Comfort myself as I might, that the impossible was required of no one, and granted that the thing was impossible, it was none the less a cause of misery, a present disaster: I was aware, and soon my uncle would be aware, of an impenetrable something separating us. I felt that we had already begun to grow strange to each other, and the feeling lay like death at my heart.

Our lessons together were still going on; that I was no longer a child had made only the difference that progress must make; and I had no thought that they would not thus go on always. They were never for a moment irksome to me; I might be tired by them, but never of them. We were regularly at work together by seven, and after half an hour for breakfast, resumed work; at half-past eleven our lessons were over. But although the day was then clear of the imperative, much the greater part of it was in general passed in each other's company. We might not speak a word, but we would be hours together in the study. We might not speak a word, but we would be hours together on horseback.

For this day, then, our lessons were over, and my uncle was from home. This was an indisputable relief, yet the fact that it was so, pained me keenly, for I recognized in it the first of the schism. How I got through the day, I cannot tell. I was in a dream, not all a dream of delight. Haunted with the face I had seen, and living in the new consciousness it had waked in me, I spent most of it in the garden, now in the glooms of the yew-walks, and now in the smiling wilderness. It was odd, however, that, although I was not expected to be in my uncle's room at any time but that of lessons, all the morning I had a feeling as if I ought to be there, while yet glad that my uncle was not there.

It was late before he returned, and I went to bed. Perhaps I retired so soon that I might not have to look into his eyes. Usually, I sat now until he came home. I was long in getting to sleep, and then I dreamed. I thought I was out in the storm, and the flash came which revealed the horse and his rider, but they were both different. The horse in the dream was black as coal, as if carved out of the night itself; and the man upon him was the beautiful stranger whose horse I had not seen for the garden-wall. The darkness fell, and the voice of my uncle called to me. I waited for him in the storm with a troubled heart, for I knew he had not seen that vision, and I could no more tell him of it, than could Christabel tell her father what she had seen after she lay down. I woke, but my waking was no relief.



CHAPTER XI.

THE MOLE BURROWS.

I slept again after my dream, and do not know whether he came into my room as he generally did when he had not said good-night to me. Of course I woke unhappy, and the morning-world had lost something of its natural glow, its lovely freshness: it was not this time a thing new-born of the creating word. I dawdled with my dressing. The face kept coming, and brought me no peace, yet brought me something for which it seemed worth while even to lose my peace. But I did not know then, and do not yet know what the loss of peace actually means. I only know that it must be something far more terrible than anything I have ever known. I remained so far true to my uncle, however, that not even for what the face seemed to promise me, would I have consented to cause him trouble. For what I saw in the face, I would do anything, I thought, except that.

I went to him at the usual hour, determined that nothing should distract me from my work—that he should perceive no difference in me. I was not at the moment awake to the fact that here again were love and deception hand in hand. But another love than mine was there: my uncle loved me immeasurably more than I yet loved that heavenly vision. True love is keen-sighted as the eagle, and my uncle's love was love true, therefore he saw what I sought to hide. It is only the shadow of love, generally a grotesque, ugly thing, like so many other shadows, that is blind either to the troubles or the faults of the shadow it seems to love. The moment our eyes met, I saw that he saw something in mine that was not there when last we parted. But he said nothing, and we sat down to our lessons. Every now and then as they proceeded, however, I felt rather than saw his eyes rest on me for a moment, questioning. I had never known them rest on me so before. Plainly he was aware of some change; and could there be anything different in the relation of two who so long had loved each other, without something being less well and good than before? Nor was it indeed wonderful he should see a difference; for, with all the might of my resolve to do even better than usual, I would now and then find myself unconscious of what either of us had last been saying. The face had come yet again, and driven everything from its presence! I grew angry—not with the youth, but with his face, for appearing so often when I did not invite it. Once I caught myself on the verge of crying out, "Can't you wait? I will come presently!" and my uncle looked up as if I had spoken. Perhaps he had as good as heard the words; he possessed what almost seemed a supernatural faculty of divining the thought of another—not, I was sure, by any effort to perceive it, but by involuntary intuition. He uttered no inquiring word, but a light sigh escaped him, which all but made me burst into tears. I was on one side of a widening gulf, and he on the other!

Our lessons ended, he rose immediately and left the room. Five minutes passed, and then came the clatter of his horse's feet on the stones of the yard. A moment more, and I heard him ride away at a quick trot. I burst into tears where I still sat beside my uncle's empty chair. I was weary like one in a dream searching in vain for a spot whereupon to set down her heart-breaking burden. There was no one but my uncle to whom I could tell any trouble, and the trouble I could not have told him had hitherto been unimaginable! From this my reader may judge what a trouble it was that I could not tell him my trouble. I was a traitor to my only friend! Had I begun to love him less? had I begun to turn away from him? I dared not believe it. That would have been to give eternity to my misery. But it might be that at heart I was a bad, treacherous girl! I had again a secret from him! I was not with him!

I went into the garden. The day was sultry and oppressive. Coolness or comfort was nowhere. I sought the shadow of the live yew-walls; there was shelter in the shadow, but it oppressed the lungs while it comforted the eyes. Not a breath of wind breathed; the atmosphere seemed to have lost its life-giving. I went out into the wilderness. There the air was filled and heaped with the odours of the heavenly plants that crowded its humble floor, but they gave me no welcome. Between two bushes that flamed out roses, I lay down, and the heather and the rose-trees closed above me. My mind was in such a confusion of pain and pleasure—not without a hope of deliverance somewhere in its clouded sky—that I could think no more, and fell asleep.

I imagine that, had I never again seen the young man, I should not have suffered. I think that, by slow natural degrees, his phantasmal presence would have ceased to haunt me, and gradually I should have returned to my former condition. I do not mean I should have forgotten him, but neither should I have been troubled when I thought of him. I know I should never have regretted having seen him. In that, I had nothing to blame myself for, and should have felt—not that a glory had passed away from the earth, but that I had had a vision of bliss. What it was, I should not have had the power to recall, but it would have left with me the faith that I had beheld something too ethereal for my memory to store. I should have consoled myself both with the dream, and with the conviction that I should not dream it again. The peaceful sense of recovered nearness to my uncle would have been far more precious than the dream. The sudden fire of transfiguration that had for a moment flamed out of the All, and straightway withdrawn, would have become a memory only; but none the less would that enlargement of the child way of seeing things have remained with me. I do not think that would ever have left me: it is the care of the prudent wise that bleaches the grass, and is as the fumes of sulphur to the red rose of life.

Outwearied with inward conflict, I slept a dreamless sleep.



CHAPTER XII.

A LETTER.

A cool soft breeze went through the curtains of my couch, and I awoke. The blooms of the peasant-briars and the court-roses were waving together over my head. The sigh of the wind had breathed itself out over the far heath, and ere it died in my fairy forest of lowly plants and bushes, had found and fanned the cheeks that lay down hot and athirst for air. It gave me new life, and I rose refreshed. Something fluttered to the ground. I thought it was a leaf from a white rose above me, but I looked. At my feet lay a piece of paper. I took it up. It had been folded very hastily, and had no address, but who could have a better right to unfold it than I! It might be nothing; it might be a letter. Should I open it? Should I not rather seize the opportunity of setting things right between my heart and my uncle by taking it to him unopened? Only, if it were indeed—I dared hardly even in thought complete the supposition—might it not be a wrong to the youth? Might not the paper contain a confidence? might it not be the messenger of a heart that trusted me before even it knew my name? Would I inaugurate our acquaintance with an act of treachery, or at least distrust? Right or wrong, thus my heart reasoned, and to its reasoning I gave heed. "It will," I said, "be time enough to resolve, when I know concerning what!" This, I now see, was juggling; for the question was whether I should be open with my uncle or not. "It might be," I said to myself, "that, the moment I knew the contents of the paper, I should reproach myself that I had not read it at once!" I sat down on a bush of heather, and unfolded it. This is what I found, written with a pencil:—

"I am the man to whom you talked so kindly over your garden wall yesterday. I fear you may think me presuming and impertinent. Presuming I may be, but impertinent, surely not! If I were, would not my heart tell me so, seeing it is all on your side?

"My name is John Day; I do not yet know yours. I have not dared to inquire after it, lest I should hear of some impassable gulf between us. The fear of such a gulf haunts me. I can think of nothing but the face I saw over the wall through the clusters of lilac: the wall seems to keep rising and rising, as if it would hide you for ever.

"Is it wrong to think thus of you without your leave? If one may not love the loveliest, then is the world but a fly-trap hung in the great heaven, to catch and ruin souls!

"If I am writing nonsense—I cannot tell whether I am or not—it is because my wits wander with my eyes to gaze at you through the leaves of the wild white rose under which you are asleep. Loveliest of faces, may no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm, until I have said what I must, and laid it where she will find it!

"I live at Rising, the manor-house over the heath. I am the son of Lady Cairnedge by a former marriage. I am twenty years of age, and have just ended my last term at Oxford. May I come and see you? If you will not see me, why then did you walk into my quiet house, and turn everything upside down? I shall come to-night, in the dusk, and wait in the heather, outside the fence. If you come, thank God! if you do not, I shall believe you could not, and come again and again and again, till hope is dead. But I warn you I am a terrible hoper.

"It would startle, perhaps offend you, to wake and see me; but I cannot bear to leave you asleep. Something might come too near you. I will write until you move, and then make haste to go.

"My heart swells with words too shy to go out. Surely a Will has brought us together! I believe in fate, never in chance!

"When we see each other again, will the wall be down between us, or shall I know it will part us all our mortal lives? Longer than that it cannot. If you say to me, 'I must not see you, but I will think of you,' not one shall ever know I have other than a light heart. Even now I begin the endeavour to be such that, when we meet at last, as meet we must, you shall not say, 'Is this the man, alas, who dared to love me!'

"I love you as one might love a woman-angel who, at the merest breath going to fashion a word unfit, would spread her wings and soar. Do not, I pray you, fear to let me come! There are things that must be done in faith, else they never have being: let this be one of them.—You stir."

As I came to these last words, hurriedly written, I heard behind me, over the height, the quick gallop of a horse, and knew the piece of firm turf he was crossing. The same moment I was there in spirit, and the imagination was almost vision. I saw him speeding away—"to come again!" said my heart, solemn with gladness.

Rising-manor was the house to which the lady took me that dread night when first I knew what it was to be alone in darkness and silence and space. Was that lady his mother? Had she rescued me for her son? I was not willing to believe it, though I had never actually seen her. The way was mostly dark, and during the latter portion of it, I was much too weary to look up where she sat on her great horse. I had never to my knowledge heard who lived at Rising. I was not born inquisitive, and there were miles between us.

I sat still, without impulse to move a finger. I lived essentially. Now I knew what had come to me. It was no merely idiosyncratic experience, for the youth had the same: it was love! How otherwise could we thus be drawn together from both sides! Verily it seemed also good enough to be that wondrous thing ever on the lips of poets and tale-weaving magicians! Was it not far beyond any notion of it their words had given me?

But my uncle! There lay bitterness! Was I indeed false to him, that now the thought of him was a pain? Had I begun a new life apart from him? To tell him would perhaps check the terrible separation! But how was I to tell him? For the first time I knew that I had no mother! Would Mr. Day's mother be my mother too, and help me? But from no woman save my own mother, hardly even from her, would I ask mediation with the uncle I had loved and trusted all my life and with my whole heart. I had never known father or mother, save as he had been father and mother and everybody to me! What was I to do? Gladly would I have hurried to some desert place, and there waited for the light I needed. That I was no longer in any uncertainty as to the word that described my condition, did not, I found, make it easy to use the word. "Perhaps," I argued, struggling in the toils of my new liberty, "my uncle knows nothing of this kind of love, and would be unable to understand me! Suppose I confessed to him what I felt toward a man I had spoken to but once, and then only to tell him the way to Dumbleton, would he not think me out of my mind?"

At length I bethought me that, so long as I did not know what to do, I was not required to do anything; I must wait till I did know what to do. But with the thought came suffering enough to be the wages of any sin that, so far as I knew, I had ever committed. For the conviction awoke that already the love that had hitherto been the chief joy of my being, had begun to pale and fade. Was it possible I was ceasing to love my uncle? What could any love be worth if mine should fail my uncle! Love itself must be a mockery, and life but a ceaseless sliding down to the death of indifference! Even if I never ceased to love him, it was just as bad to love him less! Had he not been everything to me?—and this man, what had he ever done for me? Doubtless we are to love even our enemies; but are we to love them as tenderly as we love our friends? Or are we to love the friend of yesterday, of whom we know nothing though we may believe everything, as we love those who have taken all the trouble to make true men and women of us? "What can be the matter with my soul?" I said. "Can that soul be right made, in which one love begins to wither the moment another begins to grow? If I be so made, I cannot help being worthless!"

It was then first, I think, that I received a notion—anything like a true notion, that is, of my need of a God—whence afterward I came to see the one need of the whole race. Of course, not being able to make ourselves, it needed a God to make us; but that making were a small thing indeed, if he left us so unfinished that we could come to nothing right;—if he left us so that we could think or do or be nothing right;—if our souls were created so puny, for instance, that there was not room in them to love as they could not help loving, without ceasing to love where they were bound by every obligation to love right heartily, and more and more deeply! But had I not been growing all the time I had been in the world? There must then be the possibility of growing still! If there was not room in me, there must be room in God for me to become larger! The room in God must be made room in me! God had not done making me, in fact, and I sorely needed him to go on making me; I sorely needed to be made out! What if this new joy and this new terror had come, had been sent, in order to make me grow? At least the doors were open; I could go out and forsake myself! If a living power had caused me—and certainly I did not cause myself—then that living power knew all about me, knew every smallness that distressed me! Where should I find him? He could not be so far that the misery of one of his own children could not reach him! I turned my face into the grass, and prayed as I had never prayed before. I had always gone to church, and made the responses attentively, while I knew that was not praying, and tried to pray better than that; but now I was really asking from God something I sorely wanted. "Father in heaven," I said, "I am so miserable! Please, help me!"

I rose, went into the house, and up to the study, took a sock I was knitting for my uncle, and sat down to wait what would come. I could think no more; I could only wait.



CHAPTER XIII.

OLD LOVE AND NEW.

While I waited, as nearly a log, under the weariness of spiritual unrest, as a girl could well be, the door opened. Very seldom did that door open to any one but my uncle or myself: he would let no one but me touch his books, or even dust the room. I jumped from the chest where I sat.

It was only Martha Moon.

"How you startled me, Martha!" I cried.

"No wonder, child!" she answered. "I come with bad news! Your uncle has had a fall. He is laid up at Wittenage with a broken right arm."

I burst into tears.

"Oh, Martha!" I cried; "I must go to him!"

"He has sent for me," she answered quietly.

"Dick is putting the horse to the phaeton."

"He doesn't want me, then!" I said; but it seemed a voice not my own that shrieked the words.

The punishment of my sin was upon me. Never would he have sent for Martha and not me, I thought, had he not seen that I had gone wrong again, and was no more to be trusted.

"My dear," said Martha, "which of us two ought to be the better nurse? You never saw your uncle ill; I've nursed him at death's door!"

"Then you don't think he is angry with me, Martha?" I said, humbled before myself.

"Was he ever angry with you, Orbie? What is there to be angry about? I never saw him even displeased with you!"

I had not realized that my uncle was suffering—only that he was disabled; now the fact flashed upon me, and with it the perception that I had been thinking only of myself: I was fast ceasing to care for him! And then, horrible to tell! a flash of joy went through me, that he would not be home that day, and therefore I could not tell him anything!

The moment Martha left me I threw myself on the floor of the desert room. I was in utter misery.

"Gladly would I bear every pang of his pain," I said to myself; "yet I have not asked one question about his accident! He must be in danger, or he would not have sent for Martha instead of me!"

How had the thing happened, I wondered. Had Death fallen with him—perhaps on him? He was such a horseman, I could not think he had been thrown. Besides, Death was a good horse who loved his master—dearly, I was sure, and would never have thrown him or let him fall! A great gush of the old love poured from the fountain in my heart: sympathy with the horse had unsealed it. I sprang from the floor, and ran down to entreat Martha to take me with her: if my uncle did not want me, I could return with Dick! But she was gone. Even the sound of her wheels was gone. I had lain on the floor longer than I knew.

I went back to the study a little relieved. I understood now that I was not glad he was disabled; that I was anything but glad he was suffering; that I had only been glad for an instant that the crisis of my perplexity was postponed. In the meantime I should see John Day, who would help me to understand what I ought to do!

Very strange were my feelings that afternoon in the lonely house. I had always felt it lonely when Martha, never when my uncle was out. Yet when my uncle was in, I was mostly with him, and seldom more than a few minutes at a time with Martha. Our feelings are odd creatures! Now that both were away, there was neither time nor space in my heart for feeling the house desolate; while the world outside was rich as a treasure-house of mighty kings. The moment I was a little more comfortable with myself, my thoughts went in a flock to the face that looked over the garden-wall, to the man that watched me while I slept, the man that wrote that lovely letter. Inside was old Penny with her broom: she took advantage of every absence to sweep or scour or dust; outside was John Day, and the roses of the wilderness! He was waiting the hour to come to me, wondering how I would receive him!

Slowly went the afternoon. I had fallen in love at first sight, it is true; not therefore was I eager to meet my lover. I was only more than willing to see him. It was as sweet, or nearly as sweet, to dream of his coming, as to have him before me—so long as I knew he was indeed coming. I was just a little anxious lest I should not find him altogether so beautiful as I was imagining him. That he was good, I never doubted: could I otherwise have fallen in love with him? And his letter was so straightforward—so manly!

The afternoon was cloudy, and the twilight came the sooner. From the realms of the dark, where all the birds of night build their nests, lining them with their own sooty down, the sweet odorous filmy dusk of the summer, haunted with wings of noiseless bats, began at length to come flickering earthward, in a snow infinitesimal of fluffiest gray and black: I crept out into the garden. It was dark as wintry night among the yews, but I could have gone any time through every alley of them blind-folded. An owl cried and I started, for my soul was sunk in its own love-dawn. There came a sudden sense of light as I opened the door into the wilderness, but light how thin and pale, and how full of expectation! The earth and the vast air, up to the great vault, seemed to throb and heave with life—or was it that my spirit lay an open thoroughfare to the life of the All? With the scent of the roses and the humbler sweet-odoured inhabitants of the wilderness; with the sound of the brook that ran through it, flowing from the heath and down the hill; with the silent starbeams, and the insects that make all the little noises they can; with the thoughts that went out of me, and returned possessed of the earth;—with all these, and the sense of thought eternal, the universe was full as it could hold. I stood in the doorway of the wall, and looked out on the wild: suddenly, by some strange reaction, it seemed out of creation's doors, out in the illimitable, given up to the bare, to the space that had no walls! A shiver ran through me; I turned back among the yews. It was early; I would wait yet a while! If he were already there, he too would enjoy the calm of a lovely little wait.

A small wind came searching about, and found, and caressed me. I turned to it; it played with my hair, and cooled my face. After a while, I left the alley, passed out, closed the door behind me, and went straying through the broken ground of the wilderness, among the low bushes, meandering, as if with some frolicsome brook for a companion—a brook of capricious windings—but still coming nearer to the fence that parted the wilderness from the heath, my eyes bent down, partly to avoid the hillocks and bushes, and partly from shyness of the moment when first I should see him who was in my heart and somewhere near. Softly the moon rose, round and full. There was still so much light in the sky that she made no sudden change, and for a moment I did not feel her presence or look up. In front of me, the high ground of the moor sank into a hollow, deeply indenting the horizon-line: the moon was rising just in the gap, and when I did look up, the lower edge of her disc was just clear of the earth, and the head of a man looking over the fence was in the middle of the great moon. It was like the head of a saint in a missal, girt with a halo of solid gold. I could not see the face, for the halo hid it, as such attributions are apt to do, but it must be he; and strengthened by the heavenly vision, I went toward him. Walking less carefully than before, however, I caught my foot, stumbled, and fell. There came a rush through the bushes; he was by my side, lifted me like a child, and held me in his arms; neither was I more frightened than a child caught up in the arms of any well-known friend: I had been bred in faith and not mistrust! But indeed my head had struck the ground with such force, that, had I been inclined, I could scarcely have resisted—though why should I have resisted, being where I would be! Does not philosophy tell us that growth and development, cause and effect, are all, and that the days and years are of no account? And does not more than philosophy tell us that truth is everything?"

"My darling! Are you hurt?" murmured the voice whose echoes seemed to have haunted me for centuries.

"A little," I answered. "I shall be all right in a minute." I did not add, "Put me down, please;" for I did not want to be put down directly. I could not have stood if he had put me down. I grew faint.

Life came back, and I felt myself growing heavy in his arms.

"I think I can stand now," I said. "Please put me down."

He obeyed immediately.

"I've nearly broken your arms," I said, ashamed of having become a burden to him the moment we met.

"I could run with you to the top of the hill!" he answered.

"I don't think you could," I returned. Perhaps I leaned a little toward him; I do not know. He put his arm round me.

"You are not able to stand," he said. "Shall we sit a moment?"



CHAPTER XIV.

MOTHER AND UNCLE.

I was glad enough to sink on a clump of white clover. He stretched himself on the heather, a little way from me. Silence followed. He was giving me time to recover myself. As soon, therefore, as I was able, it was my part to speak.

"Where is your horse?" I asked. The first word is generally one hardly worth saying.

"I left him at a little farmhouse, about a mile from here. I was afraid to bring him farther, lest my mother should learn where I had been. She takes pains to know."

"Then will she not find out?"

"I don't know."

"Will she not ask you where you were?"

"Perhaps. There's no knowing."

"You will tell her, of course, if she does?"

"I think not."

"Oughtn't you?"

"No."

"You are sure?"

"Yes."

"You don't mean you will tell her a story?"

"Certainly not."

"What will you do then?"

"I will tell her that I will not tell her."

"Would that be right?"

Through the dusk I could see the light of his smile as he answered,

"I think so. I shall not tell her."

"But," I began.

He interrupted me.

My heart was sinking within me. Not only had I wanted him to help me to tell my uncle, but I shuddered at the idea of having with any man a secret from his mother.

"It must look strange to you," he said; "but you do not know my mother!"

"I think I do know your mother," I rejoined. "She saved my poor little life once.—I am not sure it was your mother, but I think it was."

"How was that?" he said, much surprised. "When was it?"

"Many years ago—I cannot tell how many," I answered. "But I remember all about it well enough. I cannot have been more than eight, I imagine."

"Could she have been at the manor then?" he said, putting the question to himself, not me. "How was it? Tell me," he went on, rising to his feet, and looking at me with almost a frightened expression.

I told him the incident, and he heard me in absolute silence. When I had done,—

"It was my mother!" he broke out; "I don't know one other woman who would have let a child walk like that! Any other would have taken you up, or put you on the horse and walked beside you!"

"A gentleman would, I know," I replied. "But it would not be so easy for a lady!"

"She could have done either well enough. She's as strong as a horse herself, and rides like an Amazon. But I am not in the least surprised: it was just like her! You poor little darling! It nearly makes me cry to think of the tiny feet going tramp, tramp, all that horrible way, and she high up on her big horse! She always rides the biggest horse she can get!—And then never to say a word to you after she brought you home, or see you the next morning!"

"Mr. Day," I returned, "I would not have told you, had I known it would give you occasion to speak so naughtily of your mother. You make me unhappy."

He was silent. I thought he was ashamed of himself, and was sorry for him. But my sympathy was wasted. He broke into a murmuring laugh of merriment.

"When is a mother not a mother?" he said. "—Do you give it up?—When she's a north wind. When she's a Roman emperor. When she's an iceberg. When she's a brass tiger.—There! that'll do. Good-bye, mother, for the present! I mayn't know much, as she's always telling me, but I do know that a noun is not a thing, nor a name a person!"

I would have expostulated.

"For love's sake, dearest," he pleaded, "we will not dispute where only one of us knows! I will tell you all some day—soon, I hope, very soon. I am angry now!—Poor little tramping child!"

I saw I had been behaving presumptuously: I had wanted to argue while yet in absolute ignorance of the thing in hand! Had not my uncle taught me the folly of reasoning from the ideal where I knew nothing of the actual! The ideal must be our guide how to treat the actual, but the actual must be there to treat! One thing more I saw—that there could be no likeness between his mother and my uncle!

"Will you tell me something about yourself, then?" I said.

"That would not be interesting!" he objected.

"Then why are you here?" I returned.

"Can any person without a history be interesting?"

"Yes," he answered: "a person that was going to have a history might be interesting."

"Could a person with a history that was not worth telling, be interesting? But I know yours will interest me in the hearing, therefore it ought to interest you in the telling.

"I see," he rejoined, with his merry laugh, I shall have to be careful! My lady will at once pounce upon the weak points of my logic!"

"I am no logician," I answered; "I only know when I don't know a thing. My uncle has taught me that wisdom lies in that,"

"Yours must be a very unusual kind of uncle!" he returned.

"If God had made many men like my uncle, I think the world wouldn't be the same place."

"I wonder why he didn't!" he said thoughtfully.

"I have wondered much, and cannot tell," I replied.

"What if it wouldn't be good for the world to have many good men in it before it was ready to treat them properly?" he suggested.

The words let me know that at least he could think. Hitherto my uncle had seemed to me the only man that thought. But I had seen very few men.

"Perhaps that is it," I answered. "I will think about it.—Were you brought up at Rising? Have you been there all the time? Were you there that night? I should surely have known had you been in the house!"

He looked at me with a grateful smile.

"I was not brought up there," he answered. "Rising is mine, however—at least it will be when I come of age; it was left me some ten years ago by a great-aunt My father's property will be mine too, of course. My mother's is in Ireland. She ought to be there, not here; but she likes my estates better than her own, and makes the most of being my guardian."

"You would not have her there if she is happier here?"

"All who have land, ought to live on it, or else give it to those who will. What makes it theirs, if their only connection with it is the money it brings them? If I let my horse run wild over the country, how could I claim him, and refuse to pay his damages?"

"I don't quite understand you."

"I only mean there is no bond where both ends are not tied. My mother has no sense of obligation, so far as ever I have been able to see. But do not be afraid: I would as soon take a wife to the house she was in, as I would ask her to creep with me into the den of a hyena."

It was too dreadful! I rose. He sprang to his feet.

"You must excuse me, sir!" I said. "With one who can speak so of his mother, I am where I ought not to be."

"You have a right to know what my mother is," he answered—coldly, I thought; "and I should not be a true man if I spoke of her otherwise than truly."

He would pretend nothing to please me! I saw that I was again in the wrong. Was I so ill read as to imagine that a mother must of necessity be a good woman? Was he to speak of his mother as he did not believe of her, or be unfit for my company? Would untruth be a bond between us?

"I beg your pardon," I said; "I was wrong. But you can hardly wonder I should be shocked to hear a son speak so of his mother—and to one all but a stranger!"

"What!" he returned, with a look of surprise; "do you think of me so? I feel as if I had known you all my life—and before it!"

I felt ashamed, and was silent. If he was such a stranger, why was I there alone with him?

"You must not think I speak so to any one," he went on. "Of those who know my mother, not one has a right to demand of me anything concerning her. But how could I ask you to see me, and hide from you the truth about her? Prudence would tell you to have nothing to do with the son of such a woman: could I be a true man, true to you, and hold my tongue about her? I should be a liar of the worst sort!"

He felt far too strongly, it was plain, to heed a world of commonplaces.

"Forgive me," I said. "May I sit down again?"

He held out his hand. I took it, and reseated myself on the clover-hillock. He laid himself again beside me, and after a little silence began to relate what occurred to him of his external history, while all the time I was watching for hints as to how he had come to be the man he was. It was clear he did not find it easy to talk about himself. But soon I no longer doubted whether I ought to have met him, and loved him a great deal more by the time he had done.

I then told him in return what my life had hitherto been; how I knew nothing of father or mother; how my uncle had been everything to me; how he had taught me all I knew, had helped me to love what was good and hate what was evil, had enabled me to value good books, and turn away from foolish ones. In short, I made him feel that all his mother had not been to him, my uncle had been to me; and that it would take a long time to make me as much indebted to a husband as already I was to my uncle. Then I put the question:

"What would you think of me if I had a secret from an uncle like that?"

"If I had an uncle like that," he answered, "I would sooner cut my throat than keep anything from him!"

"I have not told him," I said, "what happened to-day—or yesterday."

"But you will tell him?"

"The first moment I can. But I hope you understand it is hard to do. My love for my uncle makes it hard. It has the look of turning away from him to love another!"

With that I burst out crying. I could not help it. He let me cry, and did not interfere. I was grateful for that. When at length I raised my head, he spoke.

"It has that look," he said; "but I trust it is only a look. Anyhow, he knows that such things must be; and the more of a good man and a gentleman he is, the less will he be pained that we should love one another!"

"I am sure of that," I replied. "I am only afraid that he may never have been in love himself, and does not know how it feels, and may think I have forsaken him for you."

"Are you with him always?"

"No; I am sometimes a good deal alone. I can be alone as much as I like; he always gives me perfect liberty. But I never before wanted to be alone when I could be with him."

"But he could live without you?"

"Yes, indeed!" I cried. "He would be a poor creature that could not live without another!"

He said nothing, and I added, "He often goes out alone—sometimes in the darkest nights."

"Then be sure he knows what love is.—But, if you would rather, I will tell him."

"I could not have any one, even you, tell my uncle about me."

"You are right. When will you tell him?"

"I cannot be sure. I would go to him to-morrow, but I am afraid they will not let me until he has got a little over this accident," I answered—and told him what had happened. "It is dreadful to think how he must have suffered," I said, "and how much more I should have thought about it but for you! It tears my heart. Why wasn't it made bigger?"

"Perhaps that is just what is now being done with it!" he answered.

"I hope it may be!" I returned. "—But it is time I went in."

"Shall I not see you again to-morrow evening?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "I must not see you again till I have told my uncle everything."

"You do not mean for weeks and weeks—till he is well enough to come home? How am I to live till then!"

"As I shall have to live. But I hope it will be but for a few days at most. Only, then, it will depend on what my uncle thinks of the thing."

"Will he decide for you what you are to do?"

"Yes—I think so. Perhaps if he were—" I was on the point of saying, "like your mother," but I stopped in time—or hardly, for I think he saw what I just saved myself from. It was but the other morning I made the discovery that, all our life together, John has never once pressed me to complete a sentence I broke off.

He looked so sorrowful that I was driven to add something.

"I don't think there is much good," I said, "in resolving what you will or will not do, before the occasion appears, for it may have something in it you never reckoned on. All I can say is, I will try to do what is right. I cannot promise anything without knowing what my uncle thinks."

We rose; he took me in his arms for just an instant; and we parted with the understanding that I was to write to him as soon as I had spoken with my uncle.



CHAPTER XV.

THE TIME BETWEEN.

I now felt quite able to confess to my uncle both what I had thought and what I had done. True, I had much more to confess than when my trouble first awoke; but the growth in the matter of the confession had been such a growth in definiteness as well, as to make its utterance, though more weighty, yet much easier. If I might be in doubt about revealing my thoughts, I could be in none about revealing my actions; and I found it was much less appalling to make known my feelings, when I had the words of John Day to confess as well.

I may here be allowed to remark, how much easier an action is when demanded, than it seems while in the contingent future—how much easier when the thing is before you in its reality, and not as a mere thought-spectre. The thing itself, and the idea of it, are two such different grounds upon which to come either to a decision or to action!

One thing more: when a woman wants to do the right—I do not mean, wants to coax the right to side with her—she will, somehow, be led up to it.

My uncle was very feverish and troubled the first night, and had a good deal of delirium, during which his care and anxiety seemed all about me. Martha had to assure him every other moment that I was well, and in no danger of any sort: he would be silent for a time, and then again show himself tormented with forebodings about me. In the morning, however, he was better; only he looked sadder than usual. She thought he was, for some cause or other, in reality anxious about me. So much I gathered from Martha's letter, by no means scholarly, but graphic enough.

It gave me much pain. My uncle was miserable about me: he had plainly seen, he knew and felt that something had come between us! Alas, it was no fancy of his brain-troubled soul! Whether I was in fault or not, there was that something! It troubled the unity that had hitherto seemed a thing essential and indivisible!

Dared I go to him without a summons? I knew Martha would call me the moment the doctor allowed her: it would not be right to go without that call. What I had to tell might justify far more anxiety than the sight of me would counteract. If I said nothing, the keen eye of his love would assure itself of the something hid in my silence, and he would not see that I was but waiting his improvement to tell him everything. I resolved therefore to remain where I was.

The next two days were perhaps the most uncomfortable ever I spent. A secret one desires to turn out of doors at the first opportunity, is not a pleasant companion. I do not say I was unhappy, still less that once I wished I had not seen John Day, but oh, how I longed to love him openly! how I longed for my uncle's sanction, without which our love could not be perfected! Then John's mother was by no means a gladsome thought—except that he must be a good man indeed, who was good in spite of being unable to love, respect, or trust his mother! The true notion of heaven, is to be with everybody one loves: to him the presence of his mother—such as she was, that is—would destroy any heaven! What a painful but salutary shock it will be to those whose existence is such a glorifying of themselves that they imagine their presence necessary to all about them, when they learn that their disappearance from the world sent a thrill of relief through the hearts of those nearest them! To learn how little they were prized, will one day prove a strong medicine for souls self-absorbed.

"There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed."



CHAPTER XVI.

FAULT AND NO FAULT.

The next day I kept the house till the evening, and then went walking in the garden in the twilight. Between the dark alleys and the open wilderness I flitted and wandered, alternating gloom and gleam outside me, even as they chased one another within me.

In the wilderness I looked up—and there was John! He stood outside the fence, just as I had seen him the night before, only now there was no aureole about his head: the moon had not yet reached the horizon.

My first feeling was anger: he had broken our agreement! I did not reflect that there was such a thing as breaking a law, or even a promise, and being blameless. He leaped the fence, and clearing every bush like a deer, came straight toward me. It was no use trying to escape him. I turned my back, and stood. He stopped close behind me, a yard or two away.

"Will you not speak to me?" he said. "It is not my fault I am come."

"Whose fault then, pray?" I rejoined, with difficulty keeping my position. "Is it mine?"

"My mother's," he answered.

I turned and looked him in the eyes, through the dusk saw that he was troubled, ran to him, and put my arms about him.

"She has been spying," he said, as soon as he could speak. "She will part us at any risk, if she can. She is having us watched this very moment, most likely. She may be watching us herself. She is a terrible woman when she is for or against anything. Literally, I do not know what she would not do to get her own way. She lives for her own way. The loss of it would be to her as the loss of her soul. She will lose it this time though! She will fail this time—if she never did before!"

"Well," I returned, nowise inclined to take her part, "I hope she will fail! What does she say?"

"She says she would rather go to her grave than see me your husband."

"Why?"

"Your family seems objectionable to her."

"What is there against it?"

"Nothing that I know."

"What is there against my uncle? Is there anything against Martha Moon?" I was indignant at the idea of a whisper against either.

"What have I done?" I went on. "We are all of the family I know: what is it?"

"I don't think she has had time to invent anything yet; but she pretends there is something, and says if I don't give you up, if I don't swear never to look at you again, she will tell it."

"What did you answer her?"

"I said no power on earth should make me give you up. Whatever she knew, she could know nothing against you, and I was as ready to go to my grave as she was. 'Mother,' I said, 'you may tell my determination by your own! Whether I marry her or not, you and I part company the day I come of age; and if you speak word or do deed against one of her family, my lawyer shall look strictly into your accounts as my guardian.' You see I knew where to touch her!"

"It is dreadful you should have to speak like that to your mother!"

"It is; but you would feel to her just as I do if you knew all—though you wouldn't speak so roughly, I know."

"Can you guess what she has in her mind?"

"Not in the least. She will pretend anything. It is enough that she is determined to part us. How, she cares nothing, so she succeed."

"But she cannot!"

"It rests with you."

"How with me?"

"It will be war to the knife between her and me. If she succeed, it must be with you. I will do anything to foil her except lie."

"What if she should make you see it your duty to give me up?"

"What if there were no difference between right and wrong! We're as good as married!"

"Yes, of course; but I cannot quite promise, you know, until I hear what my uncle will say."

"If your uncle is half so good a man as you have made me think him, he will do what he can on our side. He loves what is fair; and what can be fairer than that those who love each other should marry?"

I knew my uncle would not willingly interfere with my happiness, and for myself, I should never marry another than John Day—that was a thing of course: had he not kissed me? But the best of lovers had been parted, and that which had been might be again, though I could not see how! It was good, nevertheless, to hear John talk! It was the right way for a lover to talk! Still, he had no supremacy over what was to be!

"Some would say it cannot be so great a matter to us, when we have known each other such a little while!" I remarked.

"The true time is the long time!" he replied. "Would it be a sign that our love was strong, that it took a great while to come to anything? The strongest things—"

There he stopped, and I saw why: strongest things are not generally of quickest growth! But there was the eucalyptus! And was not St. Paul as good a Christian as any of them? I said nothing, however: there was indeed no rule in the matter!

"You must allow it possible," I said, "that we may not be married!"

"I will not," he answered. "It is true my mother may get me brought in as incapable of managing my own affairs; but—"

"What mother would do such a wicked thing!" I cried.

"My mother," he answered.

"Oh!"

"She would!"

"I can't believe it."

"I am sure of it."

I held my peace. I could not help a sense of dismay at finding myself so near such a woman. I knew of bad women, but only in books: it would appear they were in other places as well!

"We must be on our guard," he said.

"Against what?"

"I don't know; whatever she may do."

"We can't do anything till she begins!"

"She has begun."

"How?" I asked incredulous.

"Leander is lame," he answered.

"I am so sorry!"

"I am so angry!"

"Is it possible I understand you?"

"Quite. She did it."

"How do you know?"

"I can no more prove it than I can doubt it. I cannot inquire into my mother's proceedings. I leave that sort of thing to her. Let her spy on me as she will, I am not going to spy on her."

"Of course not! But if you have no proof, how can you state the thing as a fact?"

"I have what is proof enough for saying it to my own soul."

"But you have spoken of it to me!"

"You are my better soul. If you are not, then I have done wrong in saying it to you."

I hastened to tell him I had only made him say what I hoped he meant—only I wasn't his better soul. He wanted me then to promise that I would marry him in spite of any and every thing. I promised that I would never marry any one but him. I could not say more, I said, not knowing what my uncle might think, but so much it was only fair to say. For I had gone so far as to let him know distinctly that I loved him; and what sort would that love be that could regard it as possible, at any distance of time, to marry another! Or what sort of woman could she be that would shrink from such a pledge! The mischief lies in promises made without forecasting thought. I knew what I was about. I saw forward and backward and all around me. A solitary education opens eyes that, in the midst of companions and engagements, are apt to remain shut. Knowledge of the world is no safeguard to man or woman. In the knowledge and love of truth, lies our only safety.

With that promise he had to be, and was content.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE SUMMONS.

Next morning the post brought me the following letter from my uncle. Whoever of my readers may care to enter into my feelings as I read, must imagine them for herself: I will not attempt to describe them. The letter was not easy to read, as it was written in bed, and with his left hand.

"My little one,—I think I know more than you imagine. I think the secret flew into your heart of itself; you did not take it up and put it there. I think you tried to drive it out, and it would not go: the same Fate that clips the thread of life, had clipped its wings that it could fly no more! Did my little one think I had not a heart big enough to hold her secret? I wish it had not been so: it has made her suffer! I pray my little one to be sure that I am all on her side; that my will is to do and contrive the best for her that lies in my power. Should I be unable to do what she would like, she must yet believe me true to her as to my God, less than whom only I love her:—less, because God is so much bigger, that so much more love will hang upon him. I love you, dear, more than any other creature except one, and that one is not in this world. Be sure that, whatever it may cost me, I will be to you what your own perfected soul will approve. Not to do my best for you, would be to be false, not to God only, but to your father as well, whom I loved and love dearly. Come to me, my child, and tell me all. I know you have done nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of. Some things are so difficult to tell, that it needs help to make way for them: I will help you. I am better. Come to me at once, and we will break the creature's shell together, and see what it is like, the shy thing!—Your uncle."

I was so eager to go to him, that it was with difficulty I finished his letter before starting. Death had been sent home, and was in the stable, sorely missing his master. I called Dick, and told him to get ready to ride with me to Wittenage; he must take Thanatos, and be at the door with Zoe in twenty minutes.

We started. As we left the gate, I caught sight of John coming from the other direction, his eyes on the ground, lost in meditation. I stopped. He looked up, saw me, and was at my side in two moments.

"I have heard from my uncle," I said. "He wants me. I am going to him."

"If only I had my horse!" he answered.

"Why shouldn't you take Thanatos?" I rejoined.

"No," he answered, after a moment's hesitation.

"It would be an impertinence. I will walk, and perhaps see you there. It's only sixteen miles, I think.—What a splendid creature he is!"

"He's getting into years now," I replied; "but he has been in the stable several days, and I am doubtful whether Dick will feel quite at home on him."

"Then your uncle would rather I rode him! He knows I am no tailor!" said John.

"How?" I asked.

"I don't mean he knows who I am, but he saw me a fortnight ago, in one of our fields, giving Leander, who is but three, a lesson or two. He stopped and looked on for a good many minutes, and said a kind word about my handling of the horse. He will remember, I am sure."

"How glad I am he knows something of you! If you don't mind being seen with me, then, there is no reason why you should not give me your escort."

Dick was not sorry to dismount, and we rode away together.

I was glad of this for one definite reason, as well as many indefinite: I wanted John to see my letter, and know what cause I had to love my uncle. I forgot for the moment my resolution not to meet him again before telling my uncle everything. Somehow he seemed to be going with me to receive my uncle's approval.

He read the letter, old Death carrying him all the time as gently as he carried myself—I often rode him now—and returned it with the tears in his eyes. For a moment or two he did not speak. Then he said in a very solemn way,

"I see! I oughtn't to have a chance if he be against me! I understand now why I could not get you to promise!—All right! The Lord have mercy upon me!"

"That he will! He is always having mercy upon us!" I answered, loving John and my uncle and God more than ever. I loved John for this especially, at the moment—that his nature remained uninjured toward others by his distrust of her who should have had the first claim on his confidence. I said to myself that, if a man had a bad mother and yet was a good man, there could be no limit to the goodness he must come to. That he was a man after my uncle's own heart, I had no longer the least doubt. Nor was it a small thing to me that he rode beautifully—never seeming to heed his horse, and yet in constant touch with him.

We reached the town, and the inn where my uncle was lying. On the road we had arranged where he would be waiting me to hear what came next. He went to see the horses put up, and I ran to find Martha. She met me on the stair, and went straight to my uncle to tell him I was come, returned almost immediately, and led me to his room.

I was shocked to see how pale and ill he looked. I feared, and was right in fearing, that anxiety about myself had not a little to do with his condition. His face brightened when he saw me, but his eyes gazed into mine with a searching inquiry. His face brightened yet more when he found his eager look answered by the smile which my perfect satisfaction inspired. I knelt by the bedside, afraid to touch him lest I should hurt his arm.

Slowly he laid his left hand on my head, and I knew he blessed me silently. For a minute or two he lay still.

"Now tell me all about it," he said at length, turning his patient blue eyes on mine. I began at once, and if I did not tell him all, I let it be plain there was more of the sort behind, concerning which he might question me. When I had ended,

"Is that everything?" he asked, with a smile so like all he had ever been to me, that my whole heart seemed to go out to meet it.

"Yes, uncle," I answered; "I think I may say so—except that I have not dwelt upon my feelings. Love, they say, is shy; and I fancy you will pardon me that portion."

"Willingly, my child. More is quite unnecessary."

"Then you know all about it, uncle?" I ventured. "I was afraid you might not understand me. Could any one, do you think, that had not had the same experience?"

He made me no answer. I looked up. He was ghastly white; his head had fallen back against the bed. I started up, hardly smothering a shriek.

"What is it, uncle?" I gasped. "Shall I fetch Martha?"

"No, my child," he answered. "I shall be better in a moment. I am subject to little attacks of the heart, but they do not mean much. Give me some of that medicine on the table."

In a few minutes his colour began to return, and the smile which was forced at first, gradually brightened until it was genuine.

"I will tell you the whole story one day," he said, "—whether in this world, I am doubtful. But when is nothing, or where, with eternity before us."

"Yes, uncle," I answered vaguely, as I knelt again by the bedside.

"A person," he said, after a while, slowly, and with hesitating effort, "may look and feel a much better person at one time than at another. Upon occasion, he is so happy, or perhaps so well pleased with himself, that the good in him comes all to the surface."

"Would he be the better or the worse man if it did not, uncle?" I asked.

"You must not get me into a metaphysical discussion, little one," he answered. "We have something more important on our hands. I want you to note that, when a person is happy, he may look lovable; whereas, things going as he does not like, another, and very unfinished phase of his character may appear."

"Surely everybody must know that, uncle!"

"Then you can hardly expect me to be confident that your new friend would appear as lovable if he were unhappy!"

"I have seen you, uncle, look as if nothing would ever make you smile again; but I knew you loved me all the time."

"Did you, my darling? Then you were right. I dare not require of any man that he should be as good-tempered in trouble as out of it—though he must come to that at last; but a man must be just, whatever mood he is in."

"That is what I always knew you to be, uncle! I never waited for a change in your looks, to tell you anything I wanted to tell you.—I know you, uncle!" I added, with a glow of still triumph.

"Thank you, little one!" he returned, half playfully, yet gravely. "All I want to say comes to this," he resumed after a pause, "that when a man is in love, you see only the best of him, or something better than he really is. Much good may be in a man, for God made him, and the man yet not be good, for he has done nothing, since his making, to make himself. Before you can say you know a man, you must have seen him in a few at least of his opposite moods. Therefore you cannot wonder that I should desire a fuller assurance of this young man, than your testimony, founded on an acquaintance of three or four days, can give me."

"Let me tell you, then, something that happened to-day," I answered. "When first I asked him to come with me this morning, it was a temptation to him of course, not knowing when we might see each other again; but he hadn't his own horse, and said it would be an impertinence to ride yours."

"I hope you did not come alone!"

"Oh, no. I had set out with Dick, but John came after all."

"Then his refusal to ride my horse does not come to much. It is a small thing to have good impulses, if temptation is too much for them."

"But I haven't done telling you, uncle!"

"I am hasty, little one. I beg your pardon."

"I have to tell you what made him give in to riding your horse. I confessed I was a little anxious lest Death, who had not been exercised for some days, should be too much for Dick. John said then he thought he might venture, for you had once spoken very kindly to him of the way he handled his own horse."

"Oh, that's the young fellow, is it!" cried my uncle, in a tone that could not be taken for other than one of pleasure. "That's the fellow, is it?" he repeated. "H'm!"

"I hope you liked the look of him, uncle!" I said.

"The boy is a gentleman anyhow!" he answered.—"You may think whether I was pleased!—I never saw man carry himself better horseward!" he added with a smile.

"Then you won't object to his riding Death home again?"

"Not in the least!" he replied. "The man can ride."

"And may I go with him?—that is, if you do not want me!—I wish I could stay with you!"

"Rather than ride home with him?"

"Yes, indeed, if it were to be of use to you!"

"The only way you can be of use to me, is to ride home with Mr. Day, and not see him again until I have had a little talk with him. Tyranny may be a sense of duty, you know, little one!"

"Tyranny, uncle!" I cried, as I laid my cheek to his hand, which was very cold. "You could not make me think you a tyrant!"

"I should not like you to think me one, darling! Still less would I like to deserve it, whether you thought me one or not! But I could not be a tyrant to you if I would. You may defy me when you please."

"That would be to poison my own soul!" I answered.

"You must understand," he continued, "that I have no authority over you. If you were going to marry Mr. Day to-morrow, I should have no right to interfere. I am but a make-shift father to you, not a legal guardian."

"Don't cast me off, uncle!" I cried. "You know I belong to you as much as if you were my very own father! I am sure my father will say so when we see him. He will never come between you and me."

He gave a great sigh, and his face grew so intense that I felt as if I had no right to look on it.

"It is one of the deepest hopes of my existence," he said, "to give you back to him the best of daughters. Be good, my darling, be good, even if you die of sorrow because of it."

The intensity had faded to a deep sadness, and there came a silence.

"Would you like me to go now, uncle?" I asked.

"I wish I could see Mr. Day at once," he returned, "but I am so far from strong, that I fear both weakness and injustice. Tell him I want very much to see him, and will let him know as soon as I am able."

"Thank you, uncle! He will be so glad! Of course he can't feel as I do, but he does feel that to do anything you did not like, would be just horrid."

"And you will not see him again, little one, after he has taken you home, till I have had some talk with him?"

"Of course I will not, uncle."

I bade him good-bye, had a few moments' conference with Martha, and found John at the place appointed.



CHAPTER XVIII.

JOHN SEES SOMETHING.

As we rode, I told him everything. It did not seem in the least strange that I should be so close to one of whom a few days before I had never heard; it seemed as if all my life I had been waiting for him, and now he was come, and everything was only as it should be! We were very quiet in our gladness. Some slight anxiety about my uncle's decision, and the certain foreboding of trouble on the part of his mother, stilled us both, sending the delight of having found each other a little deeper and out of the way of the practical and reasoning.

We did not urge our horses to their speed, but I felt that, for my uncle's sake, I must not prolong the journey, forcing the last farthing of bliss from his generosity, while yet he was uncertain of his duty. The moon was rising just as we reached my home, and I was glad: John would have to walk miles to reach his, for he absolutely refused to take Death on, saying he did not know what might happen to him. As we stopped at the gate I bethought myself that neither of us had eaten since we left in the afternoon. I dismounted, and leaving him with the horses, got what I could find for him, and then roused Dick, who was asleep. John confessed that, now I had made him think of it, he was hungry enough to eat anything less than an ox. We parted merrily, but when next we met, each confessed it had not been without a presentiment of impending danger. For my part, notwithstanding the position I had presumed to take with John when first he spoke of his mother, I was now as distrustful as he, and more afraid of her.

Much the nearest way between the two houses lay across the heath. John walked along, eating the supper I had given him, and now and then casting a glance round the horizon. He had got about half-way, when, looking up, he thought he saw, dim in the ghosty light of the moon, a speck upon the track before him. He said to himself it could hardly be any one on the moor at such a time of the night, and went on with his supper. Looking up again after an interval, he saw that the object was much larger, but hardly less vague, because of a light fog which had in the meantime risen. By and by, however, as they drew nearer to each other, a strange thrill of recognition went through him: on the way before him, which was little better than a footpath, and slowly approaching, came what certainly could be neither the horse that had carried him that day, nor his double, but what was so like him in colour, size, and bone, while so unlike him in muscle and bearing, that he might have been he, worn but for his skin to a skeleton. Straight down upon John he came, spectral through the fog, as if he were asleep, and saw nothing in his way. John stepped aside to let him pass, and then first looked in the face of his rider: with a shock of fear that struck him in the middle of the body, making him gasp and choke, he saw before him—so plainly that, but for the impossibility, he could have sworn to him in any court of justice—the man whom he knew to be at that moment confined to his bed, twenty miles away, with a broken arm. Sole other human being within sight or sound in that still moonlight, on that desolate moor, the horseman never lifted his head, never raised his eyes to look at him. John stood stunned. He hardly doubted he saw an apparition. When at length he roused himself, and looked in the direction in which it went, it had all but vanished in the thickening white mist.

He found the rest of his way home almost mechanically, and went straight to bed, but for a long time could not sleep.

For what might not the apparition portend? Mr. Whichcote lay hurt by a fall from his horse, and he had met his very image on the back of just such a horse, only turned to a skeleton! Was he bearing him away to the tomb?

Then he remembered that the horse's name was Death.



CHAPTER XIX.

JOHN IS TAKEN ILL.

In the middle of the night he woke with a start, ill enough to feel that he was going to be worse. His head throbbed; the room seemed turning round with him, and when it settled, he saw strange shapes in it. A few rays of the sinking moon had got in between the curtains of one of the windows, and had waked up everything! The furniture looked odd—unpleasantly odd. Something unnatural, or at least unearthly, must be near him! The room was an old-fashioned one, in thorough keeping with the age of the house—the very haunt for a ghost, but he had heard of no ghost in that room! He got up to get himself some water, and drew the curtains aside. He could have been in no thraldom to an apprehensive imagination; for what man, with a brooding terror couched in him, would, in the middle of the night, let in the moon? To such a passion, she is worse than the deepest darkness, especially when going down, as she was then, with the weary look she gets by the time her work is about over, and she has long been forsaken of the poor mortals for whom she has so often to be up and shining all night. He poured himself some water and drank it, but thought it did not taste nice. Then he turned to the window, and looked out.

The house was in a large park. Its few trees served mainly to show how wide the unbroken spaces of grass. Before the house, motionless as a statue, stood a great gray horse with hanging neck, his shadow stretched in mighty grotesque behind him, and on his back the very effigy of my uncle, motionless too as marble. The horse stood sidewise to the house, but the face of his rider was turned toward it, as if scanning its windows in the dying glitter of the moon. John thought he heard a cry somewhere, and went to his door, but, listening hard, heard nothing. When he looked again from the window, the apparition seemed fainter, and farther away, though neither horse nor rider had changed posture. He rubbed his eyes to see more plainly, could no longer distinguish the appearance, and went back to bed. In the morning he was in a high fever—unconscious save of restless discomfort and undefined trouble.

He learned afterward from the housekeeper, that his mother herself nursed him, but he would take neither food nor medicine from her hand. No doctor was sent for. John thought, and I cannot but think, that the water in his bottle had to do with the sudden illness. His mother may have merely wished to prevent him from coming to me; but, for the time at least, the conviction had got possession of him, that she was attempting his life. He may have argued in semi conscious moments, that she would not scruple to take again what she was capable of imagining she had given. Her attentions, however, may have arisen from alarm at seeing him worse than she had intended to make him, and desire to counteract what she had done.

For several days he was prostrate with extreme exhaustion. Necessarily, I knew nothing of this; neither was I, notwithstanding my more than doubt of his mother, in any immediate dread of what she might do. The cessation of his visits could, of course, cause me no anxiety, seeing it was thoroughly understood between us that we were not at liberty to meet.



CHAPTER XX.

A STRANGE VISIT.

On the fifth night after that on which he left me to walk home, I was roused, about two o'clock, by a sharp sound as of sudden hail against my window, ceasing as soon as it began. Wondering what it was, for hail it could hardly be, I sprang from the bed, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out. There was light enough in the moon to show me a man looking up at the window, and love enough in my heart to tell me who he was. How he knew the window mine, I have always forgotten to ask him. I would have drawn back, for it vexed me sorely to think him too weak to hold to our agreement, but the face I looked down upon was so ghastly and deathlike, that I perceived at once his coming must have its justification. I did not speak, for I would not have any in the house hear; but, putting on my shoes and a big cloak, I went softly down the stair, opened the door noiselessly, and ran to the other side of the house. There stood John, with his eyes fixed on my window. As I turned the corner I could see, by their weary flashing, that either something terrible had happened, or he was very ill. He stood motionless, unaware of my approach.

"What is it?" I said under my breath, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He did not turn his head or answer me, but grew yet whiter, gasped, and seemed ready to fall. I put my arm round him, and his head sank on the top of mine.

Whatever might be the matter, the first thing was to get him into the house, and make him lie down. I moved a little, holding him fast, and mechanically he followed his support; so that, although with some difficulty, I soon got him round the house, and into the great hall-kitchen, our usual sitting-room; there was fire there that would only want rousing, and, warm as was the night, I felt him very cold. I let him sink on the wide sofa, covered him with my cloak, and ran to rouse old Penny. The aged sleep lightly, and she was up in an instant. I told her that a gentleman I knew had come to the house, either sleep-walking or delirious, and she must come and help me with him. She struck a light, and followed me to the kitchen.

John lay with his eyes closed, in a dead faint. We got him to swallow some brandy, and presently he came to himself a little. Then we put him in my warm bed, and covered him with blankets. In a minute or so he was fast asleep. He had not spoken a word. I left Penny to watch him, and went and dressed myself, thinking hard. The result was, that, having enjoined Penny to let no one near him, whoever it might be, I went to the stable, saddled Zoe, and set off for Wittenage.

It was sixteen miles of a ride. The moon went down, and the last of my journey was very dark, for the night was cloudy; but we arrived in safety, just as the dawn was promising to come as soon as it could. No one in the town seemed up, or thinking of getting up. I had learned a lesson from John, however, and I knew Martha's window, which happily looked on the street. I got off Zoe, who was tired enough to stand still, for she was getting old and I had not spared her, and proceeded to search for a stone small enough to throw at the window. The scared face of Martha showed itself almost immediately.

"It's me!" I cried, no louder than she could just hear; "it's me, Martha! Come down and let me in."

Without a word of reply, she left the window, and after some fumbling with the lock, opened the door, and came out to me, looking gray with scare, but none the less with all her wits to her hand.

"How is my uncle, Martha?" I said.

"Much better," she answered.

"Then I must see him at once!"

"He's fast asleep, child! It would be a world's pity to wake him!"

"It would be a worse pity not!" I returned.

"Very well: must-be must!" she answered.

I made Zoe fast to the lamp-post: the night was warm, and hot as she was, she would take no hurt. Then I followed Martha up the stair.

But my uncle was awake. He had heard a little of our motions and whisperings, and lay in expectation of something.

"I thought I should hear from you soon!" he said. "I wrote to Mr. Day on Thursday, but have had no reply. What has happened? Nothing serious, I hope?"

"I hardly know, uncle. John Day is lying at our house, unable to move or speak."

My uncle started up as if to spring from his bed, but fell back again with a groan.

"Don't be alarmed, uncle!" I said. "He is, I hope, safe for the moment, with Penny to watch him; but I am very anxious Dr. Southwell should see him."

"How did it come about, little one?"

"There has been no accident that I know of. But I scarcely know more than you," I replied—and told him all that had taken place within my ken.

He lay silent a moment, thinking.

"I can't say I like his lying there with only Penny to protect him!" he said. "He must have come seeking refuge! I don't like the thing at all! He is in some danger we do not know!"

"I will go back at once, uncle," I replied, and rose from the bedside, where I had seated myself a little tired.

"You must, if we cannot do better. But I think we can. Martha shall go, and you will stay with me. Run at once and wake Dr. Southwell. Ask him to come directly."

I ran all the way—it was not far—and pulled the doctor's night-bell. He answered it himself. I gave him my uncle's message, and he was at the inn a few minutes after me. My uncle told him what had happened, and begged him to go and see the patient, carrying Martha with him in his gig.

The doctor said he would start at once. My uncle begged him to give strictest orders that no one was to see Mr. Day, whoever it might be. Martha heard, and grew like a colonel of dragoons ordered to charge with his regiment.

In less than half an hour they started—at a pace that delighted me.

When Zoe was put up and attended to, and I was alone with my uncle, I got him some breakfast to make up for the loss of his sleep. He told me it was better than sleep to have me near him.

What I went through that night and the following day, I need not recount. Whoever has loved one in danger and out of her reach, will know what it was like. The doctor did not make his appearance until five o'clock, having seen several patients on his way back. The young man, he reported, was certainly in for a fever of some kind—-he could not yet pronounce which. He would see him again on the morrow, he said, and by that time it would have declared itself. Some one in the neighbourhood must watch the case; it was impossible for him to give it sufficient attention. My uncle told him he was now quite equal to the task himself, and we would all go together the next day. My delight at the proposal was almost equalled by my satisfaction that the doctor made no objection to it.

For joy I scarcely slept that night: I was going to nurse John! But I was anxious about my uncle. He assured me, however, that in one day more he would in any case have insisted on returning. If it had not been for a little lingering fever, he said, he would have gone much sooner.

"That was because of me, uncle!" I answered with contrition.

"Perhaps," he replied; "but I had a blow on the head, you know!"

"There is one good thing," I said: "you will know John the sooner from seeing him ill! But perhaps you will count that only a mood, uncle, and not to be trusted!"

He smiled. I think he was not very anxious about the result of a nearer acquaintance with John Day. I believe he had some faith in my spiritual instinct.

Uncle went with the doctor in his brougham, and I rode Zoe. The back of the house came first in sight, and I saw the window-blinds of my room still down. The doctor had pronounced it the fittest for the invalid, and would not have him moved to the guest-chamber Penny had prepared for him.

In the only room I had ever occupied as my own, I nursed John for a space of three weeks.

From the moment he saw me, he began to improve. My uncle noted this, and I fancy liked John the better for it. Nor did he fail to note the gentleness and gratitude of the invalid.



CHAPTER XXI.

A FOILED ATTEMPT.

The morning after my uncle's return, came a messenger from Rising with his lady's compliments, asking if Mr. Whichcote could tell her anything of her son: he had left the house unseen, during a feverish attack, and as she could get no tidings of him, she was in great anxiety. She had accidentally heard that he had made Mr. Whichcote's acquaintance, and therefore took the liberty of extending to him the inquiry she had already made everywhere else among his friends. My uncle wrote in answer, that her son had come to his house in a high fever; that he had been under medical care ever since; and that he hoped in a day or two he might be able to return. If he expressed a desire to see his mother, he would immediately let her know, but in the meantime it was imperative he should be kept quiet.

From this letter, Lady Cairnedge might surmise that her relations with her son were at least suspected. Within two hours came another message—that she would send a close carriage to bring him home the next day. Then indeed were my uncle and I glad that we had come. For though Martha would certainly have defended the citadel to her utmost, she might have been sorely put to it if his mother proceeded to carry him away by force. My uncle, in reply, begged her not to give herself the useless trouble of sending to fetch him: in the state he was in at present, it would be tantamount to murder to remove him, and he would not be a party to it.

When I yielded my place in the sick-room to Martha and went to bed, my heart was not only at ease for the night, but I feared nothing for the next day with my uncle on my side—or rather on John's side.

We were just rising from our early dinner, for we were old-fashioned people, when up drove a grand carriage, with two strong footmen behind, and a servant in plain clothes on the box by the coachman. It pulled up at the door, and the man on the box got down and rang the bell, while his fellows behind got down also, and stood together a little way behind him. My uncle at once went to the hall, but no more than in time, for there was Penny already on her way to open the door. He opened it himself, and stood on the threshold.

"If you please, sir," said the man, not without arrogance, "we're come to take Mr. Day home."

"Tell your mistress," returned my uncle, "that Mr. Day has expressed no desire to return, and is much too unwell to be informed of her ladyship's wish."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the man, "we have her ladyship's orders to bring him. We'll take every possible care of him. The carriage is an extra-easy one, and I'll sit inside with the young gentleman myself. If he ain't right in his head, he'll never know nothink till he comes to himself in his own bed."

My uncle had let the man talk, but his anger was fast rising.

"I cannot let him go. I would not send a beggar to the hospital in the state he is in."

"But, indeed, sir, you must! We have our orders."

"If you fancy I will dismiss a guest of mine at the order of any human being, were it the queen's own majesty," said my uncle—I heard the words, and with my mind's eyes saw the blue flash of his as he said them—"you will find yourself mistaken."

"I'm sorry," said the man quietly, "but I have my orders! Let me pass, please. It is my business to find the young gentleman, and take him home. No one can have the right to keep him against his mother's will, especially when he's not in a fit state to judge for himself."

"Happily I am in a fit state to judge for him," said my uncle, coldly.

"I dare not go back without him. Let me pass," he returned, raising his voice a little, and approaching the door as if he would force his way.

I ought to have mentioned that, as my uncle went to the door, he took from a rack in the hall a whip with a bamboo stock, which he generally carried when he rode. His answer to the man was a smart, though left-handed blow with the stock across his face: they were too near for the thong. He staggered back, and stood holding his hand to his face. His fellow-servants, who, during the colloquy, had looked on with gentlemanlike imperturbability, made a simultaneous step forward. My uncle sent the thong with a hiss about their ears. They sprang toward him in a fury, but halted immediately and recoiled. He had drawn a small swordlike weapon, which I did not know to be there, from the stock of the whip. He gave one swift glance behind him. I was in the hall at his back.

"Shut the door, Orba," he cried.

I shut him out, and ran to a window in the little drawing-room, which commanded the door. Never had I seen him look as now—his pale face pale no longer, but flushed with anger. Neither, indeed, until that moment had I ever seen the natural look of anger, the expression of pure anger. There was nothing mean or ugly in it—not an atom of hate. But how his eyes blazed!

"Go back," he cried, in a voice far more stern than loud. "If one of you set foot on the lowest step, and I will run him through."

The men saw he meant it; they saw the closed door, and my uncle with his back to it. They turned and spoke to each other. The coachman sat immovable on his box. They mounted, and he drove away.

I ran and opened the door. My uncle came in with a smile. He went up the stair, and I followed him to the room where the invalid lay. We were both anxious to learn if he had been disturbed.

He was leaning on his elbow, listening. He looked a good deal more like himself.

"I knew you would defend me, sir!" he said, with a respectful confidence which could not but please my uncle.

"You did not want to go home—did you?" he asked with a smile.

"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage!" answered John; "—that is, if they had got me into it. But, please, tell me, sir," he went on, "how it is I find myself in your house? I have been puzzling over it all the morning. I have no recollection of coming."

"You understand, I fancy," rejoined my uncle, "that one of the family has a notion she can take better care of you than anybody else! Is not that enough to account for it?"

"Hardly, sir. Belorba cannot have gone and rescued me from my mother!"

"How do you know that? Belorba is a terrible creature when she is roused. But you have talked enough. Shut your eyes, and don't trouble yourself to recollect. As you get stronger, it will all come back to you. Then you will be able to tell us, instead of asking us to tell you."

He left us together. I quieted John by reading to him, and absolutely declining to talk.

"You are a captive. The castle is enchanted: speak a single word," I said, "and you will find yourself in the dungeon of your own room."

He looked at me an instant, closed his eyes, and in a few minutes was fast asleep. He slept for two hours, and when he woke was quite himself. He was very weak, but the fever was gone, and we had now only to feed him up, and keep him quiet.



CHAPTER XXII.

JOHN RECALLS AND REMEMBERS.

What a weight was off my heart! It seemed as if nothing more could go wrong. But, though John was plainly happy, he was not quite comfortable: he worried himself with trying to remember how he had come to us. The last thing he could definitely recall before finding himself with us, was his mother looking at him through a night that seemed made of blackness so solid that he marvelled she could move in it. She brought him something to drink, but he fancied it blood, and would not touch it. He remembered now that there was a red tumbler in his room. He could recall nothing after, except a cold wind, and a sense of utter weariness but absolute compulsion: he must keep on and on till he found the gate of heaven, to which he seemed only for ever coming nearer. His conclusion was, that he knew what he was about every individual moment, but had no memory; each thing he did was immediately forgotten, while the knowledge of what he had to do next remained with him. It was, he thought, a mental condition analogous with walking, in which every step is a frustrated fall. I set this down here, because, when I told my uncle what John had been saying, myself not sure that I perceived what he meant, he declared the boy a philosopher of the finest grain. But he warned me not to encourage his talking, and especially not to ask him to explain. There was nothing, he said, worse for a weak brain, than to set a strong will to work it.

I tried to obey him, but it grew harder as the days went on. There were not many of them, however; he recovered rapidly. When at length my uncle talked not only to but with him, I regarded it as a virtual withdrawal of his prohibition, and after that spoke to John of whatever came into his or my head.

It was then he told me all he could remember since the moment he left me with his supper in his hand. A great part of his recollection was the vision of my uncle on the moor, and afterward in the park. We did not know what to make of it. I should at once have concluded it caused by prelusive illness, but for my remembrance of what both my uncle and myself had seen, so long before, in the thunderstorm; while John, willing enough to attribute its recurrence to that cause, found it impossible to concede that he was anything but well when crossing the moor. I thought, however, that excitement, fatigue, and lack of food, might have something to do with it, and with his illness too; while, if he was in a state to see anything phantasmal, what shape more likely to appear than that of my uncle!

He would not hear of my mentioning the thing to my uncle. I would for my own part have gone to him with it immediately; but could not with John's prayer in my ears. I resolved, however, to gain his consent if I could.

He had by this time as great a respect for my uncle as I had myself, but could not feel at home with him as I did. Whether the vision was only a vision, or indeed my uncle's double, whatever a double may be, the tale of it could hardly be an agreeable one to him; and naturally John shrank from the risk of causing him the least annoyance.

The question of course came up, what he was to do when able to leave us. He had spoken very plainly to my uncle concerning his relations with his mother—had told him indeed that he could not help suspecting he owed his illness to her.

I was nearly always present when they talked, but remember in especial a part of what passed on one occasion.

"I believe I understand my mother," said John, "—but only after much thinking. I loved her when a child; and if she had not left me for the sake of liberty and influence—that at least is how I account for her doing so—I might at this moment be struggling for personal freedom, instead of having that over."

"There are women," returned my uncle, "some of them of the most admired, who are slaves to a demoniacal love of power. The very pleasure of their consciousness consists in the knowledge that they have power—not power to do things, but power to make other people do things. It is an insanity, but a devilishly immoral and hateful insanity.—I do not say the lady in question is one of such, for I do not know her; I only say I have known such a one."

John replied that certainly the love of power was his mother's special weakness. She was spoiled when a child, he had been told; had her every wish regarded, her every whim respected. This ruinous treatment sprang, he said, from the self-same ambition, in another form, on the part of her mother—the longing, namely, to secure her child's supreme affection—with the natural consequence that they came to hate one another. His father and she had been married but fifteen months, when he died of a fall, following the hounds. Within six months she was engaged, but the engagement was broken off, and she went abroad, leaving him behind her. She married lord Cairnedge in Venice, and returned to England when John was nearly four, and seemed to have lost all memory of her. His stepfather was good to him, but died when he was about eight. His mother was very severe. Her object plainly was to plant her authority so in his very nature, that he should never think of disputing her will.

"But," said John, "she killed my love, and so I grew able to cast off her yoke."

"The world would fare worse, I fancy," remarked my uncle, "if violent women bore patient children. The evil would become irremediable. The children might not be ruined, but they would bring no discipline to the mother!"

"Her servants," continued John, "obey her implicitly, except when they are sure she will never know. She treats them so imperiously, that they admire her, and are proud to have such a mistress. But she is convinced at last, I believe, that she will never get me to do as she pleases; and therefore hates me so heartily, that she can hardly keep her ladylike hands off me. I do not think I have been unreasonable; I have not found it difficult to obey others that were set over me; but when I found almost her every requirement part of a system for reducing me to a slavish obedience, I began to lay down lines of my own. I resolved to do at once whatever she asked me, whether pleasant to me or not, so long as I saw no reason why it should not be done. Then I was surprised to find how seldom I had to make a stand against her wishes. At the same time, the mode in which she conveyed her pleasure, was invariably such as to make a pretty strong effort of the will necessary for compliance with it. But the effort to overcome the difficulty caused by her manner, helped to develop in me the strength to resist where it was not right to yield. By far the most serious difference we had yet had, arose about six months ago, when she insisted I should make myself agreeable to a certain lady, whom I by no means disliked. She had planned our marriage, I believe, as one of her parallels in the siege of the lady's noble father, then a widower of a year. I told her I would not lay myself out to please any lady, except I wanted to marry her. 'And why, pray, should you not marry her?' she returned. I answered that I did not love her, and would not marry until I saw the woman I could not be happy without, and she accepted me. She went into a terrible passion, but I found myself quite unmoved by it: it is a wonderful heartener to know yourself not merely standing up for a right, but for the right to do the right thing! 'You wouldn't surely have me marry a woman I didn't care a straw for!' I said. 'Quench my soul!' she cried—I have often wondered where she learned the oath—'what would that matter? She wouldn't care a straw for you in a month!'—'Why should I marry her then?'—'Because your mother wishes it,' she replied, and turned to march from the room as if that settled the thing. But I could not leave it so. The sooner she understood the better! 'Mother!' I cried, 'I will not marry the lady. I will not pay her the least attention that could be mistaken to mean the possibility of it.' She turned upon me. I have just respect enough left for her, not to say what her face suggested to me. She was pale as a corpse; her very lips were colourless; her eyes—but I will not go on. 'Your father all over!' she snarled—yes, snarled, with an inarticulate cry of fiercest loathing, and turned again and went. If I do not quite think my mother, at present, would murder me, I do think she would do anything short of murder to gain her ends with me. But do not be afraid; I am sufficiently afraid to be on my guard.

"My father was a rich man, and left my mother more than enough; there was no occasion for her to marry again, except she loved, and I am sure she did not love lord Cairnedge. I wish, for my sake, not for his, he were alive now. But the moment, I am one and twenty, I shall be my own master, and hope, sir, you will not count me unworthy to be the more Belorba's servant. One thing I am determined upon: my mother shall not cross my threshold but at my wife's invitation; and I shall never ask my wife to invite her. She is too dangerous.

"We had another altercation about Miss Miles, an hour or two before I first saw Orba. They were far from worthy feelings that possessed me up to the moment when I caught sight of her over the wall. It was a leap out of hell into paradise. The glimpse of such a face, without shadow of scheme or plan or selfish end, was salvation to me. I thank God!"

Perhaps I ought not to let those words about myself stand, but he said them.

He had talked too long. He fell back in his chair, and the tears began to gather in his eyes. My uncle rose, put his arm about me, and led me to the study.

"Let him rest a bit, little one," he said as we entered. "It is long since we had a good talk!"

He seated himself in his think-chair—a name which, when a child, I had given it, and I slid to the floor at his feet.

"I cannot help thinking, little one," he began, "that you are going to be a happy woman! I do believe that is a man to be trusted. As for the mother, there is no occasion to think of her, beyond being on your guard against her. You will have no trouble with her after you are married."

"I cannot help fearing she will do us a mischief, uncle," I returned.

"Sir Philip Sidney says—'Since a man is bound no further to himself than to do wisely, chance is only to trouble them that stand upon chance.' That is, we are responsible only for our actions, not for their results. Trust first in God, then in John Day."

"I was sure you would like him, uncle!" I cried, with a flutter of loving triumph.

"I was nearly as sure myself—such confidence had I in the instinct of my little one. I think that I, of the two of us, may, in this instance, claim the greater faith!"

"You are always before me, uncle!" I said. "I only follow where you lead. But what do you think the woman will do next?"

"I don't think. It is no use. We shall hear of her before long. If all mothers were like her, the world would hardly be saved!"

"It would not be worth saving, uncle."

"Whatever can be saved, must be worth saving, my child."

"Yes, uncle; I shouldn't have said that," I replied.



CHAPTER XXIII.

LETTER AND ANSWER.

We did hear of her before long. The next morning a letter was handed to my uncle as we sat at breakfast. He looked hard at the address, changed countenance, and frowned very dark, but I could not read the frown. Then his face cleared a little; he opened, read, and handed the letter to me.

Lady Cairnedge hoped Mr. Whichcote would excuse one who had so lately come to the neighbourhood, that, until an hour ago, she knew nothing of the position and character of the gentleman in whose house her son had, in a momentary, but, alas! not unusual aberration, sought shelter, and found generous hospitality. She apologized heartily for the unceremonious way in which she had sent for him. In her anxiety to have him home, if possible, before he should realize his awkward position in the house of a stranger, she had been inconsiderate! She left it to the judgment of his kind host whether she should herself come to fetch him, or send her carriage with the medical man who usually attended him. In either case her servants must accompany the carriage, as he would probably object to being removed. He might, however, be perfectly manageable, for he was, when himself, the gentlest creature in the world!

I was in a rage. I looked up, expecting to see my uncle as indignant with the diabolical woman as I was myself. But he seemed sunk in reverie, his body present, his spirit far away. A pang shot through my heart. Could the wicked device have told already?

"May I ask, uncle," I said, and tried hard to keep my voice steady, "how you mean to answer this vile epistle?"