down to the very scullery; then we adjourned to the sitting-room—the only one—and, after tea, Ursula arranged her books, some on stained shelves, which she proudly informed me were of John's own making, and some on an old spinet, which he had picked up, and which, he said, was of no other use than to hold books, since she was not an accomplished young lady, and could neither sing nor play.

"But you don't dislike the spinet, Ursula? It caught my fancy. Do you know I have a faint remembrance that once, on such a thing as this, my mother used to play?"

He spoke in a low voice; Ursula stole up to him with a fond, awed look.

"You never told me anything about your mother?"

"Dear, I had little to tell. Long ago you knew whom you were going to marry—John Halifax, who had no friends, no kindred, whose parents left him nothing but his name."

"And you cannot remember them?"

"My father not at all; my mother very little."

"And have you nothing belonging to them?"

"Only one thing. Should you like to see it?"

"Very much." She still spoke slowly, and with slight hesitation. "It was hard for him not to have known his parents," she added, when John had left the room. "I should like to have known them too. But still—when I know HIM—"

She smiled, tossed back the coronet of curls from her forehead—her proud, pure forehead, that would have worn a coronet of jewels more meekly than it now wore the unadorned honour of being John Halifax's wife. I wished he could have seen her.

That minute he re-appeared.

"Here, Ursula, is all I have of my parents. No one has seen it, except Phineas there, until now."

He held in his hand the little Greek Testament which he had showed me years before. Carefully, and with the same fond, reverent look as when he was a boy, he undid the case, made of silk, with ribbon strings—doubtless a woman's work—it must have been his mother's. His wife touched it, softly and tenderly. He showed her the fly-leaf; she looked over the inscription, and then repeated it aloud.

"'Guy Halifax, gentleman.' I thought—I thought—"

Her manner betrayed a pleased surprise: she would not have been a woman, especially a woman reared in pride of birth, not to have felt and testified the like pleasure for a moment.

"You thought that I was only a labourer's son: or—nobody's. Well, does it signify?"

"No," she cried, as, clinging round his neck and throwing her head back, she looked at him with all her heart in her eyes. "No, it does NOT signify. Were your father the king on his throne, or the beggar in the streets, it would be all the same to me; you would still be yourself—MY husband—MY John Halifax."

"God bless thee—my own wife that He has given me!" John murmured, through his close embrace.

They had altogether forgotten any one's presence, dear souls! so I kept them in that happy oblivion by slipping out to Jenny in the kitchen, and planning with her how we could at least spare Jem Watkins two days a week to help in the garden, under Mr. Halifax's orders.

"Only, Jenny," smiled I, with a warning finger, "no idling and chattering. Young folk must work hard if they want to come to the happy ending of your master and mistress."

The little maid grew the colour of her swain's pet peonies, and promised obedience. Conscientious Jem there was no fear of—all the rosy-cheeked damsels in Christendom would not have turned him aside from one iota of his duty to Mr. Halifax. Thus there was love in the parlour and love in the kitchen. But, I verily believe, the young married couple were served all the better for their kindness and sympathy to the humble pair of sweethearts in the rank below them.

John walked home with me—a pleasure I had hardly expected, but which was insisted upon both by him and Ursula. For from the very first of her betrothal there had been a thorough brother-and-sisterly bond established between her and me. Her womanly, generous nature would have scorned to do what, as I have heard, many young wives do—seek to make coldness between her husband and his old friends. No; secure in her riches, in her rightful possession of his whole heart, she took into hers everything that belonged to John, every one he cared for; to be for ever held sacred and beloved, being his, and therefore her own. Thus we were the very best of friends, my sister Ursula and me.

John and I talked a little about her—of her rosy looks, which he hoped would not fade in their town dwelling—and of good Mrs. Tod's wonderful delight at seeing her, when last week they had stayed two days in the dear old cottage at Enderley. But he seemed slow to speak about his wife, or to dilate on a joy so new that it was hardly to be breathed on, lest it might melt into air.

Only when, as we were crossing the street, a fine equipage passed, he looked after it with a smile.

"Grey ponies! she is so fond of long-tailed grey ponies. Poor child! when shall I be able to give her a carriage? Perhaps some day—who knows!"

He turned the conversation, and began telling me about the cloth mill—his old place of resort; which he had been over once again when they were at Rose Cottage.

"And do you know, while I was looking at the machinery, a notion came into my head that, instead of that great water-wheel—you remember it?—it might be worked by steam."

"What sort of steam?"

"Phineas, your memory is no better, I see. Have you forgotten my telling you how, last year, some Scotch engineer tried to move boats by steam, on the Forth and Clyde canal? Why should not the same power be turned to account in a cloth-mill? I know it could—I have got the plan of the machinery in my head already. I made a drawing of it last night, and showed it to Ursula; SHE understood it directly."

I smiled.

"And I do believe, by common patience and skill, a man might make his fortune with it at those Enderley cloth-mills."

"Suppose you try!" I said in half jest, and was surprised to see how seriously John took it.

"I wish I could try—if it were only practicable. Once or twice I have thought it might be. The mill belongs to Lord Luxmore. His steward works it. Now, if one could get to be a foreman or overseer—"

"Try—you can do anything you try."

"No, I must not think of it—she and I have agreed that I must not," said he, steadily. "It's my weakness—my hobby, you know. But—no hobbies now. Above all, I must not, for a mere fancy, give up the work that lies under my hand. What of the tan-yard, Phineas?"

"My father missed you, and grumbled after you a good deal. He looks anxious, I think. He vexes himself more than he needs about business."

"Don't let him. Keep him as much at home as you can. I'll manage the tan-yard: you know—and he knows too—that everything which can be done for us all I shall do."

I looked up, surprised at the extreme earnestness of his manner.

"Surely, John—"

"Nay, there is nothing to be uneasy about—nothing more than there has been for this year past. All trade is bad just now. Never fear, we'll weather the storm—I'm not afraid."

Cheerfully as he spoke, I began to guess—what he already must have known—that our fortunes were as a slowly leaking ship, of which the helm had slipped from my old father's feeble hand. But John had taken it—John stood firm at the wheel. Perhaps, with God's blessing, he might guide us safe to land.

I had not time to say more, when, with its pretty grey ponies, the curricle once more passed our way. Two ladies were in it: one leaned out and bowed. Presently a lacquey came to beg Mr. Halifax would come and speak with Lady Caroline Brithwood.

"Shall you go, John?"

"Certainly—why not?" And he stepped forward to the carriage-side.

"Ah! delighted to see mon beau cousin. This is he, Emma," turning to the lady who sat by her—oh, what a lovely face that lady had! no wonder it drove men mad; ay, even that brave man in whose honest life can be chronicled only this one sin, of being bewitched by her.

John caught the name—perhaps, too, he recognized the face—it was only too public, alas! His own took a sternness, such as I had never before seen, and yet there was a trace of pity in it too.

"You are quite well. Indeed, he looks so—n'est-ce pas, ma chere?"

John bore gravely the eyes of the two ladies fixed on him, in rather too plain admiration—very gravely, too, he bowed.

"And what of our young bride, our treasure that we stole—nay, it was quite fair—quite fair. How is Ursula?"

"I thank you, Mrs. Halifax is well."

Lady Caroline smiled at the manner, courteous through all its coldness, which not ill became the young man. But she would not be repelled.

"I am delighted to have met you. Indeed, we must be friends. One's friends need not always be the same as one's husband's, eh, Emma? You will be enchanted with our fair bride. We must both seize the first opportunity, and come as disguised princesses to visit Mrs. Halifax."

"Again let me thank you, Lady Caroline. But—"

"No 'buts.' I am resolved. Mr. Brithwood will never find it out. And if he does—why, he may. I like you both; I intend us to be excellent friends, whenever I chance to be at Norton Bury. Don't be proud, and reject me, there's good people—the only good people I ever knew who were not disagreeable."

And leaning on her large ermine muff, she looked right into John's face, with the winning sweetness which Nature, not courts, lent to those fair features—already beginning to fade, already trying to hide by art their painful, premature decay.

John returned the look, half sorrowfully; it was so hard to give back harshness to kindliness. But a light laugh from the other lady caught his ear, and his hesitation—if hesitation he had felt-was over.

"No, Lady Caroline, it cannot be. You will soon see yourself that it cannot. Living, as we do, in the same neighbourhood, we may meet occasionally by chance, and always, I hope, with kindly feeling; but, under present circumstances—indeed, under any circumstances—intimacy between your house and ours would be impossible."

Lady Caroline shrugged her shoulders with a pretty air of pique. "As you will! I never trouble myself to court the friendship of any one. Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle."

"Do not mistake me," John said, earnestly. "Do not suppose I am ungrateful for your former kindness to my wife; but the difference between her and you—between your life and hers—is so extreme."

"Vraiment!" with another shrug and smile, rather a bitter one.

"Our two paths lie wide apart—wide as the poles; our house and our society would not suit you; and that my wife should ever enter yours"—glancing from one to the other of those two faces, painted with false roses, lit by false smiles,—"No, Lady Caroline," he added, firmly, "it is impossible."

She looked mortified for a moment, and then resumed her gaiety, which nothing could ever banish long.

"Hear him, Emma! So young and so unkindly! Mais nous verrons. You will change your mind. Au revoir, mon beau cousin."

They drove off quickly, and were gone.

"John, what will Mrs. Halifax say?"

"My innocent girl! thank God she is safe away from them all—safe in a poor man's honest breast." He spoke with much emotion.

"Yet Lady Caroline—"

"Did you see who sat beside her?"

"That beautiful woman?"

"Poor soul! alas for her beauty! Phineas, that was Lady Hamilton."

He said no more, nor I. At my own door he left me, with his old merry laugh, his old familiar grasp of my shoulder.

"Lad, take care of thyself, though I'm not by to see. Remember, I am just as much thy tyrant as if I were living here still."

I smiled, and he went his way to his own quiet, blessed, married home.



CHAPTER XXI

The winter and spring passed calmly by. I had much ill-health, and could go out very little; but they came constantly to me, John and Ursula, especially the latter. During this illness, when I learned to watch longingly for her kind face, and listen for her cheerful voice talking pleasantly and sisterly beside my chair, she taught me to give up "Mrs. Halifax," and call her Ursula. It was only by slow degrees I did so, truly; for she was not one of those gentle creatures whom, married or single, one calls instinctively by their Christian names. Her manner in girlhood was not exactly either "meek" or "gentle"; except towards him, the only one who ever ruled her, and to whom she was, through life, the meekest and tenderest of women. To every one else she comported herself, at least in youth, with a dignity and decision—a certain stand-offishness—so that, as I said, it was not quite easy to speak to or think of her as "Ursula." Afterwards, when seen in the light of a new character, for which Heaven destined and especially fitted her, and in which she appeared altogether beautiful—I began to give her another name—but it will come by and by.

In the long midsummer days, when our house was very quiet and rather dreary, I got into the habit of creeping over to John's home, and sitting for hours under the apple-trees in his garden. It was now different from the wilderness he found it; the old trees were pruned and tended, and young ones planted. Mrs. Halifax called it proudly "our orchard," though the top of the tallest sapling could be reached with her hand. Then, in addition to the indigenous cabbages, came long rows of white-blossomed peas, big-headed cauliflowers, and all vegetables easy of cultivation. My father sent contributions from his celebrated gooseberry-bushes, and his wall-fruit, the pride of Norton Bury; Mrs. Jessop stocked the borders from her great parterres of sweet-scented common flowers; so that, walled in as it was, and in the midst of a town likewise, it was growing into a very tolerable garden. Just the kind of garden that I love—half trim, half wild—fruits, flowers, and vegetables living in comfortable equality and fraternity, none being too choice to be harmed by their neighbours, none esteemed too mean to be restricted in their natural profusion. Oh, dear old-fashioned garden! full of sweet-Williams and white-Nancies, and larkspur and London-pride, and yard-wide beds of snowy saxifrage, and tall, pale evening primroses, and hollyhocks six or seven feet high, many-tinted, from yellow to darkest ruby-colour; while for scents, large blushing cabbage-roses, pinks, gilly-flowers, with here and there a great bush of southern-wood or rosemary, or a border of thyme, or a sweet-briar hedge—a pleasant garden, where all colours and perfumes were blended together; ay, even a stray dandelion, that stood boldly up in his yellow waistcoat, like a young country bumpkin, who feels himself a decent lad in his way—or a plant of wild marjoram, that had somehow got in, and kept meekly in a corner of the bed, trying to turn into a respectable cultivated herb. Dear old garden!—such as one rarely sees now-a-days!—I would give the finest modern pleasure-ground for the like of thee!

This was what John's garden became; its every inch and every flower still live in more memories than mine, and will for a generation yet; but I am speaking of it when it was young, like its gardeners. These were Mrs. Halifax and her husband, Jem and Jenny. The master could not do much; he had long, long hours in his business; but I used to watch Ursula, morning after morning, superintending her domain, with her faithful attendant Jem—Jem adored his "missis." Or else, when it was hot noon, I used to lie in their cool parlour, and listen to her voice and step about the house, teaching Jenny, or learning from her—for the young gentlewoman had much to learn, and was not ashamed of it either. She laughed at her own mistakes, and tried again; she never was idle or dull for a minute. She did a great deal in the house herself. Often she would sit chatting with me, having on her lap a coarse brown pan, shelling peas, slicing beans, picking gooseberries; her fingers—Miss March's fair fingers—looking fairer for the contrast with their unaccustomed work. Or else, in the summer evenings, she would be at the window sewing—always sewing—but so placed that with one glance she could see down the street where John was coming. Far, far off she always saw him; and at the sight her whole face would change and brighten, like a meadow when the sun comes out. Then she ran to open the door, and I could hear his low "my darling!" and a long, long pause, in the hall.

They were very, very happy in those early days—those quiet days of poverty; when they visited nobody, and nobody visited them; when their whole world was bounded by the dark old house and the garden, with its four high walls.

One July night, I remember, John and I were walking up and down the paths by star-light. It was very hot weather, inclining one to stay without doors half the night. Ursula had been with us a good while, strolling about on her husband's arm; then he had sent her in to rest, and we two remained out together.

How soft they were, those faint, misty, summer stars! what a mysterious, perfumy haze they let fall over us!—A haze through which all around seemed melting away in delicious intangible sweetness, in which the very sky above our heads—the shining, world-besprinkled sky—was a thing felt rather than seen.

"How strange all seems! how unreal!" said John, in a low voice, when he had walked the length of the garden in silence. "Phineas, how very strange it seems!"

"What seems?"

"What?—oh, everything." He hesitated a minute. "No, not everything—but something which to me seems now to fill and be mixed up with all I do, or think, or feel. Something you do not know—but to-night Ursula said I might tell you."

Nevertheless he was several minutes before he told me.

"This pear-tree is full of fruit—is it not? How thick they hang and yet it seems but yesterday that Ursula and I were standing here, trying to count the blossoms."

He stopped—touching a branch with his hand. His voice sank so I could hardly hear it.

"Do you know, Phineas, that when this tree is bare—we shall, if with God's blessing all goes well—we shall have—a little child."

I wrung his hand in silence.

"You cannot imagine how strange it feels. A child—hers and mine—little feet to go pattering about our house—a little voice to say—Think, that by Christmas-time I shall be a FATHER."

He sat down on the garden-bench, and did not speak for a long time.

"I wonder," he said at last, "if, when I was born, MY father was as young as I am: whether he felt as I do now. You cannot think what an awful joy it is to be looking forward to a child; a little soul of God's giving, to be made fit for His eternity. How shall we do it! we that are both so ignorant, so young—she will be only just nineteen when, please God, her baby is born. Sometimes, of an evening, we sit for hours on this bench, she and I, talking of what we ought to do, and how we ought to rear the little thing, until we fall into silence, awed at the blessing that is coming to us."

"God will help you both, and make you wise."

"We trust He will; and then we are not afraid."

A little while longer I sat by John's side, catching the dim outline of his face, half uplifted, looking towards those myriad worlds, which we are taught to believe, and do believe, are not more precious in the Almighty sight than one living human soul.

But he said no more of the hope that was coming, or of the thoughts which, in the holy hush of that summer night, had risen out of the deep of his heart. And though after this time they never again formed themselves into words, yet he knew well that not a hope, or joy, or fear of his, whether understood or not, could be unshared by me.

In the winter, when the first snow lay on the ground, the little one came.

It was a girl—I think they had wished for a son; but they forgot all about it when the tiny maiden appeared. She was a pretty baby—at least, all the women-kind said so, from Mrs. Jessop down to Jael, who left our poor house to its own devices, and trod stately in Mrs. Halifax's, exhibiting to all beholders the mass of white draperies with the infinitesimal human morsel inside them, which she vehemently declared was the very image of its father.

For that young father—

But I—what can I say? How should I tell of the joy of a man over his first-born?

I did not see John till a day afterwards—when he came into our house, calm, happy, smiling. But Jael told me, that when she first placed his baby in his arms he had wept like a child.

The little maiden grew with the snowdrops. Winter might have dropped her out of his very lap, so exceedingly fair, pale, and pure-looking was she. I had never seen, or at least never noticed, any young baby before; but she crept into my heart before I was aware. I seem to have a clear remembrance of all the data in her still and quiet infancy, from the time her week-old fingers, with their tiny pink nails—a ludicrous picture of her father's hand in little—made me smile as they closed over mine.

She was named Muriel—after the rather peculiar name of John's mother. Her own mother would have it so; only wishing out of her full heart, happy one! that there should be a slight alteration made in the second name. Therefore the baby was called Muriel Joy—Muriel Joy Halifax.

That name—beautiful, sacred, and never-to-be-forgotten among us—I write it now with tears.

* * * * *

In December, 1802, she was born—our Muriel. And on February 9th—alas! I have need to remember the date!—she formally received her name. We all dined at John's house—Dr. and Mrs. Jessop, my father and I.

It was the first time my father had taken a meal under any roof but his own for twenty years. We had not expected him, since, when asked and entreated, he only shook his head; but just when we were all sitting down to the table, Ursula at the foot, her cheeks flushed, and her lips dimpling with a house-wifely delight that everything was so nice and neat, she startled us by a little cry of pleasure. And there, in the doorway, stood my father!

His broad figure, but slightly bent even now, his smooth-shaven face, withered, but of a pale brown still, with the hard lines softening down, and the keen eyes kinder than they used to be; dressed carefully in his First-day clothes, the stainless white kerchief supporting his large chin, his Quaker's hat in one hand, his stick in the other, looking in at us, a half-amused twitch mingling with the gravity of his mouth—thus he stood—thus I see thee, O my dear old father!

The young couple seemed as if they never could welcome him enough. He only said, "I thank thee, John," "I thank thee, Ursula;" and took his place beside the latter, giving no reason why he had changed his mind and come. Simple as the dinner was—simple as befitted those who, their guests knew, could not honestly afford luxuries; though there were no ornaments, save the centre nosegay of laurustinus and white Christmas roses—I do not think King George himself ever sat down to a nobler feast.

Afterwards we drew merrily round the fire, or watched outside the window the thickly falling snow.

"It has not snowed these two months," said John; "never since the day our little girl was born."

And at that moment, as if she heard herself mentioned, and was indignant at our having forgotten her so long, the little maid up-stairs set up a cry—that unmistakable child's cry, which seems to change the whole atmosphere of a household.

My father gave a start—he had never seen or expressed a wish to see John's daughter. We knew he did not like babies. Again the little helpless wail; Ursula rose and stole away—Abel Fletcher looked after her with a curious expression, then began to say something about going back to the tan-yard.

"Do not, pray do not leave us," John entreated; "Ursula wants to show you our little lady."

My father put out his hands in deprecation; or as if desiring to thrust from him a host of thronging, battling thoughts. Still, came faintly down at intervals the tiny voice, dropping into a soft coo of pleasure, like a wood-dove in its nest—every mother knows the sound. And then Mrs. Halifax entered holding in her arms her little winter flower, her baby daughter.

Abel Fletcher just looked at it and her—closed his eyes against both, and looked no more.

Ursula seemed pained a moment, but soon forgot it in the general admiration of her treasure.

"She might well come in a snow-storm," said Mrs. Jessop, taking the child. "She is just like snow, so soft and white."

"And as soundless—she hardly ever cries. She just lies in this way half the day over, cooing quietly, with her eyes shut. There, she has caught your dress fast. Now, was there ever a two months' old baby so quick at noticing things? and she does it all with her fingers—she touches everything;—ah! take care, doctor," the mother added, reproachfully, at a loud slam of the door, which made the baby tremble all over.

"I never knew a child so susceptible of sounds," said John, as he began talking to it and soothing it;—how strange it was to see him! and yet it seemed quite natural already. "I think even now she knows the difference between her mother's voice and mine; and any sudden noise always startles her in this way."

"She must have astonishingly quick hearing," said the doctor, slightly annoyed. Ursula wisely began to talk of something else—showed Muriel's eyelashes, very long for such a baby—and descanted on the colour of her eyes, that fruitful and never-ending theme of mothers and friends.

"I think they are like her father's; yes, certainly like her father's. But we have not many opportunities of judging, for she is such a lazy young damsel, she hardly ever opens them—we should often fancy her asleep, but for that little soft coo; and then she will wake up all of a sudden. There now! do you see her? Come to the window, my beauty! and show Dr. Jessop your bonny brown eyes."

They were bonny eyes! lovely in shape and colour, delicately fringed; but there was something strange in their expression—or rather, in their want of it. Many babies have a round, vacant stare—but this was no stare, only a wide, full look—a look of quiet blankness—an UNSEEING look.