But these two were different from others. They only saw their sister Selina, a woman no longer young, and not without her peculiarities, going to be married to a man she knew little or nothing about—a man whom they themselves had endured rather than liked, and for the sake of gratitude. He was trying enough merely as a chance visitor; but to look upon Mr. Ascott as a brother-in-law, as a husband— "Oh, Selina! you can not be in earnest?"

"Why not? Why should I not be married as well as my neighbors?" said she, sharply.

Nobody arguing that point, both being indeed too bewildered to argue at all, she continued, majestically,

"I assure you, sisters, there could not be a more unexceptionable offer. It is true, Mr. Ascott's origin was rather humble; but I can overlook that. In his present wealth, and with his position and character, he will make the best of husbands."

Not a word was answered; what could be answered? Selina was free to marry if she liked, and whom she liked. Perhaps, from her nature, it was idle to expect her to marry in any other way than this; one of the thousand and one unions where the man desires a handsome, lady-like wife for the head of his establishment, and the woman wishes an elegant establishment to be mistress of; so they strike a bargain—possibly as good as most other bargains.

Still, with one faint lingering of hope, Hilary asked if she had quite decided.

"Quite. He wrote to me last night, and I gave him his answer this morning."

Selina certainly had not troubled any body with her "love affairs." It was entirely a matter of business.

The sisters saw at once that she had made up her mind. Henceforward there could be no criticism of Mr. Peter Ascott.

Now all was told, she talked freely of her excellent prospects.

"He had behaved handsomely—very much so. He makes a good settlement on me, and says how happy he will be to help my family, so as to enable you always to make a respectable appearance."

"We are exceedingly obliged to him."

"Don't be sharp, Hilary. He means well. And he must feel that this marriage is a sort of—ahem! condescension on my part, which I never should have dreamed of twenty years ago."

Selina sighed; could it be at the thought of that twenty years ago? Perhaps, shallow as she seemed, this woman might once have had some fancy, some ideal man whom she expected to meet and marry; possibly a very different sort of man from Mr. Peter Ascott. However, the sigh was but momentary; she plunged back again into all the arrangements of her wedding, every one of which, down to the wedding-dress, she had evidently decided.

"And therefore you see," she added, as it the unimportant, almost forgotten item of discussion had suddenly occurred to her, "it's quite impossible that my sister should keep a shop. I shall tell Mr. Ascott, and you will see what he says to it."

But when Mr. Ascott appeared next day in solemn state as an accepted lover he seemed to care very little about the matter. He thought it was a good thing for every body to be independent; did not see why young women—he begged pardon, young ladies—should not earn their own bread if they liked. He only wished that the shop were a little further off than Kensington, and hoped the name of Leaf would not be put over the door.

But the bride-elect, indignant and annoyed, begged her lover to interfere, and prevent the scheme from being carried out.

"Don't vex yourself, my dear Selina," said he, dryly—how Hilary started to hear the stranger use the household name—"but I can't see that it's my business to interfere. I marry you, I don't marry your whole family."

"Mr. Ascott is quite right; we will end the subject," said Johanna, with grave dignity while Hilary sat with burning cheeks, thinking that, miserable as the family had been, it had never till now known real degradation.

But her heart was very sore that day. It the morning had come the letter from India never omitted, never delayed; Robert Lyon was punctual as clock-work in every thing he did. It came, but this month it was a short and somewhat sad letter—hinting of failing health, uncertain prospects; full of a bitter longing to come home, and a dread that it would be years before that longing was realized.

"My only consolation is," he wrote, for once betraying himself a little, "that however hard my life out here may be, I bear it alone."

But that consolation was not so easy to Hilary. That they two should be wasting their youth apart, when just a little heap of yellow coins—of which men like Mr. Ascott had such profusion—would bring them together; and, let trials be many or poverty hard, give them the unutterable joy of being once more face to face and heart to heart—oh, it was sore, sore!

Yet when she went up from the parlor, where the newly-affianced couple sat together, "making-believe" a passion that did not exist, and acting out the sham courtship, proper for the gentleman to pay and the lady to receive—when she shut her bedroom door, and there, sitting in the cold, read again and again Robert Lyon's letter to Johanna, so good, so honest; so sad, yet so bravely enduring—Hilary was comforted. She felt that true love, in its most unsatisfied longings, its most cruel delays, nay, even its sharpest agonies of hopeless separation, is sweeter ten thousand times than the most "respectable" of loveless marriages such as this.

So, at the week's end, Hilary went patiently to her work at Kensington, and Selina began the preparations for her wedding.



CHAPTER XV.

In relating so much about her mistresses, I have lately seemed to overlook Elizabeth Hand.

She was a person easy enough to be overlooked. She never put herself forward, not even now, when Miss Hilary's absence caused the weight of housekeeping and domestic management to fall chiefly upon her. She went about her duties as soberly and silently as she had done in her girlhood; even Miss Leaf could not draw her into much demonstrativeness: she was one of those people who never "come out" till they are strongly needed, and then— But it remained to be proved what this girl would be.

Years afterward Hilary remembered with what a curious reticence Elizabeth used to go about in those days: how she remained as old-fashioned as ever; acquired no London ways, no fripperies of dress or flippancies of manner. Also, that she never complained of anything; though the discomforts of her lodging-house life must have been great—greater than her mistresses had any idea of at the time. Slowly, out of her rough, unpliant girlhood, was forming that character of self-reliance and self-control, which, in all ranks, makes of some women the helpers rather than the helped, the laborers rather than the pleasure-seekers; women whose constant lot it seems to be to walk on the shadowed side of life, to endure rather than to enjoy.

Elizabeth had very little actual enjoyment. She made no acquaintances, and never asked for holidays. Indeed she did not seem to care for any. Her great treat was when, on a Sunday afternoon, Miss Hilary sometimes took her to Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's; when her pleasure and gratitude always struck her mistress—may, even soothed her, and won her from her own many anxieties. It is such a blessing to be able to make any other human being, even for an hour or two, entirely happy.

Except these bright Sundays, Elizabeth's whole time was spent in waiting upon Miss Leaf, who had seemed to grow suddenly frail and old. It might be that living without her child six days out of the seven was a greater trial than had at first appeared to the elder sister, who until now had never parted with her since she was born; or it was perhaps a more commonplace and yet natural cause, the living in London lodgings, without even a change of air from room to room; and the want of little comforts and luxuries, which, with all Hilary's care, were as impossible as ever to their limited means.

For Selina's engagement, which, as a matter of decorum, she had insisted should last six months, did not lessen expenses. Old gowns were shabby, and omnibuses impossible to the future Mrs. Ascott of Russell Square; and though, to do her justice, she spent as little as to her self-pleasing nature was possible, still she spent something.

"It's the last; I shall never cost you any more," she would say, complacently; and revert to that question of absorbing interest, her trousseau, an extremely handsome one, provided liberally by Mr. Ascott. Sorely had this arrangement jarred upon the pride of the Leaf family; yet it was inevitable. But no personal favors would the other two sisters have accepted from Mr. Ascott, even had he offered them—which he did not—save a dress each for the marriage, and a card for the marriage breakfast, which, he also arranged, was to take place at a hotel.

So, in spite of the expected wedding, there was little change in the dull life that went on at No. 15. Its only brightness was when Miss Hilary came home from Saturday to Monday. And in those brief glimpses, when, as was natural, she on her side, and they on theirs, put on their best face, so to speak, each trying to hide from the other any special care, it so fell out that Miss Hilary never discovered a thing which, week by week, Elizabeth resolved to speak to her about, and yet never could. For it was not her own affair; it seemed like presumptuously middling in the affairs of the family. Above all, it involved the necessity of something which looked like tale-bearing and backbiting of a person she disliked, and there was in Elizabeth—servant as she was—an instinctive chivalrous honor which made her especially anxious to be just to her enemies.

Enemy, however, is a large word to use; and yet day by day her feelings grew more bitter toward the person concerned—namely. Mr. Ascott Leaf. It was not from any badness in him: he was the sort of young man always likely to be a favorite with what would be termed his "inferiors;" easy, good-tempered, and gentlemanly, giving a good deal of trouble certainly, but giving it so agreeably that few servants would have grumbled, and paying for it—as he apparently thought every thing could be paid for—with a pleasant word and a handful of silver.

But Elizabeth's distaste for him had deeper roots. The principal one was his exceeding indifference to his aunts' affairs, great and small, from the marriage, which he briefly designated as a "jolly lark," to the sharp economies which, even with the addition of Miss Hilary's salary, were still requisite.—None of these latter did he ever seem to notice, except when they pressed upon himself; when he neither scolded nor argued, but simply went out and avoided them.

He was now absent from home more than ever, and apparently tried as much as possible to keep the household in the dark as to his movements—leaving at uncertain times, never saying what hour he would be back, or if he said so, never keeping to his word. This was the more annoying as there were a number of people continually inquiring for him, hanging about the house, and waiting to see him "on business;" and some of these occasionally commented on the young gentleman in such unflattering terms that Elizabeth was afraid they would reach the ear of Mrs. Jones, and henceforward tried always to attend to the door herself.

But Mrs. Jones was a wide awake woman. She had not let lodgings for thirty years for nothing. Ere long she discovered, and took good care to inform Elizabeth of her discovery, that Mr. Ascott Leaf was what is euphuistically termed "in difficulties."

And here one word, lest in telling this poor lad's story I may be supposed to tell it harshly or uncharitably, as if there was no crime greater than that which a large portion of society seems to count as none; as if, at the merest mention of the ugly word debt, this rabid author flew out, and made all the ultra virtuous persons whose history is here told fly out, like turkeys, after a bit of red cloth which is a very harmless scrap of red cloth after all.

Most true, some kind of debt deserves only compassion. The merchant suddenly failing; the tenderly reared family who by some strange blunder or unkind kindness have been kept in ignorance of their real circumstances, and been spending pounds for which there was only pence to pay; the individuals, men or women, who, without any laxity of principle, are such utter children in practice, that they have to learn the value and use of money by hard experience, much as a child does, and are little better than children in all that concerns L. S. D. to the end of their days.

But these are debtors by accident, not error. The deliberate debtor, who orders what he knows he has no means of paying for; the pleasure loving debtor, who can not renounce one single luxury for conscience' sake; the well-meaning, lazy debtor, who might make "ends meet," but does not, simply because he will not take the trouble; upon such as these it is right to have no mercy—they deserve none.

To which of these classes young Ascott Leaf belonged his story will show. I tell it, or rather let it tell itself, and point its own moral; it is the story of hundreds and thousands.

That a young fellow should not enjoy his youth would be hard; that it should not be pleasant to him to dress well, live well, and spend with open hand upon himself as well as others, no one will question. No one would ever wish it otherwise. Many a kindly spendthrift of twenty-one makes a prudent paterfamilias at forty, while a man who in his twenties showed a purposeless niggardliness, would at sixty grow into the most contemptible miser alive. There is something even in the thoughtless liberality of youth to which one's heart warms, even while one's wisdom reproves.—But what struck Elizabeth was that Ascott's liberalities were always toward himself, and himself only.

Sometimes when she took in a parcel of new clothes, while others yet unpaid for were tossing in wasteful disorder about his room, or when she cleaned indefinite pairs of handsome boots, and washed dozens of the finest cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, her spirit grew hot within her to remember Miss Hilary's countless wants and contrivances in the matter of dress, and all the little domestic comforts which Miss Leaf's frail health required—things which never once seemed to cross the nephew's imagination. Of course not, it will be said; how could a young man be expected to trouble himself about these things?

But they do though. Answer, many a widow's son; many a heedful brother of orphan sisters; many a solitary clerk living and paying his way upon the merest pittance; is it not better to think of others than one's self? Can a man, even a young man, find his highest happiness in mere personal enjoyment?

However, let me cease throwing these pebbles of preaching under the wheels of my story; as it moves on it will preach enough for itself.

Elizabeth's annoyances, suspicions, and conscience-pricks as to whether she ought or ought not to communicate both, came to an end at last. Gradually she made up her mind that, even if it did look like tale bearing, on the following Saturday night Miss Hilary must know all.

It was an anxious week; for Miss Leaf had fallen ill. Not seriously; and she never complained until her sister had left, when she returned to her bed and did not again rise. She would not have Miss Hilary sent for, nor Miss Selina, who was away paying a ceremonious prenuptial visit to Mr. Ascott's partner's wife at Dulwich.

"I don't want any thing that you can not do for me. You are becoming a first rate nurse. Elizabeth," she said, with that passive, peaceful smile which almost frightened the girl; it seemed as if she were slipping away from this world and all its cares into another existence. Elizabeth felt that to tell her any thing about her nephew's affairs was perfectly impossible. How thankful she was that in the quiet of the sick-room her mistress was kept in ignorance of the knocks and inquiries at the door, and especially of a certain ominous paper which had fallen into Mrs. Jones's hands, and informed her, as she took good care to inform Elizabeth, that any day "the bailiffs" might be after her young master.

"And the sooner the whole set of you clear out of my house the better; I am a decent respectable woman," said Mrs. Jones, that very morning; and Elizabeth had had to beg her as a favor not to disturb her sick mistress, but to wait one day, till Miss Hilary came home.

Also, when Ascott, ending with a cheerful and careless countenance his ten minutes' after breakfast chat in his aunt's room, had met Elizabeth on the staircase, he had stopped to bid her say if any body wanted him he was gone to Birmingham, and would not be home till Monday. And on Elizabeth's hesitating, she having determined to tell no more of these involuntary lies, he had been very angry, and then stooped to entreaties, begging her to do as he asked, or it would be the ruin of him. Which she understood well enough when, all the day, she—grown painfully wise, poor girl!—watched a Jewish-looking man hanging about the house, and noticing every body that went in or out of it.

Now, sitting at Miss Leaf's window, she fancied she saw this man disappear into the gin-palace opposite, and at the same moment a figure darted hurriedly round the street corner, and into the door of No. 15. Elizabeth looked to see if her mistress were asleep, and then crept quietly out of the room, shutting the door after her. Listening, she heard the sound of the latch-key, and of some one coming stealthily up stairs.

"Hollo!—Oh, it's only you, Elizabeth."

"Shall I light your candle, sir?"

But when she did the sight was not pleasant. Drenched with rain, his collar pulled up, and his hat slouched, so as in some measure to act as a disguise, breathless and trembling—hardly any body would have recognized in this discreditable object that gentlemanly young man, Mr. Ascott Leaf.

He staggered into his room and threw himself across the bed.

"Do you want anything, Sir?" said Elizabeth, from the door.

"No—yes—stay a minute. Elizabeth, are you to be trusted?"

"I hope I am, Sir."

"The bailiffs are after me. I've just dodged them. If they know I'm here the game's all up—and it will kill my aunt."

Shocked as she was, Elizabeth was glad to hear him say that—glad to see the burst of real emotion with which he flung himself down on the pillow, muttering all sorts of hopeless self-accusations.

"Come, Sir, 'tis no use taking on so," said she, much as she would have spoken to a child, for there was something childish rather than man like in Ascott's distress. Nevertheless, she pitied him, with the unreasoning pity a kind heart gives to any creature, who, blameworthy or not, has fallen into trouble. "What do you mean to do?"

"Nothing. I'm cleaned out. And I haven't a friend in the world."

He turned his face to the wall in perfect despair.

Elizabeth tried hard not to sit in judgment upon what the catechism would call her "betters;" and yet her own strong instinct of almost indefinite endurance turned with something approaching contempt from this weak, lightsome nature, broken by the first touch of calamity.

"Come, it's no use making things worse than they are. If no body knows that you are here, lock your door and keep quiet. I'll bring you some dinner when I bring up Missis' tea, and not even Mrs. Jones will be any the wiser."

"You're a brick, Elizabeth—a regular brick!" cried the young fellow, brightening up at the least relief. "That will be capital.—Get me a good slice of beef, or ham, or something. And mind you, don't forget!—a regular stunning bottle of pale ale."

"Very well, Sir."

The acquiescence was somewhat sullen, and had he watched Elizabeth's face he might have seen there an expression not too flattering. But she faithfully brought him his dinner, and kept his secret, even though, hearing from over the staircase Mrs. Jones resolutely deny that Mr. Leaf had been at home since morning, she felt very much as if she were conniving at a lie. With a painful, half-guilty consciousness she waited for her mistress's usual question. "Is my nephew come home?" but fortunately it was not asked.—

Miss Leaf lay quiet and passive, and her faithful nurse settled her for the night with a strangely solemn feeling, as if she were leaving her to her last rest, safe and at peace before the overhanging storm broke upon the family.

But all shadow of this storm seemed to have passed away from him who was its cause. As soon as the house was still Ascott crept down and fell to his supper with as good an appetite as possible. He even became free and conversational.

"Don't look so glum, Elizabeth. I shall soon weather through. Old Ascott will fork out; he couldn't help it. I'm to be his nephew you know. Oh, that was a clever catch of Aunt Selina's. If only Aunt Hilary would try another like it."

"If you please, Sir, I'm going to bed."

"Off with you, then, and I'll not forget the gown at Christmas. You're a sharp young woman, and I'm much obliged to you." And for a moment he looked as if he were about to make the usual unmannerly acknowledgment of civility from a young gentleman to a servant maid, viz., kissing her, but he pulled a face and drew back. He really couldn't; she was so very plain. At this moment there came a violent ring, and "Fire!" was shouted through the key-hole of the door. Terrified, Elizabeth opened it, when, with a burst of laughter, a man rushed in and laid hands upon Ascott.

It was the sheriff's officer.

When his trouble came upon him Ascott's manliness returned. He turned very white, but he made no opposition; had even enough of his wits about him—or something better than wits—to stop Mrs. Jones from rushing up in alarm and indignation to arouse Miss Leaf.

"No; she'll know it quite soon enough.—Let her sleep till morning. Elizabeth, look here." He wrote upon a card the address of the place he was to be taken to. "Give Aunt Hilary this. Say if she can think of a way to get me out of this horrid mess; but I don't deserve—Never mind. Come on, you fellows."

He pulled his hat over his eyes, jumped into the cab, and was gone. The whole thing had not occupied five minutes.

Stupefied, Elizabeth stood and considered what was best to be done. Miss Hilary must be told; but how to get at her in the middle of the night, thereby leaving her mistress to the mercy of Mrs. Jones. It would never do. Suddenly she thought of Miss Balquidder.—She might send a message. No, not a message—for the family misery and disgrace must not be betrayed to a stranger—but a letter to Kensington. With an effort Elizabeth composed herself sufficiently to write one—her first—to her dear Miss Hilary.

"HONORED MADAM,—Mr. Leaf has got himself into trouble, and is taken away somewhere; and I dare not tell missis; and I wish you was at home, as she is not well, but better than she has been, and she shall know nothing about it till you come.—Your obedient and affectionate servant, ELIZABETH HAND."

Taking Ascott's latch-key she quitted the house and slipped out into the dark night, almost losing her way among the gloomy squares, where she met not a creature except the solitary policeman, plashing steadily along the wet pavement. When he turned the glimmer of his bull's eye upon her she started like a guilty creature, till she remembered that she really was doing nothing wrong, and so need not be afraid of any thing. This was her simple creed, which Miss Hilary had taught her, and it upheld her, even till she knocked at Miss Balquidder's door. There, poor girl, her heart sank, especially when Miss Balquidder, in an anomalous costume and a severe voice, opened the door herself, and asked who was there, disturbing a respectable family at this late hour?

Elizabeth answered, what she had before determined to say, as sufficiently explaining her errand, and yet betraying nothing that her mistress might wish concealed.

"Please, ma'am, I'm Miss Leaf's servant. My missis is ill, and I want a letter sent at once to Miss Hilary."

"Oh! come in, then. Elizabeth, I think, your name is?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What made you leave home at this hour of the night? Did your mistress send you?"

"No."

"Is she so very ill? It seems sudden. I saw Miss Hilary to-day, and she knew nothing at all about it."

Elizabeth shrank a little before the keen eye that seemed to read her through.

"There's more amiss than you have told me, young woman. Is it because your mistress is in serious danger that you want to send for her sister?"

"No."

"What is it then? You had better tell me at once. I hate concealment."

It was a trial; but Elizabeth held her ground.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am; but I don't think missis would like any body to know, and therefore I'd rather not tell you."

Now the honest Scotswoman, as she said, hated any thing underhand, but she respected the right of every human being to maintain silence if necessary. She looked sharply in Elizabeth's face, which apparently re-assured her, for she said, not unkindly,

"Very well, child, keep your mistress's secrets by all means. Only tell me what you want. Shall I take a cab and fetch Miss Hilary at once?"

Elizabeth thanked her, but said she thought that would not do; it would be better just to send the note the first thing to-morrow morning, and then Miss Hilary would come home just as if nothing had happened, and Miss Leaf would not be frighted by her sudden appearance.

"You are a good, mindful girl," said Miss Balquidder. "How did you learn to be so sensible?"

At the kindly word and manner, Elizabeth, bewildered and exhausted with the excitement she had gone through, and agitated by the feeling of having, for the first time in her life, to act on her own responsibility, gave way a little. She did not exactly cry, but she was very near it.

Miss Balquidder called over the stair-head, in her quick, imperative voice—

"David, is your wife away to her bed yet?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then tell her to fetch this young woman to the kitchen and give her some supper. And afterward, will you see her safe home, poor lassie? She's awfully tired, you see."

"Yes, ma'am."

And following David's gray head, Elizabeth, for the first time since she came to London, took a comfortable meal in a comfortable kitchen, seasoned with such stories of Miss Balquidder's goodness and generosity, that when, an hour after, she went home and to sleep, it was with a quieter and more hopeful than she could have believed possible under the circumstances.



CHAPTER XVI.

Next morning, while with that cheerful, unanxious countenance which those about an invalid must learn continually to wear, Elizabeth was trying to persuade her mistress not to rise, she heard a knock, and made some excuse for escaping. She well knew what it was and who had come.

There, in the parlor, sat Miss Hilary, Mrs. Jones talking at her rather than to her, for she hardly seemed to hear. But that she had heard every thing was clear enough. Her drawn white face, the tight clasp of her hands, showed that the ill tidings had struck her hard.

"Go away, Mrs. Jones," cried Elizabeth, fiercely. "Miss Hilary will call when she wants you."

And with an ingenious movement that just fell short of a push, somehow the woman was got on the other side of the parlor door, which Elizabeth immediately shut. Then Miss Hilary stretched her hands across the table and looked up piteously in her servant's face.

Only a servant; only that poor servant to whom she could look for any comfort in this sore trouble, this bitter humiliation. There was no attempt at disguise or concealment between mistress and maid.

"Mrs. Jones has told me every thing, Elizabeth. How is my sister? She does not know?"

"No; and I think she is a good deal better this morning. She has been very bad all week; only she would not let me send for you. She is really getting well now; I'm sure of that!"

"Thank God!" And then Miss Hilary began to weep.

Elizabeth also was thankful, even for those tears, for she had been perplexed by the hard, dry-eyed look of misery, deeper than anything she could comprehend, or than the circumstances seemed to warrant.

It was deeper. The misery was not only Ascott's arrest; many a lad has got into debt and got out again—the first taste of the law proving a warning to him for life; but it was this ominous "beginning of the end." The fatal end—which seemed to overhang like a hereditary cloud, to taint as with hereditary disease, the Leaf family.

Another bitterness (and who shall blame it, for when love is really love, have not the lovers a right to be one another's first thought?)—what would Robert Lyon say? To his honest Scotch nature poverty was nothing; honor every thing. She knew his horror of debt was even equal to her own. This, and her belief in his freedom from all false pride, had sustained her against many doubts lest he might think the less of her because of her present position—might feel ashamed could he see her sitting at her ledger in that high desk, or even occasionally serving in the shop.

Many a time things she would have passed over lightly on her own account she had felt on his; felt how they would annoy and vex him. The exquisitely natural thought which Tennyson has put into poetry—

"If I am dear to some one else, Then I should be to myself more dear"—

had often come, prosaically enough perhaps, into her head, and prevented her from spoiling her little hands with unnecessarily rough work, or carelessly passing down ill streets and by-ways, where she knew Robert Lyon, had he been in London, would never have allowed her to go. Now what did such things signify? What need of taking care of herself? These were all superficial, external disgraces, the real disgrace was within. The plague-spot had burst out anew; it seemed as if this day were the recommencement of that bitter life of penury, misery, and humiliation, familiar through three generations to the women of the Leaf family.

It appeared like a fate. No use to try and struggle out of it, stretching her arms up to Robert Lyon's tender, honest, steadfast heart, there to be sheltered, taken care of, and made happy. No happiness for her! Nothing but to go on enduring and enduring to the end.

Such was Hilary's first emotion; morbid perhaps, yet excusable. It might have lasted longer—though in her healthy nature it could not have lasted very long—had not the reaction come, suddenly and completely, by the opening of the parlor door, and the appearance of Miss Leaf.

Miss Leaf—pale, indeed; but neither alarmed nor agitated, who hearing somehow that her child had arrived, had hastily dressed herself, and come down stairs, in order not to frighten Hilary. And as she took her in her arms, and kissed her with those mother-like kisses, which were the sweetest Hilary had as yet ever known—the sharp anguish went out of the poor girl's heart.

"Oh, Johanna! I can bear any thing as long as I have you"

And so in this simple and natural way the miserable secret about Ascott came out.

Being once out, it did not seem half so dreadful; nor was its effect nearly so serious as Miss Hilary and Elizabeth had feared.—Miss Leaf bore it wonderfully; she might almost have known it beforehand; they would have thought she had, but that she said decidedly she had not.

"Still you need not have minded telling me; though it was very good and thoughtful of you Elizabeth. You have gone through a great deal for our sakes, my poor girl."

Elizabeth burst into one smothered sob the first and the last.

"Nay," said Miss Leaf, very kindly; for this unwonted emotion in their servant moved them both. "You shall tell me the rest another time. Go down now, and get Miss Hilary some breakfast."

When Elizabeth had departed the sisters turned to one another. They did not talk much; where was the use of it? They both knew the worst, both as to facts and fears.

"What must be done. Johanna?"

Johanna, after a long pause, said, "I see but one thing—to get him home."

Hilary started up, and walked to and fro along the room.

"No, not that. I will never agree to it.—We can not help him. He does not deserve helping. If the debts were for food now, or any necessaries; but for mere luxuries, mere fine clothes; it is his tailor who has arrested him, you know. I would rather have gone in rags! I would rather see us all in rags!—It's mean, selfish, cowardly, and I despise him for it. Though he is my own flesh and blood, I despise him."

"Hilary!"

"No." and the tears burst from her angry eyes, "I don't mean that I despise him. I'm sorry for him: there is good in him, poor dear lad; but I despise his weakness; I feel fierce to think how much it will cost us all, and especially you, Johanna. Only think what comforts of all sorts that thirty pounds would have brought to you!"

"God will provide," said Johanna, earnestly. "But I know, my dear, this is sharper to you than to me. Besides, I have been more used to it."

She closed her eyes, with a half shudder, as if living over again the old days—when Henry Leaf's wife and eldest daughter used to have to give dinner parties upon food that stuck in their throats, as if every morsel had been stolen; which in truth it was, and yet they were helpless, innocent thieves; when they and the children had to wear clothes that seemed to poison them like the shirt of Dejanira; when they durst not walk along special streets, nor pass particular shops, for the feeling that the shop people must be staring, and pointing, and jibing at them, "Pay me what thou owest!"

"But things can not again be so bad as those days, Hilary. Ascott is young; he may mend. People can mend, my child; and he had such a different bringing up from what his father had, and his grandfather, too. We must not be hopeless yet. You see," and making Hilary kneel down before her, she took her by both hands, as if to impart something of her own quietness to this poor heart, struggling as young, honest, upright hearts do struggle with something which their whole nature revolts against, and loathes, and scorns—"you see, the boy is our boy; our own flesh and blood. We were very foolish to let him away from us for so long. We might have made him better if we had kept him at Stowbury. But he is young; that is my hope of him; and he was always fond of his aunts, and is still, I think."

Hilary smiled sadly. "Deeds, not words I don't believe in words."

"Well, let us put aside believing, and only act. Let us give him another chance."

Hilary shook her head. "Another, and another, and another—it will be always the same. I know it will. I can't tell how it is, Johanna; but whenever I look at you, I feel so stern and hard to Ascott. It seems as if there were circumstances when pity to some, to one, was wicked injustice to others: as if there were times when it is right and needful to lop off, at once and forever, a rotten branch rather than let the whole tree go to rack and ruin. I would do it! I should think myself justified in doing it."

"But not just yet. He is only a boy—our own boy."

And the two women, in both of whom the maternal passion existed strong and deep, yet in the one never had found, and in the other never might find, its natural channel, wept together over this lad, almost as mothers weep.

"But what can we do?" said Hilary at last.

"Thirty pounds, and not a halfpenny to pay it with; must we borrow?"

"Oh no—no," was the answer, with a shrinking gesture; "no borrowing. There is the diamond ring."

This was a sort of heir-loom from eldest daughter to eldest daughter of the Leaf family which had been kept even as a sort of superstition, through all temptations of poverty.—The last time Miss Leaf looked at it she had remarked, jestingly, it should be given some day to that important personage talked of for many a year among the three aunts—Mrs. Ascott Leaf.

"Who must do without it now," said Johanna, looking regretfully at the ring; "that is, if he ever takes to himself a wife, poor boy."

Hilary answered, beneath her breath, "Unless he alters, I earnestly hope he never may." And there came over her involuntarily a wild, despairing thought, Would it not be better that neither Ascott nor herself should ever be married, that the family might die out, and trouble the world no more?

Nevertheless she rose up to do what she knew had to be done, and what there was nobody to do but herself.

"Don't mind it, Johanna; for indeed I do not. I shall go to a first rate, respectable jeweler, and he will not cheat me; and then I shall find my way to the sponging-house—isn't that what they call it? I dare say many a poor woman has been there before me. I am not the first, and shall not be the last, and no body will harm me. I think I look honest, though my name is Leaf."

She laughed—a bitter laugh; but Johanna silenced it in a close embrace; and when Hilary rose up again she was quite her natural self. She summoned Elizabeth, and began giving her all domestic directions, just as usual; finally, bade her sister good by in a tone as like her usual tone as possible, and left her settled on the sofa in content and peace.

Elizabeth followed to the door. Miss Hilary had asked her for the card on which Ascott had written the address of the place where he had been taken to; and though the girl said not a word, her anxious eyes made piteous inquiry.

Her mistress patted her on the shoulder.

"Never mind about me; I shall come to no harm, Elizabeth."

"It's a bad place; such a dreadful place, Mrs. Jones says."

"Is it?" Elizabeth guessed part, not the whole of the feelings that made Hilary hesitate, shrink even, from the duty before her, turning first so hot, and then so pale. Only as a duty could she have done it at all. "No matter, I must go. Take care of my sister."

She ran down the door steps, and walked quickly through the Crescent. It was a clear, sunshiny, frosty day—such a day as always both cheered and calmed her. She had, despite all her cares, youth, health, energy; and a holy and constant love lay like a sleeping angel in her heart. Must I tell the truth, and own that before she had gone two streets' length Hilary ceased to feel so very, very miserable?

Love—this kind of love of which I speak—is a wonderful thing, the most wonderful thing in all the world. The strength it gives, the brightness, the actual happiness, even in hardest times, is often quite miraculous. When Hilary sat waiting in the jeweler's shop, she watched a little episode of high life—two wealthy people choosing their marriage plate; the bride, so careless and haughty; the bridegroom, so unutterably mean to look at, stamped with that innate smallness and coarseness of soul which his fine clothes only made more apparent. And she thought—oh, how fondly she thought!—of that honest, manly mein; of that true, untainted heart, which she felt sure, had never loved any woman but herself; of the warm, firm hand, carving its way thro' the world for her sake, and waiting patiently till it could openly clasp hers, and give her every thing it had won. She would not have exchanged him. Robert Lyon, with his penniless love, his half-hopeless fortunes, or maybe his lot of never ending care, for the "brawest bridegroom" under the sun.

Under this sun—the common, everyday winter sun of Regent and Oxford streets—she walked now as brightly and bravely as if there were no trouble before her, no painful meeting with Ascott, no horrid humiliation from which every womanly feeling in her nature shrunk with acute pain. "Robert, my Robert!" she whispered in her heart, and felt him so near to her that she was at rest, she hardly knew why.

Possibly grand, or clever, or happy people who condescend to read this story may despise it, think it unideal, uninteresting; treating of small things and common people—"poor persons," in short. I can not help it. I write for the poor; not to excite the compassion of the rich toward them, but to show them their own dignity and the bright side of their poverty. For it has its bright side; and its very darkest, when no sin is mixed up therewith, is brighter than many an outwardly prosperous life.

"Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices and strife."

With these two sage proverbs—which all acknowledge and scarcely any really believe, or surely they would act a little more as if they did—I leave Johanna Leaf sitting silently in her solitary parlor, knitting stockings for her child; weaving many a mingled web of thought withal, yet never letting a stitch go down; and Hilary Leaf walking cheerily and fearlessly up one strange street and down another to find out the "bad" place, where she once had no idea it would ever have been her lot to go.—One thing she knew, and gloried in the knowledge, that if Robert Lyon had known she was going, or known half the cares she had to meet, he would have recrossed the Indian seas—have risked fortune, competence, hope of the future, which was the only cheer of his hard present—in order to save her from them all.

The minute history of this painful day I do not mean to tell. Hilary never told it till, years after, she wept it out upon a bosom that could understand the whole, and would take good care that while the life beat in his she never should go through the like again.

Ascott came home—that is, was brought home—very humbled, contrite, and grateful. There was no one to meet him but his Aunt Johanna, and she just kissed him quietly, and bade him come over to the fire; he was shivering, and somewhat pale. He had even two tears in his handsome eyes, the first Ascott had been known to shed since he was a boy. That he felt a good deal, perhaps as much as was in his nature to feel, there could be no doubt. So his two aunts were glad and comforted; gave him his tea and the warmest seat at the hearth; said not a harsh word to him, but talked to him about indifferent things.—Tea being over, Hilary was anxious to get every thing painful ended before Selina came home—Selina, who, they felt by instinct, had now a separate interest from themselves, and had better not be told this sad story if possible; so she asked her nephew "if he remembered what they had to do this evening?"

"Had to do? Oh, Aunt Hilary, I'm so tired! can't you let me be quiet? Only this one night. I promise to bring you everything on Monday."

"Monday will be too late. I shall be away. And you know you can't do without my excellent arithmetic," she added with a faint smile. "Now, Ascott, be a good boy—fetch down all those bills and let us go over them together."

"His debts came to more than the thirty pounds then?" said his Aunt Johanna, when he was gone.

"Yes. But the ring sold for fifty." And Hilary drew to the table, got writing materials, and sat waiting, with a dull, silent patience in her look, at which Johanna sighed and said no more.

The aunt and nephew spent some time in going over that handful of papers, and approximating to the sum total, in that kind of awful arithmetic when figures cease to be mere figures, but grow into avenging monsters, bearing with them life or death.

"Is that all! You are quite sure it is all?" said Hilary at last, pointing to the whole amount, and looking steadily into Ascott's eyes.

He flushed up, and asked what she meant by doubting his word?

"Not that, but you might easily have made a mistake; you are so careless about money matters."

"Ah, that's it. I'm just careless, and so I come to grief. But I never mean to be careless any more. I'll be as precise as you. I'll balance my books every week—every day if you like—exactly as you do at that horrid shop, Aunt Hilary."

So he was rattling on, but Hilary stopped him by pointing to the figures.

"You see, this sum is more than we expected. How is it to be met? Think for yourself. You are a man now."

"I know that," said Ascott, sullenly; "but what's the use of it?—money only makes the man, and I have none. If the ancient Peter would but die now and leave me his heir, though to be sure Aunt Selina might be putting her oar in. Perhaps—considering I'm Aunt Selina's nephew—if I were to walk into the old chap now he might be induced to fork out! Hurrah! that's a splendid idea."

"What idea?"

"I'll borrow the money from old Ascott."

"That means, because he has already given, you would have him keep on giving—and you would take and take and take—Ascott, I'm ashamed of you."

But Ascott only burst out laughing. "Nonsence!—he has money and I have none; why shouldn't he give it me?"

"Why?"—she repeated, her eyes flashing and her little feminine figure seeming to grow taller as she spoke—"I'll tell you, since you don't seem yourself to understand it. Because a young man, with health and strength in him, should blush to eat any bread but what he himself earns. Because he should work at any thing and every thing, stint himself of every luxury and pleasure, rather than ask or borrow, or, except under rare circumstances, rather than be indebted to any living soul for a single half-penny. I would not, if I were a young man."

"What a nice young man you would make, Aunt Hilary!"

There was something in the lad's imperturbable good humor at once irritating and disarming. Whatever his faults, they were more negative than positive; there was no malice prepense about him, no absolute personal wickedness. And he had the strange charm of manner and speech which keeps up one's outer surface of habitual affection toward a person long after all its foundations of trust and respect have hopelessly crumbled away.

"Come now, my pretty aunt must go with me. She will manage the old ogre much better than I. And he must be managed somehow. It's all very fine talking of independence, but isn't it hard that a poor fellow should be living in constant dread of being carried off to that horrid, uncleanly, beastly den—bah! I don't like thinking of it—and all for the want of twenty pounds? You must go to him, Aunt Hilary."

She saw they must—there was no help for it. Even Johanna said so. It was after all only asking for Ascott's quarterly allowance three days in advance, for it was due on Tuesday. But what jarred against her proud, honest spirit was the implication that such a request gave of taking as a right that which had been so long bestowed as a favor. Nothing but the great strait they were in could ever have driven her to consent that Mr. Ascott should be applied to at all; but since it must be done, she felt that she had better do it herself. Was it from some lurking doubt or dread that Ascott might not speak the entire truth, as she had insisted upon its being spoken, before Mr. Ascott was asked for any thing? since whatever he gave must be given with a full knowledge on his part of the whole pitiable state of affairs.

It was with a strange, sad feeling—the sadder because he never seemed to suspect it, but talked and laughed with her as usual—that she took her nephew's arm and walked silently through the dark squares, perfectly well aware that he only asked her to go with him in order to do an unpleasant thing which he did not like to do himself, and that she only went with him in the character of watch, or supervisor, to try and save him from doing something which she herself would be ashamed should be done.

Yet he was ostensibly the head, hope, and stay of the family. Alas! many a family has to submit to, and smile under an equally melancholy and fatal sham.



CHAPTER XVII.

Mr. Ascott was sitting half asleep in his solitary dining room, his face rosy with wine, his heart warmed also, probably from the same cause. Not that he was in the least "tipsy"—that low-word applicable only to low people, and not men of property, who have a right to enjoy all the good things of this life. He was scarcely even "merry," merely "comfortable," in that cozy, benevolent state which middle aged or elderly gentlemen are apt to fall into after a good dinner and good wine, when they have no mental resources, and the said good dinner and good wine constitutes their best notion of felicity.

Yet wealth and comfort are not things to be despised. Hilary herself was not insensible to the pleasantness of this warm, well-lit, crimson-atmosphered apartment. She as well as her neighbors liked pretty things about her, soft, harmonious colors to look at and wear, well-cooked food to eat, cheerful rooms to live in. If she could have had all these luxuries with those she loved to share them, no doubt she would have been much happier. But yet she felt to the full that solemn truth that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesses;" and though hers was outwardly so dark, so full of poverty, anxiety, and pain, still she knew that inwardly it owned many things, one thing especially, which no money could buy, and without which fine houses, fine furniture, and fine clothes—indeed, all the comforts and splendors of existence, would be worse that valueless, actual torment. So as she looked around her she felt not the slightest envy of her sister Selina.

Nor of honest Peter, who rose up from his arm-chair, pulling the yellow silk handkerchief from his sleepy face, and, it must be confessed, receiving his future connections very willingly, and even kindly.

Now how was he to be told? How when she and Ascott sat over the wine and desert he had ordered for them, listening to the rich man's complaisant pomposities, were they to explain that they had come a begging, asking him, as the climax to his liberalities, to advance a few pounds in order to keep the young man whom he had for years generously and sufficiently maintained out of prison? This, smooth it over as one might, was, Hilary felt, the plain English of the matter, and as minute after minute lengthened, and nothing was said of their errand, she sat upon thorns.

But Ascott drank his wine and ate his walnuts quite composedly.

At last Hilary said, in a sort of desperation, "Mr. Ascott, I want to speak to you."

"With pleasure, my dear young lady. Will you come to my study?—I have a most elegantly furnished study, I assure you. And any affair of yours—"

"Thank you, but it is not mine; it concerns my nephew here."

And then she braced up all her courage, and while Ascott busied himself over his walnuts—he had the grace to look excessively uncomfortable—she told, as briefly as possible, the bitter truth.

Mr. Ascott listened, apparently without surprise, and any how, without comment. His self-important loquacity ceased, and his condescending smile passed into a sharp, reticent, business look. He knitted his shaggy brows, contracted that coarsely-hung, but resolute mouth, in which lay the secret of his success in life, buttoned up his coat, and stuck his hands behind him over his coat-tails. As he stood there on his own hearth, with all his comfortable splendors about him—a man who had made his own money, hardly and honestly, who from the days when he was a poor errand-lad had had no one to trust to but himself, yet had managed always to help himself, ay, and others too—Hilary's stern sense of justice contrasted him with the graceful young man who sat opposite to him, so much his inferior, and so much his debtor. She owned that Peter Ascott had a right to look both contemptuously and displeased.

"A very pretty story, but I almost expected it," said he.

And there he stopped. In his business capacity he was too acute a man to be a man of many words, and his feelings, if they existed, were kept to himself.

"It all comes to this, young man," he continued, after an uncomfortable pause, in which Hilary could have counted every beat of her heart, and even Ascott played with his wine glass in a nervous kind of way—"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs. Ascott's relatives. You're quite right, it wouldn't. But I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff for all that. You must rise very early in the morning to take me in."

Hilary started up in an agony of shame. "That's not fair, Mr. Ascott. We do not take you in. Have we not told you the whole truth? I was determined you should know it before we asked you for one farthing of your money. If there were the smallest shadow of a chance for Ascott in any other way, we never would have come to you at all. It is a horrible, horrible humiliation!"

It might be that Peter Ascott had a soft place in his heart, or that this time, just before his marriage, was the one crisis which sometimes occurs in a hard man's life, when, if the right touch comes, he becomes malleable ever after; but he looked kindly at the poor girl, and said, in quite a gentle way, "Don't vex yourself, my dear. I shall give the young fellow what he wants: nobody ever called Peter Ascott stingy. But he has cost me enough already: he must shift for himself now. Hand me over that check-book, Ascott; but remember this is the last you'll ever see of my money."

He wrote the memorandum of the check inside the page, then tore off the check itself, and proceeded to write the words "Twenty pounds," date it, and sign it, lingering over the signature, as if he had a certain pride in the honest name "Peter Ascott," and was well aware of its monetary value on Change and elsewhere.

"There, Miss Halary, I flatter myself that's not a bad signature, nor would be easily forged. One can not be too careful over— What's that? a letter, John?"

By his extreme eagerness, almost snatching it from his footman's hands, it was one of importance. He made some sort of rough apology, drew the writing materials to him, wrote one or two business-looking letters, and made out one or two more checks.

"Here's yours Ascott; take it, and let me have done with it," said he, throwing it across the table folded up. "Can't waste time on such small transactions. Ma'am, excuse me, but five thousand pounds depends on my getting these letters written and sent off within a quarter of an hour."

Hilary bent her head, and sat watching the pen scratch, and the clock tick on the mantle-piece; thinking if this really was to be the last of his godfather's allowance, what on earth would become of Ascott? For Ascott himself, he said not a word. Not even when, the letters dispatched, Mr. Ascott rose, and administering a short, sharp homily, tacitly dismissed his visitors: Whether this silence was sullenness, cowardice, or shame, Hilary could not guess.

She quitted the house with a sense of grinding humiliation almost intolerable. But still the worst was over; the money had been begged and given—there was no fear of a prison. And spite of every thing, Hilary felt a certain relief that this was the last time Ascott would be indebted to his godfather. Perhaps this total cessation of extraneous help might force the young man upon his own resources, compel his easy temperament into active energy, and bring out in him those dormant qualities that his aunts still fondly hoped existed in him.

"Don't be down-hearted, Ascott," she said: "we will manage to get on somehow till you bear of a practice, and then you must work—work like a 'brick,' as you call it. You will, I know."

He answered nothing.

"I won't let you give in, my boy," she went on, kindly. "Who would ever dream of giving in at your age, with health and strength, a good education, and no encumbrances whatever—not even aunts! for we will not stand in your way, be sure of that. If you can not settle here, you shall try to get out abroad, as you have sometimes wished, as an army surgeon or a ship's doctor; you say these appointments are easy enough to be had. Why not try? Any thing; we will consent to any thing, if only we can see your life busy and useful and happy."

Thus she talked, feeling far more tenderly to him in his forlorn despondency than when they had quitted the house two hours before. But Ascott took not the slightest notice. A strange fit of sullenness or depression seemed to have come over him, which, when they reached home and met Aunt Johanna's silently-questioning face, changed into devil-may-care indifference.

"Oh yes, aunt, we've done it; we've got the money, and now I may go to the dogs as soon as I like."

"No," said Aunt Hilary, "it is nothing of the sort: it is only that Ascott must now depend upon himself, and not upon his godfather. Take courage," she added, and went up to him and kissed him on the forehead; "we'll never let our boy go to the dogs! and as for this disappointment, or any disappointment, why it's just like a cold bath, it takes away your breath for the time, and then you rise up out of it brisker and fresher than ever."

But Ascott shook his head with a fierce denial. "Why should that old fellow be as rich as Croesus and I as poor as a rat? Why should I be put into the world to enjoy myself, and can't? Why was I made like what I am, and then punished for it? Whose fault is it?"

Ay, whose? The eternal, unsolvable problem rose up before Hilary's imagination. The ghastly spectre of that everlasting doubt, which haunts even the firmest faith sometimes—and which all the nonsense written about that mystery which,

"Binding nature fate to fate, Leaves free the human will,"

only makes darker than before—oppressed her for the time being with an inexpressible dread.

Ay, why was it that the boy was what he was? From his inherited nature, his temperament, or his circumstances? What, or more awful question still, who was to blame?

But as Hilary's thoughts went deeper down the question answered itself—at least as far as it ever can be answered in this narrow, finite stage of being. Whose will—we dare not say whose blame—is it that evil must inevitably generate evil? that the smallest wrong-doing in any human being rouses a chain of results which may fatally involve other human beings in an almost incalculable circle of misery? The wages of sin is death. Were it not so sin would cease to be sin, and holiness, holiness. If He, the All-holy, who for some inscrutable purpose saw fit to allow the existence of evil, allowed any other law than this, in either the spiritual or material world, would He not be denying Himself, counteracting the necessities of His own righteous essence, to which evil is so antagonistic, that we can not doubt it must be in the end cast into total annihilation—into the allegorical lake of fire and brimstone, which is the "second death?" Nay, do they not in reality deny Him and His holiness almost as much as Atheists do, who preach that the one great salvation which He has sent into the world is a salvation from punishment—a keeping out of hell and getting into heaven—instead of a salvation from sin, from the power and love of sin, through the love of God in Christ?

I tell these thoughts, because like lighting they passed through Hilary's mind, as sometimes a whole chain of thoughts do, link after link, and because they helped her to answer her nephew quietly and briefly, for she saw he was in no state of mind to be argued with.

"I can not explain, Ascott, why it is that any of us are what we are, and why things happen to us as they do; it is a question we none of us understand, and in this world never shall. But if we know what we ought to be, and how we may make the best of every thing, good or bad, that happens to us, surely that is enough without perplexing ourselves about any thing more."

Ascott smiled, half contemptuously, half carelessly: he was not a young fellow likely to perplex himself long or deeply about these sort of things.

"Any how, I've got 20 in my pocket, so I can't starve for a day or two. Let's see; where is it to be cashed? Hillo! who would have thought the old fellow would have been so stupid? Look there, Aunt Hilary!"

She was so unfamiliar with checks for 20, poor little woman! that she did not at first recognize the omission of the figures "20" at the left-hand corner. Otherwise the check was correct.

"Ho, ho!" laughed Ascott, exceedingly amused, so easily was the current of his mind changed. "It must have been the 5000 pending that muddled the 'cute old fellow's brains. I wonder whether he will remember it afterward, and come posting up to see that I've taken no ill-advantage of his blunder; changed this 'Twenty' into 'Seventy.' I easily could, and put the figures 70 here. What a good joke!"

"Had ye not better go to him at once, and have the matter put right?"

"Rubbish! I can put it right myself. It makes no difference who fills up a check, so that it is signed all correct. A deal you women know of business!"

But still Hilary, with a certain womanish uneasiness about money matters, and an anxiety to have the thing settled beyond doubt, urged him to go.

"Very well; just as you like. I do believe you are afraid of my turning forger."

He buttoned his coat with a half sulky, half defiant air, left his supper untasted, and disappeared.

It was midnight before he returned. His aunts were still sitting up, imagining all sorts of horrors, in an anxiety too great for words; but when Hilary ran to the door, with the natural "Oh, Ascott, where have you been?" he pushed her aside with a gesture that was almost fierce in its repulsion.

"Where have I been? taking a walk round the Park; that's all. Can't I come and go as I like, without being pestered by women? I'm horribly tired. Let me alone—do!"

They did let him alone. Deeply wounded, Aunt Johanna took no further notice of him than to set his chair a little closer to the fire, and Aunt Hilary slipped down stairs for more coals. There she found Elizabeth, who they thought had long since gone to bed, sitting on the stairs, very sleepy, but watching still.

"Is he come in?" she asked; "because there are more bailiffs after him. I'm sure of it; I saw them."

This, then, might account for his keeping out of the way till after twelve o'clock, and also for his wild, haggard look. Hilary put aside her vague dread of some new misfortune; assured Elizabeth that all was right; he had got wherewithal to pay every body on Monday morning, and would be safe till then. All debtors were safe on Sunday.

"Go to bed now—there's a good girl; it is hard that you should be troubled with our troubles."

Elizabeth looked up with those fond gray eyes of hers. She was but a servant, and yet looks like these engraved themselves ineffaceably on her mistress's heart, imparting the comfort that all pure love gives from any one human being to another.

And love has its wonderful rights and rewards. Perhaps Elizabeth, who thought herself nothing at all to her mistress, would have marveled to know how much closer her mistress felt to this poor, honest, loving girl, whose truth she believed in, and on whose faithfulness she implicitly depended, than toward her own flesh and blood, who sat there moodily over the hearth; deeply pitied, sedulously cared for, but as for being confided in relied on, in great matters or small, his own concerns or theirs—the thing was impossible.

They could not even ask him—they dared not, in such a strange mood was he—the simple question, Had he seen Mr. Ascott, and had Mr. Ascott been annoyed about the check? It would not have been referred to at all had not Hilary, in holding his coat to dry, taken his pocket book out of the breast pocket, when he snatched at it angrily.

"What are you meddling with my things for? Do you want to get at the check, and be peering at it to see if it's all right? But you can't; I've paid it away. Perhaps you'd like to know who to? Then you shan't. I'll not be accountable to you for all my proceedings. I'll not be treated like a baby. You'd better mind what you are about, Aunt Hilary."

Never, in all his childish naughtiness, or boyish impertinence, had Ascott spoken to her in such a tone. She regarded him at first with simple astonishment, then hot indignation, which spurred her on to stand up for her dignity, and not submit to be insulted by her own nephew. But then came back upon her her own doctrine, taught by her own experience, that character and conduct alone constitutes real dignity or authority. She had, in point of fact, no authority over him; no one can have, not even parents, over a young man of his age, except that personal influence which is the strongest sway of all.

She said only, with a quietness that surprised herself—"You mistake, Ascott; I have no wish to interfere with you whatever; you are your own master, and must take your own course. I only expect from you the ordinary respect that a gentleman shows to a lady. You must be very tired and ill, or you would not have forgotten that."

"I didn't; or, if I did, I beg your pardon," said he, half subdued. "When are you going to bed?"

"Directly. Shall I light your candle also?"

"Oh no; not for the world; I couldn't sleep a wink. I'd go mad if I went to bed. I think I'll turn out and have a cigar."

His whole manner was so strange that his Aunt Johanna, who had sat aloof, terribly grieved, but afraid to interfere, was moved to rise up and go over to him.

"Ascott, my dear, you are looking quite ill. Be advised by your old auntie. Go to bed at once, and forget every thing till morning."

"I wish I could; I wish I could. Oh, Auntie, Auntie!"

He caught hold of her hand, which she had laid upon his head, looked up a minute into her kind, fond face, and burst into a flood of boyish tears.

Evidently his troubles had been too much for him; he was in a state of great excitement. For some minutes his sobs were almost hysterical: then by a struggle he recovered him-self, seemed exceedingly annoyed and ashamed, took up his candle, bade them a hurried goodnight, and went to bed.

That is, he went to his room; but they heard him moving about overhead for a long while after: nor were they surprised that he refused to rise next morning, but lay most of the time with his door locked, until late in the afternoon, when he went out for a long walk, and did not return till supper, which he ate almost in silence. Then, after going up to his room, and coming down again, complaining bitterly how very cold it was, he crept in to the fireside with a book in his hand, of which Hilary noticed he scarcely read a line.

His aunts said nothing to him; they had determined not: they felt that further interference would be not only useless but dangerous.

"He will come to himself by-and by; his moods, good or bad, never last long, you know," said Hilary, somewhat bitterly. "But, in the mean time, I think we had better just do as he says—let him alone."

And in that sad, hopeless state they passed the last hours of that dreary Sunday—afraid either to comfort him or reason with him; afraid, above all, to blame him lest it might drive him altogether astray. That he was in a state of great misery, halt sullen, half defiant, they saw, and were scarcely surprised at it; it was very hard not to be able to open their loving hearts to him, as those of one family should always do, making every trouble a common care, and every joy a universal blessing. But in his present state of mind—the sudden obstinacy of a weak nature conscious of its weakness, and dreading control—it seemed impossible either to break upon his silence or to force his confidence.

They might have been right in this, or wrong; afterward Hilary thought the latter. Many a time she wished and wished, with a bitter regret, that instead of the quiet "Good night, Ascott!" and the one rather cold kiss on his forehead, she had flung her arms round his neck, and insisted on his telling out his whole mind to her, his nearest kinswoman, who had been half aunt and half sister to him all his life. But it was not done: she parted from him, as she did Sunday after Sunday, with a sore sick feeling of how much he might be to her, to them all, and how little he really was.

If this silence of hers was a mistake—one of those mistakes which sensitive people sometimes make—it was, like all similar errors, only too sorrowfully remembered and atoned for.



CHAPTER XVIII.

The week passed by, and Hilary received no ill tidings from home. Incessant occupation kept her from dwelling too much on anxious subjects: besides, she would not have thought it exactly right, while her time and her mental powers were for so many hours per diem legally Miss Balquidder's, to waste the one and weaken the other by what is commonly called "fretting." Nor, carrying this conscientious duty to a higher degree, and toward a higher Master, would she have dared to sit grieving overmuch over their dark future. And yet it was very dark. She pondered over what was to be done with Ascott, or whether he was still to be left to the hopeless hope of doing something for himself: how long the little establishment at No. 15 could be kept together, or if, after Selina's marriage, it would not be advisable to make some change that should contract expenses, and prevent this hard separation, from Monday to Saturday, between Johanna and herself.

These, with equally anxious thoughts, attacked her in crowds every day and every hour; but she had generally sufficient will to put them aside: at least till after work was done, and they could neither stupefy nor paralyze her. Trouble had to her been long enough familiar to have taught her its own best lesson—that the mind can, in degree, rule itself, even as it rules the body.

Thus, in her business duties, which were principally keeping accounts; in her management of the two young people under her, and of the small domestic establishment connected with the shop, Hilary went steadily on, day after day; made no blunders in her arithmetic, no mistakes in her housekeeping. Being new to all her responsibilities, she had to give her whole mind to them; and she did it: and it was a blessing to her—the sanctified blessing which rests upon labor, almost seeming to neutralize its primeval curse.

But night after night, when work was over, she sat alone at her sewing—the only time she had for it—and her thoughts went faster than her needle. She turned over plan after plan, and went back upon hope after hope, that had risen and broken like waves of the sea—nothing happening that she had expected; the only thing which had happened, or which seemed to have any permanence or reality, being two things which she had never expected at all—Selina's marriage, and her own engagement with Miss Balquidder. It often happens so, in most people's lives, until at last they learn to live on from day to day, doing each day's duty within the day, and believing that it is a righteous as well as a tender hand which keeps the next day's page safely folded down.

So Hilary sat, glad to have a quiet hour, not to grieve in, but to lay out the details of a plan which had been maturing in her mind all week, and which she meant definitely to propose to Johanna when she went home next day. It would cost her something to do so, and she had had some hesitations as to the scheme itself, until at last she threw them all to the winds, as an honest-hearted, faithful and faithfully-trusting woman would. Her plan was, that they should write to the only real friend the family had—the only good man she believed in—stating plainly their troubles and difficulties about their nephew; asking his advice, & possibly his help. He might know of something—some opening for a young surgeon in India, or some temporary appointment for the voyage out and home, which might catch Ascott's erratic and easily attracted fancy: give him occupation for the time being, and at least detach him from his present life, with all its temptations and dangers.

Also, it might result in bringing the boy again under that influence which had been so beneficial to him while it lasted, and which Hilary devoutly believed was the best influence in the world. Was it unnatural, if, mingled with an earnest desire for Ascott's good, was an under-lying delight that that good should be done to him by Robert Lyon?

So when her plan was made, even to the very words in which she meant to unfold it to Johanna, and the very form in which Johanna should write the letter, she allowed herself a few brief minutes to think of him—Robert Lyon—to call up his eyes, his voice, his smile; to count, for the hundreth time, how many months—one less than twenty-four, so she could not say years now—it would be before he returned to England. Also, to speculate when and where they would first meet, and how he would speak the one word—all that was needful to change "liking" into "love," and "friend" into "wife."

They had so grown together during so many years not the less so during these years of absence, that it seemed as if such a change would hardly make any difference. And yet—and yet—as she sat and sewed, wearied with her day's labors, sad and perplexed, she thought—if only, by some strange magic, Robert Lyon were standing opposite, holding open his arms, ready and glad to take her and all her cares to his heart, how she would cling there! how closely she would creep to him, weeping with joy and content, neither afraid nor ashamed to let him see how dearly she loved him!

Only a dream! ah, only a dream! and she started from it at the sharp sound of the doorbell—started, blushing and trembling, as if it had been Robert Lyon himself, when she knew it was only her two young assistants whom she had allowed to go out to tea in the neighborhood. So she settled herself to her work again; put all her own thoughts by in their little private corners, and waited for the entrance and the harmless gossip of these two orphan girls, who were already beginning to love her, and make a friend of her, and toward whom she felt herself quite an elderly and responsible person. Poor little Hilary! It seemed to be her lot always to take care of somebody or other. Would it ever be that any body should take care of her?

So she cleared away some of her needlework, stirred the fire, which was dropping hollow and dull, and looked up pleasantly to the opening door. But it was not the girls: it was a man's foot and a man's voice.

"Any person of the name of Leaf living here? I wish to see her, on business."

At another time she would have laughed at the manner and words, as if it were impossible so great a gentleman as Mr. Ascott could want to see so small a person as the "person of the name of Leaf," except on business. But now she was startled by his appearance at all. She sprang up only able to articulate "My sister—"

"Don't be frightened; your sisters are quite well. I called at No. 15 an hour ago."

"You saw them?"

"No; I thought it unadvisable, under the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"I will explain, if you will allow me to sit down; bah! I've brought in sticking to me a straw out of that confounded shaky old cab. One ought never to be so stupid as to go any where except in one's own carriage. This is rather a small room, Miss Hilary."

He eyed it curiously round; and, lastly, with his most acute look he eyed herself, as if he wished to find out something from her manner, before going into further explanations.

But she stood before him a little uneasy, and yet not very much so. The utmost she expected was some quarrel with her sister Selina; perhaps the breaking off of the match, which would not have broken Hilary's heart at all events.

"So you have really no idea what I'm come about!"

"Not the slightest."

"Well!" said Peter Ascott. "I hardly thought it; but when one has been taken in as I have been, and this isn't the first time by your family—"

"Mr. Ascott! will you explain yourself?"

"I will, ma'am. It's a very unpleasant business I come about; any other gentleman but me would have come with a police officer at his back. Look here, Miss Hilary Leaf—did you ever set eyes on this before?"

He took out his check book, turned deliberately over the small memorandum halves of the page, till he came to one in particular, then hunted in his pocket book for something.

"My banker sent in to-day my canceled checks, which I don't usually go over oftener than three months; he knew that, the scamp."

Hilary looked up.

"Your nephew, to be sure. See!"

He spread before her a check, the very one she had watched him write seven days before, made payable to "Ascott Leaf, or bearer," and signed with the bold, peculiar signature. "Peter Ascott." Only instead of being a check for twenty pounds it was for seventy.

Instantly the whole truth flashed upon Hilary: Ascott's remark about how easily the T could be made into an S, and what a "good joke" it would be; his long absence that night; his strange manner: his refusal to let her see the check again; all was clear as daylight.

Unfortunate boy! the temptation had been too strong for him. Under what sudden, insane impulse he had acted—under what delusion of being able to repay in time; or of Mr. Ascott's not detecting the fraud; or if discovered, of its being discovered after the marriage, when to prosecute his wife's nephew would be a disgrace to himself, could never be known. But there unmistakable was the altered check, which had been presented and paid, the banker of course not having the slightest suspicion of any thing amiss.

"Well, isn't this a nice return for all my kindness? So cleverly done, too. But for the merest chance I might not have found it out for three months. Oh, he's a precious young rascal, this nephew of yours. His father was only a fool, but he— Do you know that this is a matter of forgery—forgery, ma'am," added Mr. Ascott, waxing hot in his indignation.

Hilary uttered a bitter groan.

Yes, it was quite true. Their Ascott, their own boy, was no longer merely idle, extravagant, thoughtless—faults bad enough, but capable of being mended as he grew older: he had done that which to the end of his days he could never blot out. He was a swindler and a forger.

She clasped her hands tightly together, as one struggling with sharp physical pain, trying to read the expression of Mr. Ascott's face. At last she put her question into words.

"What do you mean to do? Shall you prosecute him?"

Mr. Ascott crossed his legs, and settled his neckcloth with a self-satisfied air. He evidently rather enjoyed the importance of his position. To be dictator, almost of life and death, to this unfortunate family was worth certainly fifty pounds.

"Well, I haven't exactly determined. The money, you see, is of no moment to me, and I couldn't get it back any how. He'll never be worth a half-penny, that rascal. I might prosecute, and nobody would blame me; indeed, if I were to decline marrying your sister, and cut the whole set of you, I don't see," and he drew himself up, "that any thing could be said against me. But—"

Perhaps, hard man as he was, he was touched by the agony of suspense in Hilary's face, for he added.

"Come, come, I won't disgrace your family; I won't do any thing to harm the fellow."

"Thank you!" said Hilary, in a mechanical, unnatural voice.

"As for my money, he's welcome to it, and much good may it do him. 'Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil,' and in double quick time too. I won't hinder him. I wash my hands of the young scape-grace. But he'd better not come near me again."

"No," acquiesced Hilary, absently.

"In fact," said Mr. Ascott, with a twinkle of his sharp eye, "I have already taken measures to frighten him away, so that he may make himself scarce, and give neither you nor me any farther trouble. I drove up to your door with a policeman, asked to see Mr. Leaf, and when I heard that he was out—a lie, of course I left word I'd be back in half an hour. Depend upon it," and he winked confidentially, "he will smell a rat, and make a moonlight flitting of it, and we shall never hear of him any more."

"Never hear of Ascott any more?" repeated Hilary; and for an instant she ceased to think of him as what he was—swindler, forger, ungrateful to his benefactors, a disgrace to his home and family. She saw only the boy Ascott, with his bright looks and pleasant ways, whom his aunts had brought up from his cradle, and loved with all his faults—perhaps loved still. "Oh, I must go home. This will break Johanna's heart!"

Mr. Peter Ascott possibly never had a heart, or it had been so stunted in its growth that it had never reached its fair development. Yet he felt sorry in his way for the "young person," who looked so deadly white, yet tried so hard not to make a scene, nay, when her two assistants came into the one little parlor, deported herself with steady composure; told them that she was obliged suddenly to go home, but would be back, if possible, the next morning. Then, in that orderly, accurate way which Peter Ascott could both understand and appreciate, she proceeded to arrange with them about the shop and the house in case she might be detained till Monday.

"You're not a bad woman of business," said he, with a patronizing air. "This seems a tidy little shop; I dare say you'll get on in it."

She looked at him with a bewildered air, and went on speaking to the young woman at the door.

"How much might your weekly receipts be in a place like this? And what salary does Miss—Miss What's-her-name give to each of you? You're the head shop-woman, I suppose?"

Hilary made no answer: she scarcely heard. All her mind was full of but one thing: "Never see Ascott any more!"

There came back upon her all the dreadful stories she had ever heard of lads who had committed forgery or some similar offense, and, in dread of punishment, had run away in despair, and never been heard of for years—come to every kind of misery, perhaps even destroyed themselves. The impression was so horribly vivid, that when, pausing an instant in putting her books in their places, she heard the door bell ring Hilary with difficulty repressed a scream.

But it was no messenger of dreadful tidings, it was only Elizabeth Hand; and the quiet fashion in which she entered showed Hilary at once that nothing dreadful had happened at home.

"Oh no, nothing has happened," confirmed the girl. "Only Miss Leaf sent me to see if you could come home to night instead of tomorrow. She is quite well, that is, pretty well; but Mr. Leaf—"