But one thing the girl did understand—her young mistress's kindness. She stood watching the delicate little hand that had so patiently guided hers, and now wrote copy after copy for her future benefit. At last she said—

"You're taking a deal o' trouble wi' a poor wench, and it's very kind in a lady like you."

Miss Hilary was puzzled what answer to make. True enough it was "kind," and she was "a lady;" and between her and Mrs. Hand's rough daughter was an unmistakable difference and distinction. That Elizabeth perceived it was proved by her growing respectfulness of manner—the more respectful, it seemed, the more she herself improved. Yet Hilary could not bear to make her feel more sharply than was unavoidable the great gulf that lies and ever must lie—not so much between mistress and servant, in their abstract relation—(and yet that is right, for the relation and authority are ordained of God)—but between the educated and the ignorant, the coarse and the refined.

"Well," she said, after a pause of consideration, "you always have it in your power to repay my 'kindness,' as you call it. The cleverer you become the more useful you will be to me; and the more good you grow the better I shall like you."

Elizabeth smiled—that wonderfully bright, sudden smile which seemed to cover over all her plainness of feature.

"Once upon a time," Hilary resumed by-and-by, "when England was very different from what it is now, English ladies used to have what they call 'bower-women,' whom they took as girls, and brought up in their service; teaching them all sorts of things—cooking, sewing, spinning, singing, and, probably, except that the ladies of that time were very ill-educated themselves, to read and write also. They used to spend part of every day among their bower-women; and as people can only enjoy the company of those with whom they have some sympathies in common, we must conclude that—"

Here Hilary stopped, recollecting she must be discoursing miles above the head of her little bower-maiden, and that, perhaps, after all, her theory would be best kept to herself, and only demonstrated practically.

"So, Elizabeth, if I spend a little of my time in teaching you, you must grow up my faithful and attached bower-maiden?"

"I'll grow up any thing, Miss Hilary, if it's to please you," was the answer, given with a smothered intensity that quite startled the young mistress.

"I do believe the girl is getting fond of me," said she, half touched, half laughing to Johanna. "If so, we shall get on. It is just as with our school children, you know. We have to seize hold of their hearts first, and their heads afterward. Now, Elizabeth's head may be uncommonly tough, but I do believe she likes me."

Johanna smiled; but she would not for the world have said—never encouraging the smallest vanity in her child—that she did not think this circumstance so very remarkable.



CHAPTER V.

A household exclusively composed of women has its advantages and its disadvantages. It is apt to become somewhat narrow in judgment, morbid in feeling, absorbed in petty interests, and bounding its vision of outside things to the small horizon which it sees from its own fireside. But, on the other hand, by this fireside often abides a settled peace and purity, a long-suffering, generous forbearance, and an enduring affectionateness which the other sex can hardly comprehend or credit. Men will not believe, what is nevertheless the truth, that we can "stand alone" better than they can; that we can do without them far easier, and with less deterioration of character, than they can do without us; that we are better able to provide for ourselves interests, duties, and pleasures; in short, strange as it may appear, that we have more real self-sustaining independence than they.

Of course, that the true life, the highest life, is that of man and woman united, no one will be insane enough to deny; I am speaking of the substitute for it, which poor humanity has so often to fall back upon and make the best of—a better best very frequently than what appears best in the eyes of the world. In truth, many a troubled, care ridden, wealthy family, torn with dissensions, or frozen up in splendid formalities, might have envied that quiet, humble, maiden household of the Misses Leaf, where their only trial was poverty, and their only grief the one which they knew the worst of, and had met patiently for many a year—poor Selina's "way."

I doubt not it was good for Elizabeth Hand that her first place—the home in which she received her first impressions—was this feminine establishment, simple and regular, in which was neither waste nor disorder allowed. Good, too, that while her mistresses' narrow means restricted her in many things enjoyed by servants in richer families, their interests, equally narrow, caused to be concentrated upon herself a double measure of thought and care. She became absolutely "one of the family," sharing in all its concerns. From its small and few carnal luxuries—such as the cake, fruit, or pot of preserve, votive offerings from pupils' parents—up to the newspaper and the borrowed book, nothing was either literally or metaphorically "locked" up from Elizabeth.

This grand question of locking up had been discussed in full conclave the day after her month of preparation ended, the sisters taking opposite sides, as might have been expected. Selina was for the immediate introduction of a locksmith and a key basket.

"While she was only on trial, it did not so much signify; besides, if it did, we had only buttons on the press doors; but now she is our regular servant we ought to institute a regular system of authority. How can she respect a family that never locks up any thing?"

"How can we respect a servant from whom we lock up every thing!"

"Respect a servant! What do you mean, Hilary?"

"I mean that if I did not respect a servant I would be very sorry to keep her one day in any house of mine."

"Wait till you've a house of your own to keep, Miss," said Selina, crossly. "I never heard such nonsense. Is that the way you mean to behave to Elizabeth? leave every thing open to her—clothes, books, money; trust her with all your secrets; treat her as your most particular friend?"

"A girl of fifteen would be rather an inconvenient particular friend! And I have happily few secrets to trust her with. But if I could not trust her with our coffee, tea, sugar, and so on, and bring her up from the very first in the habit of being trusted, I would recommend her being sent away to-morrow."

"Very fine talking; and what do you say, Johanna?—if that is not an unnecessary question after Hilary has given her opinion."

"I think," replied the elder sister, taking no notice of the long familiar innuendo, "that in this case Hilary is right. How people ought to manage in great houses I can not say; but in our small house it will be easier and better not to alter our simple ways. Trusting the girl—if she is a good girl—will only make her more trustworthy; if she is bad, we shall the sooner find it out and let her go."

But Elizabeth did not go. A year passed; two years; her wages were raised, and with them her domestic position. From a "girl" she was converted into a regular servant; her pinafores gave place to grown-up gowns and aprons; and her rough head, at Miss Selina's incessant instance, was concealed by a cap—caps being considered by that lady as the proper and indispensable badge of servant-hood.

To say that during her transition state, or even now that she had reached the cap era, Elizabeth gave her mistresses no trouble, would be stating a self-evident improbability. What young lass under seventeen, of any rank, does not cause plenty of trouble to her natural guardians? Who can "put an old head on young shoulders?" or expect from girls at the most unformed and unsatisfactory period of life that complete moral and mental discipline, that unfailing self-control, that perfection of temper, and every thing else which, of course, all mistresses always have?

I am obliged to confess that Elizabeth had a few—nay, not a few—most obstinate faults; that no child tries its parents, no pupil its school teachers, more than she tried her three mistresses at intervals. She was often thoughtless and careless, brusque in her manner, slovenly, in her dress; sometimes she was down-right "bad," filled full—as some of her elders and betters are, at all ages—with absolute naughtiness; when she would sulk for hours and days together, and make the whole family uncomfortable, as many a servant can make many a family small as that of the Misses Leaf.

But still they never lost what Hilary termed their "respect" for Elizabeth; they never found her out in a lie, a meanness, or an act of deception or dishonesty. They took her faults as we must take the surface faults of all connected with us—patiently rather than resentfully, seeking to correct rather than to punish. And though there were difficult elements in the household, such as their being three mistresses to be obeyed the youngest mistress a thought too lax and the second one undoubtedly too severe, still no girl could live with these high-principled, much-enduring women without being impressed with two things which the serving class are slowest to understand—the dignity of poverty, and the beauty of that which is the only effectual law to bring out good and restrain evil—the law of loving-kindness.

Two fracas, however, must be chronicled, for after both, the girl's dismissal hung on a thread. The first was when Mrs. Cliffe, mother of Tommy Cliffe, who was nearly killed in the field, being discovered to be an ill sort of woman, and in the habit of borrowing from Elizabeth stray shillings, which were never returned, was forbidden the house, Elizabeth resented it so fiercely that she sulked for a whole week afterward.

The other and still more dangerous crisis in Elizabeth's destiny was when a volume of Scott's novels, having been missing for some days, was found hidden in her bed, and she lying awake reading it was thus ignominiously discovered at eleven P. M. by Miss Selina, in consequence of the gleam of candle light from under her door.

It was true neither of these errors were actual moral crimes. Hilary even roused a volley of sharp words upon herself by declaring they had their source in actual virtues; that a girl who would stint herself of shillings, and hold resolutely to any liking she had, even if unworthy, had a creditable amount of both self-denial and fidelity in her disposition. Also that a tired out maid-of all-work, who was kept awake of nights by her ardent appreciation of the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," must possess a degree of both intellectual and moral capacity which deserved cultivation rather than blame. And though this surreptitious pursuit of literature under difficulties could not of course be allowed, I grieve to say that Miss Hilary took every opportunity of not only giving the young servant books to read, but of talking to her about them. And also that a large proportion of these books were—to Miss Selina's unmitigated horror—absolutely fiction! stories, novels, even poetry—books that Hilary liked herself—books that had built up in her own passionate dream of life; wherein all the women were faithful, tender, heroic, self-devoted; and all the men were—something not unlike Robert Lyon.

Did she do harm? Was it; as Selina and even Johanna said sometimes, "dangerous" thus to put before Elizabeth a standard of ideal perfection, a Quixotic notion of life—life in its full purpose power, and beauty—such as otherwise never could have crossed the mind of this working girl, born of parents who, though respectable and worthy, were in no respect higher than the common working class? I will not argue the point: I am not making Elizabeth a text for a sermon; I am simply writing her story.

One thing was certain, that by degrees the young woman's faults lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much harder to fight with.

"She makes me feel more sorry for her than angry with her," Miss Leaf would sometimes say, coming out of the kitchen with that grieved face, which was the chief sign of displeasure her sweet nature ever betrayed. "She will have up-hill work through life, like us all, and more than many of us, poor child!"

But gradually Elizabeth, too, copying involuntarily the rest of the family, learned to put up with Miss Selina; who, on her part, kept a sort of armed neutrality. And once, when a short but sharp illness of Johanna's shook the house from its even tenor, startled every body out of their little tempers, and made them cling together and work together in a sort of fear-stricken union against one common grief, Selina allowed that they might have gone farther and fared worse on the day they engaged Elizabeth.

After this illness of his Aunt. Ascott came home. It was his first visit since he had gone to London: Mr. Ascott, he said, objected to holidays. But now, from some unexplained feeling, Johanna in her convalescence longed after the boy—no longer a boy, however, but nearly twenty, and looking fully his age. How proud his aunts were to march him up the town, and hear every body's congratulations on his good looks and polished manners! It was the old story—old as the hills! I do not pretend to invent any thing new. Women, especially maiden aunts, will repeat the tale till the end of time, so long as they have youths belonging to them on whom to expend their natural tendency to clinging fondness, and ignorant, innocent hero worship. The Misses Leaf—ay, even Selina, whose irritation against the provoking boy was quite mollified by the elegant young man—were no wiser than their neighbors.

But there was one person in the household who still obstinately refused to bow the knee to Ascott. Whether it was, as psychologists might explain, some instinctive polarity in their natures; or whether, having once conceived a prejudice, Elizabeth held on to it like grim death; still there was the same unspoken antagonism between them. The young fellow took little notice of her except to observe "that she hadn't grown any handsomer;' but Elizabeth watched him with a keen severity that overlooked nothing, and resisted, with a passive pertinacity that was quite irresistible, all his encroachments on the family habits, all the little self-pleasing ways which Ascott had been so used to of old, that neither he nor his aunts apparently recognized them as selfish.

"I canna bear to see him" ("can not," suggested her mistress, who not seeing any reason why Elizabeth should not speak the Queen's English as well as herself, had instituted h's, and stopped a few more glaring provincialisms.) "I cannot bear to see him, Miss Hilary, lolling on the arm-chair, when Missis looks so tired and pale, and sitting up o' nights, burning double fires, and going up stairs at last with his boots on, and waking every body. I dunnot like it, I say."

"You forget; Mr. Ascott has his studies. He must work for the next examination."

"Why doesn't he get up of a morning then instead of lying in bed, and keeping the break-fast about till ten? Why can't he do his learning by daylight? Daylight's cheaper than mould candles, and a deal better for the eyes."

Hilary was puzzled. A truth was a truth, and to try and make it out otherwise, even for the dignity of the family, was something from which her honest nature revolted. Besides, the sharp-sighted servant would be the first to detect the inconsistency of one law of right for the parlor and another for the kitchen. So she took-refuge in silence and in the apple-pudding she was making.

But she resolved to seize the first opportunity of giving Ascott, by way of novelty, the severest lecture that tongue of aunt could bestow. And this chance occurred the same afternoon, when the other two aunts had gone out to tea, to a house which Ascott voted "slow," and declined going to. She remained to make tea for him, and in the mean time took him for a constitutional up and down the public walks hard by.

Ascott listened at first very good humoredly; once or twice calling her "a dear little prig," in his patronizing way—he was rather fond of patronizing his Aunt Hilary. But when she seriously spoke of his duties, as no longer a boy but a man, who ought now to assume the true, manly right of thinking for and taking care of other people, especially his aunts, Ascott began to flush up angrily.

"Now stop that, Aunt Hilary: I'll not have you coming Mr. Lyon over me."

"What do you mean?"

For of late Ascott had said very little about Mr. Lyon—not half so much as Mr. Lyon, in his steadily persistent letters to Miss Leaf, told her about her nephew Ascott.

"I mean that I'll not be preached to like that by a woman. It's bad enough to stand it from a man; but then Lyon's a real sharp fellow, who knows the world, which women don't, Aunt Hilary. Besides, he coaches me in my Latin and Greek; so I let him pitch into me now and then. But I won't let you; so just stop it; will you."

Something new in Ascott's tone—speaking more of the resentful fierceness of the man than the pettishness of the boy—frightened his little aunt, and silenced her. By-and-by she took comfort from the reflection that, as the lad had in his anger betrayed, he had beside him in London a monitor whose preaching would be so much wiser and more effectual than her own that she determined to say no more.

The rare hearing of Mr. Lyon's name—for, time and absence having produced their natural effect, except when his letter came, he was seldom talked about now—set Hilary thinking.

"Do you go to see him often?" she said, at last.

"Who? Mr. Lyon?" And Ascott, delighted' to escape into a fresh subject, became quite cheerful and communicative. "Oh, bless you! He wouldn't care for my going to him. He lives in a two-pair back, only one room, 'which serves him for kitchen and parlor and all:' dines at a cook shop for nine-pence a day, and makes his own porridge night and morning. He told me so once, for he isn't a bit ashamed of it. But he must be precious hard up sometimes. However, as he contrives to keep a decent coat on his back, and pay his classes at the University, and carry off the very first honors going there, nobody asks any questions. That's the good of London life, Aunt Hilary," said the young fellow, drawing himself up with great wisdom. "Only look like a gentleman, behave yourself as such, and nobody asks any questions."

"Yes," acquiesced vaguely Aunt Hilary. And then her mind wandered yearningly to the solitary student in the two-pair back. He might labor and suffer; he might be ill; he might die, equally solitary, and "nobody would ask any questions." This phase of London life let a new light in upon her mind. The letters to Johanna had been chiefly filled with whatever he thought would interest them. With his characteristic Scotch reserve, he had said very little about himself, except in the last, wherein he mentioned that he had "done pretty well" at the college this term, and meant to "go in for more work" immediately.

What this work entailed—how much more toil, how much more poverty—Hilary knew not. Perhaps even his successes, which Ascott went on to talk of, had less place in her thoughts than the picture of the face she knew, sharpened with illness, wasted with hard work and solitary care.

"And I can not help him—I can not help him!" was her bitter cry; until, passing from the dream-land of fancy, the womanly nature asserted itself. She thought if it had been, or if it were to be, her blessed lot to be chosen by Robert Lyon, how she would take care of him! what an utter slave she would be to him! How no penury would frighten her, no household care oppress or humble her, if done for him and for his comfort. To her brave heart no battle of life seemed too long or too sore, if only it were fought for him and at his side. And as the early falling leaves were blown in gusts across her path, and the misty autumn night began to close in, nature herself seemed to plead in unison with the craving of her heart, which sighed that youth and summer last not always; and that, "be it ever so humble," as the song says, there is no place so bright and beautiful as the fireside of a loveful home.

While the aunt and nephew were strolling thus, thinking of very different things, their own fire newly lit—Ascott liked a fire—was blazing away in solitary glory, for the benefit of all passers-by. At length one—a gentleman—stopped at the gate, and looked in, then took a turn to the end of the terrace, and stood gazing in once more. The solitude of the room apparently troubled him; twice his hand was on the latch before he opened it and knocked at the front door.

Elizabeth appeared, which seemed to surprise him.

"Is Miss Leaf at home?"

"No, Sir."

"Is she well? Are all the family well?" and he stepped right into the passage, with the freedom of a familiar foot.

("I should ha' slammed the door in his face," was Elizabeth's comment afterward; "only, you see, Miss Hilary, he looked a real gentleman.")

The stranger and she mutually examined one another.

"I think I have heard of you," said he, smiling. "You are Miss Leaf's servant—Elizabeth Hand."

"Yes, Sir," still grimly, and with a determined grasp of the door handle.

"If your mistresses are likely to be home soon, will you allow me to wait for them? I am an old friend of theirs. My name is Lyon."

Now Elizabeth was far too much one of the family not to have heard of such a person. And his knowing her was a tolerable proof of his identity; besides, unconsciously, the girl was influenced by that look and mien of true gentlemanhood, as courteous to the poor maid-of-all-work as he would have been to any duchess born; and by that bright, sudden smile, which came like sunshine over his face, and like sunshine warmed and opened the heart of every one that met it.

It opened that of Elizabeth. She relaxed her Cerberus keeping of the door, and even went so far as to inform him that Miss Leaf and Miss Selina were out to tea, but Miss Hilary and Mr. Ascott would be at home shortly. He was welcome to wait in the parlor if he liked.

Afterward, seized with mingled curiosity and misgiving, she made various errands to go in and look at him; but she had not courage to address him, and he never spoke to her. He sat by the window, gazing out into the gloaming. Except just turning his head at her entrance; she did not think he had once stirred the whole time.

Elizabeth went back to her kitchen, and stood listening for her young mistress's familiar knock. Mr. Lyon seemed to have listened too, for before she could reach it the door was already opened.

There was a warm greeting—to her great relief: for she knew she had broken the domestic laws in admitting a stranger unawares—and then Elizabeth heard them all three go into the parlor, where they remained talking, without ringing for either tea or candles, a full quarter of an hour.

Miss Hilary at last came out, but much to Elizabeth's surprise, went straight up into her bedroom without entering the kitchen at all.

It was some minutes more before she descended; and then, after giving her orders for tea, and seeing that all was arranged with special neatness, she stood absently by the kitchen fire. Elizabeth noticed how wonderfully bright her eyes were, and what a soft, happy smile she had. She noticed it, because she had never seen Miss Hilary look exactly like that before; and she never did again.

"Don't you be troubling yourself with waiting about here," she said; and her mistress seemed to start at being spoken to. "I'll get the tea all right, Miss Hilary. Please go back into the parlor."

Hilary went in.



CHAPTER VI.

Elizabeth got tea ready with unwonted diligence and considerable excitement. Any visitor was a rare occurrence in this very quiet family; but a gentleman visitor—a young gentleman too—was a remarkable fact, arousing both interest and curiosity. For in the latter quality this girl of seventeen could scarcely be expected to be deficient; and as to the former, she had so completely identified herself with the family she served, that all their concerns were her concerns also. Her acute comments on their few guests, and on their little scholars, sometimes amused Hilary as much as her criticisms on the books she read. But as neither were ever put forward intrusively or impertinently, she let them pass, and only laughed over them with Johanna in private.

In speaking of these said books, and the questions they led to, it was not likely but that mistress and maid—one aged twenty-two, and the other seventeen—should occasionally light upon a subject rather interesting to women of their ages, though not commonly discussed between mistresses and maids. Nevertheless, when it did come in the way, Miss Hilary never shirked it, but talked it out, frankly and freely, as she would to any other person.

"The girl has feelings and notions on the matter, like all other girls, I suppose," reasoned she to herself; "so it is important that her notions should be kept clear, and her feelings right. It may do her some good, and save her from much harm."

And so it befell that Elizabeth Hand, whose blunt ways, unlovely person, and temperament so oddly nervous and reserved, kept her from attracting any "sweetheart" of her own class, had unconsciously imbibed her mistress's theory of love. Love, pure and simple, the very deepest and highest, sweetest and most solemn thing in life: to be believed in devoutly until it came, and when it did come, to be held to, firmly, faithfully, with a single-minded, settled constancy, till death. A creed, quite impossible, many will say, in this ordinary world, and most dangerous to be put into the head of a poor servant. Yet a woman is but a woman, be she maid-servant or queen; and if, from queens to maid-servants, girls were taught thus to think of love, there might be a few more "broken" hearts perhaps, but there would certainly be fewer wicked hearts; far fewer corrupted lives of men, and degraded lives of women; far fewer unholy marriages, and desolated, dreary, homeless homes.

Elizabeth, having cleared away her tea-things, stood listening to the voices in the parlor, and pondering. She had sometimes wondered in her own mind that no knight ever came to carry off her charming princess—her admired and beloved Miss Hilary. Miss Hilary, on her part, seemed totally indifferent to the youths at Stowbury; who indeed were, Elizabeth allowed, quite unworthy her regard. The only suitable lover for her young mistress must be somebody exceedingly grand and noble—a compound of the best heroes of Shakespeare, Scott, Fenimore Cooper, Maria Edgeworth, and Harriet Martineau. When this strange gentleman appeared—in ordinary coat and hat, or rather Glengary bonnet, neither particularly handsome nor particularly tall, yet whose coming had evidently given Miss Hilary so much pleasure, and who, once or twice while waiting at tea, Elizabeth fancied she had seen looking at Miss Hilary as nobody ever looked before—when Mr. Robert Lyon appeared on the horizon, the faithful "bower maiden" was a good deal disappointed.

She had expected something better; at all events, something different. Her first brilliant castle in the air fell, poor lass! but she quickly built it up again, and, with the vivid imagination of her age, she mapped out the whole future, ending by a vision of Miss Hilary, all in white, sweeping down the Terrace in a carriage and pair—to fortune and happiness; leaving herself, though with a sore want at her heart, and a great longing to follow, to devote the remainder of her natural life to Miss Johanna.

"Her couldna do without somebody to see to her—and Miss Selina do worrit her so." muttered Elizabeth, in the excitement of this Almaschar vision, relapsing into her old provincialisms. "So, even if Miss Hilary axes me to come, I'll stop, I reckon. Ay, I'll stop wi' Miss Leaf."

This valorous determination taken, the poor maid servant's dream was broken by the opening of the parlor door, and an outcry of Ascott's for his coat and gloves, he having to fetch his aunts home at nine o'clock, Mr. Lyon accompanying him. And as they all stood together at the front door, Elizabeth overheard Mr. Lyon say something about what a beautiful night it was.

"It would do you no harm, Miss Hilary; will you walk with us?"

"If you like."

Hilary went up stairs for her bonnet and shawl; but when, a minute or two after, Elizabeth followed her with a candle, she found her standing in the centre of the room, all in the dark, her face white and her hands trembling.

"Thank you, thank you!" she said mechanically, as Elizabeth folded and fastened her shawl for her—and descended immediately. Elizabeth watched her take, not Ascott's arm, but Mr. Lyon's, and walk down the terrace in the starlight.

"Some'at's wrong. I'd like to know who's been a-vexin' of her," thought fiercely the young servant.

No, nobody had been "a-vexing" her mistress. There was nobody to blame; only there had happened to Hilary one of those things which strike like a sword through a young and happy heart, taking all the life and youth out of it.

Robert Lyon had, half an hour ago, told her—and she had had to hear it as a piece of simple news, to which she had only to say, "Indeed!"—that to day and to-morrow were his two last days at Stowbury—almost his last in England. Within a week he was to sail for India.

There had befallen him what most people would have considered a piece of rare good fortune. At the London University, a fellow student, whom he had been gratuitously "coaching" in Hindostanee, fell ill, and was "thrown upon his hands." as he briefly defined services which must have been great, since they had resulted in this end. The young man's father—a Liverpool and Bombay merchant—made him an offer to go out there, to their house, at a rising salary of 300 rupees a month for three years; after the third year to become a junior partner; remaining at Bombay in that capacity for two years more.

This he told to Hilary and Ascott in almost as few words as I have here put it—for brevity seemed a refuge to him. It was also to one of them. But Ascott asked so many questions that his aunt needed to ask none. She only listened, and tried to take all in, and understand it, that is, in a consecutive, intelligent, business shape, without feeling it. She dared not let herself feel it, not for a second, till they were out, arm-in-arm, under the quiet winter stars. Then she heard his voice asking her, "So you think I was right?"

"Right?" she echoed mechanically.

"I mean in accepting that sudden chance, and changing my whole plan of life. I did not do it—believe me—without a motive."

"What motive?" she would once unhesitatingly have asked; now she could not.

Robert Lyon continued speaking, distinctly and yet in an undertone, that though Ascott was walking a few yards off, Hilary felt was meant for her alone to hear.

"The change is, you perceive, from the life of a student to that of a man of business. I do not deny that I preferred the first. Once upon a time to be a fellow in a college, or a professor, or the like, was my utmost aim and I would have half killed myself to attain it. Now, I think differently."

He paused, but did not seem to require an answer, and it did not come.

"I want, not to be rich but to get a decent competence, and to get it as soon as I can. I want not to ruin my health with incessant study. I have already injured it a good deal."

"Have you been ill? You never said so."

"Oh no, it was hardly worth while. And I knew an active life would soon set me right again. No fear! there's life in the old dog yet. He does not wish to die. But," Mr. Lyon pursued, "I have had a 'sair fecht' the last year or two. I would not go through it again, nor see any one dear to me go through it. It is over, but it has left its scars. Strange! I have been poor all my life, yet I never till now felt an actual terror of poverty."

Hilary shrank within herself; less even at the words than at something in their tone—something hard, nay fierce; something at once despairing and aggressive.

"It is strange," she said; "such a terror is not like you. I feel none; I can not even understand it."

"No, I knew you could not," he muttered; and was silent.

So was Hilary. A vague trouble came over her. Could it be that he, Robert Lyon, had been seized with the auri sacra fames, which he had so often inveighed against and despised? that his long battle with poverty had caused in him such an overweening desire for riches that, to obtain them, he would sacrifice every thing else, exile himself to a far country for years, selling his very life and soul for gold?

Such a thought of him was so terrible—that is, would have been were it tenable—that Hilary for an instant felt herself shiver all over. The next she spoke out—in justice to him she forced herself to speak out—all her honest soul.

"I do believe that this going abroad to make a fortune, which young men so delight in, is often a most fatal mistake. They give up far more than they gain—country, home, health. I think a man has no right to sell his life any more than his soul for so many thousands a year."

Robert Lyon smiled—"No, and I am not selling mine. With my temperate habits I have as good a chance of health at Bombay as in London—perhaps better. And the years I must be absent I would have been absent almost as much from you—I mean they would have been spent in work as engrossing and as hard. They will soon pass, and then I shall come home rich—rich. Do you think I am growing mercenary?"

"No."

"Tell me what you do think about me?"

"I—can not quite understand."

"And I cannot make you understand. Perhaps I will, some day when I come back again. Till then, you must trust me, Hilary."

It happens occasionally, in moments of all but tolerable pain, that some small thing, a word, a look, a touch of a hand, lets in such a gleam of peace that nothing ever extinguishes the light of it: it burns on for years and years, sometimes clear, sometimes obscured, but as ineffaceable from life and memory as a star from its place in the heavens. Such, both then, and through the lonely years to come, were those five words, "You must trust me. Hilary."

She did; and in the perfection of that trust her own separate identity, with all its consciousness of pain, seemed annihilated; she did not think of herself at all, only of him, and with him, and for him. So, for the time being, she lost all sense of personal suffering, and their walk that night was as cheerful and happy as if they were to walk together for weeks and months and years, in undivided confidence and content, instead of its being the last—the very last.

Some one has said that all lovers have, soon or late, to learn to be only friends: happiest and safest are those in whom the friendship is the foundation—always firm and ready to fall back upon, long after the fascination of passion dies. It may take a little from the romance of these two if I own that Robert Lyon talked to Hilary not a word about love, and a good deal about pure business, telling her all his affairs and arrangements, and giving her as clear an idea of his future life as it was possible to do within the limits of one brief half hour.

Then casting a glance round, and seeing that Ascott was quite out of ear-shot, he said, with that tender fall of the voice that felt, as some poet hath it,

"Like a still embrace,"

"Now tell me as much as you can about yourself."

At first there seemed nothing to tell; but gradually he drew from Hilary a good deal. Johanna's feeble health, which caused her continuing to teach to be very unadvisable; and the gradual diminishing of the school—from what cause they could not account—which made it very doubtful whether some change would not soon or late be necessary.

What this change should be she and Mr. Lyon discussed a little—as far as in the utterly indefinite position of affairs was possible. Also, from some other questions of his, she spoke to him about another dread which had lurked in her mind, and yet to which she could give no tangible shape, about Ascott. He could not remove it, he did not attempt; but he soothed it a little, advising with her as to the best way of managing the willful lad. His strong, clear sense, just judgment, and, above all, a certain unspoken sense of union, as if all that concerned her and hers he took naturally upon himself as his own, gave Hilary such comfort that, even on this night, with a full consciousness of all that was to follow, she was happy—nay, she had not been so happy for years. Perhaps (let the truth be told), the glorious truth of true love, that its recognition, spoken or silent, constitutes the only perfect joy of life that of two made perhaps she had never been so really happy since she was born.

The last thing he did was to make her give him an assurance that in any and all difficulty she would apply to him.

"To me, and to no one else, remember. No one but myself must help you. And I will, so, long as I am alive. Do you believe this?"

She looked up at him by the lamp light, and said, "I do."

"And you promise?"

"Yes."

Then they loosed arms, and Hilary knew that they should never walk together again till—when and how?

Returning, of course, he walked with Miss Leaf; and throughout the next day, a terribly wet Sunday, spent by them entirely in the little parlor, they had not a minute of special or private talk together. He did not seem to wish it; indeed, almost avoided it.

Thus slipped away the strange, still day—a Sunday never to be forgotten. At night, after prayers were, over, Mr. Lyon rose suddenly, saying he must leave them now; he was obliged to start from Stowbury at daybreak.

"Shall we not see you again?" asked Johanna.

"No. This will be my last Sunday in England. Good-by!"

He turned excessively pale, shook hands silently with them all—Hilary last—and almost before they recognized the fact, he was gone.

With him departed, not all Hilary's peace or faith or courage of heart, for to all who love truly, while the best beloved lives, and lives worthily, no parting is hopeless and no grief overwhelming; but all the brightness of her youth, all the sense of joy that young people have in loving, and in being beloved again, in fond meetings and fonder partings, in endless walks and talks, in sweet kisses and clinging arms. Such happiness was not for her: when she saw it the lot of others, she said to herself sometimes with a natural sharp sting of pain, but oftener with a solemn acquiescence, "It is the will of God; it is the will of God."

Johanna, too, who would have given her life almost to bring some color back to the white face of her darling, of whom she asked no questions, and who never complained nor confessed any thing, many and many a night when Hilary either lay awake by her side, or tossed and moaned in her sleep, till the elder sister took her in her arms like a baby—Johanna, too, said to herself, "This is the will of God."

I have told thus much in detail the brief sad story of Hilary's youth, to show how impossible it was that Elizabeth Hand could live in the house with these two women without being strongly influenced by them, as every person—especially every woman—influences for good or for evil every other person connected with her, or dependent upon her. Elizabeth was a girl of close observation and keen perception. Besides, to most people, whether or not their sympathy be universal, so far as the individual is concerned, any deep affection generally lends eyes, tact, and delicacy.

Thus when on the Monday morning at breakfast Miss Selina observed, "What a fine day Mr. Lyon was having for his journey; what a lucky fellow he was; how he would be sure to make a fortune, and if so, she wondered whether they should ever see or hear any thing of him again"—Elizabeth, from the glimpse she caught of Miss Hilary's face, and from the quiet way in which Miss Leaf merely answered, "Time will show;" and began talking to Selina about some other subject—Elizabeth resolved never in any way to make the smallest allusion to Mr. Robert Lyon. Something had happened, she did not know what; and it was not her business to find out; the family affairs, so far as she was trusted with them, were warmly her own, but into the family secrets she had no right to pry.

Yet, long after Miss Selina had ceased to "wonder" about him, or even to name him—his presence or absence did not touch her personally, and she was always the centre of her own small world of interest—the little maidservant kept in her mind, and pondered over at odd times every possible solution of the mystery of this gentleman's sudden visit; of the long wet Sunday when he sat all day talking with her mistresses in the parlor; of the evening prayer, when Miss Leaf had twice to stop, her voice faltered so; and of the night when, long after all the others had gone to bed, Elizabeth, coming suddenly into the parlor, had found Miss Hilary sitting alone over the embers of the fire, with the saddest, saddest look! so that the girl had softly shut the door again without ever speaking to "Missis."

Elizabeth did more; which, strange as it may appear, a servant who is supposed to know nothing of any thing that has happened can often do better than a member of the family who knows every thing, and this knowledge is sometimes the most irritating consciousness a sufferer has. She followed her young mistress with a steady watchfulness, so quiet and silent that Hilary never found it out; saved her every little household care, gave her every little household treat. Not much to do, and less to be chronicled; but the way in which she did it was all.

During the long dull winter days, to come in and find the parlor fire always bright, the hearth clean swept, and the room tidy; never to enter the kitchen without the servant's face clearing up into a smile; when her restless irritability made her forget things and grow quite vexed in the search after them, to see that somehow her shoes were never misplaced, and her gloves always came to hand in some mysterious manner—these trifles; in her first heavy days of darkness, soothed Hilary more than words could tell.

And the sight of Miss Hilary going about the house and school room as usual, with that poor white face of hers; nay, gradually bringing to the family fireside, as usual, her harmless little joke, and her merry laugh at it and herself—who shall say what lessons may not have been taught by this to the humble servant, dropping deep sown into her heart, to germinate and fructify, as her future life's needs required?

It might have been so—God knows! He alone can know, who, through what (to us) seem the infinite littleness of our mortal existence, is educating us into the infinite greatness of His and our immortality.



CHAPTER VII.

Autumn soon lapsed into winter: Christmas came and went, bringing, not Ascott, as they hoped and he had promised, but a very serious evil in the shape of sundry bills of his, which, he confessed in a most piteous letter to his Aunt Hilary, were absolutely unpayable out of his godfather's allowance. They were not large—or would not have seemed so to rich people—and they were for no more blamable luxuries than horse hire, and a dinner or two to friends out in the country; but they looked serious to a household which rarely was more than five pounds beforehand with the world.

He had begged Aunt Hilary to keep his secret, but that was evidently impossible; so on the day the school accounts were being written out and sent in, and their amount anxiously reckoned, she laid before her sisters the lad's letter, full of penitence and promises: "I will be careful—I will indeed—if you will help me out this once, dear Aunt Hilary; and don't think too ill of me. I have done nothing wicked. And you don't know London; you don't know, with a lot of young fellows about one, how very hard it is to say no."

At that unlucky postscript the Misses Leaf sorrowfully exchanged looks. Little the lad thought about it; but these few words were the very sharpest pang Ascott had ever given to his aunts.

"What's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh." "Like father like son." "The sins of the parents shall be visited on the children." So runs many a proverb: so confirms the unerring decree of a just God, who would not be a just God did He allow Himself to break His own righteous laws for the government of the universe; did He falsify the requirements of His own holy and pure being, by permitting any other wages for sin than death. And though, through His mercy, sin forsaken escapes sin's penalty, and every human being has it in his own power to modify, if not to conquer, any hereditary moral as well as physical disease, thereby avoiding the doom and alleviating the curse, still the original law remains in force, and ought to remain, an example and a warning. As true as that every individual sin that a man commits breeds multitudes more, is it that every individual sin may transmit his own peculiar type of weakness or wickedness to a whole race, disappearing in one generation, re-appearing in another, exactly the same as physical peculiarities do, requiring the utmost caution of education to counteract the terrible tendencies of nature—the "something in the blood" which is so difficult to eradicate: which may even make the third and fourth generation execrate the memory of him or her who was its origin.

The long life-curse of Henry Leaf the elder, and Henry Leaf the younger, had been—the women of the family well knew—that they were men who "couldn't say No." So keenly were the three sisters alive to this fault—it could hardly be called a crime, and yet in its consequences it was so—so sickening the terror of it which their own wretched experience had implanted in their minds, that during Ascott's childhood and youth his very fractiousness and roughness, his little selfishness, and his persistence in his own will against theirs, had been hailed by his aunts as a good omen that he would grow up "so unlike his poor father."

If the two unhappy Henry Leafs—father and son—could have come out of their graves that night and beheld these three women, daughters and sisters, sitting with Ascott's letter on the table, planning how the household's small expenses could be contracted, its still smaller luxuries relinquished, in order that the boy might honorably pay for pleasures he might so easily have done without! If they could have seen the weight of apprehension which then sank like a stone on these long-tried hearts, never to be afterward removed: lightened sometimes, but always—however Ascott might promise and amend—always there! On such a discovery, surely, these two "poor ghosts" would have fled away moaning, wishing they had died childless, or that during their mortal lives any amount of self restraint and self compulsion had purged from their natures the accursed thing; the sin which had worked itself out in sorrow upon every one belonging to them, years after their own heads were laid in the quiet dust.

"We must do it," was the conclusion the Misses Leaf unanimously came to; even Selina; who with all her faults, had a fair share of good feeling and of that close clinging to kindred which is found in fallen households, or households whom the sacred bond of common poverty, has drawn together in a way that large, well-to-do home circles can never quite understand.

"We must not let the boy remain in debt; it would be such a disgrace to the family."

"It is not the remaining in debt, but the incurring of it, which is the real disgrace to Ascott and the family."

"Hush Hilary," said Johanna, pointing to the opening door; but it was too late.

Elizabeth, coming suddenly in—or else the ladies had been so engrossed with their conversation that they had not noticed her—had evidently heard every word of the last sentence. Her conscious face showed it; more especially the bright scarlet which covered both her cheeks when Miss Leaf said "Hush!" She stood, apparently irresolute as to whether she should run away again; and then her native honesty got the upper hand, and she advanced into the room.

"If you please, missis, I didn't mean to—but I've heard—"

"What have you heard; that is, how much?"

"Just what Miss Hilary said. Don't be afeared. I shan't tell. I never chatter about the family. Mother told me not."

"You owe a great deal, Elizabeth, to your good mother. Now go away."

"And another time." said Miss Selina, "knock at the door."

This was Elizabeth's first initiation into what many a servant has to share—the secret burden of the family. After that day, though they did not actually confide in her, her mistresses used no effort to conceal that they had cares; that the domestic economies must, this winter, be especially studied; there must be no extra fires, no candles left burning to waste; and once a week or so, a few butterless breakfasts or meatless dinners must be partaken of cheerfully, in both parlor and kitchen. The Misses Leaf never stinted their servant in any thing in which they did not stint themselves.

Strange to say, in spite of Miss Selina's prophecies, the girl's respectful conduct did not abate: on the contrary, it seemed to increase. The nearer she was lifted to her mistress's level, the more her mind grew, so that she could better understand her mistresses cares, and the deeper her consciousness of the only thing which gives one human being any real authority over another—personal character.

Therefore, though the family means were narrowed, and the family luxuries few, Elizabeth cheerfully put up with all; she even felt a sort of pride in wasting nothing and in making the best of every thing, as the others did. Perhaps, it may be said she was an exceptional servant; and yet I would not do her class the wrong to believe so-I would rather believe that there are many such among it; many good, honest, faithful girls, who only need good mistresses unto whom to be honest and faithful, and they would be no less so than Elizabeth Hand.

The months went by—heavy and anxious months; for the school gradually dwindled away, and Ascott's letter—now almost the only connection his aunts had with the outer world, for poverty necessarily diminished even their small Stowbury society—became more and more unsatisfactory; and the want of information in them was not supplied by those other letters which had once kept Johanna's heart easy concerning the boy.

Mr. Lyon had written once before sailing, nay, after sailing, for he had sent it home by the pilot from the English Channel; then there was, of course, silence. October, November, December, January, February, March—how often did Hilary count the months, and wonder how soon a letter would come, whether a letter ever would come again. And sometimes—the sharp present stinging her with its small daily pains, the future looking dark before her and them all—she felt so forlorn, so forsaken, that but for a certain tiny well-spring of hope, which rarely dries up till long after three-and twenty, she could have sat down and sighed, "My good days are done."

Rich people break their hearts much sooner than poor people; that is, they more easily get into that morbid state which is glorified by the term, "a broken heart." Poor people can not afford it. Their constant labor "physics pain." Their few and narrow pleasures seldom pall. Holy poverty! black as its dark side is, it has its bright side too, that is, when it is honest, fearless, free from selfishness. wastefulness, and bickerings; above all, free from the terror of debt.

"We'll starve, we'll go into the work house rather than we'll go into debt!" cried Hilary once, in a passion of tears, when she was in sore want of a shawl, and Selina urged her to get it, and wait till she could pay for it. "Yes; the work house! It would be less shame to be honorably indebted to the laws of the land than to be meanly indebted, under false pretences, to any individual in it".

And when, in payment for some accidental lessons, she got next month enough money to buy a shawl, and a bonnet, too—nay, by great ingenuity, another bonnet for Johanna—Hilary could have danced and sang—sang, in the gladness and relief of her heart, the glorious euthanasia of poverty.

But these things happened only occasionally; the daily life was hard still; ay, very hard, even though at last came the letter from "foreign parts;" and following it, at regular intervals, other letters. They were full of facts rather than feelings—simple, straightforward; worth little as literary compositions; school-master and learned man as he was, there was nothing literary or poetical about Mr. Lyon; but what he wrote was like what he spoke, the accurate reflection of his own clear, original mind and honest, tender heart.

His letters gave none the less comfort because, nominally, they were addressed to Johanna. This might have been from some crotchet of over-reserve, delicacy, or honor—the same which made him part from her for years with no other word than 'You must trust me, Hilary;' but whatever it was she respected it, and she did trust him. And whether Johanna answered his letters or not, month by month they unfailingly came, keeping her completely informed of all his proceedings, and letting out, as epistles written from over the seas often do, much more of himself and his character than he was probably aware that he betrayed.

And Hilary, whose sole experience of mankind had been the scarcely remembered father, the too well remembered brother, and the anxiously watched nephew, thanked God that there seemed to be one man in the world whom a woman could lean her heart upon, and not feel the support break like a reed beneath her—one man whom she could entirely believe in, and safely and sacredly trust.



CHAPTER VIII.

Time slipped by. Robert Lyon had been away more than three years. But in the monotonous life of the three sisters at Stowbury, nothing was changed. Except, perhaps, Elizabeth, who had grown quite a woman; might have passed almost for thirty; so solidly old fashioned were her figure and her manners.

Ascott Leaf had finished his walking the hospitals and his examinations, and was now fitted to commence practice for himself. His godfather had still continued his allowance, though once or twice, when he came down to Stowbury, he had asked his aunts to help him in small debts the last time in one a little more serious; when, after some sad and sore consultation, it had been resolved to tell him he must contrive to live within his own allowance. For they were poorer than they used to be; many more schools had arisen in the town, and theirs had dwindled away. It was becoming a source of serious anxiety whether they could possibly make ends meet; and when, the next Christmas, Ascott sent them a five pound note—an actual five pound note, together with a fond, grateful letter that was worth it all—the aunts were deeply thankful, and very happy.

But still the school declined. One night they were speculating upon the causes of this, and Hilary was declaring, in a half jocular, half earnest way, that it must be because a prophet is never a prophet in his own country.

"The Stowbury people will never believe how clever I am. Only, it is a useless sort of cleverness, I fear. Greek, Latin, and mathematics are no good to infants under seven, such as Stowbury persists in sending to us."

"They think I am only fit to teach little children—and perhaps it is true," said Miss Leaf.

"I wish you had not to teach at all. I wish I was a daily governess—I might be, and earn enough to keep the whole family; only, not here."

"I wonder," said Johanna, thoughtfully, "if we shall have to make a change."

"A change!" It almost pained the elder sister to see how the younger brightened up at the word. "Where to—London? Oh, I have so longed to go and live in London! But I thought you would not like it, Johanna."

That was true. Miss Leaf, whom feeble health had made prematurely old, would willingly have ended her days in the familiar town; but Hilary was young and strong. Johanna called to mind the days when she too had felt that rest was only another name for dullness; and when the most difficult thing possible to her was what seemed now so easy—to sit down and endure.

Besides, unlike herself, Hilary had her life all before her. It might be a happy life, safe in a good man's tender keeping; those unfailing letters from India seemed to prophecy that it would. But no one could say. Miss Leaf's own experience had not led her to place much faith in either men or happiness.

Still, whatever Hilary's future might be, it would likely be a very different one from that quiet, colorless life of hers. And as she looked at her younger sister, with the twilight glow on her face—they were taking an evening stroll up and down the terrace—Johanna hoped and prayed it might be so. Her own lot seemed easy enough for herself; but for Hilary—she would like to see Hilary something better than a poor schoolmistress at Stowbury.

No more was said at that time, but Johanna had the deep, still, Mary-like nature, which "kept" things, and "pondered them in her heart." So that when the subject came up again she was able to meet it with that sweet calmness which was her especial characteristic—the unruffled peace of a soul which no worldly storms could disturb overmuch, for it had long since cast anchor in the world unseen.

The chance which revived the question of the Great Metropolitan Hegira, as Hilary called it, was a letter from Mr. Ascott, as follows:

"MISS LEAF. MADAM,—I shall be obliged by your informing me if it is your wish, as it seems to be your nephew's, that instead of returning to Stowbury, he should settle in London as a surgeon and general practitioner? His education complete, I consider that I have done my duty by him; but I may assist him occasionally still, unless he turns out—as his father did before him—a young man who prefers being helped to helping himself, in which case I shall have nothing more to do with him. I remain, Madam, your obedient servant, PETER ASCOTT."

The sisters read this letter, passing it round the table, none of them apparently liking to be the first to comment upon it. At length Hilary said: "I think that reference to poor Henry is perfectly brutal."

"And yet he was very kind to Henry. And if it had not been for his common sense in sending poor little Ascott and the nurse down to Stowbury the baby might have died. But you don't remember any thing of that time, my dear," said Johanna, sighing.

"He has been kind enough, though he has done it in such a patronizing way," observed Selina. "I suppose that's the real reason of his doing it. He thinks it fine to patronize us, and show kindness to our family; he, the stout, bullet-headed grocer's boy, who used to sit and stare at us all church time."

"At you—you mean. Wasn't he called your beau?" said Hilary mischievously, upon which Selina drew herself up in great indignation.

And then they fell to talking of that anxious question—Ascott's future. A little they reproached themselves that they had left the lad so long in London—so long out of the influence that might have counteracted the evil, sharply hinted in his godfather's letter. But once away—to lure him back to their poor home was impossible.

"Suppose we were to go to him," suggested Hilary.

The poor and friendless possess one great advantage—they have nobody to ask advice of; nobody to whom it matters much what they do or where they go. The family mind has but to make itself up, and act accordingly. Thus within an hour or two of the receipt of Mr. Ascott's letter Hilary went into the kitchen, and told Elizabeth that as soon as her work was done Miss Leaf wished to have a little talk with her.

"Eh! what's wrong? Has Miss Selina been a-grumbling at me?"

Elizabeth was in one of her bad humors, which, though of course they never ought to have, servants do have as well as their superiors. Hilary perceived this by the way she threw the coals on and tossed the chairs about. But to-day her heart was full of far more serious cares than Elizabeth's ill temper. She replied, composedly—

"I have not heard that either of my sisters is displeased with you. What they want to talk to you about is for your own good. We are thinking of making a great change. We intend to leave Stowbury and going to live in London."

"Going to live in London!"

Now, quick as her tact and observation were—her heart taught her these things—Elizabeth's head was a thorough Saxon one, slow to receive impressions. It was a family saying, that nothing was so hard as to put a new idea into Elizabeth except to get it out again.

For this reason Hilary preferred paving the way quietly, before startling her with the sudden intelligence of their contemplated change.

"Well, what do you say to the plan?" asked she, good-humoredly.

"I dunnot like it at all," was the brief gruff answer of Elizabeth Hand.

Now it was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines that no human being is good for much unless he or she has what is called "a will of one's own." Perhaps this, like many another creed, was with her the result of circumstances. But she held it firmly, and with that exaggerated one-sidedness of feeling which any bitter family or personal experience is sure to leave behind—a strong will was her first attraction to every body. It had been so in the case of Robert Lyon, and not less in Elizabeth's.

But this quality has its inconveniences. When the maid began sweeping up her hearth with a noisy, angry gesture, the mistress did the wisest and most dignified thing a mistress could do under the circumstances and which she knew was the sharpest rebuke she could administer to the sensitive Elizabeth—she immediately quitted the kitchen.

For an hour after the parlor bell did not ring; and though it was washing day, no Miss Hilary appeared to help in folding up the clothes. Elizabeth, subdued and wretched, waited till she could wait no longer; then knocked at the door, and asked humbly if she should bring in supper?

The extreme kindness of the answer, to the effect that she must come in, as they wanted to speak to her, crushed the lingering fragments of ill humor out of the girl.

"Miss Hilary has told you our future plans, Elizabeth; now we wish to have a little talk with you about yours."

"Eh?"

"We conclude you will not wish to go with us to London; and it would be hardly advisable you should. You can get higher wages now than any we can afford to give you; indeed, we have more than once thought of telling you so, and offering you your choice of trying for a better place."

"You're very kind," was the answer, stolid rather than grateful.

"No; I think we are merely honest. We should never think of keeping a girl upon lower wages than she was worth. Hitherto, however, the arrangement has been quite fair you know, Elizabeth, you have given us a deal of trouble in the teaching of you." And Miss Leaf smiled, half sadly, as if this, the first of the coming changes, hurt her more than she liked to express. "Come, my girl," she added, "you needn't look so serious. We are not in the least vexed with you; we shall be very sorry to lose you, and we will give you the best of characters when you leave."

"I dunnot—mean—to leave."

Elizabeth threw out the words like pellets, in a choked fashion, and disappeared suddenly from the parlor.

"Who would have thought it!" exclaimed Selina; "I declare the girl was crying."

No mistake about that; though when, a few minutes after, Miss Hilary entered the kitchen, Elizabeth tried in a hurried, shamefaced way to hide her tears by being very busy over something. Her mistress took no notice, but began, as usual on washing days, to assist in various domestic matters, in the midst of which she said, quietly, "And so, Elizabeth, you would really like to go to London?"

"No! I shouldn't like it at all; never said I should. But if you go, I shall go too; though Missis is so ready to get shut o' me."

"It was for your own good, you know."

"You always said it was for a girl's good to stop in one place; and if you think I'm going to another. I aren't that's all."

Rude as the form of the speech was—almost the first rude speech that Elizabeth had ever made to Miss Hilary, and which, under other circumstances she would have felt bound severely to reprove—the mistress passed it over. That which lay beneath it, the sharpness of wounded love, touched her heart. She felt that, for all the girl's rough manner, it would have been hard to go into her London kitchen and meet a strange London face, instead of that fond homely one of Elizabeth Hand's.

Still, she thought it right to explain to her that London life might have many difficulties, that; for the present at least, her wages could not be raised, and the family might at first be in even more straitened circumstances than they were at Stowbury.

"Only at first, though, for I hope to find plenty of pupils, and by-and-by our nephew will get into practice."

"Is it on account of him you're going, Miss Hilary?"

"Chiefly."

Elizabeth gave a grunt which said as plainly as words could say, "I thought so;" and relapsed into what she, no doubt, believed to be virtuous indignation, but which, as it was testified against the wrong parties, was open to the less favorable interpretation of ill humor—a small injustice not uncommon with us all.

I do not pretend to paint this young woman as a perfect character. She had her fierce dislikes as well as her strong fidelities; her faults within and without, which had to be struggled with, as all of us have to struggle to the very end of our days. Oftentimes not till the battle is high over—sometimes not till it is quite over—does God give us the victory.

Without more discussion on either side, it was agreed that Elizabeth should accompany her mistresses. Even Mrs. Hand seemed to be pleased thereat, her only doubt being lest her daughter should meet and be led astray by that bad woman, Mrs. Cliffe, Tommy Cliffe's mother, who was reported to have gone to London. But Miss Hilary explained that this meeting was about as probable as the rencontre of two needles in a hay-rick; and besides, Elizabeth was not the sort of girl to be easily "led astray" by any body.

"No, no; her's a good wench, though I says it," replied the mother, who was too hard worked to have much sentiment to spare. "I wish the little 'uns may take pattern by our Elizabeth. You'll send her home, may be, in two or three years' time, to let us have a look at her?"

Miss Hilary promised, and then took her way back through the familiar old town—so soon to be familiar no more—thinking anxiously, in spite of herself, upon those two or three years, and what they might bring.

It happened to be a notable day—that sunshiny 28th of June—when the little, round-cheeked damsel, who is a grandmother now, had the crown of three kingdoms first set upon her youthful head; and Stowbury, like every other town in the land, was a perfect bower of green arches, garlands, banners; white covered tables were spread in the open air down almost every street, where poor men dined, or poor women drank tea; and every body was out and abroad, looking at or sharing in the holiday' making, wild with merriment, and brimming over with passionate loyalty to the Maiden Queen.

That day is now twenty-four years ago; but all those who remember it must own there never has been a day like it, when, all over the country, every man's heart throbbed with chivalrous devotion, every woman's with womanly tenderness, toward this one royal girl, who, God bless her! has lived to retain and deserve it all.

Hilary called for, and protected through the crowd, the little, timid, widow lady who had taken off the Misses Leaf's hands their house and furniture, and whom they had made very happy—as the poor often can make those still poorer than themselves—by refusing to accept any thing for the "good will" of the school. Then she was fetched by Elizabeth, who had been given a whole afternoon's holiday; and mistress and maid went together home, watching the last of the festivities, the chattering groups that still lingered in the twilight streets, and listening to the merry notes of the "Triumph" which came down through the lighted windows of the Town Hall, where the open-air tea drinkers had adjourned to dance country dances, by civic permission, and in perfectly respectable jollity.

"I wonder," said Hilary—while, despite some natural regret, her spirit stretched itself out eagerly from the narrowness of the place where she was born into the great wide world; the world where so many grand things were thought and written and done; the world Robert Lyon had so long fought with, and was fighting bravely still—"I wonder, Elizabeth, what sort of place London is, and what our life will be in it?"

Elizabeth said nothing. For the moment her face seemed to catch the reflected glow of her mistress's, and then it settled down into that look of mingled resistance and resolution which was habitual to her. For the life that was to be, which neither knew—oh, if they had known!—she also was prepared.



CHAPTER IX.

The day of the Grand Hegira came.

"I remember," said Miss Leaf, as they rumbled for the last time through the empty morning streets of poor old Stowbury: "I remember my grandmother telling me that when my grandfather was courting her, and she out of coquetry refused him, he set off on horseback to London, and she was so wretched to think of all the dangers he ran on the journey, and in London itself, that she never rested till she got him back, and then immediately married him."

"No such catastrophe is likely to happen to any of us, except, perhaps, to Elizabeth," said Miss Hilary, trying to get up, a little feeble mirth, any thing to pass away the time and lessen the pain of parting, which was almost too much for Johanna. "What do you say? Do you mean to get married in London, Elizabeth?"

But Elizabeth could make no answer, even to kind Miss Hilary. They had not imagined she felt the leaving her native place so much. She had watched intently the last glimpse of Stowbury church tower, and now sat with reddened eyes, staring blankly out of the carriage window,

"Silent as a stone."

Once or twice a large slow tear gathered on each of her eyes, but it was shaken off angrily from the high check bones, and never settled into absolute crying. They thought it best to take no notice of her. Only, when reaching the new small station, where the "resonant steam eagles" were, for the first time, beheld by the innocent Stowbury ladies, there arose a discussion as to the manner of traveling. Miss Leaf said, decidedly "Second class; and then we can keep Elizabeth with us." Upon which Elizabeth's mouth melted into something between a quiver and a smile.

Soon it was all over, and the little house-hold was compressed into the humble second class carriage, cheerless and cushionless, whirling through indefinite England in a way that confounded all their geography and topography. Gradually as the day darkened into heavy, chilly July rain, the scarcely kept up spirits of the four passengers began to sink. Johanna grew very white and worn, Selina became, to use Ascott's phrase, "as cross as two sticks," and even Hilary, turning her eyes from the gray sodden looking landscape without, could find no spot of comfort to rest on within the carriage, except that round rosy face of Elizabeth Hand's.

Whether it was from the spirit of contradiction existing in most such natures, which, especially in youth, are more strong than sweet, or from a better feeling, the fact was noticeable, that when every one else's spirits went down Elizabeth's went up. Nothing could bring her out of a "grumpy" fit so satisfactorily as her mistresses falling into one. When Miss Selina now began to fidget hither and thither, each tone of her fretful voice seeming to go through her eldest sister's every nerve, till even Hilary said, impatiently, "Oh, Selina, can't you be quiet?" then Elizabeth rose from the depth of her gloomy discontent up to the surface immediately.

She was only a servant; but Nature bestows that strange vague thing that we term "force of character" independently of position. Hilary often remembered afterward, how much more comfortable the end of the journey was than she had expected—how Johanna lay at ease, with her feet in Elizabeth's lap, wrapped in Elizabeth's best woolen shawl; and how, when Selina's whole attention was turned to an ingenious contrivance with a towel and fork and Elizabeth's basket, for stopping the rain out of the carriage roof—she became far less disagreeable, and even a little proud of her own cleverness. And so there was a temporary lull in Hilary's cares, and she could sit quiet, with her eyes fixed on the rainy landscape, which she did not see, and her thoughts wandering toward that unknown place and unknown life into which they were sweeping, as we all sweep, ignorantly, unresistingly, almost unconsciously, into new destinies. Hilary, for the first time, began to doubt of theirs. Anxious as she had been to go to London, and wise as the proceeding appeared, now that the die was cast and the cable cut, the old simple, peaceful life at Stowbury grew strangely dear.

"I wonder if we shall ever go back again, or what is to happen to us before we do go back," she thought, and turned, with a half defined fear, toward her eldest sister, who looked so old and fragile beside that sturdy, healthful servant girl. "Elizabeth!" Elizabeth, rubbing Miss Leaf's feet, started at the unwonted sharpness of Miss Hilary's tone.

"There; I'll do that for my sister. Go and look out of the window at London."

For the great smoky cloud which began to rise in the rainy horizon was indeed London. Soon through the thickening nebula of houses they converged to what was then the nucleus of all railway traveling, the Euston Terminus, and were hustled on to the platform, and jostled helplessly to and fro these poor country ladies! Anxiously they scanned the crowd of strange faces for the one only face they knew in the great metropolis—which did not appear.

"It is very strange; very wrong of Ascott. Hilary, you surely told him the hour correctly. For once, at least, he might have been in time"

So chafed Miss Selina, while Elizabeth, who by some miraculous effort of intuitive genius, had succeeded in collecting the luggage, was now engaged in defending it from all comers, especially porters, and making of it a comfort able seat for Miss Leaf.

"Nay, have patience, Selina. We will give him just five minutes more, Hilary."

And Johanna sat down, with her sweet, calm, long suffering face turned upward to that younger one, which was, as youth is apt to be, hot, and worried, and angry. And so they waited till the terminus was almost deserted, and the last cab had driven off, when, suddenly, dashing up the station yard out of another, came Ascott.

He was so sorry, so very sorry, downright grieved, at having kept his aunts waiting. But his watch was wrong—some fellows at dinner detained him—the train was before its time surely. In fact, his aunts never quite made out what the excuse was; but they looked into his bright handsome face, and their wrath melted like clouds before the sun. He was so gentlemanly, so well dressed—much better dressed than even at Stowbury—and he seemed so unfeignedly glad to see them. He handed them all into the cab—even Elizabeth. though whispering meanwhile to his Aunt Hilary, "What on earth did you bring her for?" and their was just going to leap on to the box himself, when he stopped to ask "Where he should tell cabby to drive to?"

"Where to?" repeated his aunts in undisguised astonishment. They had never thought of any thing but of being taken home at once by their boy.

"You see," Ascott said, in a little confusion, "you wouldn't be comfortable with me. A young fellow's lodgings are not like a house of one's own, and, besides—"

"Besides, when a young fellow is ashamed of his old aunts, he can easily find reasons."

"Hush, Selina!" interposed Miss Leaf. "My dear boy, your old aunts would never let you inconvenience yourself for them. Take us to an inn for the night, and to morrow we will find lodgings for ourselves."

Ascott looked greatly relieved.

"And you are not vexed with me, Aunt Johanna?" said he, with something of his old childish tone of compunction, as he saw—he could not help seeing—the utter weariness which Johanna tried so hard to hide.

"No, my dear, not vexed. Only I wish we had known this a little sooner that we might have made arrangements. Now, where shall we go?"

Ascott mentioned a dozen hotels, but they found he only knew them by name. At last Miss Leaf remembered one, which her father used to go to, on his frequent journeys to London, and whence, indeed, he had been brought home to die. And though all the recollections about it were sad enough, still it felt less strange than the rest, in this dreariness of London. So she proposed going to the "Old Bell," Holborn.

"A capital place!" exclaimed Ascott, eagerly. "And I'll take and settle you there: and we'll order supper, and make a jolly night of it. All right. Drive on, cabby."

He jumped on the box, and then looked in mischievously, flourishing his lit cigar and shaking his long hair—his Aunt Selina's two great abominations—right in her indignant face: but withal looking so merry and good tempered that she shortly softened into a smile.

"How handsome the boy is growing!"

"Yes," said Johanna, with a slight sigh; "and did you notice? how exceedingly like his—"

The sentence was left unfinished. Alas! if every young man, who believes his faults and follies injure himself alone, could feel what it must be, years afterward, to have his nearest kindred shrink from saying as the saddest, most ominous thing they could say of his son, that the lad is growing "so like his father!"

It might have been—they assured each other that it was—only the incessant roll, roll of the street sounds below their windows, which kept the Misses Leaf awake half the night of this their first night in London. And when they sat down to breakfast—having waited an hour vainly for their nephew—it might have been only the gloom of the little parlor which cast a slight shadow over them all. Still the shadow was there.

It deepened despite the sunshiny morning into which the last night's rain had brightened till Holborn Bars looked cheerful, and Holborn pavement actually clean, so that, as Elizabeth said, "you might eat your dinner off it;" which was the one only thing she condescended to approve in London. She had sat all evening mute in her corner, for Miss Leaf would not send her away into the terra incognita of a London hotel. Ascott, at first considerably annoyed at the presence of what he called a "skeleton at the feast," had afterward got over it; and run on with a mixture of childish glee and mannish pomposity about his plans and intentions—how he meant to take a house, he thought, in one of the squares, or a street leading out of them: how he would put up the biggest of brass plates, with "Mr. Leaf, surgeon." and soon get an extensive practice, and have all his aunts to live with him. And his aunts had smiled and listened, forgetting all about the silent figure in the corner, who perhaps had gone to sleep, or had also listened.

"Elizabeth, come and look out at London."

So she and Miss Hilary whiled away another heavy three quarters of an hour in watching and commenting on the incessantly shifting crowd which swept past Holborn Bars. Miss Selina sometimes looked out too, but more often sat fidgeting and wondering why Ascott did not come; while Miss Leaf, who never fidgeted, became gradually more and more silent. Her eyes were fixed on the door, with an expression which, if Hilary could have remembered so far back, would have been to her something not painfully new, but still more painfully old—a look branded into her face by many an anxious hour's listening for the footstep that never came, or only came to bring distress. It was the ineffaceable token of that long, long struggle between affection and conscience, pity and scarcely repressible contempt, which, for more than one generation, had been the appointed burden of this family—at least the women of it—till sometimes it seemed to hang over them almost like a fate.

About noon Miss Leaf proposed calling for the hotel bill. Its length so alarmed the country ladies that Hilary suggested not staying to dine, but going immediately in search of lodgings.

"What, without a gentleman! Impossible! I always understood ladies could go nowhere in London without a gentleman!"

"We shall come very ill off then, Selina. But any how I mean to try. You know the region where, we have heard, lodgings are cheapest and best—that is, best for us. It can not be far from here. Suppose I start at once?"

"What, alone?" cried Johanna, anxiously.

"No, dear, I'll take the map with me, and Elizabeth. She is not afraid."

Elizabeth smiled, and rose, with that air of dogged devotedness with which she would have prepared to follow Miss Hilary to the North Pole, if necessary. So, after a few minutes of arguing with Selina, who did not press her point overmuch, since she herself had not to commit the impropriety of the expedition. After a few minutes more of hopeless lingering about—till even Miss Leaf said they had better wait no longer—mistress and maid took a farewell nearly as pathetic as if they had been really Arctic voyagers, and plunged right into the dusty glare and hurrying crowd of the "sunny side" of Holborn in July.

A strange sensation, and yet there was something exhilarating in it. The intense solitude that there is in a London crowd these country girls—for Miss Hilary herself was no more than a girl—could not as yet realize. They only felt the life of it; stirring, active, incessantly moving life; even though it was of a kind that they knew as little of it as the crowd did of them. Nothing struck Hilary more than the self-absorbed look of passers-by: each so busy on his own affairs, that, in spite of Selina's alarm, for all notice taken of them, they might as well be walking among the cows and horses in Stowbury field.

Poor old Stowbury! They felt how far away they were from it when a ragged, dirty, vicious looking girl offered them a moss rose bud for "one penny, only one penny;" which Elizabeth, lagging behind, bought, and found it only a broken off bud stuck on to a bit of wire.

"That's London ways, I suppose," said she, severely, and became so misanthropic that she would hardly vouchsafe a glance to the hand some square they turned into, and merely observed of the tall houses, taller than any Hilary had ever seen, that she "wouldn't fancy running up and down them stairs."

But Hilary was cheerful in spite of all. She was glad to be in this region, which, theoretically, she knew by heart—glad to find herself in the body, where in the spirit she had come so many a time. The mere consciousness of this seemed to refresh her. She thought she would be much happier in London; that in the long years to come that must be borne, it would be good for her to have something to do as well as to hope for; something to fight with as well as to endure. Now more than ever came pulsing in and out of her memory a line once repeated in her hearing, with an observation of how "true" it was. And though originally it was applied by a man to a woman, and she smiled sometimes to think how "unfeminine" some people—Selina for instance—would consider her turning it the other way, still she did so. She believed that, for woman as for man, that is the purest and noblest love which is the most self-existent, most independent of love returned; and which can say, each to the other equally on both sides, that the whole solemn purpose of life is, under God's service,

"If not to win, to feel more worthy thee."

Such thoughts made her step firmer and her heart lighter; so that she hardly noticed the distance they must have walked till the close London air began to oppress her, and the smooth glaring London pavements made her Stowbury feet ache sorely.

"Are you tired, Elizabeth? Well, we'll rest soon. There must be lodgings near here. Only I can't quite make out—"

As Miss Hilary looked up to the name of the street the maid noticed what a glow came into her mistress's face, pale and tired as it was. Just then a church clock struck the quarter hour.

"That must be St. Pancras. And this—yes, this is Burton Street, Burton Crescent."

"I'm sure Missis wouldn't like to live there;" observed Elizabeth, eyeing uneasily the gloomy rez de-chaussee, familiar to many a generation of struggling respectability, where, in the decadence of the season, every second house bore the announcement "apartments furnished."

"No," Miss Hilary replied, absently. Yet she continued to walk up and down the whole length of the street; then passed out into the dreary, deserted looking Crescent, where the trees were already beginning to fade; not, however, into the bright autumn tint of country woods, but into a premature withering, ugly and sad to behold.

"I am glad he is not here—glad, glad!" thought Hilary, as she realized the unutterable dreariness of those years when Robert Lyon lived and studied in his garret from month's end to month's end—these few dusty trees being the sole memento of the green country life in which he had been brought up, and which she knew he so passionately loved. Now she could understand, that "calenture" which he had sometimes jestingly alluded to, as coming upon him at times, when he felt literally sick for the sight of a green field or a hedge full of birds. She wondered whether the same feeling would ever come upon her in this strange desert of London, the vastness of which grew upon her every hour.

She was glad he was away; yes, heart glad! And yet, if this minute she could only have seen him coming round the Crescent, have met his smile, and the firm, warm clasp of his hand—

For an instant there rose up in her one of those wild, rebellious outcries against fate, when to have to waste years of this brief life of ours, in the sort of semi-existence that living is, apart from the treasure of the heart and delight of the eyes, seems so cruelly, cruelly hard!

"Miss Hilary."

She started, and "put herself under lock and key" immediately. "Miss Hilary; you do look so tired!"

"Do I? Then we will go and sit down in this baker's shop, and get rested and fed. We cannot afford to wear ourselves out, you know. We have a great deal to do to-day."

More indeed, than she calculated, for they walked up one street and down another, investigating at least twenty lodgings before any appeared which seemed fit for them. Yet some place must be found where Johanna's poor, tired head could rest that night. At last, completely exhausted, with that oppressive exhaustion which seems to crush mind as well as body after a day's wandering in London. Hilary's courage began to ebb. Oh for an arm to lean on, a voice to listen for, a brave heart to come to her side, saying, "Do not be afraid, there are two of us!" And she yearned, with an absolutely sick yearning such as only a woman who now and then feels the utter helplessness of her womanhood can know, for the only arm she cared to lean on, the only voice dear enough to bring her comfort, the only heart that she felt she could trust.

Poor Hilary! And yet why pity her? To her three alternatives could but happen: were Robert Lyon true to her she would be his entirely and devotedly, to the end of her days; did he forsake her, she would forgive him should he die, she would be faithful to him eternally. Love of this kind may know anguish, but not the sort of anguish that lesser and weaker loves do. If it is certain of nothing else, it can always be certain of itself.

"Its will is strong; 'It suffers; but it can not suffer long."

And even in its utmost pangs is an underlying peace which often approaches to absolute joy.

Hilary roused herself, and bent her mind steadily on lodgings till she discovered one from the parlor of which you could see the trees of Burton Crescent and hear the sound of Saint Pancras's clock.

"I think we may do here—at least for a while," said she cheerfully; and then Elizabeth heard her inquiring if an extra bedroom could be had if necessary.

There was only one small attic. "Ascott never could put up with that," said Hilary, half to herself. Then suddenly—"I think I will see Ascott before I decide. Elizabeth, will you go with me, or remain here?"

"I'll go with you, if you please, Miss Hilary."

"If you please," sounded not unlike, "if I please," and Elizabeth had gloomed over a little. "Is Mr. Ascott to live with us?"

"I suppose so."

No more words were interchanged till they reached Gower street, when Miss Hilary observed, with evident surprise, what a handsome street it was.

"I must have made some mistake. Still we will find out Mr. Ascott's number, and inquire."

No, there was no mistake. Mr. Ascott Leaf had lodged there for three months, but had given up his rooms that very morning.

"Where had he gone to?"

The servant—a London lodging house servant all over—didn't know; but she fetched the landlady, who was after the same pattern of the dozen London landladies with whom Hilary had that day made acquaintance, only a little more Cockney, smirking, dirty, and tawdrily fine.

"Yes, Mr. Leaf had gone, and he hadn't left no address. Young College gentlemen often found it convenient to leave no address. P'raps he would if he'd known there would be a young lady a calling to see him."

"I am Mr. Leaf's aunt," said Hilary, turning as hot as fire.

"Oh, in-deed," was the answer, with civil incredulousness.

But the woman was sharp of perception—as often-cheated London landladies learn to be. After looking keenly at mistress and maid, she changed her tone; nay, even launched out into praises of her late lodger: what a pleasant gentleman he was; what good company he kept, and how he had promised to recommend her apartments to his friends.

"And as for the little some'at of rent, Miss—tell him it makes no matter, he can pay me when he likes. If he don't call soon p'raps I might make bold to send his trunk and his books over to Mr. Ascott's of—dear me, I forget the number and the square."

Hilary unsuspiciously supplied both.

"Yes, that's it—the old gen'leman as Mr. Leaf went to dine with every other Sunday, a very rich old gentleman, who, he says, is to leave him all his money. Maybe a relation of yours, Miss?"

"No," said Hilary; and adding something about the landlady's hearing from Mr. Leaf very soon, she hurried out of the house, Elizabeth following.

"Won't you be tired if you walk so fast, Miss Hilary?"

Hilary stopped, choking. Helplessly she looked up and down the forlorn, wide, glaring, dusty street; now sinking into the dull shadow of a London afternoon.

"Let us go home!" And at the word a sob burst out—just one passionate pent up sob. No more. She could not afford to waste strength in crying.

"As you say, Elizabeth, I am getting tired, and that will not do. Let me see; something must be decided." And she stood still, passing her hand over her hot brow and eyes. "I will go back and take the lodgings, leave you there to make all comfortable, and then fetch my sisters from the hotel. But stay first, I have forgotten something."

She returned to the house in Gower Street, and wrote on one of her cards an address—the only permanent address she could think of—that of the city broker who was in the habit of paying them their yearly income of 50.

"If any creditors inquire for Mr. Leaf, give them this. His friends may always hear of him at the London University."

"Thank you, ma'am," replied the now civil landlady. "Indeed, I wasn't afraid of the young gentleman giving us the slip. For though he was careless in his bills he was every inch the gentleman. And I wouldn't object to take him in again. Or p'raps you yourself, ma'am, might be a-wanting rooms."

"No, I thank you. Good morning." And Hilary hurried away.

Not a word did she say to Elizabeth, or Elizabeth to her, till they got into the dull, dingy parlor—henceforth, to be their sole apology for "home:" and then she only talked about domestic arrangements—talked fast and eagerly, and tried to escape the affectionate eyes which she knew were so sharp and keen. Only to escape them—not to blind them; she had long ago found out that Elizabeth was too quick-witted for that, especially in any thing that concerned "the family." She felt convinced the girl had heard every syllable that passed at Ascott's lodgings: that she knew all that was to be known, and guessed what was to be feared as well as Hilary herself.

"Elizabeth"—she hesitated long, and doubted whether she should say the thing before she did say it—"remember we are all strangers in London, and family matters are best kept within the family. Do not mention either in writing home, or to any body here, about—about—"

She could not name Ascott; she felt so horribly ashamed.



CHAPTER X.

Living in lodgings, not temporarily, but permanently, sitting down to make one's only "home" in Mrs. Jones's parlor or Mrs. Smith's first floor, of which not a stick or a stone that one looks at is one's own, and whence one may be evicted or evade, with a week's notice or a week's rent, any day—this sort of life is natural and even delightful to some people. There are those who, like strawberry plants, are of such an errant disposition, that grow them where you will, they will soon absorb all the pleasantness of their habitat, and begin casting out runners elsewhere; may, if not frequently transplanted, would actually wither and die. Of such are the pioneers of society—the emigrants, the tourists, the travelers round the world; and great is the advantage the world derives from them, active, energetic, and impulsive as they are. Unless, indeed, their talent for incessant locomotion degenerates into rootless restlessness, and they remain forever rolling stones, gathering no moss, and acquiring gradually a smooth, hard surface, which adheres to nothing, and to which nobody dare venture to adhere.

But there are others possessing in a painful degree this said quality of adhesiveness, to whom the smallest change is obnoxious; who like drinking out of a particular cup, and sitting in a particular chair; to whom even a variation in the position of furniture is unpleasant. Of course, this peculiarity has its bad side, and yet it is not in itself mean or ignoble. For is not adhesiveness, faithfulness, constancy—call it what you will—at the root of all citizenship, clanship, and family love? Is it not the same feeling which, granting they remain at all, makes old friendships dearer than any new? Nay, to go to the very sacredest and closest bond, is it not that which makes an old man see to the last in his old wife's faded face the beauty which perhaps nobody ever saw except himself, but which he sees and delights in still, simply because it is familiar and his own.