Queenie gave a little start and cry of suppressed pleasure, and then the color rushed over her face. With sudden impulse, as involuntary as it was graceful, she held out her hand to Garth.

"Oh, Mr. Clayton! how kind you are to me! Once or twice I was half afraid you had forgotten; and all the time you were quietly arranging it."

Garth was quite equal to the occasion. He looked down at the girl's radiant face, so expressive of joy and gratitude, with warm kindliness shining in his eyes. When the slim hand was stretched out to him he held it for a moment as though it had been Cathy's. "Oh, if he were only my brother!" sighed the girl to herself, with a little outburst of natural yearning as she felt the strong clasp.

Garth's handsome face looked almost as bright as hers. His position contented him; it was novel as well as interesting. It pleased him to throw the shield of his protection and tenderness round these young strangers, who had, in a way, appealed to his generosity. If Queenie had been old and plain he would have been just as gentle and chivalrous in his manner to her. No woman would ever have had a rough word from Garth; but a little of the zest and flavor would have been wanting.

To read gratitude in a pair of wonderful brown eyes, that seem to have no bottom to their depth, and to feel a soft, girlish hand touch his own timidly, were new revelations to the young man, who was a philosopher, but no stoic. He remembered their expression long afterwards, and the peculiar feel of the fluttering fingers, with an odd sensation that tingled through him. "What a contrast she is to Dora!" he thought again.

"You are very, very good to me," continued Queenie; but he interrupted her.

"I don't deserve half these thanks; I have done very little, after all. So you thought I had forgotten you? When you know me better," went on Garth with good-humored reproach, "you will find out that I am a man of my word. When I say I will do a thing you may be sure that if it be in my power it will be done."

"I was not so unjust as to doubt you," returned Queenie, humbly, "only as the days went on I lost hope. I thought you had failed in persuading Mr. Logan, and did not like to tell me."

"I hope I never shrink from any duty, however unpleasant; procrastination is only for cowards. I should certainly have told you at once, Miss Marriott. But now for these miserable details," continued Garth, changing his grave tone into a lighter one. "So you will persist in thinking it a matter of congratulation that you are to be our future school-mistress?"

"Certainly."

"It is not a very desirable post; indeed, it is quite beneath your acceptance. You cannot think how strongly Mr. Logan and I feel on that point. As the Vicar's churchwarden I had a right to take my own ground in the matter, and we have arranged that your future stipend shall be fifty pounds a-year. More than this is out of our power," continued Garth, stammering a little, and for the first time becoming slightly embarrassed. "There is not even a dwelling-house or lodging attached to the salary; but the Vicar wishes, that is—" corrected Garth, feeling himself on the edge of a very decided fib, and slightly daunted by the look in Queenie's eyes.

"You are not going to offer me more than my fair salary?" returned the girl, drawing up her head with a sudden gesture of pride he had never seen in her before, and her voice sounded clear and decided. "You told Mr. Logan, of course, that this was impossible? I will work; but I will not be beholden to him or any other man for a penny more than I have honestly earned. Forty, not fifty, pounds was the sum you named to me in the quarry."

"Don't be contumacious, Miss Marriott," returned Garth, with an amused look; but on the whole he rather liked the girl's independence than otherwise; it accorded with his own notions. He had held these sentiments all his life, and it was his chief pride that he had never been beholden to his fellows for anything that he could not justly claim. "Pride, independence, were necessary adjuncts to manhood," so Garth thought; "but in a woman, perhaps, they might be made to yield under the pressure of emergency."

"I will only take what belongs to me," she continued obstinately.

"Then that will be fifty pounds a-year. Listen to me, please," as she again attempted to speak. "I am the Vicar's warden, and have a right to use my authority in this affair. I have always considered that our mistresses are underpaid; I intend to fix the salary from this time at the sum I named. Mr. Logan and Captain Fawcett, our remaining trustee, agree to this; so," finished Garth, with a persuasive smile, "it is signed, sealed, and delivered, and only wants your consent."

Queenie bowed her head gravely, and with a little dignity. She was sharp-witted enough to see that Garth had not said all he intended, that something perilous to her pride lay folded on the edge of that fib; something that, with the kindest intentions in the world, would have wounded her susceptibility and hurt her.

"Then there is nothing more to say?" rather stiffly.

"Do these details weary you! They are very necessary," he returned, with a frank kindness that disarmed her at once. "If you fill this position it is better to understand everything thoroughly. You still think that, with the little you have, and the chance of giving lessons in the evening, you will be able to live upon the proceeds of so small a salary? There is your little sister remember, Miss Marriott."

"We have learned to do without things, and to be content with very little; it will be enough, thank you," returned the girl, quietly.

"Then in that case I can only wish you success on your undertaking. Your duties will not be so very arduous. The hours are from nine to twelve in the morning, and from two to four in the afternoon. The school-house is a miserable sort of place, a compromise between a barn and a small dissenting chapel. You are not so fortunate as Mr. Miles; the boys' school-house is a much handsomer and more commodious building."

"I have seen him, have I not?" asked Queenie, somewhat curiously.

"Perhaps, but it is holiday time, and he always goes down to his brother in Wales. He is a very pleasant sort of fellow, though rather an oddity; is slightly lame, plays on the violin, and is an inveterate smoker. He is a man of good education, and has been usher in two or three first-class schools. He had fair hopes of rising in the world until he met with his accident. For the misanthrope he professes to be he is one of the cheeriest sort possible. He lodges over the postoffice; Mrs. Dawes thinks a great deal of him."

"Have you no doctor here?" inquired Queenie, with a sudden remembrance of Miss Charity.

Garth shook his head gravely. "Ah! poor Dr. Morgan is dead; he died the week before you came. He is a loss to us all, poor old fellow! He lived in the corner house, next Mrs. Morris; and," with a smile breaking round the corners of his mouth, "remained a bachelor all his life in spite of her. But a truce to this sort of gossip; that would just suit Cathy. I have spoken to Captain Fawcett about letting Briarwood Cottage to you, and he is perfectly willing to do so. The rent is fifteen pounds a-year; but, as he justly says, it is quite unfit for human habitation at the present—the floors want mending, and there is some papering and whitewashing to be done."

"The cottage is really to be mine?" she exclaimed breathlessly.

"It is yours from this present moment if you like, though you will not enter into legal possession for six weeks. You must put up with our society for that time. I shall take the liberty of sending Nathan over to trim the grass and weeds, unless you are particularly partial to docks, Miss Marriott."

"Thank you, you are very good; but," hesitating, and looking up in his face in some perplexity, "I shall have to go over to Carlisle, I must speak to Mr. Runciman, about the furniture, you know; we shall want very little, Emmie and I, at least, only a few chairs and a table. Do you think ten pounds will go far? one must buy a few things, but I am so ignorant of prices," cried poor Queenie, feeling all at once very helpless and womanish, and hoping that he would not laugh at her ignorance.

Garth could not help feeling amused at the girl's naïveté, but he was quite ready for the emergency, having already settled it all with Langley. "If she be very independent we can manage it best in this way," he had said to his sister.

"One must have chairs and tables; well, and a few other things. There must be blankets for winter, and cooking utensils," continued Garth, with charming frankness. "Langley knows better than I about such matters, and by-and-bye we will get her to draw up a list. Langley has a splendid head for details. There is a second-hand lot of things going off in a few days' time; you can leave Langley and me to manage it."

"Yes; but the money; there will only be about ten or twelve pounds that Miss Titheridge sent me back at the last. She said she owed it to us, but it was only her conscience that pricked her, I know."

"You must keep that for present expenses, as you cannot draw your salary beforehand," he returned promptly. "I will tell you what we will do: Langley shall invest in these few articles for you,—we shall pick them up cheaply, you know,—and you shall repay her by instalments, just a small sum quarterly as you can spare it. Langley shall have a regular debtor and creditor account. Nothing need offend your independence, Miss Marriott."

"No; but it is too kind, much, much too kind," she returned, hesitating. "And how do I know when I may be able to repay it?"

"In two years' time at the farthest," he returned cheerfully. "I only look upon it as a safe investment for Langley's money."

"Owe no man anything, but to love one another," suddenly came into Queenie's mind. Was she fastening a load of debt round her neck? would she ever be able to pay it back? was not this another kindly ruse to afford her help?

She looked up quickly, almost suspiciously, but the grey eyes that watched her were honest and straightforward. He would not press benefits on her that he felt would be repugnant. No; she was sure of that.

Garth answered her unspoken thought, flushing slightly, as though her mute appeal touched him.

"I am sure you will be able to repay us; we will do all in our power to help you to do so." Then, after a moment's hesitation: "I feel just as you do about these sort of things. I like to help myself, and not to be dependent on other people. Believe me, Miss Marriott, I think far too highly of your independence, and respect you too much to offer you any help that you could not accept."

"Then I will trust you," returned Queenie in a low tone. She spoke upon impulse. It cost her a momentary pang, as though she felt some cold weight suddenly settling down on her; and after all, what could she do? Caleb could not help them, at least not much. Emmie and she could not dwell between four bare walls. What was there for her but to accept the kindly advance so gracefully hidden under Langley's name—Langley and Cathy, who had not a six-pence of their own, as Cathy once somewhat triumphantly informed her? "It is Garth who buys everything for us, dear old fellow, and pays all our bills, after grumbling over them," she said once.

"I assure you, you will never repent the trust," he answered, so gravely that Queenie feared he was hurt by her reluctance, until the old bright smile came back to re-assure her. "Then this grand matter is settled, and we will go and talk to Langley."

Emmie was almost wild with joy when she heard the news. The sensitive little creature burst into a perfect passion of tears, as she clung to her sister's neck, trembling with such excitement that Queenie was frightened.

"Oh, Queenie, is it really, really true that we are going to live in that little cottage, you and I together, like the sisters in story books?" she exclaimed over and over again.

"Yes, yes; once upon a time there were two sisters—one of them was handsome and the other ugly," interrupted Cathy briskly.

"The handsome one was my Queen then, she drops diamonds and roses every time she speaks; I am the little ugly duckling they called me at Miss Titheridge's."

"Nonsense," returned Cathy abruptly, kissing the little pale face, as she spoke somewhat hurriedly. There was still a weird, unchildlike look about Emmie—the blue eyes were still too bright and large, the cheeks too thin and hollow, but the little rings of yellow hair were beginning to curl prettily over the temples. "Remember the ugly duckling turned into the beautiful swan at last."

"Oh, I don't want beauty; Queenie is welcome to it all. I shall have it some day in heaven, there is no ugliness there you know," moralized the child in her strange old-fashioned way. A sudden mist rose to her sister's eyes as she spoke, the graceful fancies of the old fairy tale dissolved, and in its place came an overwhelming vision of a white-robed multitude, beatific with youth, and endowed with angelic beauty.

There is no ugliness there; no, little Emmie, no ugliness because no sin, no weariness of a diseased and worn-out body, no gloom of an over-tempted and troubled mind; for in the new heavens and the new earth God will see that everything there also is good.

They were sitting together on the low window-seat of the room that the sisters occupied; and Cathy had come in, with her long black hair floating over her shoulders, to chat over her friend's new prospect. It was one of those quiet, calm summer nights, when a "peace be still" seems whispered to God's universe; a white crescent moon hung in the dark blue sky, bright facets of gold glimmered here and there, the dark sycamores hardly stirred in the faint breeze, the tombstones shone in the pure white light; below them the church stood in dark shadow.

"I like this better than our old garret," whispered Emmie. "I am so fond of that churchyard, Cathy; I like it better than Mrs. Fawcett's garden. I like to lie in bed and think of the real people who are buried there, and wonder what they were like when they walked and talked as we are doing. The world seems so full of dead and living people somehow."

"Talking of churchyards always makes me shiver," returned Cathy, exchanging a meaning glance with her friend. Emmie was not always quite canny, she thought. "I would rather talk about Queenie's new cottage, and all the fun we mean to have there. I shall come to tea nearly every night, and in the winter you and I will toast muffins, Emmie, and roast chestnuts. I think I must give you one of my Persian kittens, since you have left yours at Carlisle; no cottage is complete without a cat on the hearth."

"But, Cathy," remonstrated her friend, "I am afraid there will be little time for fun of any sort. There will be French lessons to give on two or three evenings in the week; and by-and-bye there will be Emmie to teach, and our clothes to mend, and then, as we can only afford a girl to clean up and do the rough work, I shall have to teach myself cooking. And, oh dear, the day will never be long enough for all I shall have to do," sighed poor Queenie, all at once oppressed by a sense of her future work.

"Do you suppose that I shall sit down with folded hands and see you slave yourself to death in that fashion?" returned Cathy in an aggrieved voice, "is that your notion of friendship, you disagreeable old Queen? You will have teaching enough with the village children and Mrs. Morris's seven little hopes; you may make up your mind just to leave Emmie to me."

"But that is nonsense. What would Langley say to such a proposal?"

"Langley is charmed at the notion; we settled it between us this morning. Emmie is to come and do her lessons with me every morning, and her music with Langley. I shall make a first-rate governess, my dear Madam Dignity; and," mimicking Langley's soft serious voice, "think what a grand thing it will be not to let my acquirements rust, but to turn them to solid account!" Then with a burst of her old vivacity, "think what a blessing you and Emmie will be to me! you will give me occupation, and prevent my dying of ennui in this mill-pond of existence, as Ted calls it."

Queenie's eyes looked unutterable things, but she only said, "Oh Cathy, Cathy, how can I ever repay all your goodness?"

"Goodness to myself, you mean. I will tell you what we will do, Queen: we will coax Langley to let us go into the kitchen and take regular lessons from Susan; it will be rather hot work this weather, but we will go through the furnace of affliction together. You are beginning house-keeping on rather a small scale, my poor dear; but to live we must eat, and to eat I fear we require a certain amount of ingredients, concerning the price and the cooking of which I fear we are profoundly ignorant."

"Yes, indeed," returned her friend ruefully, "This must be rectified at once. What a blessing you are to me. I was sighing for new worlds to conquer, and now frying-pans and mending open a new scope for my feminine talents. How I used to envy those Israelitish women when I was at school."

"You used to be very cross on darning afternoons," put in Emmie.

"I am afraid I was. Think of one's clothes never wearing out for forty years! it was enough to reconcile them to the wilderness. I should not be surprised if I rather liked it now. Suppose we take lessons in patching from Miss Faith?"

"I must help too," broke in the child eagerly. "I can mend quite neatly now, Cathy; and I will weed the garden, and grow radishes, and mustard, and cress, and sweep up the hearth, and put on the kettle for Queenie when she comes home tired. Oh I wish Caleb and Molly would come and live with us, and that we could all be happy together."

"Caleb would not like to leave Carlisle, or Molly either; you must be content with me, and only me."

"My dears," interrupted Langley's quiet voice from the door, "it is past eleven, and these night dews are not wholesome for the child; let me beg you to close the window, and leave off talking;" and thus admonished, the little party broke up somewhat hurriedly.

Queenie had interviews with Mr. Logan and Captain Fawcett the next day.

"Well, Miss Marriott, so you are to be my tenant for Briarwood cottage," he said, stopping to speak to her, as they encountered each other in the lane. "My wife was so glad to get the little lassie for a neighbor, that you might almost have made your own terms with us."

"You are very kind not to put difficulties in my way. The rent is so small that I thought we could afford it. It will be quieter than lodgings, and more to ourselves; but it sounds rather ambitious, a home of our own," returned the girl, with a little thrill of excitement. Poor as it was it would be home.

"Suppose we go and have a look at it," proposed Captain Fawcett in his curt, business-like way. "It is in miserable need of repairs, I know; that last tenant of mine let it go to rack and ruin. I will go over to Hargrave's and get the key. Oh, there's the Vicar crossing over to speak to you; I can safely leave him with you a minute."

"I must shake hands with my new school-mistress," said Mr. Logan, beaming on her through his spectacles. "So you have talked us all over, and got your own way; well, well, everything is for the best, of course; but to have a young lady, a clergyman's daughter too, teaching in that crazy little building yonder is a strange sight to me."

"I shall not be above my work; you will have no reason to repent your decision," returned the girl firmly, but modestly.

"Well said, my dear young lady, 'who sweeps a room.' You know what our excellent Herbert says, 'It is the motive that ennobles the work.' I am glad to see you remember that."

"I mean my work to ennoble me," replied Queenie, her face glowing with the thought. "It does not matter that the building is poor, and the children some of them rough and uncultivated; it is a grand work to teach young minds, and to watch their progress, and get interested in their lives. It may tire one a little at times," she continued candidly, "but it is not mere drudgery and nothing else. Oh, Mr. Logan, say you are pleased to have me; it will give me heart and courage to hear you say so."

"Pleased! I am more glad than I can say," returned the Vicar, with a look that Queenie did not quite read, but which touched her greatly, it was at once so keen and gentle. "God bless both the work and worker. Oh, here comes the Captain; perhaps when you have looked over your new abode you may like to see the inside of the school-house?"

"We will all walk down together," interposed the Captain. "Come along, Miss Marriott; don't keep the Vicar waiting."

Queenie followed the two gentlemen silently. A strange sensation woke in her as she crossed the threshold. She had closed the first chapter of her existence. Here was a new life waiting for her to take up; it would be lived out underneath this humble roof. The past lay shrouded away, hidden like a dead hand out of sight. What would the future hold for her and Emmie?

She followed them silently from room to room, as Captain Fawcett made his brief, business-like comments. The damp oozed from the corners, long lengths of soiled paper trailed from the walls, the boards creaked under their foot-fall, the scurry of tiny feet and the squeak of mice sounded behind the wainscot, docks and nettles peeped in at the begrimed windows. Queenie shivered slightly.

"We will alter all this," exclaimed Captain Fawcett, turning briskly round on her, and pulling at his grey moustache. "This damp mouldiness is enough to make any one shiver; a little paint and a few coats of white-wash, and a fresh paper or two, will make a different thing of it."

"I was not thinking of the damp," returned Queenie in a low voice; and then she went and stood by herself at the window, looking up the ridge of ragged grass that lay like a steep little wilderness behind the house. It was the newness and the strangeness of her surroundings that oppressed her. "To have a house of one's own, that is the strangest part of all," she thought.

She was still silent as she walked down the village street. One or two of the women at the cottage doors stood and looked after them curiously; but at the sight of the quaint edifice, with its half-moon windows, Queenie's youthful energy revived.

She walked in, head erect, as the gentlemen made way for her, and stood before the old wooden desks, and looked at the half-dozen forms before her. It was a small square room, well, but not cheerfully, lighted; the windows set so high in the walls that no signs of the outer world could distract the attention of the little students.

"This small inner room is for the infants," explained Mr. Logan, coming round to her side; "it is a very humble affair, you see."

"Yes; but it is my work," returned Queenie, facing round on them with a quiver of excitement. "My work, and my life, and no other's, and I mean to do the best with both of them that I can."

Some one stooping his high head at the door cried softly "Amen" to himself.

It was Garth Clayton.

CHAPTER II.

DORA.

                                                                            "Woman-kind,
Whom all men ought, both young and old, defend with all their
        might;
Considering what they do deserve of every living wight."
                                                                                                        More.

The next week or two passed pleasantly and quickly. The girls adhered rigidly to their course of self-improvement, despite the temptation afforded by summer days. During the fresh morning hours they remained closely shut up in kitchen or pantry, busied in all sorts of mysteries connected with the culinary art, appearing at the early dinner with flushed tired faces and slightly dishevelled hair. All sorts of telegraphic communications passed between them and Langley. Garth, who was not in the secret, and who was a somewhat fastidious as well as abstemious man, was a little perplexed by Susan's vagaries, as he termed them.

"What has come to the woman, Langley?" he would say. "She has always been the best bread-maker in Hepshaw, but this last batch is almost uneatable, it is so heavy and sad. Her pies last night were disgraceful, and now this joint is under-done."

"I will speak to her," Langley would answer, quietly, while the girls interchanged looks of confusion and dismay. Queenie's discomfiture and disappointment were too obvious one day to escape notice. Garth, who was really annoyed, and had been complaining in no very measured terms, caught sight of the girl's crimsoned face, and at once held his peace. But the next day he marched into the kitchen, and found Susan and her coadjutors at work.

It was really a picturesque sight. The girls had rolled up their sleeves in imitation of Susan, and the round dimpled arms were very white and pretty; the coarse bib-aprons could not disguise the slim figures. Cathy had tied a handkerchief over her dark hair; she looked like a young Zingara as she walked across the kitchen, flourishing her basting-ladle; she was stirring some savory mess in a great iron pot. "Far over hill and dale freely we roam," sang Cathy. "Queen, I am sure this will be a success, it smells so good."

"Hush! here comes your brother," ejaculated Queenie. The smooth rolling-pin slipped out of her hand; the sunshine streamed through the window on the red brick floor, and the white table heaped up with ripe fruit, with great golden plums and clusters of red cherries. One level beam had touched the girl's brown hair with gold; her coarse apron enveloped her. She looked like Cinderella before her pumpkin chariot arrived.

"So I have two new cooks, have I?" laughed Garth, as he lounged against the doorway. What a pretty picture it was—the low dark kitchen never looked so inviting before. He made Cathy bring him some cider, and then helped himself to some of Queenie's fruit. Queenie picked him out the juiciest plums with her long white fingers; they had quite a little feast together, the girls waiting on him. Before he went away Queenie had finished rolling out her dough; the tarts were all in the oven before Susan's testy hints were taken, and she had her kitchen to herself.

In the afternoons they sat over their work with Langley in some shady corner of the garden. Sometimes, but not often, Miss Faith joined them.

"Cara does not want me, and so I have come up for an hour," she would say. Her quiet eyes would brighten, and a tinge of color would come into her face, at the sight of the little party gathered on the lawn. Sometimes Garth would be there, stretched on the crisp short grass at Langley's feet, with his paper or his book beside him. He always started up, well-pleased, at the sight of his favorite.

"Miss Charity cannot always have you; other people want you too," he would say, as he brought out another low basket-work chair, and gathered her a rose or two, for Miss Faith had a passion for flowers. Garth dealt in these chivalrous little attentions; it pleased him to tender these sort of offerings to the women he delighted to honor. "You are my patron saint," he would say to her, as he laid the flowers beside her. "Faith is very necessary to us all, but you never seem to remember that," with almost an affectionate intonation in his voice.

"I am only necessary to Cara," she would answer sadly. She took Garth's little speeches, his flowers, his kind looks, as simply as they were offered. To the quiet woman of thirty-five, who had no life of her own to live, and who had laid her own shadowy hopes, her unspoken desires, on the shrine of stern duty, there was nothing suspicious or incongruous in Garth's devotion; he liked her, and she was fond of him. Any other thought would have been impossible to either of them.

Cathy once hinted at this.

"Garth cares for Miss Faith more than for any other woman; he always has," she said once to Queenie. "I used to wonder, long ago, whether anything else would ever come of it. Men do care for women who are older than themselves sometimes, and though she was never pretty she has such a dear face; but I see now that such a thought would never occur to either of them."

"Of course not," interrupted her friend, indignantly. "Miss Faith is very nice, but she is old for her age. You see, youth has been crushed out of her. She would make a nice Sister of Charity; the dress would just suit her. I like her pale creamy complexion; but she is far, far too old for your brother," finished Queenie, to whom the idea was somehow repugnant. Miss Faith, with her soft plaintive voice and little close bonnet, beside the strong vigorous man, still in the glory of his youth! Queenie's ideas were very vague on the subject, but she thought the woman that Garth Clayton honored with his preference ought to be very nice indeed.

"Are you nearly through D'Aubigné's 'Reformation,' Miss Faith?" Cathy would ask her, a little wickedly, on these occasions. Miss Faith would answer her quite seriously; she did not perfectly comprehend a joke. Poor woman, the little pleasantries of life, the fun and drollery of young wits, were almost unknown to her.

"We are still in the third volume," she would sigh; "it is hard reading for summer days, but it suits Cara. Hope quite enjoys it too, but it is a treat to sit out here and listen to the birds, and do nothing but work and talk. I think I almost dislike books, though I should not like Cara to hear me; but then I never was clever."

"I think you would like the interesting sort," returned Langley simply. "Do you remember how much you cared for the volume of Jean Ingelow's poems that I lent you? you told me you cried over the 'Song of Seven.'"

"Oh yes, I love poetry," brightening visibly; "but I could not make Cara interested in it in the least; she calls it moonshine and milk and water."

"That comes of having a strong-minded woman for a sister," interrupted Cathy, who never liked to be long silent.

"My dear, Cara is very strong-minded; she is always talking about my having no mental backbone. She says if we do not exercise our mind, drill it thoroughly, and put it through a course of mental calisthenics, that we shall never keep it in a healthy condition. She thinks it a waste of time to read novels, unless they are Sir Walter Scott's or Miss Austin's. I know it is very bad taste, but I never could admire Miss Austin."

"But you enjoyed 'Dombey and Son,'" interposed Garth, who abhorred strong-minded women, and could not tolerate Miss Charity; hearing her opinions quoted even upset his equanimity. "Never mind what Cara likes; we are each bound to have our own individual taste. If Langley likes pickles better than strawberry jam she has no right to prevent Cathy from feasting on the latter dainty. I hate rules and regulations for grown-up people; it is just as though we want to bring back the swaddling clothes of infancy."

"I am afraid I am not fond of rules, and I do like poetry and novels," returned Miss Faith timidly. Here amongst these young people she felt a different creature; their ideas were as fresh and sweet to her as Garth's roses that she had fastened in her belt. "I must go now; but you have done me so much good, you always do," she said presently as she rose. Garth pleaded hard that she would stay, but she only shook her head at him wistfully.

"No, don't tempt me; Cara would be disappointed when she woke up from her afternoon nap if she found I had not returned; it is not nice to disappoint people, and then her pain might come on again."

"At least you might promise to drive over with us to Crossgill to-morrow; we are going to introduce Miss Marriott to the Cunninghams. Langley cannot go, and there will be a spare place in the waggonette." But Miss Faith would not promise. Two afternoons of pleasure would be unheard-of dissipation; she would never hear the last of it; and what would Cara do without her reading?

"As though we cared about that," muttered Garth, sotto voce; and then, as he returned from unlatching the little side gate, he paused a moment by Queenie. "There goes one of life's unsolved enigmas—a good woman thrown away on a selfish one. I know you agree with me, Miss Marriott; I can read it in your face."

Queenie gave him a bright, understanding smile. She had just finished a most artistic-looking patch in an old frock of Emmie's, and held it up in critical approval. "When people are so good they can hardly fail to be happy," she said with slightly qualified assent. Somehow she did not pity Miss Faith quite so much this afternoon; it was a little contrary of her perhaps, but then, had she not gone away with Garth's roses in her belt? and had he not called her his patron saint, and hinted that she was necessary to him, to them all? Queenie felt that even Miss Faith's life was not quite devoid of all sweetness when such speeches as these were made to her. Garth had not sufficient vanity to guess at these thoughts, but he seemed quite disposed to linger by Queenie's side and argue out the matter. He had been quite absorbed by Miss Faith's conversation while she remained; and now it would be refreshing to turn to Queenie. It did not occur to him to pick roses for her, but he stood beside her, and watched her deft fingers move swiftly over her work, with a lazy sort of pleasure.

"No one could doubt her goodness," he went on, taking up the thread of his argument; "the question is, is she quite right to give up her own will so entirely to her sister? One may be good and self-sacrificing, and yet preserve one's individuality."

"I think she is not quite sufficiently strong-minded."

"Don't; if you knew how I hate that word! it is Miss Charity's war-cry. Women do not need to be strong-minded, they ought to be pliant, yielding, ready to take impressions; a woman with an inflexible will is a man in disguise. If Miss Charity had married—poor thing, she might have done so once, and have rued taking the step to her dying day—she would have ruled her husband with a rod of iron, much as she rules Miss Faith."

"I suppose she is fond of her," doubtfully.

"Oh yes; tyranny does not exclude affection, at least among women," was the grim answer. "Miss Charity is only forming her sister's education, moulding her taste, in fact; she little knows how all the maxims slide off her like the rain off a duck's back. Away from her sister she is a different creature—dares to hold her own opinions, and to own to her own modest tastes. I call Miss Faith, exquisitely feminine; don't you think that is the word for her, Miss Marriott?"

"Yes," replied Queenie hesitating. It was very pleasant to have Garth there beside her, talking on any subject; but she almost wished that he would praise Miss Faith a little less. How did she know, Cathy might be wrong after all; Miss Faith was only seven years his senior, and there were so few people in Hepshaw. Queenie was still too young to know how silent a man generally is on the merits of a woman he actually loves.

"I mean her to go over to Crossgill with us to-morrow," he said presently, returning to the charge. "If I have to beard the lion in his den, and Miss Charity on her couch, I intend to have my way. I know what I will do, Langley shall go over there after tea, she has great influence with the dominant cardinal virtue. Willing or unwilling, Miss Faith goes with us to-morrow." And Garth, as usual, had his way.

It would be hard to tell whether Queenie or Miss Faith enjoyed the drive and the lovely scenery most. Cathy was on the box beside her brother, and had the reins more than once in her hands, and only Emmie remained with them.

Miss Faith was a quiet companion, and at first Queenie missed her friend's lively tongue; but by-and-bye they fell into a pleasant channel of talk, which proved so interesting that they were both surprised when Garth told them that they were within sight of Crossgill, and that in another five minutes they would be at the Vicarage.

They were descending a steep winding road as he spoke, and in another moment they entered the village. Queenie always spoke of it afterwards as one of the prettiest villages she had ever seen. A little stream flowed down the middle of the road, the cottages looked picturesque and in good condition; a fine old church seemed to tower in symbolic majesty over the whole place. Emmie and she uttered a simultaneous cry of admiration when they first caught sight of Crossgill Vicarage. It was the ideal Vicarage; the neatly-kept gravelled paths, the exquisitely trimmed lawn, the flower-beds masses of variegated colors, the rare shrubs and plants, all spoke of the owner's cultivated taste; the house itself, with its quaint casements and low bay-windows, was almost embosomed in creepers and climbing roses; the porch was full of flowers. As the door opened they found themselves in a little square hall, wainscoted in oak, with an oak staircase and low gallery running across it.

An old servant with a wrinkled face, evidently about eighty years old, welcomed Cathy and Garth with beaming smiles. Garth shook hands with her.

"Well, Nurse, I have brought visitors to see your young lady. Oh, there is Miss Dora," as a slight girlish figure crossed the gallery, and came rapidly down the broad low staircase towards them.

What a picturesque little figure it was. Picturesque—that was just the word for her. No one in their senses could have called Dora Cunningham pretty, but taken altogether she was simply charming.

She was dressed so quaintly too; the shady coarse straw hat, with the wreath of wild convolvoli, just suited the pale piquante face; and over her dark blue cambric she wore a long narrow holland apron, laced across the bodice in old-century fashion, and bordered with antique silken flowers. A kitten's soft head and innocent blue eyes peeped out of one of the pockets. "You have come at last," she said with just a slight accent of reproach, and a little satirical elevation of the eyebrows. "I have been looking for you for weeks past. Where is Langley? and why has not Ted been to see me lately?"

"I have brought Miss Faith and our guest, Miss Marriott, instead," returned Garth. "This is her little sister Emmie. Are you going to give us some tea, Miss Dora? Where is your father? Shall I go and look for him while you show these ladies your pretty drawing-room and conservatory?"

"Nurse, will you send papa to us, please. No, Mr. Clayton, I am not going to let you escape like that; you owe me some apology first for your long absence. What have you been doing? What have you all been doing? Come in here; I mean to catechise you."

Miss Cunningham spoke in a brisk, pleasant voice, though it had a sharp, decided note or two in it. She marshalled her guests with perfect ease and self-possession into the long bay-windowed drawing-room. A white-haired, aristocratic-looking man in an old gardening coat came out of the conservatory with a watering-pot in his hand.

"Papa, you must come and talk to Miss Marriott and Miss Palmer, please. Let me take that watering-pot away, it is trickling all over the carpet, and your coat is covered with lime. Do you like a low chair, Miss Marriott? If you sit there you can see the flowers in the conservatory, and just a pretty peep of the garden. I hope you will talk to papa, he is so fond of talking to strangers. Miss Palmer, you know papa, of course?"

"Miss Faith and I are old friends, my dear," interposed Mr. Cunningham.

"Yes, I know; it is Miss Marriott who is the only stranger," returned Dora calmly, untying her hat. She had white dimpled hands, rather like a baby's. "Now, Mr. Clayton, please tell me what you have been doing with yourself all this time?"

Mr. Cunningham proved himself a most genial host. He took Miss Faith and Queenie into the conservatory, and gathered some of his choicest flowers for them. A little summer shower had just commenced; the light patter of drops on the glass roof blended unceasingly with the voices. Dora's canaries were singing loudly; a small blue-black Skye terrier scampered over the wet lawn. Miss Faith seemed rapt in quiet happiness; Queenie was just a trifle absent and distracted.

Through the conservatory door she could catch sight of a pretty group. Dora sat in her little low chair, and Cathy had ensconced herself on the rug at her feet. Garth stood with his broad shoulders propped against the wooden mantel-piece, looking at them both. His face wore an amused expression; evidently he was well entertained.

"Do you think her pretty?" whispered Emmie, coming round to her sister's side. "She is like a picture, somehow; but I like your face best, Queenie, there is more in it." Queenie could not understand why the child's remark jarred on her. She colored hastily and turned away.

But she told herself afterwards that Emmie was right on one point. Dora Cunningham was certainly not pretty: her teeth were a little too prominent, her nose was somewhat blunt and unformed, and her eyes were blue and still, and had no special depth in them. Her fair hair was her chief beauty; it was very abundant, and she wore it gracefully, just simply turned off from her face and knotted carelessly behind.

At this early stage of their acquaintance Queenie hardly knew whether she was attracted or repulsed by the young mistress of Crossgill Vicarage. Her perfect self-possession, her absence of all consciousness, her cool, business-like comments on things in general, her faith in her own management and powers of observation, astonished Queenie not a little.

From the first she had taken possession of Garth, quite frankly and openly.

"I always leave the ladies to papa," she said to Queenie, as she led the way by-and-bye into the hall, where tea had been prepared for them. "Papa is such a lady's man. I always get on best with gentlemen, at least if they are like Mr. Clayton. Girls are all very well in their way, but men are so much more amusing. I dare say you think the same?"

"I have never thought about it; I have seen so few gentlemen in my life," answered Queenie, a little confused by the question. The music and drawing-masters at Granite Lodge and Caleb Runciman were about the only specimens of manhood with whom she had been acquainted, until her arrival at Church-Stile House. She was afraid, too, that Garth had overheard Miss Cunningham's frank speech; if he had, he took no notice. He placed himself at the little oval table beside his young hostess, and looked at the plump childish hands, busy amongst the old china cups and saucers.

The old nurse stood behind her mistress's chair, and joined in the conversation. She and Garth seemed great friends.

"Well, Nurse, how are Miss Beatrix and Miss Florence?"

"Well, very well, bless their dear hearts. Miss Beatrix is taller than Miss Dora even, and is growing prettier than ever. We want them back, Mr. Clayton, sir."

"Now, Nurse, that's nonsense," interposed Dora, briskly. "Remember they are gone for their good, not ours. Beatrix must finish her education before she comes home; you know papa and I have settled that."

"I don't think the poor young ladies like foreign parts so well as home," sighed the old woman, plaintively. "Miss Flo writes beautiful letters, to be sure; but she says she is home-sick sometimes."

"Have you sisters?" enquired Queenie, with a little surprise. She thought Dora was the only inhabitant of the vicarage.

Dora nodded. "Yes; there are the girls. Nurse is talking about them now; she is always talking about them. They are at school in Brussels. They are very well, of course, for girls, only I have never forgiven them for not being boys. I have always so longed for a brother—a great big brother—to take me about when papa is lazy or tired," appealing to Garth with candid blue eyes, not unlike the kitten's.

"What a pity we can't make you a present of Ted," returned Garth coolly; but Nurse interposed again with the garrulity of age.

"Miss Dora, dear, I can't bear to hear you talk so; it doesn't seem right, does it, sir? with those sweet young ladies for sisters, adoring her and spoiling her as they do. Why one of these days, my darling, you will have a husband to take you about; that will be better than a brother, won't it, Mr. Clayton, sir?"

"I suppose I shall have a husband some day, but there is no need for you to drag him in before-hand, Nurse;" returned Dora with perfect composure, as she tied on her broad-brimmed hat again. The allusion in Garth's presence did not disturb her equanimity in the least; she took it quite as a matter of course. "It is only Nurse's nonsense," she said, turning calmly to Queenie; "if she talked so to the girls it would be different, but nothing matters to me," with a little curl of her lip and a shrug.

"I think you must miss your sisters, living here alone?" observed Queenie, by way of changing the subject.

"Oh, as to that, papa and I miss them, of course. They are well enough for girls, only they are just at the gauche age, you know; when they are older I shall know better what to do with them."

"Then are you never dull?" asked Garth. "I should have thought Flo especially would have left a void in the house, she was so bright and full of fun."

"I should have called Flo noisy," exclaimed Dora quietly. "Busy people are never dull; I should have thought you would have found that out by this time."

"I know you emulate the busy bee, and improve each shining hour, Miss Dora; but still—"

"I suppose you mean to be satirical," with a little scorn. "You men think there is no work done but by yourselves."

"Oh, no; I am sure your list of duties must be very long," evidently teasing her, to her father's great delight.

"Quite long enough for a woman," she returned, pointedly. "I have my house-keeping, and my schools, and the mothers' meeting, and the penny club, and the coal and blanket fund, and the library, besides odds and ends of business, and all my visiting. Papa and I work together, and in the evening I read to him."

"Dora is my right hand," interposed Mr. Cunningham, looking at his girl fondly.

"After all men must have some one to help them," returned Dora loftily. She delivered herself of her little speech Parthian-wise, as she rose from the tea-table, turning her shoulder somewhat upon Garth as she did so.

"Are we such helpless creatures then?" he asked in a low voice, following her.

"Most of you are," she replied calmly. "Miss Marriott, the rain is over, shall we take a turn in the garden?"

CHAPTER III.

TANGLED.

"Women do not like a man the worse for having many favorites, if he desert them all for her. She fancies that she herself has the power of fixing the wanderer; that other women conquer like the Parthians, but that she herself, like the Romans, can not only make conquests, but retain them."—Colton.

The conversation had now become more general; but towards the close of the visit Queenie found herself alone with Miss Cunningham. They were standing in the porch together. Garth had gone round to the stables to see after the waggonette, and the others were in the Vicar's study, turning over a portfolio of old engravings. Queenie had been more than half disposed to follow them, but Miss Cunningham had detained her.

"You will find this pleasanter than papa's dark little study; besides, he does not want us now he has Miss Faith Palmer. Why do men like talking to her so much?" she continued in a perplexed voice. "She is not a bit clever, or what one would call attractive, and yet Mr. Clayton and papa are always lauding her to the skies."

"She is very good," returned Queenie. After what had passed between herself and Garth she was disposed to hold her peace on the subject of Miss Faith's merits. Some hours had passed since her arrival at Crossgill Vicarage, but, strange to say, she was less than ever inclined to be communicative to Miss Cunningham.

"So are you and I good, at least I hope so," answered Dora promptly, "though we do not dress in grey, and wear a close bonnet like a Quaker. I am a foe to that sort of goodness that must cloak itself in a peculiar garb. By-the-bye, how do you get on with Langley Clayton? she is one of the good sort too."

"I think she is one of the best women I ever met," was the enthusiastic reply; "she is almost perfection, so unselfish and so unobtrusive in everything she does."

"Yes; Langley is Langley; but she is a trifle too melancholy for my taste. I don't like people to go through life in a sort of 'patience on a monument' attitude. One suspects all manner of strange back-grounds, and then it is so provoking. Langley is Langley, of course, but I like Cathy best."

"Have you known them long, Miss Cunningham?"

"Ever since I was so high," putting her hand about three feet from the ground. "I used to call Mr. Clayton Garth once, till he got so big and grand that he used to frighten me; not that I am at all frightened of him or any other man now," she continued, with a curl of her lip, "one sees their weaknesses too plainly for that. How long are you going to stay at Church-stile House, Miss Marriott?"

"About three weeks, I believe, that is, until the cottage is ready for us. You know, I suppose, that we remain in Hepshaw. I am the new school-mistress. Mr. Clayton and Mr. Logan have elected me," explained Queenie simply; but, nevertheless, making the statement with some reluctance. She had a notion that Miss Cunningham would think it strange.

Dora absolutely started, and then bit her lip.

"You! Why you must be joking!"

"No indeed, Miss Cunningham."

"Why did they not tell me? It is Cathy's doing, I suppose, to keep you near her, you are great friends I hear; but I am surprised Mr. Clayton allowed it for a moment. You,—excuse me, Miss Marriott, but I cannot get over my surprise,—you look so unlike a school-mistress. Did you ever see your predecessor, Miss Drake?"

Queenie shook her head. She felt a little discomposed; the cool scrutiny of the blue eyes did not please her. Dora's searching glance took in every detail—the well-gloved hands, the dainty French tie, the little brown hat with its pheasant's wing, all the finish and detail that marks the gentlewoman's taste.

"No, you are not much like Miss Drake," she replied coldly; and a little cloud of dissatisfaction and perplexity knitted her brow.

They both seemed relieved when Garth made his appearance with the waggonette. Dora at once went in search of the rest of the party. Miss Faith and Emmie joined them instantly, but Cathy still lingered.

"Come, Catherine, come, it is getting late," exclaimed her brother impatiently; "you and Miss Dora have gossiped enough by this time." Cathy gave him a laughing look as she jumped into the waggonette, and ensconced herself cosily by Queenie.

"Don't be cross, Garth. No one calls me Catherine but Mr. Logan and Miss Cosie. I have only been mystifying Dora on the subject of our young friend here. She seems 'struck all of a heap'—to use an elegant but most expressive phrase—at the notion of her turning school-mistress. What business of hers is it, I should like to know? Let her mind her own parish."

"Hush, Cathy, be quiet; she will hear you," interposed Garth sharply, as he turned round to wave an adieu to the little figure in the porch. Dora stood with her hand shading her eyes, watching them until they were out of sight. She looked still more like a picture framed in roses, her straw hat hanging on her arm, and the sunset shining on her fair hair.

Garth turned round more than once, and then he resumed the subject somewhat irritably.

"What has Dora got in her head, I should like to know? she looks as if something does not please her. What nonsense have you been talking, Cathy?"

"Plaze your honor, no nonsense at all, at all," began Cathy mischievously, but a glance at her brother's side face, which looked unusually grave, sobered her in time. "Garth, don't be such a griffin, or I will never take you out to tea again. Dora chose to cross-examine me as to Miss Marriott's motives in taking so singular a step as becoming our school-mistress, and I thought her curiosity somewhat impertinent, and so took a delight in baffling it."

"I think it was you who were impertinent, Cathy," returned Garth, still displeased. "Surely such an old friend as Dora has a right to interest herself in our affairs if she likes."

"Not at all," returned his sister haughtily; "besides, this is not our affair at all, it is Queenie's. What right has any one to poke and pry into her motives? Of course you always take Dora's part, you and Langley are alike in that; but she got nothing out of me."

"My dear Cathy, Miss Cunningham is perfectly welcome to know everything, as far as I am concerned," interrupted Queenie, somewhat distressed at this argument. These slight diversities of opinion were not unusual between Cathy and her brother; but Queenie had never before heard him express himself so strongly.

"I am glad you take such a sensible view of it," returned Garth, mollified in an instant. "Cathy is thoughtless with her tongue sometimes, and hurts people. Miss Cunningham always takes a lively interest in all that concerns Hepshaw; you see, their own parish is managed so admirably, Crossgill is quite a model village in every way, that she feels she has some authority in speaking."

"All meddlers have authority, self-imposed, of course," observed Cathy, sotto voce. Nevertheless, the remark reached Garth's ears.

"What makes you so hard on Dora this evening?" he asked, good-humoredly. "She deserves a good scolding, does she not, Miss Faith? You are generally such good friends; something has gone wrong to-night, eh, little one?"

He spoke coaxingly, but Cathy would not be induced to answer. "She was sick of Dora; she would have Dora on the brain if they did not change the subject," was her pettish reply, and, seeing her in this humor, Garth, like a wise man, dropped the subject. But the conversation made a painful impression on Queenie; in her heart she sided with Cathy. She thought Miss Cunningham's curiosity unjustifiable in the last degree. "What is it to her how long I remain in Church-Stile House and in Hepshaw?" she said proudly to herself.

This feeling was not mollified when, two days afterwards, Cathy informed her that Miss Cunningham had driven over in her little basket-carriage, and was at that moment talking to Langley in the drawing-room.

Queenie changed color a little as she put down her book.

"So soon!" she ejaculated.

"Yes; she has come to return our call, and to see Langley," with a meaning look, that made Queenie feel still more uncomfortable. "No; we need not go to her just yet; Langley will bring her out to us by-and-bye. I think I shall tell Susan to let us have some tea, it is so delightfully cool and shady under these trees."

"Wait a moment, Cathy," catching hold of her dress, as she brushed past her, on hospitable thoughts intent. "Tell me why you do not like Miss Cunningham."

"But I do like her," returned Cathy, opening her eyes widely. "Who has said anything to the contrary? I think she is a dear little thing, and as good as gold. Why her father and sisters dote on her; only they have spoiled her between them."

"Then what put you out so the other night?" persisted Queenie.

"My dear, that is a complaint to which I am often subject. Many things put me out, you do sometimes, and so does Garth, dear, stupid, blundering old fellow that he is."

"Yes; but, Cathy, do be serious; you were as cross as possible that evening with Miss Cunningham, and would not say anything in her favor."

"Well, I believe I was cross," candidly. "If there be one thing I hate it is to be managed, and Dora will try to manage people. It is all very well in Crossgill, where every one worships the ground she treads on,—and of course she is very clever, and does no end of good,—but it is different when she tries to manage us here. It will be time enough for that when,—that is, if,—but I think I will leave that part of my sentence unfinished," continued Cathy, provokingly, and she ran away into the house, leaving Queenie still more mystified and uncomfortable.

Tea had long been set out on the low table under the plane-tree before Langley made her appearance with their visitor. The blue cambric and the broad-brimmed hat, wreathed with wild convolvoli, seemed quite familiar to Queenie. Dora held out her hand to her with perfect good humor; perhaps her manner was a trifle condescending.

"Well, I have come over to talk to you, and hear all about it," she said, taking possession of Garth's favorite basket-work chair, and unfastening her hat in her old fashion. "Papa says that I am too fond of interfering in every one's business, and that the world would go on just as well without me; but I can never believe that," with a low laugh, as though the idea amused her. "Fancy Crossgill and papa without me!" folding her dimpled hands complacently.

"I dare say they would do very well," interrupted Cathy, who was hovering near her with some rosebuds in her hands. Dora calmly helped herself to some, and went on talking.

"They will have to do without me some day, of course. It is a woman's duty to marry, and I suppose I must submit to my destiny. The girls will be sad managers; but no one could expect me to remain an old maid on their account. I have brought them up, and when I have introduced them into society I shall consider that I have done my duty."

"Hear, hear," interposed Garth from the back-ground, so suddenly that even Langley started. Queenie thought that now, at least, Miss Cunningham must look conscious and confused; but she did nothing of the kind; she only faced round coolly on the interloper, and asked what he meant by eaves-dropping in that fashion?

Garth laughed and made himself comfortable on his old grey plaid at her feet; but he looked a little mischievous.

"So there are limits to your sisterly self-sacrifice after all?" Dora gave a slight shrug.

"Self-sacrifice, without limits and without common-sense, remind one of the Suttee and the car of Juggernaut. When one is speaking generally it is a pity to particularize. At present I have too much on my hands to trouble about my future. There are the girls, and Flo is always in scrapes, and wanting me," finished Dora, in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.

"But Flo is nearly sixteen!"

"Yes, and Beatrix is seventeen. I mean Beatrix to remain at Brussels another year, in spite of papa and nurse; she is young for her age, and is far too shy and unformed to bring out at present; Flo has much more in her. But I did not come over here to talk about the girls and myself," continued Dora frankly; "they are good girls of course, but they are much more trouble than if they had been boys. I wanted a chat with Miss Marriott, and to hear all about this school business. I have had to do with schools all my life, you know," turning to Queenie; "and we have a charming place for our mistress at Crossgill. I have all sorts of ideas in my head, and shall be able to help you," ran on Dora, in a brisk, business-like way that almost took away Queenie's breath.

"You are very kind," she began, hesitatingly, and then she stopped. What business was it of Miss Cunningham's? why need she brook patronage from a girl so little older than herself, and a perfect stranger? But Dora misconstrued her momentary hesitation.

"Oh, you need not mind troubling me, I take interest in all sorts of people and things. Papa calls it interference, but I know better. Most people content themselves with their own little sphere of duty, and don't trouble themselves beyond it, but every one is welcome to my advice or assistance."

An inexplicable smile crossed Garth's face, but he made no remark. A close observer might have said that he was watching the two faces before him, with a view to comparison. Dora made a pretty picture as she leant back in her low basket-chair, with her sunny hair, and the roses fastened in her blue cambric. Queenie looked a little sombre and shadowy beside her in her brown dress. Her eyes were down-cast; she looked disturbed and ill-at-ease; she had lost something of the brightness and independence that were her chief charms.

"I don't like talking about myself and my own affairs," she said, with natural reserve; but somehow it sounded ungracious in her own ears. Miss Cunningham was an old friend of the family; perhaps she was wrong in treating her like a stranger; but Dora was not repulsed by her coldness.

"I dare say you feel a little proud about it; I should in your position," with a patronizing kindness that made Queenie's cheeks burn. "Miss Drake was such a very different person, quite common-place and ordinary. I think she was a small tradesman's daughter. It must be difficult to fit yourself to such a position, to come down to it with dignity." But Queenie would hear no more.

"You talk as though I were somebody, and not a poor governess, Miss Cunningham. I hope it is not beneath a clergyman's daughter to teach the children of honest people. It is not the work, it is the motive that ennobles the worker," cried the girl, turning on her young adviser with burning cheeks, and her eyes suddenly shining. "If I teach the children of the poor, I remember that I am poor myself. I shall not be ashamed of my position, or forget that my mother was a lady. I cannot forget what is due to myself or her, or to Emmie's mother, who brought me up, and made me what I am."

Dora raised her pretty eyebrows in some surprise; this little burst of sentiment perplexed her.

"I did not know you were such an impulsive character, Miss Marriott. You remind me of Flo a little, it is just her way of breaking out when she is lectured; not that I am presuming to lecture you," with an amused look; "I am only offering you advice and assistance. Miss Drake and I used to have long talks, did we not, Langley? and settle all sorts of things. She was a very ordinary person, and a little commonplace, I must confess, but she was always ready to take advice."

"I fear you will not find me quite so submissive as Miss Drake. I am only humble to those whom I know and love, and who love me!" replied Queenie, with a soft unsteady smile. "You are very good, Miss Cunningham; but I do not see how you can help me in this. I have Langley and Cathy, and they trust me a little," finished the girl, with a touching inflexion in her voice; "and for the rest, it is hard uphill work, and I must fight my way alone;" and then, as though to put a stop to the argument, she rose and placed herself by Langley's side.

"I don't understand. I hope she does not think me interfering. Perhaps she does not know that Hepshaw is a sort of second home to me!" returned Dora, in unfeigned perplexity, turning to Garth. Rebuffs were unknown to her; she was far too used to worship to take them kindly; her face changed and clouded a little. "I call it such a pity to show this sort of feeling in such a position. You have all of you made a mistake, Mr. Clayton; she is far above her work."

"There you are wrong," replied Garth warmly. Dora had risen, and he had followed her, and they were standing by the little gate looking down the plane-tree walk. Some children were planting flowers on a newly-made grave; some one was practising on the organ; through the open door they could hear snatches of Bach's Passion music. "Believe me, you are wrong; Miss Marriott's a fine creature. She thinks nothing beneath her, and would work herself to death for that little sister of hers. You are both good creatures; I wonder why you persist in misunderstanding each other?" he continued in an aggrieved voice, and with a man's usual blindness in such cases. "I am disappointed that you do not care more for Langley's protégée, Miss Dora."

"Oh, as to that, I like her well enough," she returned, a little coolly; "she is in good style and lady-like, only far too impulsive for my taste. She reminds me of Flo, and you know I always find Flo rather troublesome."

"I know your conduct to your sisters is perfectly admirable," was the answer. "You have been a mother to them in every sense of the word. Why Flo perfectly adores you, Dora."

"I am used to being adored," she returned quietly. It had not escaped her notice that he had gone back to his old habit, and called her Dora; she rather liked it than otherwise. It was very pleasant lingering by the little gate in the sunset. She was quite aware how pretty a picture she made, with her uncovered hair, and the roses in the blue cambric. Garth, tall and dark, and in his grey working suit, made a splendid foil to her.

"Shall we take a turn on the terrace?" he asked in a low voice, unlatching the little gate as he spoke; but Dora shook her head. It would be very pleasant wandering there in the sunset with Garth Clayton; but then there were the girls, and Flo not sixteen yet. Things were progressing certainly, but perhaps, under the circumstances, it would not be wise to expedite matters. Her sisters must be introduced into society, and Beatrix must be trained to take her position at Crossgill Vicarage before she could turn her attentions to such things. There must be no loitering in the sunset just now; men were impressionable, and well, perhaps Garth's manner was a little different to-day; he certainly looked a little disconsolate over her refusal.

"I shall gather you some roses before you go; you won't refuse them I hope, Dora," he returned, somewhat discontentedly.

"Yes, you may gather me some; but you must not call me Dora, please. It is a great pity, but we are not children now, and people will talk."

"Let them talk," returned Garth, now really provoked. He was very proud, and this repulse did not suit him. The sunset was inviting, and the shining little head beside him seemed to draw him with golden meshes. He was half serious and half jesting, but the mood and the hour had a certain sweetness not to be lightly lost; but if she chose to repulse him, well, it had not gone very far, and on the whole he preferred his freedom; but here Dora was looking at him pathetically with her blue eyes.

"Are you cross with me? one cannot always please one's self. Papa will want me; and one has so many duties," sighed the young diplomatist, "and cannot choose one's pleasures," looking at him slyly, but with a certain softness.

"No; you are very good. I suppose I am like other men, and want my own way. Do you think if you had more to do with me that you could cure me, Dora?"

"Hush, here comes Miss Marriott," she returned, laying her hand warningly on his arm. It was a very pretty hand, and showed well on the grey coat-sleeve. He had called her Dora again, but she did not again rebuke him; somehow his tenacity did not displease her. "He will be troublesome by-and-bye, but I think I shall be able to manage him," she thought, as she turned with a somewhat heightened color to the new-comer.

Queenie came between them as they fell apart; she was not thinking of them just now, but of something that she had schooled herself to say.

"I told Langley that I must come after you, and she said that I was right. I wanted to say, Miss Cunningham, that I was wrong just now. I ought to have thanked you more for your interest and what you said to me; you meant it kindly, very kindly, I am sure." Queenie spoke in rather a measured voice, as though she were repeating a lesson; but Dora received the apology very graciously.

"I thought you would think better of it, only you were so impulsive, and missed my meaning. People always take my advice in the end, they find it answers. They know that I take interest and want to help them."

"Yes; and I ought not to reject any well-meant kindness," returned Queenie, with still more effort, as she noticed Garth's keen survey of them both.

"I am glad that you have decided that we are to be friends and not enemies," replied Dora calmly, but half-amused by what she termed an exaggeration of feeling. "I know I shall get on with you better than with Miss Drake. She was such a very ordinary person, and dressed so very oddly."

"There is no comparison between Miss Marriott and Miss Drake," interposed Garth, a little sharply. "Let every one stand on their own merits."

"You are perfectly right," was the composed answer. "I am only glad that we all understand each other so well. I shall come and see you in your cottage, Miss Marriott, and then I am sure we shall become friends."

Queenie did not answer, but a rebellious flush rose to her cheek. She had come between them, and was still standing there on the little path. The children had planted their flowers and had gone home. The music had ceased, and the organist had closed the church. "Let us go back to the house and to Langley," observed Miss Cunningham a little impatiently, when the silence had lasted a moment. But as the girls walked back to the house side by side Garth did not accompany them. He was gathering roses.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KING OF KARLDALE.

"I ask thee for a thoughtful love,
    Through constant watching wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles,
    And wipe the weeping eyes;
And a heart at leisure from itself,
    To soothe and sympathize." L. Waring.

A few days after Miss Cunningham's visit Langley came into the room where the girls were sitting as usual, chatting merrily over their work.

"Cathy, do you think you could spare Queenie to us for a few hours?"

"That depends upon circumstances, my dear, was the cool response.

"Because Garth and I want her. I have just had a letter from Gertrude, and she and Harry wish us to go over there to-morrow; she is very unwell, I fear, and Garth thinks it would be such a good opportunity to show Queenie the beauties of Karlsmere."

"Why should we not all go? Do go and coax him, Langley."

"Indeed I cannot," replied Langley earnestly. "Gertrude is such an invalid that we cannot fatigue her with numbers. No, it is no use teasing him," as Cathy made an impetuous movement to the door; "he has quite decided that he will only take Queenie and me. I thought it was very nice of him proposing it," with a deprecating glance at her sister's disappointed face; "it will be a treat for Queenie; and you know in another week or so she will have to begin work in earnest."

"You and Garth never care for me to go over to Karldale," began Cathy a little crossly, but Langley stopped her rather hurriedly. She was a trifle moved from her ordinary composure; her face looked more worn and anxious than usual; a nervous flush glowed in her thin cheeks.

"My dear, you never will believe in Gertrude's ill-health. I am sadly troubled about her, and so is Garth."

"I have small sympathy for people who are always calling 'wolf,'" replied Cathy, taking up her work again. "I believe Gertrude's temper is most in fault."

"Then we will not argue about it," returned her sister, with a little sigh. She was very patient, but Cathy's mood evidently jarred on her. Cathy threw down her work again with such impatience that her needle broke as her sister left the room.

"Why will she give in to that woman's whims as she does! I can't understand it. Gertrude makes a perfect slave of her when she goes there, and actually Langley seems to like it. She is always going over there now; and she comes back tired out and fit for nothing."

"Do you know, I think it vexes Langley dreadfully when, you depreciate Mrs. Chester; I have noticed it more than once," observed Queenie, in her shrewd way.

"I know it does, and my wretched temper makes me do it all the more; but Langley is such a patient old dear that I hate to see her domineered over and victimized by a woman like Gertrude. When I see her with that worried look in her face I am always ten times more bitter; and then I am so fond of Harry, and Karlsmere would be so delicious this weather, and I own I was cross," continued Cathy, with the frankness that made her so lovable; "but of course you must go to please them, and Emmie and I will spend the day with Miss Cosie."

Queenie was thankful that the matter was so amicably settled; but since her friend was not to join in her pleasure she would not dwell on her own anticipations, delightful as they were; but in her heart she thought how good it was of Mr. Clayton to include her in their little trip. Since that day in the granite quarry his manner had insensibly changed to her; always kind and gentle, it was now tinged with stronger interest. A pleasant cordiality marked their intercourse; he was always thoughtful for her comfort and pleasure. Unconsciously, Queenie was beginning to depend for much of her present happiness upon this friendship with Garth Clayton. "It is almost as good as having a brother of my own," she said once to Cathy. Queenie's hard-working life, with its stern, morbid realities, had left her scant leisure for the ordinary dreams of girlhood. She had never mapped out any bright future for herself; possible lovers had not stolen across the sad margin of her thoughts. "Those things were not for her," she had said to herself. "Other women had a strong arm to lean upon, other women had fathers and brothers or husbands to work for them, and shield them in the battle of life; she had to work for herself and her helpless little sister, that was all. And so she took up her burthen bravely, neither repining that such things were, nor wasting her best energies with fruitless regrets for impossibilities. No vague sentimentalities preyed on her healthy young nature; no bitterness for her joyless youth marred her sweet serenity. Everything will be made up to us there, I am sure of it," she would say to herself, with tender, old-fashioned wisdom. "One day I shall get old, and not care so much about these things; perhaps Emmie will marry, and I shall be aunt Queenie, and take care of her and her children."

And so, with the courage of perfect innocence, and with a simplicity that was perfectly free from self-consciousness, Queenie gave herself up to the delight of this new friendship. There was no one to warn her of danger; no one to bid the brave young heart shield itself with greater reserve and prudence, to question her of the meaning of this strange happiness that seemed to flood her whole being with brightness.

"Every one is so good to me, and I am so happy," she said almost daily. When alone her thoughts were a perpetual thanksgiving. An insensible change had passed over her thoughts with respect to Garth, she was less critical; the defects and flaws of character she had at first noticed in him became less apparent; his slight arbitrariness, his condescension, his masterful assumption of power, even his lack of deep intellect were all unnoticed. If he spoke, Queenie was as ready to obey his behests as ever Langley or Cathy were. If his want of ambition, his perfect content with himself and his surroundings, sometimes surprised her, she began to credit him with greatness of mind; or if she were too shrewd for that, to own to herself that even his very faults were more lovable than other people's virtues.

"He is a sort of Bayard; he is as courteous to me as though I were the greatest lady in the laud, instead of a village school-mistress," said the girl once with tears in her eyes, "And see how good he is to those old ladies at The Sycamores: he let Miss Hope talk to him for a whole hour about her Temperance Society, though I could see he was dreadfully bored by her. He never hurts people's feelings by letting them see that they trouble him."

"My dear, Garth is perfection, and I am glad you have found it out," was Cathy's reply.

Queenie found vent for her feelings in a grateful little speech when she next saw Garth. He came in at the drawing-room door, throwing his head back in his usual fashion, and shook himself like a rough terrier.

"What a dirty fellow I look, to be sure; the roads have quite powdered me. I hope we shall have rain before to-morrow."

"Oh, Mr. Clayton, I have been wanting to thank you ever since I heard it. It will be so delightful—to-morrow I mean."

"That remains to be proved; we shall enjoy it all the more for having you with us," was the pleasant answer. "I have been waiting for an opportunity to drive you over to Karlsmere ever since you came. The lake is charming, and you will get quantities of parsley fern for your cottage garden. By-the-bye, I have been in there this morning, and the workmen are getting on famously; all the holes are stopped, and there's another coat of paint on. I hardly knew the place. We shall be losing you in another fortnight, I am afraid;" for Queenie had obstinately refused to burthen her friends with their presence a day longer than was necessary.

She tried to look pleased at this announcement; but a pang crossed her in spite of herself at the thought of leaving Church-Stile House. The cottage seemed dull by comparison. True, she should often see them, and Cathy would be in and out perpetually; but she would no longer be his guest, sharing in the pleasant every-day life of the family, making one in their plans, a party to their little jokes and pleasantries. "It is time for me to go, I am getting spoiled amongst you all. I feel I have been idle long enough," she said to her friend afterwards; but somehow she sighed as she said it.

The day at Karlsmere proved as delightful in reality as it was in anticipation. Garth was in one of his boyish, frolicsome moods. He and Queenie hunted for ferns, and gathered wild flowers, while Langley walked thoughtfully beside the margin of the beautiful lake. It was a golden day in Queenie's memory. How often she recalled that walk afterwards. The blue shimmering lake, so still and silent in the sunlight; the winding roads; the steep woody height on the farther bank; the pretty vicarage with its trim garden and the tiny church, reminding her of a small ill-furnished room. The tall athletic figure in the grey suit, vaulting lightly over the crisp bracken high above them; the handful of wild flowers tossed laughingly at her feet; Langley standing on a smooth white boulder, looking with grave unsmiling eyes at the baby waves lapping to her feet. How well she recalled it all.

"There's Harry coming to meet us," shouted Garth; but Langley did not hear him. She stood in that strange, self-absorbed attitude, motionless and oblivious, till Nan ran up to her and pulled her dress; and then the color rushed over her pale face with surprise, and she stooped and pressed the child closely to her.

"Little Nan, my dear little Nan," she whispered.

"I am father's Nan," lisped the child. "I am nobody's Nan but father's. Father's up there," pointing with her fore-finger to the rocks above them. "He and Jeb are both there. I carried Jeb, but he was heavy, and my arms did ache."

"Yes, you are father's Nan," repeated Langley dreamily; "father's little comforter;" and as she kissed the little face a sudden mist rose before her eyes.

"Why are your eyes wet when you kiss me?" questioned Nan curiously, "and why do you always kiss me so close, so close? Mammie never does; but only father, only father and you."

"Hush, Nan; I love you. Do you hear me, Nan? I love you dearly, dearly." Langley spoke in a strange, stifled voice, but the child only gazed at her in surprise.

"You need not cry about it. You know father loves me too, but he never cries over me. Mammie does; but then she pushes me away."

"Ah, poor mother is ill, you know."

Nan reflected a moment gravely. "Yes; her head did ache. She said 'Go away, Nan, you tire me; go to father and Jeb;' and I did go. Mammie does not love Nan much."

"Oh, hush, my darling, hush! poor mother!"

"She did often say 'Go away, Nan; Nan is naughty.' But Nan is good, always good; father says so."

"What are you talking to Langley about, you little chatter-box? Here is Jeb whining his heart out for you," called out Mr. Chester from the bank above them. "Stay where you are, pet, and father will come and carry you."

"Father's coming," echoed Nan placidly. She stood quite quiet and patiently while he talked to Langley; but when he lifted her in his arms she seemed to nestle into them with a little coo of content. Once or twice during their walk her father stooped over her and peered into the white sun-bonnet rather anxiously.

"She is not quite as strong as she was, and seems to tire sooner," he said to Langley. "Gertrude tells me I am wrong to let the child go about so much in the heat. But what am I to do? When I leave her at home she makes herself ill with fretting. Naughty Nan," in a tone of infinite tenderness.

"Nan always good," was the somewhat drowsy answer.

"God bless her, so she is, my little white angel. Look at her, Langley; this is just what she does: she always falls asleep in my arms like this. Sometimes she is so heavy that I am obliged to put her down. I wonder how I should feel if I were a poor man on the tramp, with my child in my arms, and the world before me. I wonder, too, what mammie would do without us," as Nan opened her dark eyes, roused by the suppressed vehemence of her father's voice.

"Mammy did say 'Go away, Nan; Nan makes mammy's head to ache.'"

"I am afraid mammy says that far too often," was the somewhat bitter reply. "It seems hard for a mother never to be able to bear her child's presence."

"Hush! Miss Marriott will hear you, Harry!" interposed Langley, gently. Mr. Chester looked round and shook his head.

"No; they are too far behind, and seem engrossed with each other's conversation. Look here, Langley, we are old friends, and you know all our troubles, and I tell you truly, things are getting worse every day."

Langley's pale face turned paler, but she made no answer.

"Sometimes I think if I could only see Gertrude happy and contented I should not mind what became of me; I wear out my heart to please her. I do not think she has ever heard a harsh word from me since I married her; can any husband do more?"

"No, indeed; you are good, very good, to her," was the almost inaudible reply.

"And yet it has come to this, that I have no wife and no home, for without sympathy how can one be said to possess either. If she would only greet me with a smile sometimes; if she had a kind word for me or this child; but you heard what she said just now. She is a sensitive little creature, and I fully believe her mother's indifference pains her."

"Harry, indeed, indeed, you must not be hard upon Gertrude; if you only knew how she suffers."

"Do I not know it? She will not be long with us, my poor Gertie, I am sure of that; she is wasting every day, Langley; Dr. Marshall says so. That is what makes it so bitter to think there can be no peace now. If I could only make her happy; if I could be sure that she has not repented of marrying me; but sometimes I think that if I had left her amongst her own people she would not be pining herself to death as she is now."

A look of intense pain crossed Langley's face.

"You must not think that."

"But how am I to help it, when I see her drooping and wasting before my eyes, my own wife, whom I have sworn to cherish? Sometimes I dread that she will tell me so; and then, how am I to bear it?"

"Gertrude will never tell you so;" but Mr. Chester shook his head. "She will never tell you so," repeated Langley in a steadier voice. "In spite of her unhappy nature Gertrude is a good woman. Harry, you always listen to me as if—as if I were your sister; do try and believe what I say this once."

"What am I to believe?"

"That it is not your fault. Gertrude says you are goodness itself to her and the child; sometimes she speaks of you both so tenderly. Why will you not go on bearing things as you have done, so patiently, so nobly, and trust that Providence will bring good out of all this evil?"

"Then you think that there is nothing that I can do for her. I half hoped that you would find out something that she wanted, some wish that she might express."

"Then I will let you know," replied Langley, with assumed cheerfulness. In reality her heart was as heavy as lead, the talk had oppressed her. Ever ready with her sympathy she had yet found it hard to comfort him. What comfort could there be in such a home—a hasty, ill-assorted marriage, defective sympathy, inequalities of temper, physical sufferings impatiently borne, the daily burthen of sickness without ameliorating circumstances, and all this patiently, nay, heroically endured. What was she to say but that he was blameless? Whose fault was it that all this had come upon him? that he was walking by her side, groaning aloud for once in the very heaviness of his spirit? What could her words be to him but meaningless truisms, that must fall flatly on his ear? Had she any comfort at all to offer him? was not such comfort placed beyond his reach and hers for ever?

Unconsciously she slackened her pace as such thoughts came to her, and in a few minutes the others joined them, and the conversation became general.

Queenie was delighted with the look of the Grange, as Mr. Chester's house was called. It was a rambling grey stone house, standing just at the head of the lake; a picturesque old archway embosomed with ivy admitted them into a place half garden, half orchard, with a low fence dividing it from the crofts; the large square hall was used as a summer sitting-room. From the inner room a tall dark-eyed woman advanced languidly to meet them, wrapped up, in spite of the summer day, in a costly Indian shawl.

"Well, Gertie, I have brought your friends," exclaimed her husband, cheerfully; "I met them half way down the lake. I hope you have not been expecting us before."

"You must have dawdled on your way then," returned Mrs. Chester fretfully, "for I have been waiting for at least an hour, until I thought I should have been too nervous to receive them; but that is the way when you get with Langley, Harry, you never remember poor me."

"I am sure we walked here straight enough," replied Mr. Chester hastily; but Langley, with a sweet look, stopped him.

"We have ventured to bring our friend, Miss Marriott, Gertrude; Garth wanted to show her Karlsmere. She knows what an invalid you are, and will not make any demands on your strength. Now you must go and establish yourself comfortably on your couch, while Queenie and I get rid of some of our dust, and Harry puts dear little Nan in her crib."

"I tell Harry that he is killing that child, by dragging her about in the sun," rejoined Mrs. Chester, with a shrug of her shoulders. "He will not listen to me. One would think he had a dozen children, and could afford to lose one or two; but there, it is no use my talking to him."

"Why, Gertie, I thought you said that your head was bad, and that Nan was worrying you," observed her husband in a deprecating voice.

"Well, but she might be playing up-stairs with her Noah's Ark. Of course I am only a mother, and don't understand children; but look how flushed her face is, Langley."

"She is only rosy with sleep," interrupted Garth, stooping to kiss her. "What a pretty little face it is! She is more like you than Harry," continued the artful young diplomatist; "she has got your eyes and eyelashes, Mrs. Chester."

"Yes; she is very like you, Gertie," replied her husband eagerly. "Garth is right; I never saw it so plainly before."

"Other people have always seen it," was the somewhat pointed answer.

"Oh, Langley, I don't like her at all," exclaimed Queenie, when she found herself alone with Langley in the large pleasant room overlooking the crofts. "I always thought Cathy was prejudiced; but I think her so—so disagreeable."

"She has been waiting for us, you see, and that always makes her nervous; one must make allowance for an invalid's humor."

"Some invalids are quite pleasant," returned Queenie stoutly. "There is a fretful chord in her voice that jars somehow. She is very slim and elegant, and I suppose some people would call her handsome; but I don't like her gloomy dark eyes, and her mouth goes down at the corners. I always distrust people's tempers when I see that."

"I did not know that you were such an observer, my dear."

"I know when people's faces please me, and when I shall get to love them," was the oracular rejoinder. "I could never love Mrs. Chester, Langley, though I might get to pity her in time," and Langley attempted no further defence.

Queenie found her first impressions only deepened as the day went on. There was a carping fretfulness in Mrs. Chester's manner to her husband that must have provoked a less sweet temper, but at times he scarcely seemed to notice it. When the child was in the room she seemed to engross all his attention; when she was absent he appeared restless and ill-at-ease. "She can be pleasant to every one but to him," Queenie thought to herself. "Cathy was right when she said that she detested that woman."

But even Queenie and Cathy might have found some pity in their youthful intolerance if they had overheard the brief fragments of a conversation that passed between Mrs. Chester and Langley.

"Oh, Gertrude, I know it is hard; but if you would only try, for his and the child's sake, to control yourself a little; you do not know how unhappy you are making him."

"Does he complain of me to you?" she demanded fiercely; "that would be manly and generous on his part."

"Do you want me to leave off talking to you?" replied Langley in a tone of genuine grief. "Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude, what will you say next? Do you wish to know what he did really say? He asked me if there was nothing he could do for you. He begged me to find out if there was any wish that he could gratify; he—but I cannot repeat it. If you had only heard what he said!"

Mrs. Chester rose feverishly from her couch and caught hold of Langley's dress.

"There it is. No, don't turn from me, don't look so shocked; you know it is his very goodness that makes me worse. Why is he so good to me when I try him so? Sometimes I think that I am possessed with some sort of evil spirit; I can't help tormenting him. Oh, Langley, why did he insist on my marrying him? why did he not leave me in my old home when he knew, when I told him, that I could not ever care for him as I could for that other? when—" but Langley stopped her with a face of horror.

"Hush! don't mention his name! Harry's wife can have no remembrance of that sort. You are a good woman, Gertrude; I have always said so."

"No, no," she returned, bursting into tears; "don't judge me out of your merciful heart, Langley. I have never been a good wife to Harry, and I never shall. I try to forget, but the effort is killing me. Oh, why did he not leave me in my old home, and not have doomed us both to this misery?"

"Hush! you are not yourself to-day! I cannot hear you talk any more in this way;" and Langley rose, pale and resolute. "Put yourself and your unhappiness aside, it is too late to talk of such things now; think only of the duty you owe to Harry and your little child."

"Yes, my little child, who will so soon be without a mother," she returned, weeping passionately; but Langley only stooped over her with sad dry eyes, and, kissing her, bade God bless her, and turned away.

CHAPTER V.

A GOLDEN HARVEST.

"Yes; keep me calm, though loud and rude
    The sounds my ears that greet;
Calm in the closet's solitude,
    Calm in the bustling street;
Calm in the hour of buoyant health,
    Calm in my hour of pain;
Calm in my poverty or wealth,
    Calm in my loss or gain."—Bonar.

It had been arranged that Queenie should return to Carlisle for a day or two before entering on her new duties, leaving Emmie behind her at Church-Stile House. She must bid good-bye to her old friend, Caleb Runciman, and redeem her promise of seeing Mr. Calcott again. A brisk correspondence had been kept up between her and Caleb. The old man had expressed himself well satisfied with her plans, though many and sore were his regrets at losing her and his little favorite. "I told Mr. Calcott your intention, as you wished me, my dear," wrote Caleb, in his cramped neat hand. "He received the news in silence, but after a while he muttered, 'Well, well, it will do for a time; but it seems strange. Frank Marriott's daughter a village school-mistress!' and then he asked, querulously, if the girl were coming back? I think he misses you, my dear, though not more than I do; and what we shall do without you and the precious lamb is more than Molly and I can tell; but she has got your old room ready, and has baked a first-rate cake; and there's a warm welcome waiting for you, Miss Queenie, my dear; so no more at present, from your attached friend, Caleb Runciman."

The day after their return from Karlsmere, as they were sitting at breakfast, Garth looked up rather suddenly from the paper he was reading. "Miss Marriott, I am afraid you have lost a friend," he said, rather abruptly. "Andrew Calcott of Carlisle is dead!"

"Uncle Andrew! Oh, poor Uncle Andrew!" exclaimed Emmie, mournfully; but Queenie only started and turned pale.

"By some mistake the announcement has been postponed; he died three days ago. Ah, there is the postman coming up the walk. I should not be surprised if you have another letter from your old friend, Mr. Runciman."

Garth was right; but Queenie rose from the table and carried off the letter to read in the privacy of her own room. Cathy found her quietly crying over it when she went up some time afterwards.

"I did not think I should have minded it so much," she said, drying her eyes as Cathy entered; "but it seems so dreadful, his dying alone in the night, with no one near him. Perhaps Caleb was right, and he may have passed away in his sleep."

"Is that all they know about it?"

"Yes; they just went up in the morning, and found him lying there quite cold, with a smile on his face. He never would let any one stay in his room; that was one of his peculiarities. Caleb knew this would happen one night, but he seems dreadfully down about it. I am to go over next Thursday, you know, and he says this need not make any difference."

"You will be sorry that you have not seen him again."

"Yes; it is that that troubles me. I cannot bear to think that I have been enjoying myself all this time, and that he has been missing me. I remember now, that he seemed to think that it was good-bye."

Queenie's bright spirits were quenched for the remainder of the day. Her tender heart was grieved by the thought of the lonely death-bed. Garth found her looking still pale and depressed when he came back from the works. To distract her thoughts he took her and Cathy for a long country walk, from which they did not return until late in the evening. He had never been more gentle to her, Queenie remembered afterwards. He and Cathy had restrained their high spirits, and had only talked to her of what roused and interested her—of the school, the cottage, and plans for her new life. Walking back in the moonlight, their conversation flowed in graver channels. He and Cathy talked of their mother; and Queenie for the first time had a clue to the passionate devotion with which Garth regarded her memory.

She bade good-bye to her friends rather sadly when the day arrived for her to go back to Carlisle. She was only to be absent three days, and yet the separation caused her an effort. Why had the place grown so suddenly dear to her that it cost her a pang only to turn her back upon it?

Garth and Cathy accompanied her to the station.

"I do not know what I shall do without you, Queen," exclaimed her friend, disconsolately.

"We shall all miss you, Miss Marriott," echoed Garth, brightly. "Take care of yourself, and come back to us as soon as you can." And the pleasant words lingered long in her memory.

But, in spite of herself, her journey was a dull one. Mr. Calcott's sudden death still oppressed her. The day was sultry and sunless; heavy thunder-clouds brooded on the edge of the horizon; the air was surcharged with electricity; a storm seemed impending. It broke upon her long before she arrived at her destination. Queenie sat quietly in her place and watched the fierce play of the elements, half fascinated and half bewildered; a vague excitement seemed roused in her, a strange disturbance and sense of change oppressed her.

"I am just the same, and yet I feel different," she said to herself; "I suppose this storm excites me. I wonder if he meant it when he said he would miss me, or if it was only his way; he must always say something pleasant. I wonder if he would be very sorry if I were never to come back. Would it make any difference to him, really? They are all going to the Abbey this evening; how I wish I could be with them; but this is unkind to my poor Caleb. I am ashamed to think how selfish I am getting. I will try not to think of Hepshaw or Church-Stile House until Monday;" but, in spite of her good resolutions, her thoughts had travelled there again before another half-hour had elapsed.

The storm had ceased, but the rain was still pouring steadily down as Queenie plodded through the streets of Carlisle. She had to pass Granite Lodge on her way to Caleb's; but the sight of the grim portico made her shiver and avert her eyes. She gave quite a sigh of relief when she found herself in the dark entry of Caleb's house, with Molly's bright face smiling at her.

"Ay, the master's in there. Master, master, here's our young lady come an hour before her time," vociferated the good woman, dropping curtseys profusely in her excitement.

"Why, Molly, my dear creature, you need, not to be so ceremonious," exclaimed Queenie, pressing the hard hand between both her own; "it is only Miss Queenie; surely you have not forgotten me in this little time."

"No; but I must not forget my manners to my betters," returned Molly, coloring and dropping another hurried curtsey. "But go in there, my dear young lady. I think he is a bit dazed with his sleep, or something, or he would have come out to meet you."

Caleb rose from his chair rather feebly as she entered; his blue eyes had certainly a dazed look in them.

"Miss Queenie, my dear," he said, rather tremulously, "I am not so young as I was, and things sadly upset me. Molly is a good creature, but her intelligence is limited. I have wanted you badly the last few days, you and the precious lamb."

"Dear Caleb, if I had known that I would certainly have brought Emmie."

"No, no need; it is only an old man's whim; she is better off where she is. I have been trying to write to you the last day or two, Miss Queenie, my dear; but I got so flurried and made such poor beginnings that I was obliged to give it up, not being so young as I was, my dear, and soon upset by what's over and gone."

"I am afraid it has been a sad shock to you," observed Queenie, gravely. Caleb's wrinkled hand was quite cold and shaking, and Queenie rubbed it in a soft, caressing way as she spoke.

"You might have knocked me over with a feather," returned Caleb, reverting to his favorite expression. "It was not so much the shock of his death, though I have worked for him, boy and man, just fifty-five years last Michaelmas, nor the manner of it, for he slept away as peaceful as an infant; it is what came after, the mysterious dealings of Providence; but I must have my pipe, saving your presence, Miss Queenie dear. And you must have something to eat and drink to keep up your strength; and then you and me will have a deal of comfortable talk together, when we are both more composed;" and Queenie, seeing how agitated the old man really was, yielded with her usual sweet unselfishness, and went up to the little room, with the big brown bed, where she and Emmie had slept, with the window overlooking the stone-mason's yard, with the great slabs and blocks of stone.

The rain was dripping on the sheds and the white, unfinished monuments. Queenie stood for a long time listening to the soft patter on the leaves, until she found she was in the Warstdale granite-quarry, sitting amongst the grey stones, with Garth stretched on his plaid beside her, and roused herself with difficulty.

She went down after that, and poured out tea for herself from the little black teapot, and did justice to Molly's cake; and looked at the grate, wreathed with sprays of silvery honesty, and wondered if the rain had cleared up at Hepshaw, and whether they would go after all to the abbey; and then scolded herself for being so stupid and abstracted.

Caleb was rather quiet also, and sat regarding her solemnly through his puffs of smoke; now and then he seemed about to speak, but checked himself. He cleared his throat rather nervously when Queenie had ended her little repast and took a seat beside him.

"Now, dear old friend, I am refreshed, and we can have our talk," she said cheerfully. "Fill your pipe again; you never talk so well without it, you know. I want to tell you about Emmie, and the cottage, and the school, and the dear people at Church-Stile House; if I do not begin now I shall never get through it all in three days."

"Ay, ay; but there is something we must talk about before that; the cottage and the school were all very well once, but now things are different. As I said before, I am not so young as I was, Miss Queenie, dear; and you will not flurry me and make me nervous if I tell you a few of my thoughts?"

"Now, Caleb, you are not going to speak against my little scheme," cried the girl reproachfully. "It is all settled; nothing in the world could shake my purpose. I would rather be the school-mistress at Hepshaw, and earn my daily bread, than be the richest lady in Carlisle."

The old man adjusted his pipe with trembling fingers.

"Do you hear me, Caleb?"

"I hear you, Miss Queenie, my dear."

"Do you believe what I say? When I lie down at night I am so happy that I cannot sleep; I can hardly say my prayers sometimes, I want to sing them instead. Think of Emmie and I having our wish, and living in our own cottage! Will you come and see us there, dear, you and Molly?"

"No, Miss Queenie; I hope not. Listen to me, my dearie. There, my pipe is out, but never mind; somehow I can't smoke it to-night. Supposing you were rich, very rich, Miss Queenie, how about the cottage then?"

"Suppose that you were talking nonsense," she returned, laughing. "Do you know, I have learnt to make bread, and to cook, and to mend, and to iron, and to do all sorts of useful things. I mean my cottage to be the cleanest and the prettiest in Hepshaw. There is quite a large garden, only it was grown over with rank grass; but Captain Fawcett and Mr. Clayton have had it dug up. We mean to plant beans and peas, and all kinds of vegetables; but I shall have roses and mignonette under the windows."

"My dear, you must listen to me; never mind about the cottage just now. What did I say to you, dearie, about the mysterious dealings of Providence? Things happen sometimes that we never expected. What were you saying, my dearie, about being the richest woman in Carlisle?"

The old man's manner was so singular that the girl gazed at him in astonishment.

"Supposing something strange had happened, Miss Queenie," he continued nervously, "and you were to wake up one morning—this morning, say—and find yourself a rich lady, what should you say to that, my dearie?"

"I—I should be sorry, I think. Oh, Caleb! what do you mean?" she implored, roused at last by his agitation.

"No, no; don't say that, Miss Queenie, dear; it is tempting the good Providence that has turned his hard heart, and made him restore to you and that precious lamb fourfold of what was due to you. 'I was sick and ye visited me.' There it is, my dearie; and the blessing has come back to you again when you least expected it."

"Caleb, I cannot bear this," exclaimed the girl, turning suddenly very pale. "Do you see how you are trying me? Is there something I ought to know, and that you are trying to prepare me to hear, something about Mr. Calcott and Emmie?"

"Nay, nay; not about Emmie."

"About myself, then?"

"Ay," patting her hand tremulously, "about yourself, Miss Queenie, dear. You have woke up this morning a rich woman. Mr. Calcott has left you all his money."

"Oh, Caleb! no,"—Queenie's voice rose almost to a cry—"not to me, surely, surely! You must mean Emmie! Emmie is his niece, not I; I am nothing to him."

"Ah! but you ministered to him like a daughter; you were not turned from him by his hard words."

"But I was cruel, and left him alone in his sufferings; I never came back even to wish him good-bye. I have been thinking of myself, not him, all this time. Caleb, I can never take his money, it belongs to Emmie; I can never defraud Emmie," and Queenie leaned her head on her old friend's shoulder and burst into a perfect passion of tears.

Caleb stroked her hair gently. "Hush, my pretty; there is something like five thousand a year, all in safe investments. But the lawyer will be round here presently, and tell you all about that. He has left me an annuity of three hundred a-year in return for fifty-five years of faithful services. Think of that, Miss Queenie! You might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard that."

"Yes; but Emmie," she sobbed. "I cannot defraud Emmie."

"Bless you, Miss Queenie, dear, you are not defrauding the poor innocent. If the money had not come to you it would have gone to some hospital. Have you forgotten his vow, that his sister and her child should never inherit a farthing of his money? No doubt he repents these rash words of his, and he means you to take care of Emmie, and give her the benefit of his wealth."

"Are you sure, quite sure, that he meant that?"

"Positive and certain, my pretty."

"And you do not think I shall be wrong to accept his bounty for her sake?"

"Surely not. It would be quarrelling with the dispensations of Providence."

"I feel so oppressed," cried the girl, laying her hand on her bosom; "there is a weight here as though I were sorry and not glad. If he had given me a little I could have taken it and have been thankful, but so much crushes me somehow."

"How about the cottage now?" interposed Caleb jocosely, trying to rally her, but she stopped him with quivering lips.

"Hush! I can bear no more, not to-night. Did you say the lawyer was coming? Let me go away for a little, I feel sick and giddy, and I want to understand it all."

"Then run away, my dearie, and I will send for you when he comes; there's a bit of a letter or a paper that he wants to give you."

"She is as cold and white as a bit of marble; I wonder what's come to the pretty creature," he muttered when he was left alone. "She is not heart glad, I can see that. She has a scared look in her face, as though she has lost her foothold somehow."

Queenie had regained her calmness by the time the lawyer made his appearance. She listened to his explanations and instructions silently but with composure, only her compressed lips and closely-locked hands showed the intense strain of feeling under the quietude of her manner.

"Five thousand a-year; you are sure that is the sum mentioned," she said, when he paused once.

"Yes; house property, and investments in the funds, consols, and various securities will yield about that sum, I should think. The furniture is to be sold, but the plate and valuables are yours. There are various legacies to old servants, and a pension or two; but to-morrow we can go over particularly into details."

"And it is all for my own use and benefit?"

"Exactly so; the terms of the will are binding. There is to be no partition or deed of gift to any other person during your lifetime. There is a small sealed paper addressed to you, which Mr. Calcott gave into my hand, and which you had better read at once, it may throw some light on his conduct."

Queenie took the paper. It was written in a feeble, almost illegible, hand, and was not easy to decipher; the beginning was strangely abrupt.

"I have told you that I have no niece; I must wash my hands of the child. When a man has taken an oath upon his lips it is too late then to talk of repentance. But I can trust her to Frank Marriott's daughter. Mind, girl; I say that I can trust you, and a dead man's trust is sacred.

"My money is my own to do with it as I will. I have no relation in the world, for the child is nothing to me. Do you remember telling me that you were sorry for me, that no one would shed tears over my grave? I can recal your words now. 'It must be so dreadful not to want love, to be able to do without it.' Child, child, what possessed you to say such words to me?

"Well, you are wrong; Caleb will be sorry for me, the poor fellow has a faithful heart; and, if I mistake not, you will shed a tear or two when you hear that I have gone. Do you recollect how you reproached me the first time I saw you? 'Though you were dying of hunger,' you said, 'you would not crave my bounty.' You told me that I had given you hard, sneering words; that I was refusing to help you in your bitter strait; that I was leaving you, young and single-handed, to fight in this cruel world. Girl, those were hard words to haunt a dying man's pillow. Well, well, I am dying, and I know you have forgiven me, though I have a wish to hear you say it once; but I know you forgave me when you gave me that kiss. Ah, I have not forgotten that. I am leaving you all my money, think of that! to Frank Marriott's daughter! It has been a curse to me, mind you turn it into a blessing. Remember, I trust the child to you. Perhaps in the many mansions,—but there, Emily was a saint, and I am a poor miserable sinner. The child is like her mother, so take care of her. If Emily and I meet—but there's no knowing—I should like to tell her the child has suffered no wrong,—the many mansions—there may be room for Andrew Calcott; who knows? There, God bless you; God bless you both. I am getting drowsy and must sleep;" but here the letter broke off abruptly.

"I found him exhausted with the effect of writing," observed Mr. Duncan, turning his head away that he might not see Queenie's agitated face; "he made me seal it up in his presence, and then begged us all to leave him. In the morning the nurse found him lying as you have heard, with his face to the light; he had been dead some hours. I was quite struck with the change in him when I went up; he looked years younger. There was a smile on his face, and all the lines seemed smoothed away. He had been a great sufferer all his life, and that made him something of a misanthrope."

"Yes, yes; no one understood him, and even I was hard upon him," returned Queenie, bursting into tears again. Ah, why had she forgotten him? Did she know that the dead hand would have been stretched out to her with a blessing in it for her and the child?

CHAPTER VI.

QUEENIE'S WHIM.

"She knew not what was lacking,
    Knew not until it came;
She gave it the name of friendship,
    But that was not its name.
And the truth could not be hidden
    From her own clear-seeing eyes.
When the name her own heart whispered,
    And whispered too, 'Be wise.'"—Isa Craig-Knox.

The storm had wholly ceased, but a few snatches of summer lightning still played on the ragged edge of the clouds when Queenie at last bade her old friend good night, and went up to her little room, to think over the bewildering events of the day. The air was still oppressed and sultry. The white slabs of stone in the mason's yard shone dimly in the darkness; the wet ivy scattered a shower of drops on the girl's uncovered head as she leaned out, as though gasping for air. A faint perfume of saturated roses and drowned lavender pervaded everything. A blue-grey moth trailed his draggled wings feebly across the sill. The dark-scented air seemed full of mystery and silence.

Queenie leant her head upon her hands and tried to think, but in reality she was too numb and bewildered. "What has happened to me? why am I more sorry than glad about it all? how have I deserved it? and what am I to do with all this wealth that has come to me?" she kept saying to herself over and over again.

A few hundreds would have sent her back rejoicing and triumphant. A modest competency, an assured income, would have lightened the whole burthen of her responsibility, and made her young heart happy; but all this wealth! It would not be too much to say that for the time she was simply crushed by it.

"Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient to me." Queenie, as well as Garth Clayton, had ever loved that prayer of the wise Agar. If she could have chosen her lot in life it would have been in some such words as these. To have sufficient, but not too much, was the very sum and substance of her wishes.

Now a strange sense of trouble and loss oppressed her. Her plans for the future were strangely disturbed; a moral earthquake had shattered her airy castles, and she was looking mournfully at their wrecks. Her cottage and her work, must she relinquish both? Was Emmie's childish notion of happiness to be frustrated also? "I would rather be the school-mistress at Hepshaw than the richest lady in Carlisle." How passionately she had said those words, and yet she had meant them from her very heart.

And then, with a sudden sharp pang, she remembered that it was one of Garth Clayton's peculiarities to dislike riches for women. A certain conversation that had passed between him and his brother occurred to her with painful vividness.

One of Garth's school friends had just married a wealthy widow.

"What a lucky fellow young Musgrave is," Ted had grumbled. "He was never a fellow for work, and now he need not do another stroke of business for the remainder of his life. See if I don't pick up a rich wife for myself one of these days."

"What! you would consent to live on your wife's money!" returned his brother, with a face of disgust. "You would help yourself out of her pocket, in order that you might eat the bread of idleness! a nice manly notion that."

"Why should a man be bound to work for both if he does not choose?" replied Ted, sulkily. "I thought this was an enlightened age, and that the rights of women would entitle them to the honor of helping to be bread-winner. Don't pull such a long face, Garth; I wouldn't marry any girl if she were weighted in gold unless I liked her, only I mean to invest my affections prudently."

"I don't think I could ever fall in love with a rich woman," was Garth's emphatic answer. "I believe I am peculiar on this point. If I ever marry, my wife must be dependent on me, not I on her. Why one of the chief pleasures of matrimony must be to bully your wife sometimes, just to see how nicely she takes it; but if she has all the pounds, shillings, and pence on her side, she might turn round and bully me."

"Garth, how can you be so absurd," broke in Cathy.

"You see, a husband ought to have all the power," he continued, in his droll, half-serious way. "The threat of withholding a new dress would reduce any woman to a state of abject submission. I should like my wife, provided I ever have one, which is not likely if you are going to be so extravagant, Cathy, I should like her to coax and wheedle me out of all her ribbons and fineries; but if she could demand a cheque for a new silk dress whenever she liked-'I should thank you to remember, Mr. Clayton, who it is who brought you all that money'—why what a fool I should feel."

"Langley, do hear him; when he pays all our bills without looking at a single item."

"Ah, but you are not my wife, my dear, that makes all the difference. The immaculate creature whom I honor with my regard must be made aware that she is marrying a man with a hobby. Why," finished Garth, with a sudden glow of strong feeling on his face, "it must destroy the very nature and meaning of things not to feel that your wife is dependent upon you for everything."

How well Queenie recalled this conversation. How truly it spoke of the nature of the man—his sturdy independence, his pride and love of authority, and also of the tenderness that loved to shield and protect.

Garth always cared most for what was dependent on him; feminine self-reliance seldom pleased him. Queenie's independence was simply owing to circumstances; she was strong-minded and yet not self-asserting; her force of will seldom came to the surface. In every-day life, amongst those who loved her, she was singularly submissive and yielding, and from the first she had placed implicit trust in Garth Clayton, in a way that had touched him to the heart.

A bitter reflection crossed her mind now—Garth was good to her; he had in a way taken her under his protection, and was showing her much brotherly kindness; would he not lose interest in her now she was rich? Queenie remembered how coldly he had talked of a certain school friend of Langley's, a young heiress, who had lately settled some miles from Hepshaw. Langley had once or twice proposed driving over to see her, but Garth had always negatived the notion.

"Caroline is such a good creature," Langley would say; "she is not pretty, but thoroughly nice, and so bright."

"Then go over, by all means, and see her, my dear; but I must ask you to excuse me from accompanying you." And when Cathy had pressed him, he had seemed put out, and had muttered, "that he had something better to do than to run after girls all day, especially when they were heiresses."

Queenie thought of all this with a certain dismay and sinking of heart. She was an heiress herself, and he disliked heiresses. Perhaps, when he knew that, his manner would change; it would become cooler and more distant. How could she ever bring herself to bear that?

The thought of the cottage became every moment dearer. He was furnishing it for her now. He and Langley had been up to the sale, but the whole business had been kept a secret from her.

"You know you are to leave all these details to me," he had remarked casually on his return. Queenie was quite aware how often Cathy and Langley were closeted with him in his study. Cathy would come out from these interviews very round-eyed and mysterious, and with an air of importance that amused Queenie. She had a notion once or twice that the pile of new towels and dusters in Langley's basket were not for the use of the inhabitants of Church-Stile House; but she dared not inquire the truth.

Was this pleasant surprise they were planning to be in vain? And then again, was she not bound by her work? The Vicar and church-wardens had elected her as mistress of the Hepshaw girls' school, was she not bound to fulfil her duties until the vacancy could be filled?

Queenie's young head and heart were in a whirl; regret, pride, pleasure, and yet pain, each in turn predominated. "What shall I do? what ought I to do?" she kept repeating; and then all at once a look of amusement, almost of glee, crossed her face. "I have it! but will it do? will it be right? Oh! what will Caleb say? And then if he, if Mr. Clayton, found out would he not think it childish and whimsical to the last degree; but I can't help it, I must have breathing time and a little happiness first."

When Queenie had reached this conclusion she laid her head on the pillow, but it was not easy to still her throbbing pulses; for almost the first time in her healthy young life sleep entirely forsook her. The morning sun was flooding the little chamber, the birds were twittering and pluming themselves amongst the ivy, before a brief forgetfulness sealed her senses; a confused dream followed. She thought she was standing on a lonely sand-bank, when suddenly it changed to shifting gold beneath her feet; she felt herself sinking, and cried out to some one to save her; and woke to find Molly's homely face bending over her, with a great bunch of roses in her hand.

"I have been out to the market, and I bought these of a poor decent-looking body. The master's been down nigh upon an hour, but he would not let me disturb you before this," cried Molly, dropping one of her old-fashioned curtseys.

Queenie laid her hot cheek against the cool crimson hearts of the roses. "Oh, Molly! you dear, kind creature, how delicious; and how thankful I am that you woke me. Do you know, you have saved me from a horrible death. I was drowning in gold, sinking in it; it was all hard and glittering, and seemed to strangle me. How sweet the roses and the sunshine are after it. Oh!" with a little whimsical shudder, "I wish I had not woke up such a very rich woman, Molly."

Queenie was in a curious mood all breakfast-time; she would not talk sensibly, and she would persist in turning a deaf ear to all Caleb's scraps of advice and wisdom. When their frugal meal was finished she dragged Caleb's great elbow-chair to the open window, and placed herself on the low window-seat beside it. "Now, Caleb, I want to talk to you," she said coaxingly.

"But, Miss Queenie dear, it is getting late, and you have over-slept yourself, you know; and there is the office, and Mr. Duncan; he will be expecting us."

"What is the good of being an heiress if one cannot do as one likes, and keep lawyers and those sort of people waiting?" returned Queenie, coolly. "I am a different person to what I was yesterday; so different that I have to pinch myself now and then to be sure that I am really Queenie Marriott, and not some one else. I feel like that man in the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,' only I forget his name."

"But, my dear young lady," pleaded Caleb, helplessly.

"Now, Caleb, you are to be good, and listen to me. I am quite serious, quite in earnest; and if you give me any trouble I shall just take the next train back to Hepshaw, and leave you and Mr. Duncan to do as you like with all this dreadful money."

Caleb held up his hands in amazement. "Dreadful money!" he gasped.

"It is very rude to repeat people's words," replied the girl, with a little stamp of her foot. "It is dreadful to me; it has been suffocating and strangling me all night. I can't be rich all at once like this, it takes my breath away. Do you hear me, Caleb? I don't mean to be rich for another twelvemonth."

"Aye, what? I am not as young as I was, and maybe I am a little hard of hearing, my dearie;" and Caleb looked at her rather vacantly.

"Listen to me, dear," she repeated, more gently, laying her hand on his sleeve to enforce attention. "I have been awake all night; the thought of all this money coming to me unearned and undeserved oppressed and made me quite unhappy. I do not want it," hesitating, and reddening slightly over her words; "it has interfered with my plans, and turned everything in my life topsy-turvy. It is not that I am ungrateful, or that I may not want it some day, but I must be free, free to do my own work, free to live my own humble life, free as a gipsy or Bohemian, for one twelvemonth longer."

"Miss Queenie, dear, I call this tempting Providence," began the old man, solemnly. "These riches are yours, and you must use them. Why bless your dear heart, they are earned and deserved over and over again, and every one who knows you will say so."

"These riches are mine, and I suppose I ought to say thank God for them, and I think I do in my heart, for Emmie's sake," she replied, solemnly; "but, Caleb, I am determined for another year I will not use them. I will take a little, perhaps; you and Mr. Duncan shall give me enough for present use; but for a year I will be the school-mistress at Hepshaw, and nothing else."

"The school-mistress at Hepshaw!—five thousand a-year! Heaven bless us and save us! I am getting dazed, Miss Queenie. The school-mistress at Hepshaw!"

"Yes; I am bound to my work, and I do not mean to shrink from it. I mean to hide up my riches, to keep them a grand secret even from Emmie; to live in my little cottage among my kind friends, and work and be free and happy for a whole year. Only one year, Caleb," caressing him, for tears of disappointment stood in his eyes; "only one little year out of my whole life."

"And what then, Miss Queenie?"

"Then I must be brave, and buckle on my golden harness. Don't be afraid, dear old friend, I do not mean to shrink from my responsibilities; I would not if they were really and truly to crush me," with a smile, followed by a sigh. "I only want to have time to get used to the thought. I must teach and fit myself to be a rich woman before I am one. Now you must promise to keep my secret, you and Molly, and Mr. Duncan. No one knows me; no one need concern themselves about my business. I was Miss Titheridge's under-teacher, and now I am the school-mistress at Hepshaw."

"But, Miss Queenie—"

"Caleb, you must promise me. Hush," kneeling down before him, and bringing her bright face on a level with his; "I will not hear another word. It is a whim, dear; just Queenie's whim, and that is all."

"I saw it was a bit of girl's nonsense, but I couldn't gainsay her coaxing ways," as Caleb said to Mr. Duncan afterwards. "She always had a will of her own, had Miss Queenie; but in the main she is right and sensible, and has an old head on young shoulders. It is just a sort of play-acting. She has set her heart on this school and cottage of hers, and nothing will do for her but to go back to it."

"Marie Antoinette at Trianon! I have a notion that there is more in this than meets the eye," argued the lawyer shrewdly, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Well, well, Mr. Runciman, it is none of our business; the girl is absolute mistress of her own fortune. Morton and I are only joint executors, and bound to see things are right and fair; she might spend it all on that charity school of hers, and we should have no right to interfere."

"But, all the same, it is a bit of pure nonsense," returned Caleb, distrustful for the first time of his favorite's good sense.

"Don't trouble your head about it, Runciman," was the good-humored reply; "the best of women have their crazy fits sometimes. Mark my words, before six months are over she will have changed her tune. Either the truth will have leaked out, or she will be impatient to try her heiress-ship; there's no knowing what will happen. She has asked me for fifty pounds; in another month it will be a hundred. Bless you, when her fingers have got used to the feel of bank-notes they will slip through them pretty readily."

Queenie had got her way, but she found it somewhat difficult to pacify her old friend. She had just been out to buy some simple unexpensive mourning for herself and Emmie, and was standing by the table fingering the stuffs as he entered.

"Silk and crape, that is what you ought to have worn, Miss Queenie," grumbled Caleb, with a dissatisfied face; but the girl only shook her head.

"Crape is such dusty, inconvenient wear in the country, and Emmie is such a child," she returned; "these simple stuffs will be far more suitable. Fancy my wearing silk dresses in that little old barn of a school-room, or in our tiny cottage!"

"This is all of a piece with your fantastical scheme. Cambric! why Molly could wear that," continued Caleb, with the same rueful visage. "Dear, dear, what a tempting of Providence, hoarding and hiding in this miserly way, Miss Queenie. Why, as I said to Molly, our young lady can take one of those big new houses they are building near us, and have her carriage and her riding-horse; and no doubt she will visit at the Deanery, and at Rose Castle, and be an out-and-out fine lady; but I never thought it would come to this," dropping his hands on his knees in a low-spirited way.

Queenie laughed, but she could not help an involuntary shudder at Caleb's picture of her future greatness. A house at Carlisle, a carriage, even prospective visits at the Deanery would be poor compensation if she must resign her friends at Hepshaw. Would not her fortune be productive of greater happiness, of more enduring pleasures than those Caleb offered her? "If I must be rich I will be rich in my own way," thought the girl, a little rebelliously; and all through that day and the next a thousand schemes and fancies flitted before her, as unsubstantial and impracticable as such airy castles generally prove themselves.

A new and perfectly strange feeling of timidity came over her as the time drew near for her return to Hepshaw. Some complicated business arrangements had compelled her to lengthen her three days' visit into a week. Cathy had written to scold her for her delay; and Queenie had to ransack her brain to discover plausible excuses.

"Garth has just come in from the works, and he bids me tell you that you must positively return on Saturday evening, as the school is to re-open on Monday," wrote Cathy. "They are getting on so nicely at the cottage that it will be quite ready for occupation in another ten days; and Langley has discovered a little jewel of a maid, who will just exactly suit you. Do you remember her—Patience Atkinson, the rosy-faced girl who lived next door to the wheelwright's?"

Cathy's letter, with its girlish overflow of spirits and affectionate nonsense, caused Queenie a few moments' uneasiness. "I shall seem to be what I am not. I wonder if I am doing wrong to deceive them," she thought, with a sudden throb of startled honesty. "No; after all, it is my own business. I may spend, or hoard, or fling it all to the winds, and no one would have a right to complain of me."

But, nevertheless, there was a guilty consciousness that made her for the first time shrink from meeting Garth Clayton's eye.

It was evening when she arrived at Church-Stile House. Ted had met her at the station; Cathy and Emmie had come flying down the lane to meet them, and had greeted her rapturously. As she came across the moat, with the girls hanging on either arm, she saw Garth at the hall-door watching them.

"Why, what a truant you have been," he said, in his pleasant way. "We thought our new school-mistress had given us the slip. Cathy had got all sorts of notions in her head. One was that Mr. Calcott had left you a legacy. She narrated wonderful dreams to us one morning, of how you had a great fortune, and were going to marry a marquis."

"Cathy is an inveterate dreamer," returned Queenie, avoiding Mr. Clayton's eyes as she spoke. How constrained her voice was; she was hot and cold in a moment. How strange that he should address her in this manner. Was it a presentiment or something?

"You are pale and tired; your visit to Carlisle has not agreed with you," he returned, following her into the drawing-room, where Langley was waiting for them. "It has brought back unpleasant memories, eh?" with an abruptness, not unkindly, but which made Queenie still more nervous.

"Yes; and I believe I am tired," she stammered. "Mr. Runciman was very good to me, but he found it hard to let me go; that worried me rather; that and other things,"—the truth reluctantly drawn from her by those clear grey eyes.

"I saw that at once," was the prompt reply, and then he left her to his sister's care. But later on in the evening, when she was rested and refreshed, he returned again to the charge.

"I suppose Mr. Calcott has left a great deal of money? I did not read in the paper at what amount his property was valued, but I suppose it was pretty considerable."

"Yes; I believe so," returned Queenie faintly. They were sitting round the open window; the lamp on the centre table cast only a dim light on their faces. Langley had been playing to them, and just now the music had ceased.

"Have you any idea how he has disposed of it? Every one thought there would be a new wing added to the hospital. He had not a relative in the world belonging to him, except your little sister Emmie."

"No; and he has left nothing to Emmie," she returned, thankful that in this she could speak the whole truth. "Nearly all of it has gone to a stranger, a mere connection. Caleb has an annuity; and I—he has not forgotten me," shielding her face still more in the darkness. "Emmie and I will have enough to live on now. I shall not need to give French lessons, or to add in any way to my salary," blurting out the lesson she had prepared herself to say.

"Will you have enough without the school?" persisted Garth curiously. His keen ear had detected a certain trembling in Queenie's voice. Her agitation had not escaped him, and he was trying in his straightforward way to find out why she was not like herself to-night. "Do you mean that your salary is no longer of importance to you?"

"It is not all that we shall have to live on, that is what I meant to say," she returned hurriedly. "I shall not have to stint, or be afraid of how we shall make ends meet; there will be enough. Emmie will have little comforts; that is all I care for."

"I am very glad," returned Garth, gravely; but he questioned her no more. Possibly he expected her further confidence, and was a little disappointed when she withheld it. Neither on that evening nor on any further occasion did he revert to the subject; and Queenie, who began to feel her position an embarrassing one, was glad that the whole matter should be consigned to oblivion.

Cathy's curiosity was much more easily satisfied.

"There, my dream has come true," she said, embracing her ecstatically when they had retired to their own rooms. "Why did you not write and tell me about it? Will you have much, Queen—a whole hundred a-year?"

"Yes; I shall have a hundred a-year," returned Queenie, trying not to laugh. When she was away from those keen grey eyes she felt something like a renewal of courage. Her spirits returned; the whole thing appeared to her in the light of a good joke. "When it comes out, and he asks me the reason of this mystery, I know what I shall tell him," she thought, when Cathy had withdrawn, well pleased, and she was left alone for the night. "I shall tell him that I wanted to remain poor a little longer, and to be liked for myself; that I feared losing the school and the cottage; that it was an innocent whim that could do no one harm, and that would give me a great deal of pleasure," and when she had settled this point comfortably with herself she composed herself to sleep.

CHAPTER VII.

WEAVING IN THE SUNSET.

"Where waitest thou,
Lady I am to love? Thou comest not;
Thou knowest of my sad and lonely lot;
I look'd for thee ere now!

"It is the May!
And each sweet sister soul hath found its brother;
Only we two seek fondly each the other,
And, seeking, still delay."—Arnold.

Queenie entered upon her new duties with an ardor that would have surprised any one acquainted with the real state of the case. If a feeling of amusement sometimes crossed her mind at the incongruity between her present position and the heiress-ship she had refused to take up, it only added zest and flavor to her work.

Queenie Marriott was one of those women whose zeal was according to knowledge. She loved her work for its own sake. In her eyes it was invested with a meaning and dignity that redeemed it from its so-called drudgery, and placed it high in the ranks of honorable labor.

Her youthful enthusiasm anointed everything with a sort of moral chrism. The little barnlike structure, with its half-moon windows, and rough forms and desks, was a species of temple wherein she enshrined all manner of precious things. When she looked round on the children's faces they seemed to appeal to her with all sorts of involved meanings, demanding patience and sympathy, and all such goodly things at her hands.

Queenie knew the royal road to learning lay through her pupils' hearts. She must love them, and teach them to love her; obedience would follow as a matter of course. All children were dear to her, for Emmie's sake. Now and then, through the buzz of voices droning through the repetition lessons, there would come before her a certain vivid memory, stabbing her with sudden, sharp pain—a dark garret haunted with shadows; a pale-faced child crouched on the window-seat, wrapped in an old red shawl, with great blue eyes dim with fear; of a little figure stricken down, and lying amongst them as one that was dead; of a sick-room where a child-martyr went down into the very valley of the shadow of death, where a fight so long and terrible was carried on that the weary watcher only covered her face with her trembling hands, and prayed for merciful death to come as a deliverer.

And so for the sake of that childish sufferer, and that great miracle of healing—Queenie clave with very love to all children. There was one child, Prissy Atkinson, the sister of the very Patience whom Langley had selected as her little maid, to whom she showed especial kindness.

She was the plainest and most uninteresting girl in the school, slightly lame, and with an odd drawl and lisp in her voice, ungainly in manner, and with no particular cleverness to recommend her; yet, by some undefinable feeling, Queenie singled out this child as an object of her interest.

The little rough head often felt a tender hand laid upon it. The gentlest voice Prissy had ever heard would accost her now and then; difficult tasks were smoothed by magic; pleasant smiles would reward her diligence. When her head once ached, a resting-place was found for it on teacher's own shoulder. "Oh, teacher! I love you! I do love you so!" cried Prissy, out of the fulness of her heart, throwing her thin arms round Queenie's neck. Was the warm kiss that answered her given in reality to Prissy or to Emmie?

Emmie would come sometimes and look in at the open door, with round blue eyes, very wide open with pleasure and astonishment. The little girls would look up from their tasks and nod at her; the sisters would interchange fond, satisfied looks. Sometimes a tall figure would pause for a moment behind Emmie; then a strong arm would draw the child from the threshold.

"Naughty Emmie! infringing the rules in school-hours. Do you know I shall have you put on a form as an example for disobedient children? Why has Langley allowed you to play truant in this way?"

"I ran away from Cathy, down the lane," Emmie answered, clinging to his hand, and looking up coaxingly into his face. "I do love to see Queenie amongst them all. Did she not look nice, Mr. Clayton?"

"Very nice," returned Garth absently. In reality he was pondering over the little scene he had just witnessed. "It would make a picture," he thought; "the slim, girlish figure in the black dress, the bent brown head, the children's eager faces, the bowl of white narcissus on the desk, the sunshine streaming in at the open door." She had looked up at him, and smiled as he stood there, such a bright smile; somehow it haunted him. "What a brave, true heart it is," he thought, as he went down the village with Emmie still clinging closely to him. "She looked as proud of herself and her work as ever Princess Ida amongst her golden-haired girl-graduates. That is what I like about her; she is superior to the nonsense and conventionality of the present day. Most women would have felt themselves humiliated in her position; but she seems to have grasped the real meaning of her work and purpose. If it were not selfish I could find it in my heart to be half sorry about that legacy. I wanted to see if the bare crust she talked about would have set her teeth on edge in the eating. I had a notion that it would have been pleasant to see her working up her way alone; and then one would have a faint chance of helping her. She is beyond this now; Cathy says he has left her a hundred a-year. Why, with her salary and what she has they will have close upon two hundred. They will do capitally on that; and, after all, one would not like to see them pinch. Well, it is none of my business," finished Garth, rousing himself from his cogitations. "I wish Dora could have seen her just now, giving that object lesson; I fancy she would have changed her opinion altogether. How strange it was that they did not seem to take to each other; but then women are strange creatures, and difficult to understand."

It was an odd coincidence that made Garth think of Dora; for at that moment her little pony-carriage turned the corner of the lane. She waved her whip and her little gloved hand as she saw him; and Garth crossed the road with a slight flush on his face.

"I wanted to see Miss Marriott. I promised to call upon her; but I find the cottage is still unoccupied," said Miss Cunningham, leaning a little towards him, and fixing her calm blue eyes on his face. Not a look or gesture escaped her scrutiny. His slight confusion at her unexpected appearance was perfectly transparent to her. "Things are going on as they ought to go on," she said to herself; "but there is no need to hurry it;" and though her pulses quickened a little at his obvious pleasure at seeing her she would have scorned to betray her interest.

"They do not go in until Tuesday; we shall keep them until then," returned Garth, stroking the pony's neck absently. Dora was looking prettier than ever this morning, he thought. She wore a hat with a long, white curling feather; the golden hair shone under it; she patted it nonchalantly with her little gloved hand as she talked. Emmie interrupted them presently.

"School is over! there are the girls coming out. Prissy is last, of course. Ah! there is Queenie!" and she darted across the road, and almost threw herself on her sister. Queenie did not quicken her steps when she saw them. She came up a little reluctantly when she recognized the occupant of the pony-carriage.

Dora greeted her with her usual good-humor.

"Ah, there you are, Miss Marriott! how cool you look in that nice, broad-brimmed hat. But I am sorry to see you in black. You have lost a friend, Mr. Clayton tells me. Well, I told you that I should call and have a chat about the school and all manner of things. Will you jump in and let me drive you up the lane. Langley has promised me some luncheon."

"Emmie and I will be at the house as soon as you," returned Queenie, taking the child's hand and walking on swiftly. Miss Cunningham meant to be kind, she was sure of that; why was it that her manner always irritated her? There was a flavor of patronage in it that galled her sensitiveness. "Perhaps if she knew I had five thousand a-year she might change her tone," thought Queenie, a little wrathfully. "I never find it difficult to get on with people; and yet in my heart I cannot like her. Why will she make it her business to poach on other people's manor? The Hepshaw school is my affair, and has nothing to do with Crossbill Vicarage."

Miss Cunningham seemed to think otherwise. She cross-examined Queenie all through luncheon on a hundred petty details. Queenie, to her surprise, found she was acquainted with many of the girls' names and histories. She put the new mistress right on one or two points with much shrewdness and cleverness. She could talk, and talk well, on most subjects. By-and-bye, when the school was exhausted, she turned to Garth, and argued quite a knotty point of politics with him, elucidating her view with a clear-headedness and force of words that surprised her feminine hearers.

Garth had much ado to hold his own against her, but the consciousness of being in the right gave him the advantage.

"Now, Miss Dora, I think you must yield this once," he said, looking at her triumphantly. Dora measured him with her glance before she answered.

"I never yield to papa, but I suppose I must to you," she said in the quietest manner possible, and there was a slight stress on the last word that made Garth redden as though he had received an unexpected concession.

He placed himself at her side when they went into the garden after luncheon, and appeared determined to monopolize her attention; but this did not seem to suit Miss Cunningham, for she called Cathy to her, and the two commenced a conversation in which he soon found himself excluded. Once or twice, when he turned restive under this treatment, and seemed to incline to seek conversation in a little talk with Queenie, a soft glance from Dora's blue eyes recalled and kept him stationary.

"All this is so uninteresting to you gentlemen, you like politics better," she said presently in a low voice, as though appealing for pardon; "if you will gather me a few flowers, Mr. Clayton, I shall soon have finished my talk with Cathy, and then we will take a turn down the plane-tree walk; it looks so cool and shady." But when the flowers were tastefully arranged, and Garth, with a little look of triumph, threw open the gate for her to pass through, Dora still held Cathy's arm. It was not quite as enjoyable as Garth had fancied it would be. Dora was all amiability and sweetness; she had the roses in her hands, and touched them tenderly from time to time. She tripped beside him, holding up her long white dress with one hand, the other rested lightly on Cathy's arm. Her blue eyes looked yearningly at him and the sunset together.

"How calm and still everything looks. I think I love this old walk better than any place in the world. It reminds me of old days, Mr. Clayton, when you and I and Cathy used to walk here."

"When we were children we used to say that two were company and three none," responded Garth sulkily. The hint was so obvious that Cathy would at once have made her escape, but Dora tightened her grasp on her arm with a slightly heightened color.

"That depends on one's company. One could never find Cathy in the way," she said, with a little infusion of tenderness in her voice.

"Never! can you imagine no possible circumstances in which a duet would be preferable?" questioned Garth, turning on her so abruptly that Dora, for all her coolness, was non-plussed for the moment. What was he going to say? With all her prudence she felt alarmed and fluttered, but the thought of her girls calmed her into soberness again.

"I never was good at guessing riddles," she returned, not perusing the gravel at her feet as some girls would have done in her place, but looking full at him with unblenching eyes. "Just now a trio suits me best, that is all I meant."

"Pshaw," he muttered, turning angrily away. Was she fooling him after all? He was not a man who would ever understand coquetry or caprice; such things would have simply disgusted him; but then he knew Dora was no coquette. "She is trying to manage me for some purpose of her own; she wants me to come to a certain point and no further; she is showing me very plainly what she means," he said to himself, repulsed and yet attracted in spite of himself by this strange conduct. After all the plane-tree walk and the sunset, now he had them, were failures. He had not once this evening called her Dora. How could he, with Cathy walking there beside them, and noting his discomfiture with her keen girlish eyes. True, he had not known what he would have said to her if they had been alone; sentiment was only just waking up in Garth's nature. A week or two ago he would have pronounced himself heart-whole, would have laughed at the notion of his being in love. Why had a sudden fancy come to him for golden hair and sunsets, and quiet evening strolls? Was he feeling dimly after something? was this restlessness, this indefinable longing after some visionary ideal, a part of the disease?

Garth could not have answered these questions if his life depended on it. He had ceased to be satisfied with his sister's company. A craving after some new excitement made itself very plainly felt at this time. His pulses were throbbing with fresh life; the world was before him, the young man's world; he had only to look round him and choose. Strong, keen-eyed, vigorous, with dominant will and sober judgment, what obstacle need he dread? what impediments could he not overcome?

Hitherto freedom, and the mystery obscuring his future fate, had had a strange charm in Garth's eyes. It had pleased him to know that such things were for him when he should stoop and open his hand to receive the best gift of heaven. "I suppose I shall fall in love some day, every one does; but there is plenty of time for that sort of thing," he often said to his sisters, and there had been an amused look upon his face, as though the notion pleased him.

But, in spite of his young man's conceit, Garth had an old-fashioned reverence in speaking on such subjects. It would not be too much to say that he stood, as it were, bare-headed on holy ground. One evening, shortly after Queenie's return from Carlisle, Cathy had been repeating to them scraps of poetry as they sat round the open window in the twilight, and by-and-bye she commenced in a low voice reciting some quaint old lines of Arnold, in which this craving for an unknown love is most touchingly depicted.

"Thou art as I—
Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;
We cannot live apart must meeting be
Never before we die?

"Dear soul, not so!
That time doth keep for us some happy years,
That God hath portion'd out our smiles and tears,
Thou knowest, and I know.

"Yes, we shall meet!
And therefore let our searching be the stronger:
Dark days of life shall not divide us longer.
Nor doubt, nor danger, sweet!

"Therefore I bear
This winter-tide as bravely as I may,
Patiently waiting for the bright spring-day
That cometh with thee, dear."

"How beautiful!" sighed Langley. "I have always been so fond of those lines. Your new song, 'My Queen.' embodies the same meaning, Cathy." But Garth said nothing; he only sat for a long time shading his eyes with his hand, and there was a certain moved look on his face when he uncovered it as though he had been strongly affected.

But ever since that evening the restlessness had grown upon him, and there had been a certain carping fastidiousness in his manner to his sisters; and once or twice he had used Dora's name as a sort of reproach. "If you were only as good a manager as Miss Cunningham, Langley;" or "I wish you would read more, and choose your books as sensibly as Miss Dora does, Cathy."

Langley took her rebuke meekly and in silence; but Cathy treated her brother to a contemptuous shrug and a disdainful look.

"Dora; I am sick of Dora. Every one sees how that will end," she said in a vexed voice, when they had come in from the garden, and she had followed her friend up-stairs. "When that happens I suppose we shall all be managed into our graves."

"Oh don't!" exclaimed Queenie, with a sudden accent of pain, and becoming somewhat pale over her words. "She is not good enough for him—for your brother."

"She is too good, you mean. I hate such faultless people. Dora is never in the wrong; she is a pattern daughter, a pattern sister, a model housekeeper, and unexceptionable in all parochial and social duties; the work she gets through would astonish your weak mind."

"And then she is so clever."

"Clever! she is a perfect paragon of learning. She educated her sisters until they went to Brussels. Then she is no mean musician; she works beautifully too, and copies out all her father's sermons. I am not sure she does not write them as well."

"Ah! now I can see you are joking."

"My dear, Dora is no joking matter, I can assure you; she and her goodness together are very ponderous affairs. Do you think Garth does not know all this? Why he and Dora have been friends ever since they were children."

"I can see that he respects her most thoroughly."

"Not more than she respects him; she is always telling how excellent he is, and what a model to other young men. When I am in a very good humor with Garth, I sometimes repeat these little speeches, only I have come lately to doubt the wisdom of adding fuel to the fire."

"Surely such perfection must satisfy you as well as him, or you must be difficult to please," returned Queenie a little sarcastically. A numb, undefinable sort of pain seemed taking possession of her. Would Hepshaw be quite so desirable a place of residence when Dora was mistress of Church-Stile House? this was the question she asked herself. And for the first time the thought of her fortune gave her a positive feeling of pleasure.

"Oh, as to that, I am very fond of Dora," replied Cathy carelessly; "she amuses me, and she is very good-natured; and then one must like one's future sister-in-law for the sake of dear old Garth. I only hope she will have the good sense not to try and manage him, for he will never stand it."

This conversation depressed Queenie somehow, and kept her wakeful and restless; it did not add to her tranquillity to hear Garth's footsteps under her window, crunching the gravel walk, for long after they had retired. It was contrary to his usual habit; it argued disturbance or preoccupation of mind.

Garth's soliloquy would have perplexed both her and Cathy if they had heard it.

"I wonder if I am in love with Dora after all?" he was asking himself, as he lighted himself a fresh cigar, and then stood leaning against the little gate, looking down the plane-tree walk. It was moonlight now, and the monuments glimmered in the white light; there were faint, eerie shadows under the dark trees; now and then a night-bird called, or a dog barked from the village, and then stillness gathered over everything again.

"I wonder if I am really in love, or if I am only arguing myself into it. Now I come to think of it, when I imagined my future wife I always thought of Dora; we have grown up together, and it seems natural somehow; and then I had always a boyish fancy for golden hair. What a pretty little head it is, as well as a wise one. I wish she were not quite so independent, and would lean on a fellow more. I suppose it is the fault of circumstances. Every one depends on her—her father and her sisters. She never had the chance of being helpless like other women. I always think of that and make allowance for her faults.

"Sometimes," soliloquized the young philosopher as his cigar went out, and he calmly relighted it, "sometimes I'm afraid that if we ever came together I might find her a little masterful and opinionated; that is the danger with capable women, they have their own notions and stick to them. I confess I should like my wife to follow my ideas, and not to be lady paramount in everything; not that even Dora would find it easy to manage me," continued Garth, with an amused curl of the lip.

"What a nice, sensible little companion she would be for a man," he resumed presently, after the firm even footsteps had crunched the gravel awhile. "That is the best of her, she never bores or wearies one; she is always fresh and good-humored, and ready to take interest in everything, even in the schools, and Miss Marriott, only Miss Marriott repulses her somehow. Her manner vexed me this afternoon; there was a stand-offishness and a reserve in it, as though Dora's interest offended her. She never appears at her best advantage when Dora is with us. Why am I always comparing those two? somehow I can't help it. Dora interests me most, of course; and yet men who are in love seldom study the pros and cons of character as I have been doing for the last half-hour. Certainly some of the symptoms are still lacking, or else I am too matter-of-fact a fellow to have them. And yet I don't know. What were those lines Cathy repeated the other night? How well the little puss recited them; with such feeling too.

'Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;
We cannot live apart.'

Humph! I am not in love so much as all that, and I don't think Dora is either. I have a doubt whether the 'open sesame' has been said to either of us yet; if so, 'where waitest thou, lady I am to love?' Well, it is a rare old poem, and touches a fellow up in an extraordinary sort of way. I have got it by heart now, and it haunts me to a droll extent. There, my cigar is out, confound it, so I may as well get rid of all this moonshine and go in. How runs the last verse—

'Tis the May-light
That crimsons all the quiet college gloom.
May it shine softly in thy sleeping room;
And so, dear wife, good night.'"

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MISTRESS OF BRIERWOOD COTTAGE.

"By night we lingered on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer dawn;

"And calm that let the tapers burn
    Unwavering: not a cricket chirr'd:
    The brook alone far off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn."
                                                                        Tennyson.

"A penny for your thoughts, little Emmie," cried Garth gaily, a few evenings afterwards, when his abrupt entrance had broken up a somewhat silent group. The child, who was sitting at Langley's feet as usual, with her head in her lap, held up her hand warningly.

"Hush! I was counting them; now I have lost one."

"Counting what, you small elf?"

"The angels, of course; we have had ever so many passing through the room this evening. Just now Langley sighed and disturbed one. They never come when we talk and laugh, you know," continued Emmie, with a child's beautiful unreasoning faith in what would seem to older minds a piece of fond superstition. "I do love a real long silence, when people are all thinking together; the angels have such a good time of it then."

"What a queer little thinking machine that is," muttered Ted, drowsily; but Garth only patted her head kindly.

It was never his way to laugh at a child's fancies. "The real germ is hidden in the bud; a mere infant will sometimes turn our wisdom into foolishness," he had observed more than once in his graver moments. "Well, my white May-flower," he continued, using his pet name for her; "so the angels were having it all to themselves this evening, eh?"

"I did not know we were assisting at a séance," growled Ted, stretching himself; "we have got a precious small medium, it strikes me. What sort of spirits were they, Emmie, black, white, or grey? I fancied my own familiar, in the shape of an elongated cat, with yellow sparks for eyes, grinned at me with feline and whiskered face from behind the sofa corner. 'Avaunt thee, witch,' I cried, and with diabolic stare and hiss it vanished."

"A truce with your nonsense, Ted; you will scare the child."

"I think we have all been very stupid and silent this evening," interposed Langley. "I fancy that we are all sorry to lose Queenie and Emmie from our circle to-morrow."

"The sofa-cushion is drenched with my tears," continued Ted, the incorrigible. "The drip, drip of them was mistaken by Langley for rain. 'A wet evening,' quoth she; but my sobs prevented me from undeceiving her."

"Isn't Mr. Ted wicked to tell so many stories in play?" interrupted Emmie, in a shocked tone.

"Play!" reiterated that remorseless youth, "is that how you stigmatize an honest grief, and mistaken though blighted devotion? is it nothing to this lacerated heart to know that the beloved heads of the Marriott sisters will rest for the last time to-night beneath our roof? 'Quoth the raven, nevermore, rests sweet Marriott at thy door.'"

"Oh, shut up, you young idiot," exclaimed his brother in a tone of deep disgust.

"He has been so tiresome all day," observed Cathy; "he has not left Queenie and me a moment in peace."

"Only a lock of hair, and that was refused; even a hair-pin would have been prized, or the frayed end of a ribbon; all, all denied.

'Oh stay, the Clayton said; and yield
A withered rose, or weed of field.
Indignant glared her bright brown eye,
And with a frown she made reply,
You botherer.'"

Ted, in another moment—"

"You have the heart of a barbarian, Garth; the softer passion is unknown to you—the 'pills and paradise' of a man's existence. Look at me, like Etna half consumed, a mighty ruin—all thy work, oh woman! Ah, as the soothing bard, the glorious Will of immortal memory, once wrote—

'He never told his love; no, never;
No more did she, but did you ever'—

She gave him one long glance, and then"—but Ted never finished his ridiculous effusion, for in another moment Garth had pinned him in his powerful grasp, and stretched him prone and struggling on the floor. "And there shall you lie until you have promised not to spout any more nonsense," was the inexorable mandate of his tyrant.

"Floored by fate, and crushed by the gigantic hoof of destiny, I submit. 'More kicks than half-pence,' quoth he, under the healing (heeling) process; but what boots such trifles to the stalwart heart of a young Briton. Alas, thy sole is open and clear to me, my brother, and the footprint of ignoble passion is stamped upon it."

"Pax, pax," groaned Garth.

"Oh, leave him alone, you are only making him worse," laughed Queenie; "if he sees nobody heeds his nonsense he will soon leave off."

"I feel like the gladiator, butchered to make a Clayton holiday; my breast-bone is staved in by the barbarian. 'Dying, we salute thee, Caesar.' Well, it is of 'no consequence,' as Toots remarks."

"There, get up and behave yourself," interrupted Garth, with a final kick; "and now, to get rid of this foolish fellow, I vote that some of us take a turn in the plane-tree walk. Come, Miss Marriott, you and Cathy put on your hats." But Cathy, who was in a curious mood to-night, and had done nothing but sigh and interlace her fingers restlessly in the twilight, muttered something about Miss Cosie and the Vicarage, and vanished from the room; and so it came to pass that Queenie found herself gravely pacing up and down the plane-tree walk by Garth's side.

Naturally as it had come about—for no one else had volunteered to accompany them—the novelty of the circumstance caused them both a little embarrassment; and, by some curious physiological coincidence, each fell to thinking of Dora Cunningham. Garth smoked his cigar meditatively, and cast curious side-long glances at the slender black figure beside him. Visions of a white dress and golden hair still haunted him. Why was he shy and silent all at once? had he anything in common with this grave, brown-eyed girl? He was wondering, if she were Dora would he have found anything to say to her? He was sorry to think that this was Miss Marriott's last night. Sorry! yes; it made him feel all at once as though the old house had grown suddenly dull and empty; and yet if it had been Dora—

"Miss Marriott, how is it that you and Miss Cunningham don't hit it off better?" he said, so abruptly that Queenie started and changed color. She was feeling very heavy-hearted, poor little soul, to think it was her last night at Church-Stile House; and how she would miss the slow, even tramp of Garth's footsteps under her windows, and the red end of his cigar emerging from the trees every ten minutes. She had often sat and watched it with unconscious interest even to herself; she was loath to part with that, and his cheery good morning when she looked out to smell the roses.

She was just wondering how much he would miss her, and whether her absence would leave any perceptible gap in the family circle; and this question jarred upon her with sudden discord.

"What do you mean?" she asked faintly, conscious all at once of a certain chilliness round the region of the heart. She had hoped for a few words of friendly interest and advice on her own affairs to-night. Had he only brought her out there to talk of Dora Cunningham?

"Why don't you two girls get on better together?" pursued Garth, inexorably. He was quite aware of the reluctance of Queenie's tone as she answered him, but the opportunity was a good one, and he thought he would have it out with her. She was indebted to him for much kindness, he told himself; his sisters and he had taken her by the hand, and found her occupation, and a roof to cover her head; he had a right to ask, as a return, that she should show a little consideration for him and his friends; and her manner to Dora somehow galled him. Perhaps he was a little curious on the subject as well; anyway, he would have his answer.

"How do you know that we do not?" she replied, fencing in her turn. "I have not seen Miss Cunningham more than three or four times; we are comparative strangers to each other."

"You know her as well as you know Mrs. Fawcett or Miss Faith Palmer; they are all comparative strangers to you, but to them your manner is always so bright and genial."

"Ah; one cannot help getting on with them."

"I should have said the same of Miss Cunningham. There, you shake your head; how impossible it is to understand you women. Miss Dora seems so willing to be friendly on her side. She has driven over twice to see you, and tender her advice and help; but one cannot help seeing how these overtures have been repelled."

"Mr. Clayton, pray don't speak as though you were hurt with me."

"I do feel a little hurt about this," he replied, gravely; "at least it disappoints me. You see Dora, I mean Miss Cunningham, has been intimate with us ever since we were children together, and we think so much of her opinion in things. When you came among us, and decided on taking up this new work, I thought at once what a valuable friend you would secure in her."

"You were very kind," stammered poor Queenie with downcast eyes.

"Confess that my kindness was thrown away though," he continued in a lighter tone, for her distress was not lost on him. "You are such an iceberg in her presence that even her good nature has failed to thaw you. You are never proud with Langley or Cathy, and yet Cathy can say rude things sometimes."

"I am never proud with those I love."

"Then you don't mean to love Miss Cunningham."

"No," reluctantly; "but I do not dislike her. There is simply no sympathy between us, and her manner jars and irritates me somehow. It seems as though, she were trying to keep me down in my place, and make me remember that I am only the poor school-mistress in Hepshaw, when, when you all try to make me forget it," continued the girl, and now the tears rushed to her eyes. Garth had never seen her so moved, but her frankness did not displease him. It might be his duty to give her a little wholesome advice, and to bid her curb that troublesome pride of hers; but, on the whole, he felt sorry for her.

"I think we ought to be very patient with a person that displeases us, and ask ourselves whether the fault may not lie on our side," continued her young Mentor gravely. He rather liked the right he had assumed of lecturing this girl; the occupation was piquant and interesting, and then she took his rebukes so meekly. "Miss Cunningham is a very superior person, you cannot fail to own that, I am sure; so many people rely upon her. She is the mainstay at home; her father's right hand in every thing; and then her sisters idolize her. She must be truly lovable, or they would not be so fond of her."

"Mr. Clayton, what does it matter whether we get on together or not?" exclaimed Queenie at this point, stung by all this praise, and sore almost to unhappiness. "It cannot matter to her, or to you either, whether I like her or not."

"It matters a good deal to me whether my friends are appreciated. I am disappointed about it, because I wanted to secure you a valuable ally, that is all; but I suppose it cannot be helped. Women are unaccountable beings; it is best, after all, to leave them alone," and Garth's voice was so full of kindness and regret that Queenie's soreness vanished in a sudden effort of magnanimity.

"I dare say it was my fault; I am sure Miss Cunningham meant to be kind," she faltered out hurriedly. "Only when one is poor, one is proud and sensitive over little things. Don't say anything more about it, Mr. Clayton; I mean to like her. I will like her, and you shall not have reason to complain of my disagreeable manner again."

"No; not disagreeable, only cold," he returned, with a smile of genuine content, for this admission pleased him well. They had stopped simultaneously at the little gate, and Queenie made a movement as though to go in, but he would not suffer it. "No; you shall not leave me in this way, we will have another turn," he said cheerfully. "Let us talk of something else—of yourself and your plans. Do you know, I feel quite dull at the thought of losing you and Emmie to-morrow. I wonder how much you intend to miss us."

"More than I ever missed any one in my whole life before," was the answer on Queenie's lips, but she prudently forbore to utter it, as she moved again by his side in the darkness. Did no warning monitor within her whisper that this man was growing dangerously dear to her; that the snare was already spread for her unconscious feet?

"He means to marry Dora; but I have a right to claim him still as my friend. No one shall steal his friendship from me. I will have what belongs to me," she had said to herself, almost fiercely; but the falseness of the sophistry was glossed over and hidden from her eyes. For the last few days a great sadness had crept over her. Since the evening Dora had passed through the little gate, and had walked with him up and down in the sunset, some visionary hope, baseless and unsubstantial as a dream, had vanished from her heart.

Of what avail was her idle whim now? Would it not have been better, so she told herself, to have shaken off the dust of Hepshaw from her feet? Whose blame was it if she had tangled her own life? Some impulse, some undefinable influence, had drawn her to weave these strange plans of hers; more than a girl's fancy and love of mystery and adventure were wrapped up in them. But might it not be that bitter failure and remorse should be her portion hereafter?

Would there not have been greater peace and safety for her in that house in Carlisle? Queenie asked herself these questions with a sigh long after she had left Garth, and retired to her own room, where Emmie was slumbering peacefully. She kissed the child, and placed herself under the shadow of the window-curtain, and watched, for the last time, the tiny red spark emerging every now and then from under the trees.

"Miss him! he little knows how I shall miss him!" she said to herself, bitterly. "Right or wrong, he has got into my life, and I cannot get him out. Does he love Dora, I wonder? I cannot make up my mind; but he will marry her, for all that; and then, then, if I find it very hard to bear, if she will not let me keep him as a friend, we will go away, Emmie and I, somewhere a long way off, where I can have plenty of work, and forget, and begin afresh."

But when Queenie came to this point she suddenly broke down; an oppressive sense of loneliness, as new as it was terrible, crushed on her with overwhelming force. For the first time Queenie's brave spirit seemed utterly broken, and some of the bitterest tears she ever shed wetted the child's pillow.

As for Garth, he strolled on for a long time, placidly enjoying his cigar. He had delivered his little lecture, and had then sent the girl in soothed and comforted; so he told himself. It is true a sad and wistful glance from two large dark eyes somewhat haunted him at intervals, but he drove it persistently away.

"She is a sweet girl, a very sweet girl; but she has her faults, like all of us," he said to himself. "I am glad I put her right about Dora. If Dora ever comes here, it would not do for Miss Marriott not to be friendly with her. Dora would have a right to expect then that the others should give way to her, if she ever comes here as my wife;" and here the young man's pulses quickened a little, and in the darkness the hot blood rushed to his face. "Dora my wife! how strange it sounds! Well, I suppose it will come to that some day; things seem shaping themselves that way. She will expect it, and her father too, after what has passed. I fancy there is a kind of understanding between us. I wonder what sort of feeling she has for me? She keeps a fellow at such a distance, there is no finding out; but I'll master her yet. She will soon find out, if I once make up my mind, that I am not one to bear any shilly-shallying. I don't think I could stand nonsense from any woman, not even from Dora. Her father told me once that if he died Dora would not have a penny, though the other girls have tidy little sums, each of them. I like her all the better for that. Well, after all there is no hurry. Being in love is all very well, but it is better to take life easily, and digest matters a little;" and with a conscious laugh that sounded oddly to him in the darkness, Garth swung back the little gate, and walked towards the house.

It was arranged that the sisters' modest luggage should be sent over to the cottage in the course of the morning, and that Queenie should take possession of her new abode as soon as her afternoon duties were discharged, and that Cathy and Emmie should be there to receive her.

"I am to pour out tea my own self, and Cathy has promised to make some of her delicious cakes," exclaimed Emmie, rapturously. "Langley will not come, though I have begged her over and over again; she says we three will be so much cosier together."

Queenie nodded and smiled as she bade her little sister good-bye, and trudged down the lane. The sun was shining brightly; a rose-laden wind blew freshly in her face; with the morning light courage and hope had returned; she felt half ashamed of her last night's sadness. Queenie was young, and life was strong within her. In youth happiness is a necessity, a second nature. When the heart is young it rebels fiercely against sorrow. To exist is to hope; to hope is to believe.

In youth we believe in miracles; utterly impossible combinations would not surprise us; the sun must stand still in our firmament, the stars in their course fight against Sisera; what has happened to others cannot happen to us.

It is only bitter experience that tears down this fairy glamor, the thin, gossamer film through which we so long looked. How barren and loveless life appears then! Our fairest hopes are shipwrecked; a moral earthquake has shattered our little world. We look up at the heavens, and they are as brass, and the earth under our feet as wrought iron; while beyond, and in the dim horizon, hollow voices seem to whisper a perpetual dirge.

It is a terrible subject, this awful mystery of pain, this dim and inscrutable decree, that man is born to trouble. Ah, well for those who, like that tired wanderer in that far-off land, can discern in their darkness and loneliness the ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, and feel the fanning of invisible wings even in their heaviest stupor.

Queenie's healthy young nature recoiled and shuddered at the first touch of probable pain; it lay folded like a troublesome nightmare far back among her thoughts. It had mastered her last night in the darkness; this morning the sunshine had chased it away.

"How do I know? how does any one know?" she said to herself, somewhat ambiguously, as she sat among her children that morning. "I may be wrong; it may never happen; and if it does, what is, is best, I suppose," and here she sighed. "I am thinking of him, of them both, too much. After all, what is he to me? a dear friend, a very dear friend; but my friendship must not cost me too much. I will be good and reasonable, and not ask more than a fair amount of happiness; it is only children who cry for the moon."

If you want to be happy, be good; it is a very safe maxim. Queenie felt quite bright as she walked through the little town. True, she had a slight qualm as she passed the turning that led to Church-Stile House; but she bravely stifled the feeling, and hummed an air as she opened her own little gate.

How fresh and bright it all looked. The walk was new gravelled, the little lawn looked trim and green; roses and geraniums bloomed under the windows; a honeysuckle was nicely trained round the porch. Emmie met her on the threshold, and dragged her in with both hands.

"Oh, Queen, it is all so lovely; just like a bit out of a story-book. To think of you and me living alone together in our own little cottage; only you and me!"

"I am so glad you are happy, darling, because that makes me happy," returned her sister, affectionately. "Ah, there is our little maid Patience," as the girl stood curtseying and smoothing down her clean apron, with a pleased, excited face. "Cathy—oh, Mr. Clayton, are you here too?" as Garth's dark handsome face suddenly beamed on her from the little parlor.

"I could not resist the pleasure of showing you the transformation," he returned, gaily. "You hardly know the place, do you? Langley and Cathy have done wonders. It is a pretty little home after all, and quite big enough for you two, and I hope you will be as happy as the day is long."

"Oh, what have you all done!" exclaimed Queenie, in a stifled voice. Her heart began to beat more quickly, an odd, choking feeling was in her throat. Was this their thought for her? She could not for her life have spoken another word as she followed Garth and Cathy into the parlor.

"We have only put a table and some chairs into the front room; it will be handy for Emmie to learn her lessons and play there. Langley knew we must not put you to any unnecessary expense," went on Garth, cheerfully. "This is very snug, is it not?"

Snug! Queenie looked round her half dazed. Had she ever seen this room before? Though it was summer, a little fire burnt in the grate. There was a crimson carpet; a grey rug was spread invitingly; a couch stood by the open window. There was a bird-cage, and a stand of flowers. A pretty print hung over the mantel-piece. Some book-shelves with some tempting-looking volumes had been fitted up over the corner cupboard. A gay little pink and white tea-service was on the round table. Some low basket-work chairs gave an air of comfort.

Outside the transformation was still more marked. Instead of the green wilderness, all docks and nettles, there was a long green lawn. A broad gravel path bordered the window; a few flower-beds had been cut in the turf.

"It is too late to do much this season; we shall have it very pretty next summer," observed Garth, in a cool, matter-of-fact tone, as he followed her to the window. "We have cut away a good deal of the turf, as it made the house so damp; the gravel path is far better. Cathy wants you to have a rockery and some ferns in one corner."

"It will look very nice," returned Queenie, absently.

She had a misty vision after that of a bright little kitchen that reminded her of a doll-house that she had had as a child, and then of two bed-rooms, one for herself, and one for Emmie, with a small room for Patience, all as fresh as white dimity could make them. There were flowers on the toilet-table; the little painted chest of drawers had a sweet perfume of lavender. Everything was simple and well chosen, and testified to thoughtful and loving hands.

"Oh, Cathy, what am I to say to him? what am I to say to you all?" exclaimed poor Queenie, feeling ready to throw her arms round her friend's neck and burst into tears. They were standing in the little entry, and Garth was watching them.

"Aren't you going to give me tea after all this?" he interposed, in a droll voice. "Here I have been gardening and carpentering and acting as odd man to the establishment for I do not know how long."

"Tea! oh, I forgot," returned Queenie, dashing the tears from her eyes, and hurrying to her place.

Garth stood near her a moment as he brought her one of the basket chairs.

"Does our work satisfy you? have we given you pleasure?" he asked, looking into her downcast face rather anxiously. "Do you think you will be happy here, you and Emmie, in your own little home?"

"It will be my own fault if I am not," she faltered, holding out her hand; and such a look of pure childish gratitude lit her dark eyes that the young man reddened and turned aside. "Oh, Mr. Clayton, what can I do to repay you and Langley?"

"Hush," he replied, lightly, and trying to turn it off with a laugh; "there is no talk of payment between friends; it is all understood between us. You are only in our debt a little while; besides, you are a rich woman now."

"Oh, I forgot," she exclaimed in such a tone of dismay that the others looked quite startled. "I mean—ah, yes, it will all be right soon," endeavouring to recover herself.

It was a cosy little meal after all. Garth, who saw that Queenie's fluctuating spirits needed tranquillizing, set himself to reassure and soothe her; and when he had succeeded, the three had one of their long thoughtful talks. By-and-bye Langley came, and then Ted, and filled the little room to overflowing, so that they betook themselves to the porch and the lawn.

It was quite late when they separated, and Queenie went up to her new little room. The glimmering lights in the village had been extinguished. The roads looked white and still in the moonlight; only a faint barking from a dog in the distance broke the stillness.

"How wrong and wicked I was last night!" thought the girl humbly, as she stood by the table, touching Langley's roses with caressing fingers. "I was lonely and sad; I wanted I cannot tell what. But to-night it is so different; it is so sweet to feel he has done all this for me; that it is his thought for me as well as theirs; that, whatever happens, he will be my friend, always my friend."

CHAPTER IX.

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM.

"She prayed me not to judge their cause from her,
That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than power
In knowledge; something wild within her breast,
A greater than all knowledge, beat her down."
Tennyson's 'Princess.'

The days passed very tranquilly and pleasantly after this for the inhabitants of the cottage.

Queenie had regained her brightness in a great measure. In spite of a certain dim fear that haunted the background of her memory, her life seemed full of a strange, sweet excitement. The buoyancy of youth was strong within her; the knowledge of her secret wealth gave an intoxicating flavor to everything. As she walked to and fro to her daily work, she felt like a disguised princess, like the heroine of some fairy story she had read once, spinning in her woollen garments among the simple peasant folk. "I like being a rich woman after all," she said to herself, "it is so amusing. I feel just like Cinderella before the pumpkin coach arrives; it is a story-book sort of life I am leading. Fancy teaching in a village school when one has five thousand a-year. What shall I do with it all, I wonder; I wish I might give some to Langley and Cathy."

Queenie used to build all sorts of impossible castles in the air when she was by herself or with Emmie.

"What would you say if we were to be rich one day, very, very rich?" she would ask sometimes; but Emmie only shook her fair head.

"Rich, so that we should be obliged to leave this dear cottage! Oh no, Queen, I should not like it at all. I think it is so lovely, we two living all alone together. I never, never, never was so happy in all my life before," finishing with a prolonged hug.

"Thank God for that," murmured her sister, fervently, passing her hands gently over the child's upturned face.

The sharp outlines were filling out and rounding daily; a soft bloom tinged the thin cheeks; but there was still the same solemn, unchildlike look in the large blue eyes. Their expression used to trouble Queenie sometimes. "Would the shadow of past woe never die out of them?"

"Emmie, your eyes never smile," she said once, "and yet you say you are so happy, darling."

They were sitting alone in the porch; Cathy had just left them, Garth had fetched her away. Emmie was in her favorite position, with her head resting on her crossed arms on her sister's lap. They had sat for a long time so without speaking, only Queenie's fingers every now and then twined in the child's golden hair. "Why don't you teach your eyes to smile too?" she went on, half seriously.

Emmie wrinkled her brows thoughtfully. "I wish they would look like yours, Queen; but then I never saw any eyes like yours, even Cathy says so. When you laugh they seem full of brown sunshine, only so deep, deep down; and when a great thought comes to you, one seems to see it, somehow."

"Oh, hush, you little flatterer;" but Queenie blushed, well pleased, over the praise.

"You do not know half how beautiful I think you," continued the child, earnestly; "it makes me feel happy and good only to be near you. Do sisters always feel like that, I wonder?"

"No, darling, not always."

"It must be because we love each other so. There never was a time when your voice was not like music to me. Sometimes I love you so that I ache all over with it; that was in the dreadful old days, when I thought I must die and leave you. Oh, Queen, that would have been so very, very miserable."

"Miserable to lose you, Emmie! don't speak of it; I can't bear to think of it even now," pressing the child's slight figure closer in her arms.

"It would not be so dreadful now; I should not feel that you were quite so lonely, I mean. No, I will not talk any more about it," catching sight of Queenie's averted face; "we will never be sad, you and I, never."

"I wonder if we shall always live alone," she went on, while Queenie dried her eyes. "Perhaps one day you will marry—people do, you know. How strange that will be!"

"Should you dislike that idea very much, Emmie?"

"I—I don't know," in a reluctant tone. "It will spoil things rather; but if you like it, Queen——"

"Hush," kissing her, "I think we are talking dreadful nonsense. Don't you know that I have told you that we are leading a story-book life, Emmie; first in that dreadful old garret, and now in our pretty cottage? By-and-bye it may turn into a palace; who knows?"

"Ah, then the prince will come; he always does in fairy stories."

"No; he will ride away with the golden-haired princess; they will disappear into the forest together, and never come back. We will have Caleb and Molly to live with us instead."

"Ah, that would be nice," returned the child, clapping her hands. "Only keep it the cottage; we don't want the palace, Queen. Is the prince never to come back then?"

"Of course not; would you have him leave his fair one with the golden locks? Fie, Emmie; what a perfidious prince! They will go riding on and on for ever in the enchanted forest, while you and I are walking hand in hand down the long white road that people call life."

"What a funny idea! I like the wood best, Queenie."

"Ah, so do most people," she returned, rising with a sigh; "but perhaps we do not know what is best for us. Don't you recollect the story we once read of the child who wanted the star, and missed all the flowers that grew under its feet, and so pined away, and died of unfulfilled longing? You and I will be wiser than that, little one; we will leave the star to move in its own particular orbit, and gather all the sweet homely flowers that grow in our way;" and Queenie heaved another little sigh, for she was moralizing to herself as well as to Emmie.

It was not often that the sisters were alone. Cathy spent all her leisure hours at the cottage, and even Langley would often bring her work and sit with them in the porch of an evening. Garth too was a frequent visitor; he would come down the lane of an evening, and lean against the little gate for half an hour at a time. Sometimes he would come in and help the sisters with their gardening, and bring them little gifts of fruit and flowers.

When Langley or Cathy were there he would join the little group in the porch, and linger beside them for hours, but never when they were alone. Often Ted would saunter in and trail his lazy length in one of the basket-work chairs. On these occasions Queenie would whisper to her little sister, and by-and-bye there would be a dainty repast set out for them of milk and fruit and cakes. How pretty and home-like their little parlor looked then, with its soft shaded lamp and bowl of roses! Sometimes the moonlight would stream in at the uncurtained window; one or two large grey moths would wheel round their heads. Garth would go and smoke his cigar on the broad gravel walk outside, while the girls talked softly within! Sometimes Mr. Logan would walk across and assist at these simple festivities, or Miss Cosie trip down the road with a grey shawl pinned over her curls; for the cottage was decidedly popular.

"Cathy, what makes you so quiet with Mr. Logan now?" Queenie asked her one afternoon when they were sitting together.

Emmie was spending the evening with the Fawcetts. Captain Fawcett had called for her, and the two had gone off as usual hand in hand, the Captain glancing over his stiff stock at his little companion.

Mr. Logan had looked in on them on his way to the school, and had brought them a message from Miss Cosie.

"Charlotte wants you both to come over to tea with her; she has a present of fine fruit from the Abbey farm, and she wants our friends to enjoy it with her. Miss Faith is coming, and so is Langley, and Garth has promised to look in by-and-bye."

Queenie assented cheerfully; she had a warm liking for Mr. Logan, and a great affection for Miss Cosie, and nothing pleased her better than an evening spent in their company. It struck her that Cathy acquiesced rather unwillingly in the arrangement; she made one or two excuses rather ungraciously, but Mr. Logan would take no denial.

"Never mind all that; Charlotte and I will quite expect you, Miss Catherine," was his tranquil answer.

Cathy flushed in a displeased manner, but she offered no more objections. A cloud settled on her brow now as Queenie spoke.

"You and he used to be such friends," she continued. "Don't you remember our talks in the garret? You used to call him your Mentor, and write such long letters to him sometimes; a word from him always seemed to influence you, and now it seems to me as though you tried to avoid him."

Cathy bit her lip and remained silent.

"Dear Cathy, it is so strange, so unlike you to quarrel with your best friend. The more I see Mr. Logan, the more I honor and revere him, Such intellect, and yet the simplicity and guilelessness of a child. I believe he lives only to do good; he reminds one of those olden saints of whom one reads."

Cathy's dark eyes flashed, and then grew humid with repressed feeling.

"Ah, that is just it; one cannot breathe in such a rarefied atmosphere."

"Do you mean that you find his goodness so oppressive? I am not like you then; a really good man rests me somehow. I feel in looking at one as if I were in the presence of God's highest work, as though even He could do nothing better—the best and finished work before the seventh day's rest, when 'God saw that it was good.' Think of that, Cathy. I suppose," continued Queenie, reverently, "He saw the one Divine likeness stamped on the face of humanity, the one Man shining through the ages of men. Oh, there is nothing grander in all creation than a really good man."

"Don't, Queenie; I am not in a mood for your great thoughts to-night; you must come down and meet me on my own level. You don't know how inconceivably little and mean and insignificant he makes me feel. I begin," enunciating her words with an effort, "to feel afraid of myself and him."

"Afraid of Mr. Logan! what nonsense, Catherina mia. Why a child, the very poorest and most miserable child, would slip its little hand in his fearlessly, and be soothed and comforted by the mere contact."

"A child, ah, yes; but I am a woman," returned Cathy, almost inaudibly.

"You are a girl, and so am I, which means we are faulty, imperfect creatures, full of fads and fancies, and brimful of mischief I dare say. Do you think a man like Mr. Logan, who knows human nature, expects us to be perfection?"

"No; but he expects us to grow up to him, and live and breathe in his atmosphere. But I can't, Queenie; I have tried, I have tried so hard to be good, but it stifles me; I feel just as I do when I am teaching the children in one of those close cottages, as though I must rush out and get some air, or I shall be suffocated."

"Why do you undervalue yourself so?" returned her friend, looking at her affectionately. "You have got into the habit; it is such a pity, and it spoils you so. I think you good, and you are good." But Cathy only pushed the dark locks back from her face, and looked disconsolate.

"What constitutes goodness, I wonder?" continued Queenie, reflectively. "We are simple every-day folk; we cannot all be saints. In every age there will be giants in the land. You and I, dear old Cath, must be content with being 'the little ones.'

"Ah, you are nearer his standard than I," in a low, bitter voice.

"It must be a painfully low one then. For shame, when you know all my faults as well as you know your own. I for one will always believe in you. You have such a great heart, Cathy; you would lay down your life for those you love."

"You are right there."

"Is unselfishness so common a virtue in this world that one can afford to despise it? How often have I admired your thorough honesty, your hatred of anything crooked and mean. There is nothing little about you, that is why I care for you so much."

"All pagan virtues," with a faint smile.

"Cathy, your self-depreciation is incorrigible."

"I tell you what I mean to do," rousing herself, but speaking in the same suppressed voice. "I want to go away from here; this little corner of the world stifles me. I get so tired of it all, the trying to be good and keep down my restlessness, I mean. I have so few home duties; Langley and Garth do not really want me. I should not be much missed."

"You would leave me and Emmie!" incredulously.

"Poor old Madam Dignity. It does seem hard, I know. Never mind, I should come back to you all the better and the happier for having worked off my superfluous steam. One must have a safety-valve somewhere."

"But, Cathy, you are surely not serious. I cannot see any reason for this absurd restlessness; you must throw it off, fight against it, as other women do."

"My dear oracle, there are women and women. I really believe there is a little of the savage about me; I do so object to be tamed down, and made submissive to mere conventionality. Perhaps my great grandmother was a Pawnee or a Zingaree; I must ask Garth. I don't feel completely Saxon or Celtic."

"How can you talk so wildly?"

"Grandmamma Wolf, what great eyes you have got. Don't eat me up in your fiery indignation. Seriously, Queen, don't you think it would be good for me to go away for a time?"

"Are you so anxious to leave us all?" regretfully, but moved by a certain passionate pain in the girl's face.

"I think I am. Yes, though I shall half break my heart over it. I think I am. You see, I am not like other girls. I cannot lead a quiet, humdrum life that means nothing and leads to nowhere—that is just it. I want to see the world, to rub up against other folk, and study their characters and idiosyncrasies; to have a life of my own to live, not tagged on to other people."

"But women cannot choose their own life. It always seems to me that their fate is decided for them," interrupted Queenie, in a puzzled tone.

"Not for my sort of women. Thank Heaven I am still myself enough to decide my own fate. No, I am not crazy, Queen," as her friend looked at her with a sorely perplexed countenance; "my plan is a very reasonable and sensible one. I have an idea that my vocation is nursing; not stupid sort of illnesses, but downright hard hospital nursing—broken limbs, and accidents, and horrible fever cases; real horrors, not imaginary, mind. Nervous or hypochondriacal patients, no, thank you; Catherine Clayton will have nothing to say to them."

"Go on," was the injunction, in a resigned voice, as Cathy paused to collect her breath.

"Miss Faith and I have had a long talk about it; she is not sceptical like you, she knows too well how bad this sort of restlessness is to bear; besides, she has tried it herself, and loves the work."

"Yes, I can understand such a life suiting Miss Faith; she is one of those ministering women born to smooth sick pillows. But you, Cathy," trying hard to repress a smile.

"I grant you that I might deal the aforesaid pillow an occasional thump if my patient should prove refractory; but all the same, I feel as though bandages and blisters were my vocation. I have theories about nursing that would astonish your weak mind. I believe a nurse requires as thorough an education, as careful a training, as any medical student. Miss Faith is quite of my opinion; she advises me to go to London."

"I did not know Miss Faith was your confidant," in a slightly hurt voice.

"Only in this one thing, my dear Madam Dignity," with a penitent squeeze. "She said London, and I said 'Amen.' Garth knows the house surgeon at St. George's, and the matron is a great friend of Langley's; that makes it so easy to carry out my plan."

"Cathy, I do believe that you are serious."

"I am glad you have spoken a sensible word at last."

"The work will be most revolting."

"Do you think that will daunt me? Are not women sent into the world to minister and relieve pain?"

"The labor will be excessive, and trying in the extreme," persisted Queenie. "Have you ever seen the wards of a hospital? I believe you will soon sicken and droop for your northern home."

"Pshaw! I should scorn to be such a coward; half-measures are not to my taste."

"That is all very well now; but when you are weak and unnerved by watching."

"Thank heavens I don't know what nerves are, my dear. A healthy mind and body are the first requisites for a good nurse. Just as indecision is fatal to a general's success, so would nervousness ruin the best trained nurse. Even Garth owns that as far as that goes my physique is perfect."

"Do you mean that you have already spoken to him?" in aghast voice.

"Yes; and to Langley too. They were surprised of course, and rather incredulous, but they do not thoroughly oppose my project. Langley has told Garth more than once that our quiet home life will never suit me. Langley is a wise woman, Queen."

"And you have communicated your plan to all but me," very sadly. "What has become of our old confidence, Cathy?"

"Hush! there speaks jealousy, not my Queen. If I did not tell you, it was because I would not harass you with half-digested plans. I could do nothing without Garth's and Langley's consent."

"They have given it then?"

"Not yet; but I know they will. You see, my demands were very moderate. I told Garth my views: that every woman should have a definite work or trade, and that it should, if possible, be self-supporting; that teaching was not to my taste, but that nursing was. And then I asked his permission to go up to London for a six months' trial. Could there be anything more sensible?"

"But did they not question you about your reason? No, Cathy, do not turn away from me; am I not your friend? can I not see that you are unhappy?"

"I shall not be unhappy if I can once get away from here and taste freedom; when I am no longer straitened, thralled, in bondage. No, Queenie dear, indeed I have told you all that I know about myself; there is nothing more to tell. Hush! here comes Miss Faith; not a word of this before her. I am tired of the subject; your scepticism has quite exhausted me."

"Cathy, Cathy, what an incomprehensible being you are!" sighed Queenie, as she ran off to fetch her broad-brimmed hat.

Miss Faith had come to fetch them to the Vicarage. Her quiet face brightened at the sight of the girls. An evening's pleasure, a simple tea-drinking with her friends, was an unwonted event in her colorless life.

"It was so good of Cara to spare her a whole evening, just when they were finishing the last chapter of 'Trench's Parables,' and she wanted her to begin Bossuet's life. It was very unselfish of Cara," she went on, smoothing down the soft grey merino, with its fresh lace ruffles; for Miss Faith was not without her pet vanities, and fine lace ruffles round the neck and wrists were her special weakness.

As they crossed the road Garth emerged from the lane that led to Church-Stile House. A gleam of pleasure overspread his face as he greeted them.

"Good evening, Miss Faith; what an age it is since we have seen you. How are the rest of the cardinal virtues? and what new book-torture is Miss Charity inflicting on you? By-the-bye, ladies, have you heard the wonderful intelligence? the new doctor has made his appearance."

"No; oh, tell us all about it!" exclaimed the three. "Who is he? What is his name? Is he young and nice-looking; or is he old, and stout, and horridly uninteresting?" this last from Cathy.

Garth looked benignantly at their agitated countenances. Their curiosity imparted a relish to the news. Here he had been in possession of the latest intelligence for at least half an hour; had met the new-comer with Mr. Logan, and had shaken hands with him; had discussed the weather and the crops, after the usual manner of Englishmen, while Hepshaw was buried in profound ignorance of the acquisition it had gained.

"So you have not heard the news?" he repeated, calmly.

"No; of course not. Do be quick, Garth. Who is he?"

"Ah, that is the question."

"Have you seen him? has any one told you about him? will he live in Dr. Morgan's old house? is he married? has he a tribe of children?"

"One question at a time, ladies. Who asked if he were married? Cathy, of course. No; I believe not; but I never asked him."

"You have seen him then. Oh, Miss Faith, does he not deserve to be shaken, to keep us in this suspense? Perhaps, after all, he is only a red-headed little apothecary."

"That I am sure he is not."

"He is nice then?" stimulated to fresh efforts by the twinkle in her brother's eye. Garth was evidently bent on enjoying himself at their expense.

"That depends on what you call nice. He seemed tolerably pleasant, talked good English without a twang, and had no disagreeable provincial accent."

"Young or old?"

"About forty, I should say; couldn't answer for a year or two."

"Over forty! Then he must be an old bachelor. How dreadfully uninteresting!"

"I will repeat that speech to Mr. Logan."

Cathy moved aside as if she had been stung.

Miss Faith hazarded the next question rather timidly: "Was he tall or short?"

"Neither the one nor the other."

Still further questioning elicited no remarkable items of information. He was not very stout, neither was he particularly thin; had a pleasant voice and manner; was somewhat sallow in complexion; and was becoming decidedly grey; did not wear spectacles, and had shrewd and rather humorous eyes.

"Where was he going to live?"

"Did not ask him; is at present putting up at the Deer-hound. Comes from Carlisle, so he says."

"From Carlisle?" in a faint voice from Miss Faith.

"Yes. His name is Stewart, Angus Stewart, or rather Dr. Stewart, as he is now. On the whole he is a gentlemanly sort of fellow, and likely to prove an acquisition to our little circle. I say, Cath, won't Mrs. Morris set her cap at him?"

"I think we had better walk on now," returned Cathy, abruptly, at the mention of the name. She had started violently, and had shot a quick, sidelong glance at Miss Faith. "Come, Miss Faith, we shall be late for tea."

"Yes; we shall be late," she returned, mechanically, putting a shaking hand on the girl's arm, as though to steady herself. There was not a tinge of color in Miss Faith's fair face; her breath came and went unevenly; she spoke in little gasps. "Are you sure that we heard right, Cathy? did your brother say his name was Stewart?"

"Yes; Angus Stewart," returned Cathy, in a brisk, off-hand voice; "he comes from Carlisle. Ah, by the-bye, I should not be surprised if he should prove an old hospital acquaintance of yours, Miss Faith. What fun that will be! After all, the world is not so large as one thinks it."

"It is very strange," rejoined Miss Faith, and her lips trembled nervously over her words. "The coincidence of the name and the place startled me a little. I knew some one of that name in Carlisle—let me see—ten years ago."

"How very odd!" returned her companion, with well-counterfeited surprise, and looking straight before her. "Only ten years ago? Ah, then it must be the same; besides, the name is so very uncommon."

"Angus? ah, that is what he used to say. He was very proud of his name. He told me once that was all of which he had to be proud. He was so poor, he meant. He was the house surgeon, and one used to see a good deal of him. He had a mother and sister, I remember, who lived in such a tiny house in the town."

"And you have never seen him since?"

"No," hesitating and faltering; "I had to give up nursing, and come back to Cara. One loses friends sometimes in that way. It was hard, of course; for I loved my work and my children; but one must do hard things sometimes in this world," finished poor Miss Faith, with unconscious philosophy.

CHAPTER X.

THE NEW DOCTOR.

"I learn'd at last submission to my lot,
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot."
Cowper.

"I wonder how women of thirty-five feel under these circumstances," thought Cathy, as she followed the others up the narrow dark staircase leading to Miss Cosie's neat sanctum. "I should have imagined all sentiment would have been worried out of them by this time, in this dismal old mill-pond they call life. It is very odd, but it is amusing too," she continued, with a certain girlish curiosity at the elderly romance that was impending before her eyes. After all it was not without its pathos. "Perhaps he will not recognize her when they meet, or most likely he has a wife and two or three children somewhere; I would not answer for him. It is the women who are faithful in these cases. In my opinion Jacob is the exception, not the rule. Poor old Jacob, how threadbare they have worn him! He was very patient and deep, but I liked Esau best."

Cathy mused on in her rambling fashion. Now and then she and Queenie exchanged glances full of meaning.

"Is it—can it really be he?" whispered Queenie, as she tied and untied Cathy's velvet.

"Not a doubt of it," replied the other. "Hush! we shall hear more by-and-bye."

Miss Faith looked at them both with soft dazed eyes. She had no idea that they were talking of her. "Angus Stewart! there cannot be two of that name," she said to herself, as she smoothed out her ruffles with trembling hands, and tried to adjust her pearl brooch to her liking. "I wonder when I shall see him, and if he will know me again." But here Miss Cosie rushed upon them with a small whirlwind of interjections and exclamations.

"Oh, my dears; there, there, you all look as fresh as rosebuds. What do you think? The most wonderful thing has happened. Just fancy Christopher taking it into his head to bring him here!"

"To bring whom, dear Miss Cosie?" asked Cathy quickly, for Miss Faith's color was varying dangerously.

"Why, Mr. Mac'ivor, or what's his name—something Scotch I am sure. The new doctor, I mean. And there they are talking as comfortably as though they had known each other for years, instead of minutes. Christopher has taken him over to the church already.'

"If Mr. Stewart be here we had better go down," observed Cathy, demurely, but her eyes danced with fun.

"Ah, Stewart, of course. There, there, my dear, my head is like a sieve, as Kit always tells me. 'Why, Charlotte, there must be a hole in your brain somewhere,' as he often says. And there he is, dear fellow, looking as pleased as though he had got some one to his liking; and indeed he seems a pleasant, sociable sort of person."

"Yes; but your tea will be spoiled if we stand talking any longer," put in artful Cathy; and Miss Cosie took the hint, and trotted off in her velvet high-heeled slippers, looking like a little grey mouse of a woman, in her dove-colored gown and soft Shetland shawl.

"There, there, my dear, if I had not forgotten all about the tea!" they could hear her exclaim. as she whisked down the passage.

"Now we will go down," exclaimed Cathy, promptly. "Come, Miss Faith, you are just as nice as possible;" for the nervous fingers were still adjusting the troublesome ruffle. "Think what a loss you have over those last chapters of 'Trench's Parables,' and how Cara will miss you," continued the mischievous girl, as she hurried on her trembling companion. "You have exchanged 'the feast of reason and the flow of soul' just for Miss Cosie's junket and fruit."

"I wish—I almost wish I were back with Cara," gasped poor Miss Faith at the parlor door; and indeed the ordeal was a trying one even to a woman of thirty-five.

Mr. Logan made the necessary introductions as easily as possible. "Here, ladies, is our new doctor, Mr. Stewart; give him a hearty welcome to Hepshaw. This is our girls' school-mistress, Miss Marriott, and this is Miss Catherine Clayton, but Miss Faith Palmer ought to have come first."

"Miss Faith Palmer?" queried a pleasant voice, for the parlor was somewhat dim; "here at least I ought to require no introduction," and the new-comer pressed forward to catch a farther glimpse of Miss Faith's pale face.

"Yes, we are old friends, Mr. Stewart," she returned, putting a very cold hand in his. She was glad of the half-light; he could not see her, she thought. How his voice thrilled her? Was it really ten years ago since she had last heard it?

"You are the last person I expected to see to-night," he continued, still standing near her. "It was very forgetful of me. I remember now that you said you lived at Hepshaw, but all sorts of things have driven it clean out of my head."

"All sorts of things! He is married then," argued Cathy, shrewdly. "Oh, you men, you men!"

"Ten years is a long time, a very long time," faltered Miss Faith. She experienced a chill feeling at the same moment. Was it a presentiment?

"Is it ten years since we met? I had no idea it was so long," he returned, pulling his whiskers reflectively. "Do you recollect the hospital and the boys' ward. What a capital nurse you used to be, Miss Faith, and how attached your little patients were to you!"

"Is it—is everything just the same?" she asked, nervously.

"As when I was house surgeon there, do you mean? I don't know; I have been away from Carlisle a good many years. The hospital work got humdrum somehow, and I had a berth offered me as army surgeon in Bombay; and as Alice was married, and my mother was dead, I thought I might as well try my luck. I got tired of it though."

"Alice married!"; with a quick flush of interest. They were sitting at Miss Cosie's tea-table now. Mr. Stewart was by his hostess, but he had found room for his old acquaintance beside him.

"You can't think how pleasant it is to meet an old friend in a strange place," he had observed confidentially to Miss Cosie, and the little woman had nodded and smiled delightedly.

"Yes, Alice is married; pretty girls will sometimes," with the humorous sparkle in his eyes that she remembered so well. "She married a clergyman in Lincolnshire, and has two fine boys of whom she is very proud; I have just been staying with them in their pleasant vicarage. By-the-bye, she asked after you."

"After me?" with another rush of sensitive color that made her look years younger.

"Yes; she asked if I had seen you, but I could not satisfy her on that point. Don't you think it was a shabby trick, Miss Faith, vanishing from Carlisle as you did, and never coming back? I always meant to ask you that question if we ever met again."

"I hoped to come back; I never meant to leave like that," she returned in such a low voice that Dr. Stewart had some trouble to hear her. "It was my sister's accident. You remember that I told you when I wished your mother and Alice good-bye."

"Yes; but I trusted that it was only a temporary affair, and that you might soon have been set free."

"I am not free yet," in a sad voice that went far to explain to Dr. Stewart the meaning of the worn, patient face and set lines.

The Faith Palmer of ten years ago had been a fair, pretty girl, with the lightest step and the happiest laugh imaginable, and all manner of bright winning ways. It was a sweet face still, he thought, only so thin and careworn, and all the soft coloring faded. Even her voice was subdued and quieted past recognition; the despondence of the key had touched him painfully from the first.

Faith's scrutiny had not been half so severe. Dr. Stewart was older, of coarse, and browner; well, and stouter, and he was becoming very grey; but what did that matter? There were the pleasant outlines, that had lingered for ten years in her memory, the shrewd, twinkling eyes, with their touch of humor, and the clear, genial voice.

"What does that mean? we are none of us free, for the matter of that," he asked abruptly, but not unkindly. "Here I am tying myself down for life in this northern village, because an Indian sun chose to play the most confounded tricks with my liver, and to make my existence a burthen to me. Do you mean that your sister is still an invalid?"

"Yes; I have been nursing her for ten years. There are the others, but she has got used to me. Poor Cara, she is to lie down all her life, they say."

"Humph! that accounts for it," with a dissatisfied glance, and pulling his whiskers rather fiercely. "Well, Miss Faith, I can't say home-nursing has agreed with you."

"That means that you find me changed," thought poor Miss Faith, trying to swallow down a very large lump in her throat. She had sustained her share in the conversation with tolerable success up to the present moment, but now the chilliness was creeping over her again. Why had he not tried to find out what had become of her? Hepshaw and Carlisle were not so very far apart after all. True, she had promised him to return, and had left him in perfect confidence that she would redeem her promise; but she had not been to blame for her failure. "I gave it all up, all that I knew was waiting for me, because Cara wanted me," she thought; "but he never tried to find out what had become of me."

It was well for Faith Palmer that Cathy, who was watching them from the other side of the table, struck in boldly at this juncture; it gave her time to swallow down the troublesome lump, and regain her lost self-command. During the animated talk that followed, and in which Dr. Stewart bore a chief part, she sat plaiting the snowy table-cloth with her slender fingers, and saying over and over to herself, "Ten years, and he never cared to know whether I was alive or dead."

When tea was over she moved away from him, and took refuge beside Miss Cosie and her knitting. He would amuse himself with the younger ones of course. She had noticed already that Cathy had seemed to interest him with her frank liveliness, and then there were Langley and Queenie. Queenie was looking so pretty this evening, with those deep-colored roses in her dark dress. If only she could sit quiet in her corner, and watch him unobserved! It was hard work finding appropriate answers to Miss Cosie's somewhat rambling remarks.

"Of course he will take a fancy to one of them," she thought, taking advantage of a pause during which Miss Cosie counted her stitches, and quite ignoring the fact that there might possibly be a Mrs. Stewart somewhere. "I wonder which it will be. Queenie Marriott is far prettier to my taste, her eyes are lovely; but then Cathy is very taking. Men of forty generally fall in love with young girls; and then he is such a young-looking man, and does not look his age," and Faith sighed as she thought of her faded youth.

"Did you speak, my dear?" asked Miss Cosie, at this point. "Knit one, purl two, and knit two together. There, there, I am a stupid companion. Why don't you go and join that merry party opposite? Look at Kit; how delighted he seems with the doctor."

"Miss Cosie," stammered Faith, "did he—did Dr. Stewart say anything about his being married. He did not mention his wife, I mean. Cathy was wondering, and, and——"

"Married! why, to be sure, how stupid of us! I never thought of such a thing for a moment. Of course he must be; and not one of us has asked after her," and the little woman patted her big curls in a flurried manner. "Kit, Kit, my dear," in a loud whisper, "do tell Dr. Stewart that I want to speak to him."

"Oh, Miss Cosie, pray don't. How can you think of doing such a thing?" exclaimed Faith, in a perfect agony at this unexpected proceeding. "He is such a stranger. What will he think of us?" But her protestations were in vain, for Dr. Stewart had left his place with alacrity, and had come up to them with the brightest possible face.

"Did you send for me, Miss Logan?"

"Dear, dear, to think of that, when I have not been called Miss Logan for the last twenty years. Why even the Bishop says Miss Cosie; but then, as Faith says, you are a stranger among us, and don't know our manners."

"Did Miss Faith say that? Well, I shall hope not to be a stranger long. I will promise not to offend again, Miss Cosie."

"There, there, my dear, if he has not got it as pat as possible, as though he had known me all my life. Why even the school-children, bless their little hearts, call me Miss Cosie; I don't know myself under any other name. But talking of names, Dr. Stewart, and you have a nice funny, outlandish one of your own, here we have been together for two whole hours and not one of us has asked after Mrs. Stewart."

"My mother is dead, Miss Cosie," he replied, very gravely, while Faith flushed and grew white, and wished herself home again with Cara. It was too dreadful of Miss Cosie. What would he think of them?

"Poor thing! well, well, she is better off," returned his sympathizing questioner; "she is where the weary are at rest, you know, one must think of that. But I was not speaking of your poor dear mother, Dr. Stewart, but of your wife."

For a moment Dr. Stewart looked at her in some perplexity, and then he got red, and glanced at Faith; but Faith had taken possession of Miss Cosie's knitting, and was doing her best to reduce it to hopeless and intricate confusion, and then a decidedly amused expression crossed his face.

"What makes you saddle me with a wife, Miss Cosie?"

"There, there, you must not take it amiss of us," returned the little woman earnestly, laying her hand on his arm. "Of course we shall be glad to know her; and if there is anything that I can do to make her more comfortable when the poor thing comes amongst us a stranger, I will do it with all my heart."

"But, my dear Miss Cosie," with a smile, "I have no wife."

"No wife!" and Miss Cosie's eyes grew round, and she threw up her plump little hands in astonishment; "no wife! do you mean she is dead too, Dr. Stewart?"

"I mean that I never had one," laughing now outright. "Don't you know poor men have no right to such luxuries? When one has a mother and a sister to maintain, one must put away those sort of thoughts, however much one is tempted," and Dr. Stewart spoke now in a curiously constrained voice.

"Miss Cosie, I must go home now, Cara will be looking for me," exclaimed Faith, rising hurriedly. There was a misty look in the soft blue eyes, and the color had returned to her face.

"May I take the right of an old friend, and come and see you and your sisters to-morrow," asked Dr. Stewart, as he held her hand. "May I come and talk to this Cara, of whom I have heard so much?"

"Yes; we shall be very glad," she replied, almost inaudibly, and then he let her go.

He left Miss Cosie after that, and went back to the little group gathered round the window; but a change had come over them; they seemed talking seriously.

"Miss Catherine, are you in earnest?" Mr. Logan was saying, in an incredulous voice. He pushed his spectacles up to his forehead as he spoke, and the keen, near-sighted eyes seemed to probe the girl's soul as he spoke.

Cathy winced, but she maintained her ground unflinchingly.

"Ask Garth and Langley what they think on that subject."

"She is leading us a sad life about it," returned Garth, tilting his chair that he might have a better view of Queenie. Somehow the combination of the dark dress and roses took his fancy. Miss Marriott was certainly very pretty to-night; even Dr. Stewart seemed to find a certain witchery in the dark eyes, at least Garth thought so, which put him a trifle out of humor. He had been so long without a rival in Hepshaw, that the introduction of this sudden new element of manhood was likely to disturb his equanimity. "Langley says there are no valid objections, so I suppose we shall have to let her go."

"Let us ask Dr. Stewart what he thinks of it," put in Langley, and, to her sister's relief, she quietly turned to him, and gave a brief sketch of Cathy's plan, to which he listened with ready interest, asking a question here and there in a skilful professional manner. When he was in possession of all the facts, he turned to Cathy.

"I don't see why it should not answer; at least you might give it a trial. I like your idea of every woman being trained to a definite employment; I never could understand the enforced helplessness of the sex. I have known pitiable examples of women being left dependent on over-taxed brothers, or turned upon the world absolutely without resources."

"Your rule holds good with generalities, but in Miss Catherine's case," began Mr. Logan, but Cathy somewhat proudly interrupted him.

"If it be Miss Catherine's wish to be independent, and hold her own against the world, no one has a right to interfere. No," speaking with sparkling eyes, and a certain storminess of manner, "I am not one of those women who could bear to be cramped and swathed with the swaddling-clothes of conventionality; I claim my right to work for work's sake, and to be as free as any other of God's creatures."

"You are quite right, Miss Clayton; I admire your sentiments," observed Dr. Stewart.

"Hear, hear," from Garth, somewhat sarcastically. He did not wholly approve of his wilful little sister's plan. "Bless me, child, you are hardly more than eighteen; you seem in a vast hurry to make yourself independent of your brother; no one wants to get rid of you, you little monkey."

Cathy melted a little at that. She gave him an affectionate glance.

"All the same, you will be wanting to get rid of me one of these days," she returned, meaningly, and Garth reddened. "Besides, I don't mean to leave home for good and all; I want to go up to London and learn nursing in all its branches, and then I shall know if I am fit for it. A fair trial is all I ask; and if Garth consents, no one has a right to raise an objection," in an injured, appealing voice.

"You have chosen a noble profession," began Dr. Stewart warmly, but Mr. Logan quietly interrupted him.

"Granted, my dear sir, provided the motives are equally noble."

"Now, Cath, you are going to catch it from your Mentor," observed her brother in an amused tone. "Mr. Logan has discovered a flaw in your grand scheme."

"I suppose one can discover flaws in everything," returned the Vicar in a musing tone. "Youth is the time for great projects; sometimes they are another name for restlessness and discontent. Youth lights a candle,—a farthing dip-light sometimes,—and sets out through the world to look for duties, and leaves the hearth-stone cold, and old hearts growing chill round it. I have an old-fashioned notion, that woman's mission, in its perfectness, very rarely lies beyond the threshold of home."

"How about Florence Nightingale?" interrupted Cathy.

"Or Sarah Judson?" from Langley.

"Or Mrs. Fry? or Joan of Arc?" commented Dr. Stewart.

"Or we might add Grace Darling, and a score of others," put in Garth.

"All typical women, raised up in their generation to perform a certain work, and performing it right nobly. The world calls them heroines, and with reason. They are heroines in the true sense of the word, for they have discovered the needs of the world, and, recognizing their own power to remedy, have fearlessly dared to cross the threshold of home duty for the larger arena, where only the strong prevail and the weak go to the wall."

"Cathy does not pretend to be a Florence Nightingale," put in Langley, quietly.

"I thought you always told us to elevate our standard?" a little defiantly, from Cathy.

"The higher the better," with a benign glance at her; "but it must be a true standard, unselfishness and self-sacrifice for its base, and built up of pure motives. If it be one-sided it will topple over."

"Ah! I can't read parables," rather crossly.

"Are you sure that you are really trying to read mine? You remind me of some little child, Miss Catherine, gathering shells by the sea-shore, and throwing all the pearls away. If you look far enough into the meanings of things you will perceive their value. About your plan, now?"

"I will not hear a word against it," she returned wilfully, and going over to Miss Cosie. "It is bad enough to have to argue with all one's home people; but to be lectured in public, and before Dr. Stewart—no, indeed, Mr. Logan."

"Very well, I will reserve what I have to say in private," he returned, looking after her with a sort of indulgent tenderness, as though she were the little child to whom he had compared her; and Queenie, who was near him, saw a certain vivid brightness in his eyes as he watched her.

The circle broke up after this; but, though it was tolerably late for Hepshaw hours, they did not yet talk of separating. It was a lovely moonlight night, and, at Garth's invitation, Queenie strolled with him up and down the Vicar's steep, narrow garden. Dr. Stewart joined them, and talked for some time about his Indian experiences.

They were both novel and interesting, and engrossed them wholly. Queenie was so fascinated by his description of Indian scenery that she with difficulty remembered the lateness of the hour, and that Langley and Cathy would be wondering at her absence; but she at last made an excuse to leave them.

She lingered for a moment under the shadow of the house to watch the two dark figures still pacing up and down the steep path. This evening's excitement had quickened her pulses. The arrival of the stranger, Miss Faith's repressed agitation at the sight of him, Cathy's strange restlessness and plan for leaving home, had disturbed the even current of events. The moral air seemed charged with electricity and rife with disturbance; somewhere a storm seemed impending. This sense of movement, of vitality, was not unpleasant; youth dreads nothing more than monotony. It is only in age that one sits with folded hands expecting nothing. Garth's manner, too, had given her pleasure; it had been more than usually friendly. There had been appreciation in his glance, a certain cordiality in his tone, that had fallen pleasantly on her ear. "If he will only remain my friend I shall envy no girl her lover," thought Queenie, with a sudden fulness of heart; but at that moment she was startled from her reverie by the sound of voices in the dark entry behind her.

She could hear Mr. Logan's quiet tones, and yes, surely that voice answering him was Cathy's! Before she could free herself a sentence or two reached her ear.

"You will think over what I have said, my child? You will be good and give up this, to please me?"

"No, no," returned the girl passionately, and the low, vehement tones gave Queenie a shock, for they were broken as though with weeping; "you must let me go. I will not stay and make you wretched, as I know I should do."

"You would make me very happy, Catherine."

"No, indeed, Mr. Logan, you are too great, too high for me; I cannot reach to you. I should tire myself and you with my efforts to be good. Oh, you must let me go! I must be free! indeed, indeed, I must be free!"

"Then go, my wild bird, and take my blessing with you; only—" but here the tones were too low to be distinguished; only as Queenie moved away a figure brushed past her, and glided down the garden path.

It was Cathy.

CHAPTER XI.

NEXT DOOR TO THE EVERGREENS.

"Even her little mirror
    Bore witness to the change;
For to love the face within it
    Was something; new and strange.
She had looked before and seen it
    So thin and hard and grey;
Looked, that her hair and collar
    Were smooth and in trim array."
                                                        Isa Craig-Knox.

"Cara, Dr. Stewart has come to see you."

It was Faith who spoke. It was the afternoon after Miss Cosie's tea party, and she had met her old acquaintance down the village and had brought him in at his solicitation to see her sisters. Matters were not quite satisfactory to-day. Faith had had a sleepless night after her excitement, and a racking headache had been the consequence. And Miss Charity had been in one of her trying moods. A fresh access of pain made her exacting and irritable. Faith's nervousness and pale looks met with scant sympathy. "If you were not quite so fond of gadding about and leaving other people to do your work you would not be so tired," was the severe comment; the truth being, that poor Miss Charity was having a bad time of it, and had missed Faith's soft voice and gentle manipulations.

It did not improve matters when Miss Hope came to the rescue, and took the book out of her sister's unwilling hands. "There, Faith, run along and put on your bonnet and get some air; I will read to Charity," she said, in her brusque, kindly way, and settled herself vigorously to her task; and Faith, who knew how Cara hated Hope's reading, hesitated and lingered, and then finally yielded to the temptation of the fresh air and sunshine.

It was a little trying that at this moment she should meet Dr. Stewart.

At thirty-five a sleepless night is no beautifier, one lacks youth's cosmetiques then. Faith knew her heavy half-extinguished eyes had black rings round them. The face under the close little Quaker bonnet looked older and more worn than it had last night.

"How do you do, Miss Faith? we can see each other more clearly than we could last evening. Well, we have neither of us grown younger," and Dr. Stewart scrutinized his pale companion with the utmost composure.

Faith glanced at him rather timidly; his manner troubled her, it was more brusque, a little rougher than it used to be. The shy young doctor had seen the world since then. Dr. Stewart certainly looked a little different this afternoon. He was much older and stouter than she had thought him yesterday; his whiskers were iron-grey, and his face had a brown, weather-beaten aspect, and the lines round the mouth were a trifle hard and sarcastic. She could see him more clearly than in Miss Cosie's dim room.

"You find me changed too, I dare say," he continued abruptly, reading her thoughts more shrewdly than of old. "You see I have knocked about the world for the last seven or eight years, and that makes a man old before his time."

"I don't think you look particularly old, Dr. Stewart."

"Well, forty is not exactly patriarchal," somewhat sarcastically. "On the whole I think I am rather proud of my grey hairs, they make me more important. You ought to have kept younger, Miss Faith, leading this quiet pastoral life of yours; you have not had all the hard hits and thumps that fate has dealt me."

"I think inaction is sometimes more trying," she answered faintly, for this absence of sympathy fretted her; and just then they met Cathy walking down the road with free easy gait, and carrying a basket of poppies and wild flowers. She nodded to them hurriedly and passed on. Dr. Stewart looked after her.

"That is a fine girl with a fine character, I will be bound," he said, "but I think I admire Miss Marriott more; I like her soft brunette coloring, and then she has such splendid eyes. Is that fine fellow, young Clayton, rather smitten with her?"

"I think, I am almost sure, that he cares for some one else; at least, one never knows," putting up her hand to her head.

"No, one never knows; there is a fate in these things, I believe. That elder Miss Clayton looks very worn, a story there I expect; most unmarried women have had their story,—one can read it in their faces,—and men too, for that matter. There is a skeleton in every one's cupboard they say. At forty we begin to wonder if life's worth having after all. Well, well, you have a headache, I see; this sunshine is making it worse. If you will allow me I will see you home and call on your sisters."

"They are all at home; they will be very glad to see you," she stammered, but her heart sank within her.

It was one of Cara's bad days, she might not receive him graciously; and then what would Dr. Stewart think of their humble little household? She was absent and nervous all the rest of the way. No wonder he found her changed.

"Cara, Dr. Stewart has come to see you," she said, in a deprecating voice, as though she were committing some solecism.

Miss Hope put down her book with a start, and Miss Charity looked up sharply from her knitting. "Whom did you say, Faith?" in an inflexible voice.

"An old hospital friend of hers, one of ten years' standing," observed Dr. Stewart, throwing himself into the breach with military promptness. In a moment he recognized the position; his shrewd, observant glance took in the little parlor and the occupants in a trice.

It was not a very attractive scene to a man of the world; the details were homely and uninteresting. The bay window with its geraniums and fuchsias; the sharp little bright-eyed woman with her high cheek-bones and thin curls; Miss Hope, vigorous and loud-voiced; and Miss Prudence's ungainly figure hovering in the background. Faith, with her pale face and grey dress, looked like a soft speck of shadow in the sunlight. Dr. Stewart's masculine breadth and freedom of movement seemed to fill up the little room.

"Dr. Stewart! have we ever heard of him, sister?" asked Miss Charity, a little sarcastically, and appealing to Miss Hope.

"If you have I dare say you have forgotten it; ten years is a long time for ladies' memories. I was house-surgeon in the hospital at Carlisle, where your sister worked."

"Humph!" responded Miss Charity, dryly.

Dr. Stewart's eyes twinkled at the sight of Faith's despondent face; he was quite master of the position. Miss Charity's cool reception did not daunt him in the least. He placed himself leisurely by the side of the little square couch, and eyed its occupant curiously; he turned over the books that were piled on the narrow table beside her, and read their titles one after another, and then he began to talk. How he talked! Faith's downcast face brightened; after a time she became less nervous. Dr. Stewart did not address himself to her, he seemed to ignore her existence completely. He talked to Charity, who let her knitting fall out of her hot, dry fingers as she listened; to Miss Hope, sitting there erect and open-eyed; even to poor, grim Miss Prudence, to whom few people talked. Faith raised her soft eyes every now and then in surprise; she had no idea Dr. Stewart was such a clever, well-read man; his brusqueness did not jar on her now. To judge by his conversation he might have read half the books that were written. He swallowed up Miss Charity's little modicum of information in a moment, and left her high and dry, with all her long sentences unsaid. Miss Hope gasped and said, "There, now, would you have believed it!" to the stock of choice anecdotes with which he regaled them. Never were four maiden ladies so well entertained on a summer's afternoon.

Even Miss Prudence, the most rigid of housekeepers, counted over her scanty store of preserves mentally, and decided to ask him to tea. Faith almost held her breath for the next moment; but Dr. Stewart accepted the invitation with alacrity. While the tea was brewing and Miss Prudence hunted out a remnant of rich cake, he drew his chair a little closer to Miss Charity, and questioned her somewhat minutely on the subject of her accident.

"You suffer, of course, a great deal? It is a complicated case, I fear."

"Yes; I have had my share of pain," she answered cheerfully. The sharp angles had relaxed now.

"And your prospect of ease is small?"

"Ah, well! it might be worse," she returned resignedly; and somehow the restless bright eyes and thin ringlets were less repellant to him. "I have bad times and good times, and have to lie here and make the best of it. We need to have broken wills, Dr. Stewart."

"Cara is so very patient," interposed Faith, leaning over her sister's couch.

Miss Charity gave her an odd little push.

"No; I am dreadfully cross, and give heaps of trouble. One's pain gets into one's temper. Faith's been a good girl to me all these years; I don't know what I should have done without her."

"Oh, Cara! please don't speak so," whispered poor Faith with tears in her eyes.

It was Dr. Stewart who said "Humph!" now. He glanced curiously at the two women before him. Faith was considered quite a girl still by her sisters.

"I have a temper myself; I believe every one has, though he or she will not always own to it," he remarked coolly, as he placed himself by Miss Prudence, and helped himself liberally to seed cake.

It was getting quite dark when he rose at last to take leave. Faith accompanied him to the door.

"Well, is your headache better? you are not quite so pale," he asked, not unkindly, as they stood together.

"Yes; the walk and the tea has done it good," she answered evasively. What if he should guess at her sleepless night?

"I hoped I should have come in for a compliment, and that my conversation might have helped to charm it away. You used not to be so matter-of-fact, Miss Faith."

Such a rush of color answered him. "I wonder you recollect so long ago," she returned somewhat unsteadily.

"I wonder at it myself. Perhaps you have helped to jog my memory. Well, well, we were young and foolish once. So this has been your life for the last ten years?"

"Yes; just this, and nothing else," with a sigh.

"No wonder you are thin, and have forgotten how to smile. Ten years of this sort of thing! Well, you women beat us after all;" and then he turned on his heel and went down the little garden path bordered by Faith's roses.

In a very little while Dr. Stewart took up his position in Hepshaw, and buckled to his work in a stout, uncompromising manner that seemed natural to him. From his patients he reaped golden opinions, in spite of a deeply-rooted dislike of humbug, and a tendency to shrug his shoulders impatiently over feminine fads and fancies. He was soon a general favorite. He was prompt and kind-hearted; in cases of real suffering nothing could exceed his patience and watchfulness. People soon got over his little brusqueness, and said openly that Dr. Stewart was a real acquisition to the neighborhood.

He had taken temporary lodgings in the village; but report was already busy with the fact that Juniper Lodge, Dr. Morgan's old house, next door to the Misses Palmer, had been visited more than once by the new surgeon. By-and-bye suspicion became certainty, when painters and workmen arrived on the premises. Soon the forlorn exterior of Juniper Lodge began to wear a brighter look—the old green verandah was repainted, fresh papers and plenty of whitewash made the dark old rooms habitable, the evergreen shrubs were cut down or transplanted, the walks weeded and gravelled, a van-load of furniture made its appearance, and a tidy-looking woman with a pleasant Scotch face, answering to the name of Jean, took up her residence. The next day there was a brass plate up; and Dr. Stewart quietly walked into the Evergreens, and announced formally to the sisters that he was their next-door neighbor.

"And a very pleasant neighbor too," observed Miss Hope to her gossips; "so different to Dr. Morgan, with that slatternly housekeeper of his always down at heels and talking to the postman at the gate. That Jean must be a treasure; it is a treat to look at her caps and aprons. I have been all over the house, and you could eat your dinner off the floor, as the saying is. Dr. Stewart drops in to see us very often; it brightens Charity to have a good chat with him. They have fine long arguments sometimes, only he always gets the best of it. He makes a rare commotion when he comes, for he always pulls up the blinds and throws up the windows, though I tell him not to expose our shabby old carpet. He had Charity and her couch out on the lawn the other evening; just fancy! and the poor thing has never been out for years. She was so pleased and excited that we all had a cry over it, and then he scolded us all round."

It was quite true that the arrival of Dr. Stewart as their next-door neighbor made a great change in the little household at the Evergreens; the introduction of the masculine element diffused new life and activity. During his brief visits, for he seldom stayed long, it was wonderful how much Dr. Stewart contrived to effect. The close little parlor where Faith had toiled over weary books or sewn long seams by Cara's couch for ten monotonous years was a different place now. The obnoxious geraniums no longer blocked up the window, there was plenty of air and light; Faith no longer gasped with pale cheeks in the close oppressive atmosphere. On fine afternoons Miss Charity's couch was wheeled out under the apple-trees; the poor lady could watch the butterflies glancing round her, or the great brown bees humming round her neighbor's hive. Instead of Trench's 'Parables,' or D'Aubigné's 'Reformation,' suspicious green volumes in certain standard editions lay beside her. Faith had no need to stifle hardly-to-be-repressed yawns over Kingsley's 'Hypatia,' or 'Two Years Ago.' 'Laura Doone' and Black's 'Adventures of a Phaeton' held them enchained for hours.

"I am afraid our tastes are demoralized, we are getting very lax and dissipated over our reading. It is very nice, but there is no method in it," sighed Miss Charity.

"You have had solids for ten years, now your digestion needs a lighter form of nourishment; all work and no play dulls the brain as well as poor Jack," returned Dr. Stewart decidedly. He had come in for one of his brief, business-like visits; he was always dropping in somewhere, at the Vicarage, at Church-Stile House, at Elderberry Lodge, even at the Sycamores, where comely Mrs. Morris with her seven olive branches lived. He did not favor Brierwood Cottage often with his visits, but he constantly met Queenie going to and from her school, and walked beside her in animated conversation.

Faith met them sometimes as she went about her charitable errands among the cottages; she would turn a little pale and pass on somewhat hurriedly. Dr. Stewart never stopped her on these occasions; he would go on with his talk, casting shrewd kindly glances under the girl's shady straw hat. Poor Faith would look at them wistfully, with a shy, deprecating smile; she would have a certain sinking of heart for hours afterwards. "He admires her, I knew he would," she would say to herself a little sadly.

Poor Miss Faith! it may be doubted if this revival of an old intimacy were a source of unalloyed pleasure. True, the changeless monotony of her days was broken up; but the new interest and excitement had their draw-backs.

Time, after its usual kindly fashion, had to a certain extent healed her wound; the passionate yearning of ten years ago had merged into sad serenity. Faith treasured the remembrance of those few fleeting months, as women will treasure their one romance; those unfinished hopes and fears were buried tenderly in her breast. She had ceased to suffer, but she had not ceased to remember; the sacred impression had stamped her whole life.

And now, when the freshness of youth had passed, she had met her ideal again; but was the girl's ideal likely to be the woman's reality? did she fully recognize in Dr. Stewart the dark young surgeon in that Carlisle hospital, whose soft looks and words had won her heart?

Faith winced secretly at these questions, as she did at Dr. Stewart's brusque remarks. His experience, his knowledge of the world, his laxity and breadth of church views, daunted the simple woman; once or twice his roughness of argument hurt her.

"Ah, I am a poor creature!" she said to him once. "I am not one of the clever ones, like you and Cara."

"No; you are only so so, Miss Faith; your knowledge of the world is not in any way remarkable; you are not one of the strong-minded women," with a little dry chuckle, with which he would conclude his remarks.

But, though he hurt and disappointed her, there were times when a sudden softening of voice or look brought back the past with strange vividness. Now and then he let fall a word that showed that he too had not forgotten, some chance allusion to old scenes, some memory of her tastes. "Ah, you used to like this, Miss Faith," or some such speech, that brought a flush of pleasure to her face.

Dr. Stewart looked very benign as he glanced at the homely group before him on the afternoon in question.

"This is better than twenty feet by eighteen of stuffiness," he said in his concise way.

The sisterhood were all gathered on the lawn. Miss Charity's favorite—an enormous tabby—was purring underneath the old scarlet wrapper; Miss Hope's knitting-needles clicked busily; Miss Patience was occupied over some silk patch-work, the little squares and diamonds shone in the sunlight; Faith was reading aloud 'Westward Ho.' She put down the book with a bright, welcoming smile. The interest of the story had moved her, her eyes shone with soft, serious excitement; there was a scent of tall white lilies. Dr. Stewart's bees were humming noisily; a light wind stirred the long grass shadows; Miss Charity's curls were in disorder. Some fine white-heart cherries hung over Dr. Stewart's head; he commenced gathering some, "by way of dessert," he said coolly as he transferred them to his own pocket. "Why did they not call you Cherry, Miss Charity, instead of that affected Cara?"

"It is only one of Faith's whims," returned Miss Hope; "neither Prue nor I ever use it; she begun it as a child and never left off."

"Why should I not use it, it is far softer and prettier than Charity?" interposed Faith appealingly. Dr. Stewart gave one of his dry laughs.

"Every one has a right to their own fancies. I am prosaic enough to dislike pet names. Cara, when one is christened Charity!" with a contemptuous shrug; "why, it is a direct snub to one's sponsors."

Faith looked uncomfortable; she always did when Dr. Stewart was in one of his quizzical moods. At such times he was given to find fault with everything. But in another moment he became serious.

"What an odd fancy that was of Chester's calling his little girl Nan. She is a pretty little creature, and her father seems to dote on her. I was over there yesterday; Mrs. Chester had one of her attacks."

"Poor thing!" sighed Miss Charity, "she is very delicate. People are fond of calling her fanciful, and no doubt she is full of whimsies like the rest of us; but it is hard work having an ailing body and an ailing temper too."

"Yes," he assented; "she has her share of trouble, but she has got the blessing of a good husband." But here Miss Prudence shook her head grimly. She rarely joined in the conversation if a stranger were present; and, as her remarks were generally of a lugubrious nature, they were not greatly missed.

"An ill-assorted couple, doctor," smoothing her black mittens with sad satisfaction. Miss Prudence was much given to expatiate in the domestic circle on the evils of matrimony, and to thank Heaven that she and her three sisters had not fallen into the hands of the Philistines; a peculiarly happy state of resignation for an unattractive woman, with a rigid and cast-iron exterior, and endowed besides with a masculine appendage of the upper lip.

"Humph!" grunted the doctor laconically; for he had an ill-concealed antagonism to Miss Prudence, and disliked gossiping about his patients' affairs.

"If we were to add up all the ill-assorted marriages in the world, the sum would last us a long time," observed Miss Hope philosophically.

"Right, my dear madam," was the brisk answer; "but 'if folk, won't suit themselves properly it is not other people's fault,' as the old clerk said when—when the wrong couple got married."

"They say marriages are made in heaven," began Miss Charity, a little sentimentally; but Dr. Stewart interrupted her.

"They say so; but don't you think there is a good deal of human bungling and obstinacy at the bottom? One can't fancy the angels, for example, taking a very great interest in a marriage de convenance, or a ceremony where title-deeds and money-bags play too prominent a part! I have seen something of human nature, Miss Charity, and have often found occasion for astonishment at the sad mess men, and women too, make over their lives."

"I don't think women are often to blame," observed Faith in a low voice.

"Humph! so that is your experience," with an odd, inexplicable look as he rose from the grass. "Well, ladies, this is vastly entertaining, and one could learn a good deal, no doubt; but there is work waiting for me in the shape of Jemmy Bates' broken leg, which, by-the-bye, Miss Faith, is progressing most favorably," and, with a benevolent nod that included them all, Dr. Stewart walked off, still munching his cherries.

CHAPTER XII.

LITTLE NAN.

"Those whom God loves die young;
They see no evil days;
No falsehood taints their tongue,
No wickedness their ways.

"Baptized—and so made sure
    To win their safe abode,
What can we pray for more?
    They die, and are with God."
                                                    Robert S. Hawker.

A few days after Dr. Stewart's garden visit Emmie came running up the gravel walk at Brier wood Cottage with a frightened face. Queenie, who was sitting in the porch as usual, put down her work rather hurriedly.

"Oh, Queen, I do think something is the matter. Mr. Chester is coming up this way, and he has got Nan in his arms, and she looks so odd; I am sure she is ill or something."

"Is he bringing her here, or to Church-Stile House?" asked her sister anxiously; but as she spoke Mr. Chester's tall figure came into sight. In another moment there was a click of the little gate, and he came rapidly up to them carrying his child.

"May I come in, Miss Marriott? the sun is so hot I dare not go up the lane;" and, as Queenie nodded and made room for him to pass into their cool little sitting-room, he continued in an agitated voice, "I do not know what ails Nan, she has been sleepy and quiet for a long time, and just now she turned very sick and poorly."

He had placed himself in the low chair by the window as he spoke, and Queenie knelt down by him and examined the child. As she untied the large white sun-bonnet Nan shrank from her rather restlessly.

"Nan did want to go home, father; Nan very sick," she answered, hiding her face on his shoulder.

"That is what she keeps saying over and over again," he continued, still more anxiously. "She was quite well when we left home this morning; she and her little maid were chasing each other along the lanes, pelting each other with poppies. I thought she was only tired and wanted to be carried; I can't understand this sickness and drowsiness all at once. Do you think, Miss Marriott, that it could possibly be a sunstroke?"

"I don't know; her eyes certainly look very odd," returned Queenie in great perplexity.

"Oh, father! Nan is so very tired," moaned the little creature again, creeping closer to his broad breast. "Ellen did say it was naughty to eat the pretty currants; but Nan is good now, only so sick."

"Have you any pain, my darling?" he asked, bending over her.

"No; no pain, only Nan so tired," she repeated, in the most pathetic voice. Mr. Chester looked appealingly at Queenie.

"I am afraid she is very ill," she returned reluctantly, for there was a strange look about the child that alarmed her. "Emmie dear, tell Patience to go and fetch Dr. Stewart at once, and you run across for Langley."

"Aye, we must have Langley," he repeated helplessly, looking down at his pet. Nan had left off her moaning and seemed sinking into drowsiness.

"Will she let me undress her and lay her in Emmie's bed? she will be more comfortable than in your arms;" but, as Nan stirred uneasily and murmured "Father; Nan cannot leave father," Mr. Chester was obliged to carry her up himself. But even when he placed her on the cool pillow she still held his hand tightly.

"Father will not leave his pet; don't be afraid, my darling."

When Langley arrived she found him still hanging over the child. Nan seemed sleeping; her dark eyelashes swept her cheek; one small hand was folded in her father's.

"This sleep will do her good. It must have been the sun that made her feel sick," he said, looking up at Langley with a relieved expression. Langley put back the long silky hair from the child's forehead, but did not answer. Some chill presentiment for which she could not account had seized her at the moment of Emmie's summons; and then, why did not Nan move when she kissed her?

"I do not think this looks quite like sleep, like natural sleep, I mean. I think we ought to try to rouse her, at least till Dr. Stewart comes. Speak to her, Harry; she has never slept so soundly before."

"Nan, Nan, my little one, father wants you," but, for the first time in her infant life, Nan was deaf to her father's voice.

"What can we do? what are we to do? Dr. Stewart will not be home for another hour," exclaimed Queenie, now really terrified. No suspicion of the truth had entered into any of their minds. Only when it was too late did the child's speech about the pretty currants recur to her.

The next two hours that passed were never effaced from Queenie's memory. No efforts of theirs could rouse the child from the death-like stupor that oppressed her. Langley had tried two or three remedies, but they were unavailing, and the father's agony was pitiable to witness. The little town was fairly roused, and messengers on horseback were scouring the neighbourhood after Dr. Stewart. But he had gone to a farmhouse some five miles distant, and delay was inevitable. Garth and Ted had each gone in different directions, and Faith Palmer had driven over to Karldale to tell Mrs. Chester the reason of her husband's long absence.

It was just before Dr. Stewart's arrival that Langley, examining the child's clothes, found some dark crimson stains on the front of the little white frock, and showed them to the doctor, as he stood with a grave face looking down at the child. A very brief survey had satisfied him.

"Humph! it is just as I feared when young Clayton told me the symptoms. She has been eating deadly night-shade. Children sometimes mistake them for currants. Why was she allowed to run about without her nurse?"

"She had the girl with her," returned the poor father, and here he uttered a strong expletive; but Langley laid her hand on his arm and said Hush! "What can you do to wake her, Dr. Stewart?"

"Nothing," returned the doctor sadly. "An hour or two sooner and I could have saved her. But, my good sir, these things are not in our hands. It is neither your fault nor mine that I was not here."

"You can do nothing!" turning upon him almost fiercely in his despair, as though he would wrest the child's life from him by force.

"Nothing," he repeated emphatically, for it was best that the miserable father should realize the truth at once, and not cling to the shadow of a hope. "The child is sleeping herself to death; in a few hours it must all be over."

"Try to bear it, Harry," said Langley, in her low, soothing voice, for the strong man absolutely staggered under the blow. Her face was almost as white as his as she guided him to a chair, but he turned from her with a groan and hid his face in the child's pillow.

"I will come again; there is nothing for me to do here," said Dr. Stewart. His voice was rough, probably with emotion, as he turned away abruptly.

"An hour or two earlier and I could have saved her," he said to Queenie as she followed him down-stairs. "It goes hard with a man to know that, and that he can do absolutely nothing; just because my mare wanted shoeing, and I went out of the beaten track. There is another life gone, that is what I call a mystery," and Dr. Stewart muttered his favorite "humph!" and went away with a sorrowful face, for he was soft-hearted, and loved all children for their own sweet sakes.

There was literally nothing to be done after this. Garth came in by-and-bye and paid a short visit to the room up-stairs, but he did not stay long.

"Langley is with him, and we have sent for his wife. There is nothing that a fellow can do, and—in short, I can't stand it," he blurted out confidentially to Queenie, with a man's instinctive horror of scenes. "If there were something that one could do; but in these sort of cases women are the best. It cuts one to the heart to see him going on like that;" and Garth turned on his heel abruptly, and walked to the window.

But he made himself of use too in that troubled little household; for he succeeded in coaxing Emmie, who was sobbing with nervous excitement, to go with him to Church-Stile House, and promised Queenie to place her under Cathy's care for the night. This was a great relief to Queenie, who had reason to dread any of these sort of depressing scenes for her, and left her free for any duty that might devolve on her.

A sad sight awaited her up-stairs. The setting sun was flooding the little chamber, and the last dazzling rays shone full on the face of the child. Mr. Chester was kneeling by the bed, with one little hand hidden in his; Langley, with a white, rigid face, was standing beside him. As the hoarse uncontrollable sobs, those tearless sobs of a strong man, smote on her ear she shivered and shrank back as though some blow were dealt her.

"Oh, Queenie, this is dreadful! Who can comfort him? Where is his wife and the mother of his child?" she whispered, as the girl went up to them. "It is she who ought to be here, not I."

"We have sent for her. Hush, Langley, he will hear you."

"Ah, he bears nothing; he will have it that she will wake and speak to him." But her words reached his ear.

"She will, Langley; how can you be so cruel? They always do just before——" "the last," he was going to say, but the words choked him. "You will say good-bye to father, and give him one sweet kiss, will you not, my little Nan, my darling, my treasure?"

"Oh, Harry, try to bear it! Harry, Harry, won't you listen to me a moment?" and Langley laid her cold hand on his arm; but her touch only seemed to make him more frantic.

"No, I will not bear it; I cannot bear it. Have I not suffered enough? Will God take from me my only comfort? Oh, my little child, my little child!" with another burst of anguish.

"See how calm and peaceful she looks," she went on, in her quiet, controlling voice, but her face was like marble; "just sleeping peacefully into her rest; no pain, no suffering. It is so 'He giveth His beloved sleep;' try and think of that, Harry."

"She was my ewe lamb," he muttered, gloomily; "she drank of my cup, and lay in my bosom. She was my own little daughter, my only one, She used to kneel up upon my knees and say her pretty prayers to me every night, the darling. 'God bless Nan and Nan's father,' she always said that."

"Yes; and He will bless you, my poor Harry."

"Is it blessing me to rob me like this of my all? Oh, Langley, pray to Him; you are a good woman; pray both of you that she may be spared to me."

"Ab, if it were only His will!" sighed Langley. Did the memory of those strange pathetic words of another heart-broken father cross her memory? "'While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live?' Ah, if it were only His will!"

"Hush! did you see her stir? I saw her, I felt her; she is waking now. Nan, my pet, my darling, open your sweet eyes and look at father." But, alas, the little inanimate form still lay in its deathly torpor.

And so the hours passed. Dr. Stewart came and went again; and Garth stole up the uncarpeted stairs, and stood outside with bated breath, to listen if a further change had taken place. But still Mr. Chester knelt beside the little white bed, and Langley and Queenie kept faithful watch beside him.

It was long past midnight when Queenie, laying her hand on the child's brow, felt it cold beneath her touch, and knew that the last feeble breath had been drawn, and signed to Langley that all was over.

But even then the unhappy father would not realize the truth; and when at last it dawned upon him, he bade them with passionate impatience to leave him there with his dead. "Leave me alone with my child; she belongs to me; she is mine;" and as they went out sadly they could hear him groan, "Oh, my little Nan, my little, little child."

As they left the room, Queenie could hear Garth calling to her in a suppressed voice, and at once went down to him. He took hold of her hand, and led her into the cheery little parlor. There was a bright fire in the grate; an old wooden rocking-chair stood near it; the tea-tray was on the round black table where the sisters ate their simple meals.

"Sit down there and warm yourself," he said, kindly, "and I will give you a cup of tea. Where is Langley?"

"She went into my room; I think she wants to be alone; I will go up to her presently. Oh, Mr. Clayton," bursting into tears, for this touch of thoughtfulness moved her from her enforced calmness, "it has been so sad, so dreadful, all these hours."

"Yes; I know it has been very hard upon you. Poor Chester, and poor dear little Nan; who would have dreamed of such a catastrophe? Even Dr. Stewart, who is inured to all sorts of painful scenes, seems quite upset by it. It must be hard for a man to lose his only child," continued Garth, gravely, as he brought the tea, and stirred the fire into a more cheerful blaze.

"I did not know you were here," she said, after an interval of silence. The warmth had revived her, and the flow of nervous tears had done her good. How she wished that Langley could be induced to come down too!

"I could not make up my mind to leave you all in such a strait. Langley was here, and I thought after all that I might be of use. I am glad I thought of keeping up the fire. I had a grand hunt for Patience's tea-caddy; it took me no end of time to find."

Garth was talking in a fast, nervous way to keep up his own and Queenie's spirits. He had never seen her cry before, and it gave him an odd sort of pain. The thought of the room upstairs, and of the heart-broken father kneeling there by his dead child, weighed upon them both like lead; only Queenie stretched out her cold hands to the blaze, and drank her tea obediently, and felt cheered by Garth's kindness.

"These sorts of things upset one's views of life," he continued, after a pause. "I suppose we all know trouble in some shape or other; but when it comes to a man losing his only bit of comfort, and Heaven only knows what that child was to the poor fellow—well, I can only say it does seem hard."

"That is what I felt when I thought I was going to lose Emmie. Mr. Chester has his wife."

"She has never been much good to him. I am no scandal-monger, but one can't help seeing that. I wonder what has become of her and Miss Faith?" he went on, restlessly, walking to the window and looking out on the dark summer night.

Queenie left him soon after that. "She must see after Langley," she said; "and there were other things that ought to be done," she added, with a shudder.

Garth let her go with some reluctance; the little parlor looked desolate without her. He sat down in the old rocking-chair after she had left, and fell into an odd, musing dream. "How strangely they seemed to be drawn together," he thought. He was as much at home with her as he was with Langley and Cathy; it had come quite naturally to him now to take her under his protection, and care for her as he did for them. It had been pleasant ministering to her comfort just now. How pretty she had looked sitting there in her black dress, with her head resting against the hard wood of the chair. Most women looked ugly when they cried, but her tears had flowed so quietly. And then he wondered how Dora looked when she cried, and if she would ever gaze up in his face as gently and gratefully as Queenie did just now. And then he fell to musing in a grave, old-fashioned way on the inequalities of matrimony, and the probable risk of disappointment. Things did not always turn out well, as poor Chester had found to his cost. In times of trouble a man must turn for comfort to his wife. Was Dora the one likely to yield him this comfort? She was very strong and reliable; all manner of good qualities were hers, besides her creamy skin and golden hair; but would she be gentle and soft with him at times when a man needed gentleness?

Garth was disquieting himself a little over these thoughts while Queenie stole up the little staircase. All was quiet in Emmie's room as she passed; her own was chill and dark as she entered it. Langley had not lighted the candle; she was sitting by the open window looking out at the black, starless night. The rain was falling now, the drops were pattering on the creeper. Queenie gave a little shiver of discomfort at the dreary scene, and thought regretfully of the rocking-chair downstairs.

"Have you been in again, Langley?"

"Yes; but he will not let me stay or do anything for him; he wants her all to himself for a little, he says. He just let me put things a little comfortable, and as they should be, watching me jealously all the time, and then I came away. Garth must go in by-and-bye, and coax him down."

Langley spoke in a tone of forced composure, but her breath was labored, and the hand that touched Queenie's was so damp and cold that the girl absolutely started.

"Dear Langley, all this is making you quite ill. Do come down with me; your brother has lighted a fire, and it is so warm and cosy, and we can talk ever so much better there." But Langley refused.

"No, no; I must stop here as long as he is shut up in that room. What do I want with warmth and comfort while he is suffering—suffering? and I can do nothing for him—nothing, nothing!" in a voice of such despair that Queenie started. A new light seemed breaking on her.

"He asked for you directly, before his wife was sent for, I know. I think he likes you to be with him, Langley; you are old friends, you know."

"Yes; I know. He called me to him just now, and we stood together for a long time looking down at the child. His eyes asked me for comfort; but what consolation had I to give him? His wife ought to be there, not I; we both knew that; and then he sent me away."

"But you need not have gone."

"Could I have stood there taking her place when I know too well what we have been to each other? He was right to send me away, and I was right to go; but oh, Queenie, this night is killing me!" and Langley leant against her so heavily, and her voice sounded so strangely in the darkness, that Queenie was frightened. If she guessed rightly, what utter misery there was locked up in this woman's breast!

"You must lie down on my bed; I will not talk to you like this," she said, firmly. And when Langley, faint and exhausted with emotion, offered no resistance, she fetched a thick shawl and folded it round her, and then lighted a candle and administered some sal-volatile. The dim light showed a very ghastly face, and great bright eyes brimful of wretchedness; the somewhat thin lips were trembling with weakness.

"Don't look at me, Queenie; don't let me talk. I am not myself to-night; I shall say things I ought not to say." But Queenie only kissed her tenderly, and drew the white face down to her shoulder.

"Do talk, Langley; it will do you good. You have kept it all in too long, and it has done you harm. No one wants me, and I can sit beside you a little. When I hear the least movement in Emmie's room I will go in."

"We ought not to leave him long alone," she answered, faintly. "Garth must go in to him presently. He would mind me, I know; but I dare not let him see me like this. Oh, Queenie, whatever sorrow you may have to bear, may you never know mine—to bring trouble on the man you love, and then not to be able to comfort him!"

Queenie stroked her hair softly; there was sympathy conveyed in every touch. "Tell me all about it, Langley," she whispered; "I always knew you had a grief. If you loved Mr. Chester, and he cared for you, why did you not marry him?"

"Why, indeed! I have had five years in which to ask myself that question. I loved him, of course. We had grown up together; as long as I could remember, Harry and I had been together caring for each other. Garth, every one, expected how it would be."

"Perhaps they all took it too much as a matter of course."

"How did you know that?" lifting her head from Queenie's shoulder. "No one can have told you. I never had any confidant."

"One guesses things by instinct sometimes."

"You are young to know human nature so well," sinking back with a sigh. "Ah, six years ago I was like Cathy—proud, impulsive, and loving my own will. I had a great notion of independence. I thought women were not allowed enough liberty, that they held themselves too cheaply; and though I loved Harry, I was not quite willing to marry him."

"That sounds strange. I can hardly imagine you like Cathy."

"No; my self-will is broken now; I have expiated my girlish failings too bitterly. One's spirit dies under such an ordeal. But though I blame myself, not him, I think a stronger nature would have controlled me."

"Did you refuse him then?"

"I suppose I did. He came to me one day; things had been going on for a long time, but there had been no actual wooing. Harry was a matter-of-fact man, and I was just the reverse. I had got my head full of novels, and had framed my own ideas of love-making. I wanted an ardent lover, one who would carry me away with the force of his own feelings. The quiet, business-like manner in which Harry spoke fired my pride and resolved me; besides, as I said before, that though I loved him, I was not quite willing to be married."

"Do you remember what he said to you?"

"Yes; his very words. I was in the drawing-room at Church-Stile House, and he came to me looking very quiet and pale. 'Langley,' he said, 'this has been going on a long time, too long, Garth and I think, and I don't seem to be any nearer to what I wish. We care for each other, I know. Can you not make up your mind to be my wife? Karldale Grange is waiting for its mistress.' Just that; not a word of his love for me, not a single protestation."

"I think it was very honest and straight-forward."

"Can you guess how I answered him? I thanked him coldly, and said that I was in no mood for marrying, that I was not sure that I should ever marry; I cared too much for my freedom.

"'Have you been playing with me all these years, Langley?' he said, sadly, and his face grew so white. 'I can hardly believe that. I will not press or annoy you, dear; I will speak to Garth;' and then he went away.

"Oh, if he had only stayed, Queenie, and reasoned with me a little, my better nature must have prevailed, for I loved him so; but his apparent coolness angered me, and then Garth came and scolded me, which made matters worse. He was for carrying things with a high hand; but I only grew obstinate. And so one wretched day Harry and I had bitter words together, and he faced round upon me when I sat pretending to work, and swore that if I would not marry him, Gertrude Leslie should; and with that he turned on his heel and left me.

"I felt I had gone too far then, and that he meant what he said. Sooner than lose him altogether, I would have humiliated myself in the dust. I threw down my work, and called out Harry, but he did not hear, and in another moment his horse's hoofs sounded in the lane.

"I did all then that I could do. I wrote a penitent little note begging him to forgive me, and come back to me, and all should be as he wished; and I sent a messenger on to Karldale with it, charging him to deliver it into Harry's own hands; but, alas, it was brought back to me unopened. Harry had never been home at all, he had ridden straight off to Blanddale; and the next morning I heard Gertrude Leslie had promised to be his wife.

"Oh, Queenie," as the girl leant over her and kissed the white lips that quivered still with the remembrance of that long-past agony, "that moment was a sufficient punishment for all my mad folly; even Garth thought so, for he had no word of reproach for me.

"But I opened my lips to no one. None knew what I suffered daring those nights and days. An old aunt of ours had fallen ill in Carlisle, and I went to her, and stayed with her till she died.

"When I came back they were married, and by-and-bye Harry and I met. I could see he was greatly changed, and his manner was constrained and nervous; but it was not in his nature to bear malice, and I know he soon forgave me, all the more that he must have seen that he was not the only one to suffer."

"Dear Langley," stroking the worn face still more tenderly, "I can hardly bear to hear it; it seems all so dreadful. I cannot understand how women can live through such things."

"One gets used to torture," with a strange smile. "Have you not read that martyrs have been known to sleep on the rack? The worst part of life always seems to me that pain so seldom kills. We go on mutilated, shorn of our best blessings, wounded and bleeding, but we never die."

Queenie stooped down and quoted softly in her ear, "Wherefore is light given to him in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures?"

"Ah, I have often repeated those words. I thought when I first saw Harry after he was married that it would kill me; to think that he belonged to another woman, that she, not I, had a right to his every thought and care. It seemed as though my heart could not hold all its pain."

"Ah, but he had not ceased to love you. There must have been some consolation in that thought."

"Yes; but it was not a right consolation; and then I knew that I was the cause of his unhappiness—that was the hardest part of all. He was so good; he tried so hard to do his duty by her, and make her a fond and faithful husband; but she never loved him."

"But she married him."

"Alas, she married him out of pique. Her lover had jilted her, and in her despair she took the first offer that came to her. Poor Gertrude! she has told me all her troubles. I am her friend as well as Harry's, and all that can be done for them I have tried to do to my utmost."

"That I am sure you have."

"It used to be dreadful to go there, and see how she treated him; but it was my penance, and I bore it for his sake. When the child came things were better between them, and latterly I hoped that he had ceased to regret the past; but now," she wrung her hands, and the despairing look came back into her eyes, "God has taken from him his only comfort, and I must see his misery and do nothing."

There was a moment's silence, only the ceaseless patter of the rain sounded on the leaves, and then Langley raised herself with effort.

"He has been too long alone; some one must go to him," she said, anxiously. "Either you or Garth must rouse him."

"Hush!" interrupted Queenie; "I think I hear something. There is surely the sound of wheels in the distance. It is coming nearer; yes, it is stopping at the gate."

"Then it must be Gertrude," exclaimed Langley, putting back the damp hair from her face, and trying to rise from the bed. "Look out, dear Queenie. Oh, if it should be Gertrude!"

"I am straining my eyes in the darkness, but it is so hard to distinguish anything. Yes, there are two figures, one very tall. I think that must be Mrs. Chester. Garth is opening the door; now he will bring her up. Lie down again, Langley; you look dreadful." But Langley only shook her head, and renewed her efforts to rise.

They could hear footsteps ascending the narrow stairs. The gleam of a candle preceded them. Langley tottered feebly to the head of the staircase; but Mrs. Chester did not see her.

"Where is she? where is my child?" she said, putting out her hands and feeling before her, with the gesture of a sleep-walker, or one stricken suddenly blind; and Queenie, moved with sudden compassion, sprang forward and guided her to the door.

"Little Nan is there," she said. "He is sitting by her; we cannot get him to leave her."

Yes; he was sitting there in the same attitude in which they had left him, with the child's dead hand still clasped in his. At the sight of that bowed figure, that mute despair, the wife's heart woke into sudden life, and she walked feebly towards him.

"Harry," she said, bursting into tears, and throwing her arms round his neck, "my poor Harry, it is our little child; mine as well as yours. We must comfort each other."

CHAPTER XIII.

"I KNEW YOU WOULD BE SORRY FOR US."

"When they see her their tears will cease to flow,
Lest they should fall on this pure pale brow,
    Or the lilies the child is holding.
With symbol flowers in stainless hand,
She goes by the great white throne to stand,
    Where Jesus His lambs is folding."
                                                        Helen Marion Burnside.

As the door closed upon the bereaved parents, Queenie heard a low "Thank God" behind her, and immediately afterwards Langley crept softly away. When Queenie went back to her, she found her lying on her bed shedding tears quietly. The strained and fixed expression of her face had relaxed; the worn nerves and brain had at last found relief.

"Let me cry, it will do me good," she said, when the girl would have hushed her. "If you only knew how long it is since I have been able to shed a tear. I felt as though I were turning into stone. But now—ah, if she will only be good to him I think I could bear anything."

Queenie was obliged to modify her opinion of Mrs. Chester as she watched her during the trying hours that followed. Whatever sins Gertrude had committed against her husband and child during their brief married life she felt must be partially condoned by her present self-forgetfulness.

It may be doubted perhaps whether she had loved her child while it lived with a mother's strong passion. Certain words that little Nan had uttered in her baby language had given a contrary impression. "Mammie did say, 'Go away, Nan,'" she had observed more than once. "Mammie always so tired when Nan looks at her." Might it not have been that, absorbed in her own selfish repinings and discontent, she had refused to gather up the sweetness of that infant life into hers until it was too late? That she was suffering now, no one could doubt who looked at her. The father's heart might be broken within him, but his was the agony of bereavement. No self-reproach festered his wound; no bitterness of remorse was his. But who could measure the anguish of that unhappy mother?

Queenie watched her half fascinated as she glided softly from place to place, a graceful, dark-eyed woman. The tall figure, once so full and commanding, was attenuated and bowed as though with weakness. Bright patches of color burnt on the thin cheeks: soft streaks of gray showed in the thick coils of hair; and how low and suffering were the once sharp, querulous tones.

It was a mournful little household in Brierwood Cottage. Mr. Chester had refused to leave the place where his child was. Little Nan still lay in Emmie's room. Queenie had given up hers, and had betaken herself to Patience's little chamber. Emmie was still at Church-Stile House.

Queenie used to go out to her work, and leave Gertrude alone with her husband. On her return she would see them sitting hand in hand talking softly of their child. Nothing but his wife's presence seemed to console the unhappy father. Only she or Langley could rouse him or induce him to take food. Once when they thought they were alone Queenie saw Gertrude take her husband's head between her hands and kiss it softly, and lay it on her breast. "Harry, my poor Harry," she whispered over him, with a perfect passion of pity. Did the warning voice within her admonish her that she too must soon leave him and join her child?

Langley came and went on brief ministering errands, but she never remained long. Now and then, when all was quiet in the little room above, she would go in and kneel down beside the baby coffin. What sort of prayers ascended from that lonely heart that had missed its way so early in life? "Little Nan, I would have laid down my life to have saved yours," she whispered, pressing her lips to the wood.

One day Captain Fawcett stood there with Emmie beside him. Emmie's great blue eyes dilated and widened with awe and wonder at the sight of the tiny white face. The little coffin, the bed, the room were perfectly strewn with flowers. Great boxes of rare hot-house flowers sent from Carlisle, and directed in an unknown hand, had arrived that morning at the cottage. Gertrude was sitting weaving a cross in the room down-stairs, while her husband watched her.

"Is that Nan? it looks like a stone angel lying under a quilt of roses and lilies. It is just like a little angel that I used to see in the cathedral," whispered Emmie.

"Aye, it is Nan; it is just as my girl looked when her mother dressed her up for the last time in her flowers," returned Captain Fawcett, tremulously. A tear rolled down his grizzled moustache; but Emmie's eyes only widened and grew solemn.

"It is a pity, such pretty flowers; and they will have so many there," she continued, reflectively. "Aren't you glad that Alice has all those roses? Do you know, I often dream about your girl. She was like me, you know, only she had long hair. Last night I thought she and Nan came running to meet me; they were laughing so, and their hands were full of roses."

"Bless your pretty fancies, my darling. Well, I dream of my little maid often myself, and she always comes to me and says, 'Father.' I can feel her little hand slipping into mine. And then when I wake I am lonesome somehow. Poor little Ailie."

"You must not say poor," returned Emmie, pressing heavily against his knee; "she is not poor at all; she was very tired, you know, and now she is rested. Perhaps Nan would have been tired too if she had stayed longer."

"Ah, so she might, poor lammie," with a heavy sigh.

"The world is such a tiring place," continued Emmie, moralizing in her quaint childish way. "Some one is always crying in it. If it were not for leaving Queenie alone, I think I should like to go too, and walk about the golden streets with Alice and Nan; there are such lots of children there, and it is all bright, and nobody cries and looks sad and miserable."

"Let us go and look for blackberries: the Missus is so fond of blackberries," interposed the Captain, hurriedly, for Emmie's dilated eyes filled him with alarm. The child's sensitive nature was depressed by the sadness that surrounded her; a whole world of pathos, a strange involved meaning, lay behind those simple words.

"The world is such a tiring place; some one is always crying in it." Alas! yes, little Emmie. Out of His bright heaven God looks down on the upturned wet faces of myriads of His creatures. What seas of tears roll between the earth and His mercy! If the concentrated pain of humanity could be condensed into a single groan, the whole universe could not bear the terror of that sound, reverberating beyond the bound of the uttermost stars, silencing the very music of heaven.

Such a tiring place! True, most true, little Emmie. A place where mistakes are made and never rectified; a place where a joyous meeting is too often replaced by a sad good-bye; where hearts that cleave together are sundered; where the best loved is the soonest taken; where under the sunshine lie the shadows, and the shadows lengthen the farther we walk.

Such a tiring place! since we must work and weep, and live out the life that seems to us so imperfect; since sweet blossoms fail to bring fruit, and thorns lurk underneath the roses. Yet are the letters written up, graven and indelible, on every mutilated life: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."

So one bright summer's morning, loving hands lifted little Nan and laid her in her resting-place by the lime-tree walk, and the childless parents followed hand in hand.

The churchyard was crowded with sympathizing faces. Queenie was there at the head of her scholars, and Langley stood near her, leaning heavily on her brother's arm. When the service was over the children stepped up two and two, and dropped their simple offerings of rustic wreaths and flowers into the open grave. One child had fashioned a rude cross of poppies and corn, and flung it red and gleaming at the mother's feet. Gertrude took it up and kissed it, and placed it tenderly with the rest. The child, a chubby-faced creature scarcely more than an infant, looked up at her with great black eyes.

"Oo' little gell will like my fowers," she lisped, as Gertrude burst into tears.

Queenie felt very heavy-hearted when, the next day, the Chesters left her and went back to their lonely home. Gertrude kissed her, and tried to say a few words of thanks.

"You have been a good Samaritan to me and Harry, Miss Marriott," she said, in a broken voice; "you have taken us in, and tried to bind up our wounds with oil and wine, and yet you were almost a stranger to us."

"I shall come again. I cannot keep away from there," added Mr. Chester, with a yearning look towards the place where the mortal remains of his darling were laid. "No, I cannot thank you, Miss Marriott, I never can do so."

"Oh, hush! go away, please. Would not any one have done it in my place?" cried the girl, with a little sob. She leant against the little gate, watching them until the phaeton was out of sight. Garth, who was coming down the lane, crossed over the road and joined her.

"So you have your little home to yourself again," he said, looking down at her kindly. "Ah, well, it has been a miserable week to you and to all of us. No one can help feeling for poor Chester; and as for that wife of his—"

"Well!" interrupted Queenie, fixing her strange, fathomless eyes on the young man, as he left his sentence unfinished. Every now and then they startled people with their strange haunting beauty; they startled Garth now, for he became suddenly confused.

"All I meant was, that one can plainly see that Mrs. Chester is not long for this world. Stewart says so plainly, and she must be conscious of it herself. One can tell that there is trouble in store for that poor fellow."

"Yes, and she has begun to love him too late," replied Queenie. "All these years lost, and only to understand each other at the last; there does seem such a mystery in things, Mr. Clayton."

"Not at all; he has only married the wrong woman," returned Garth, coolly; "hundreds of men do that, and have to rue their mistake. You are only a girl, you do not know the world as we do," continued the young man, a little loftily. "There are all sorts of temptations and influences. One needs all one's wisdom and strength of mind to steer clear among all the shoals and quicksands one finds in life."

"It was Mr. Chester's own fault marrying the wrong woman," persisted Queenie, with a little heat.

Garth's loftiness and burst of eloquence did not move her in the least. His cool statement of facts was rank heresy in her eyes. What was it to her that hundreds of men had made matrimonial mistakes? In her woman's creed, that code of purity and innocence, it was a simple question of right and wrong. To love one woman and marry another, however expedient in a worldly point of view, was a sin for which there was no grace of forgiveness.

"Men make their own fate; it is for them to choose. No one need make mistakes with their eyes open," continued the girl, with a little impatience and scorn of this matter-of-fact philosophy. "If they make a poor thing of their own life it is not for them to complain."

"Ah, you are hard on us. You are only a girl; you do not know," returned the young man, looking down from the altitude of his superior wisdom into Queenie's wide-open indignant eyes with exasperating calmness. "Your life compared to ours is like a mill-stream beside a rushing river: one is all movement; the strong currents draw hither and thither."

"The mill-stream is often the deeper," was the petulant answer.

Garth laughed; he was not at all discomposed by Queenie's impatient argument. He would have enjoyed having it out with her if he had had time, but, as he told himself, he had more important business in hand.

"By-the-bye, you are making me waste my precious moments as usual," he observed, good-humoredly; "and I have never given you Langley's message. She and Cathy want you to come up to our place this evening; they think the cottage must be so dull now your guests have gone."

"How kind and thoughtful of Langley!" returned Queenie; and now the brown eyes had a happy sparkle in them. There was no place so dear to her as Church-Stile House. If Garth could only have known it!

"You will be doing them a kindness by cheering them up a little, as both Ted and I will be away. Have you heard," he continued, gravely, "that they are rather in trouble at Crossgill Vicarage. I had a letter this morning from Dora, I mean Miss Cunningham," went on Garth, coloring a little bashfully over his mistake.

"Are you going there? I hope there is not much the matter," asked Queenie, in a measured voice. There was no sparkle now in her eyes. The evening was to be spent without him; and then Miss Cunningham had written to him at the first hint of trouble. She had sought him, and not Langley.

"Oh, as to that, she does not say much in her letter. Miss Cunningham is not one to make a fuss about anything. It is Florence who is ill, and she and her father mean to go over to Brussels. Stay, I have her note here," producing it from his breast-pocket. "You can judge for yourself there is not much in it; but then Miss Cunningham is one of the quiet sort."

Queenie took the note "a little reluctantly. Dora wrote a large, business-like hand. Those firm, well-formed characters had nothing irresolute in them. It was curt and concise.

"Dear Mr. Clayton," it began, "my father wishes you to know that we have had bad news from Brussels. Darling Flo is very ill. Madame Shleïfer says it is typhoid fever; but as there are no unfavorable symptoms, there is nothing serious to be apprehended. One must make allowances for Beattie's nervousness; girls of seventeen are apt to exaggerate. Still papa and I cannot help feeling anxious, and we shall start by the early train to-morrow. If you could come over this evening we shall be glad, as papa wants to consult you about a little business. The porch-room shall be got ready for you, as I know you will make an effort to come to us in our trouble."

"She does not say very much, but one can read between the lines. Florence is the youngest sister, and her favorite. I know she is terribly anxious," observed Garth, as Queenie returned the note in silence. "Well, I must be off; my trap will be round directly. You three girls will have a cosy evening without me I expect. Good-bye till to-morrow," and Garth touched his felt hat and ran down the lane.

"He might have shaken hands," thought Queenie, as she walked slowly back into the cottage.

The empty room felt very dull, but still it would have been better there than in Church-Stile House without him. On the whole, the evening was a failure. Cathy was in one of her quiet moods, and could not be roused into interest about anything. Langley looked paler than usual, and complained of head-ache, and Emmie was listless and restless. As for Queenie, she took herself to task severely for all manner of miserable fancies as she walked back to the cottage in the darkness.

"What is the use of your perpetually crying for the moon?" she said indignantly to herself. "Are you going to spoil your life and other people's with such nonsense? It is not for you to say that he is marrying the wrong woman. She is a hundred times superior to you, and I suppose he thinks so. Why is he to be blamed because he sees no beauty in your little brown face? You are nothing to him but Miss Marriott, the village school-mistress."

But that would not do, so she began again, looking at herself in the glass and crying softly. "Yes, you are a poor thing, and I pity you, but I am disappointed in you as well. You are not a bit better or more to be trusted than other girls. You know you are jealous of this Dora Cunningham; that you hate the very sound of her name, as though she had not a better right to him than you. Has she not known him all her life? and could she know him without loving him? Why," with a little sob, that sounded very pathetic in the silence, "as though any one could help it. Even Emmie loves him, and follows him about like a dog everywhere. I am not a bit ashamed of my affection for him. I would rather live lonely, as I shall live, and care about him in the way I do, receiving little daily kindnesses at his hand, than marry any other man. It is not much of a life perhaps," went on the girl, with a broken breath or two; "it does not hold as much as other people's; but such as it is, I would rather live it than go away elsewhere, and forget, and perhaps be forgotten."

Queenie was preaching a desolate little sermon to herself, but it edified and comforted her. It was only the eddying of the mill-stream when a stone had been flung into it, she told herself by-and-bye. She would be reasonable, and cease to rebel against an inevitable fate.

Garth's evening promised to be more successful. He had driven himself up to the Vicarage in the red sunset light that he loved, and Dora had come out into the porch to welcome him with her sweetest smile.

"How good of you to come! papa and I both wanted you so," putting up a white little hand to stroke the mare's glossy coat. "Poor old Bess, how hot she looks, and how fast you must have driven her; you are quite twenty minutes before the time we expected you."

"Have you been looking out for me? I am glad I was wanted," returned Garth, leaning down to take possession of the little hand. "I suppose Bess and I were both in a hurry to be here," he continued, as he looked down with kindly scrutiny at the dainty figure beside him.

Dora was a little paler than usual, and the blue eyes were a trifle heavy, but somehow her appearance had never pleased him better. She had dressed herself with even greater care than was customary with her. The soft cream-colored dress, with its graceful folds, rested the eye with a sense of fitness. One tiny rosebud gave a mere hint of color.

"I am glad you wanted me," he went on, with a little stress on the personal pronoun. "I must have been engaged indeed to have remained away at such a time."

"Yes, indeed. Poor papa, and poor dear Flo!" returned Dora, earnestly, leading him into the hall. "How could we help being very anxious and unhappy, and after Beattie's miserable letter too? But that is the worst of girls; they cannot help exaggerating things."

"I was afraid from what you said that poor Florence is very ill."

"She is ill, of course; one is always afraid of typhoid fever for a growing girl; and then papa has such a horror of German doctors. I must confess myself that I have every faith in Madame Shleïfer—such a judicious, temperate letter, and so different to poor Beattie's, who is crying herself to sleep every night, and making herself ill."

"But Madame Shleïfer does not love Florence as Beatrix does; she is liable to take alarm less easily," returned Garth, moved at this picture of the warm-hearted, impetuous girl he remembered so well.

"Beatrix's affection is not greater than ours," replied Dora, calmly. "Florence is the youngest, and I have brought her up from such a child. It is inconsiderate and a pity to write like that, and has upset papa dreadfully; but, as I told him, it was only Beatrix's way. I am afraid you will not find us very cheerful company to-night," looking up with a certain bright dewiness in her eyes—not exactly tears, but a suspicion of them.

Dora never cried, as he knew he had once heard her say that it never mended matters, and only spoiled the complexion; but as she looked up at him now with a certain unbending of the lip, and a shining mist in her blue eyes, he felt himself touched and softened.

"I cannot bear to see you in such trouble," he said, with involuntary tenderness in his tone.

"I knew you would be sorry for us," she returned simply, not moving away from him, but taking the sympathy as though it belonged to her of right. "It was so good of you to come all this distance just for papa and me."

CHAPTER XIV.

"IT MUST BE YEA, YEA, OR NAY, NAY, WITH ME."

"Silent she had been, but she raised her face;
'And will you end,' said she, 'this half-told tale?'"
Jean Ingelow.

Garth felt a little excited as he went up to the porch-room to dress for dinner; to put on his war-paint as he told himself with a little grimace. Garth was a handsome man, and he never looked better than when he was in evening dress. Though he had less personal vanity than most men, he was in some measure conscious of his advantages, and on this occasion he was a little fastidious as to the set of his collar and the manipulation of his tie.

The porch-room had always been allotted to him on the rare occasions when he slept at the vicarage. The best bed-room was always apportioned to more formal guests, but Garth much preferred his old quarters. The little room with its pink and white draperies fragrant with lavender, and its lozenge-paned lattice swinging open on the roses and clematis, and other sweet-smelling creepers, always reminded him of Dora. There was a portrait of her in crayons hanging over the mantel-shelf, taken when she was many years younger, with golden hair floating round her like a halo, the round white arms half hidden under a fleecy scarf—a charming sketch half idealized, and yet true to the real Dora. Garth leant his arms against the high wooden mantelpiece and contemplated the drawing for some minutes.

"She is prettier than ever to-night," he soliloquized. "No one would think she was seven-and-twenty to look at her this evening. She is just the woman never to look her age; she is so thoroughly healthy in her tone of mind; she has none of the morbid fancies and over-strained nerves that make other women so haggard and worn. Look at Langley, for example, getting grey at thirty. Poor dear Langley! that was a bad business of hers and Chester's.

"And then Dora always dresses so perfectly; there is a good deal in that, I believe. Many pretty women are slovens or absolutely tasteless. I should hate that in my wife. I never saw Dora look otherwise than charming, this evening especially. She never wears things that rustle or fall stiffly, she and Miss Marriott are alike in that. By-the-bye, how that girl looked at me this afternoon as she handed me back Dora's letter. There was a sort of pained, beseeching expression in her eyes that I could not make out, and which haunts me rather. I have a notion that she is not quite so happy as she used to be, and yet it must be my fancy. Well, I won't think about that this evening, I am always questioning Miss Marriott's looks. I want to make up my mind if it would not be as well to say something to Dora; if things are to be it would be just as well to feel one's way a little. I have a notion this shilly-shallying may lead to some sort of mischief presently. I never knew quite how I stand with her and what is expected of me. If a thing is to be done one need not take all one's life doing it," finished Garth, pulling himself together with a quick movement as though he would shake the courage and determination into him.

"Men make their own fate, it is for them to choose; no one need make mistakes with their eyes open." Why did that speech of Queenie's suddenly recur to him? "If they make a poor thing of their own life it is not for them to complain." The little protest came to him almost painfully as the gong sounded, and he went down-stairs.

Dora looked up at him rather curiously from under her white eyelids as he came into the room, holding his head high and carrying himself as though he knew the world was before him. He returned Mr. Cunningham's affectionate greeting in a frank, off-hand way.

"Well, Garth, you are rather a stranger to the vicarage; but I am glad to see you here again, my dear fellow. How are the sisters? and how is that young scapegrace of a Ted?"

"All well, and I only wish you could say the same, Mr. Cunningham," began Garth heartily; but, as the Vicar sighed heavily, Dora shook her fair head at him.

"Poor dear Flo!" she said softly, as though speaking out her father's thought. "But papa must eat his dinner, and then he has some business on which to consult you, Mr. Clayton; troubles will always keep, and it is no good papa spoiling his digestion by dwelling on them, is it?" finished Dora with tranquil philosophy, and Garth took the hint.

There was no sad talk after that. The Vicar still shook his head lugubriously at intervals, but he did ample justice to the excellent repast before him, and even brought up some Hermitage with his own hands for Garth to taste.

The young man drank it with a little show of indifference, more assumed than real. It was not that the rarity and flavor of Mr. Cunningham's wine pleased him, but that the attention shown him made him a little dizzy. More than once some favorite dish for which he had expressed a predilection had been brought to him.

"I knew you would like this Mayonnaise. Mrs. Gilbert has made it exactly to your taste," Dora said to him with an engaging smile.

Garth, who was only human, and not yet thirty, felt the delicate flattery thrill through him like a personal compliment.

He was sorry when Dora left the room, and Mr. Cunningham drew his chair nearer and plunged into the business that required his assistance. With all his good nature and natural aptitude for these sort of things, he found it very difficult to lend his undivided attention. "Why did she prepare that pudding with the pine-apple sauce with her own hands, because Mrs. Gilbert would have spoiled it?" he thought, as he balanced his spoon idly on the edge of his coffee-cup, thereby imperilling Mr. Cunningham's favorite Wedgewood. She had never condescended to show him such honor before; no wonder he was dizzy, and turned rather a deaf ear on the Vicar's tedious explanations. His absent, fidgetty demeanor attracted the attention of his host after a time.

"I am keeping you too long with all these bothering details, you want to be in the next room," he said, with a meaning smile, over which the young man blushed hotly.

"Not until you have finished with me. Is there anything more that I can do in your absence?" he stammered, feeling a little foolish and crest-fallen.

"No, no; Beale can do the rest. Get along with you, and tell Dora to let me know when tea is ready," and the Vicar flung his cambric handkerchief over his white head and composed himself for a nap.

Garth had not quite got rid of his flush when he opened the drawing-room door. Mr. Cunningham's smile had rather daunted him, but Dora gave him a bright little glance as he entered.

"How long you and papa have been over your stupid business! I am so tired of being alone," she said, welcoming the truant with a fascinating attempt at a pout.

The shaded lamps had been lighted in the Vicarage drawing-room; there was a burnished gleam of silver and china on the little square tea-table. A wood fire had been kindled on the hearth, but the windows and the glass door of the conservatory were open. Dora sat in her low carved chair with her lap full of silks and crewels.

"I wanted to get away. I think your father saw that at last, for he set me free. I am afraid he thought me very inattentive," replied Garth, taking up his favorite position against the mantel-piece.

He was still a little flushed, more from that smile than the Hermitage, and his eyes had a quick excited gleam in them. Dora understood it all perfectly, but she was quite mistress of the situation. Woman-like, she felt a little triumph in the exercise of her power.

"If I were to yield another hair's-breadth there is no telling what the foolish fellow would do," she thought, not without a quickening of the pulse under those intent looks. The danger had a subtle sweetness even for her, though she was too self-controlled to be swayed by it.

"Do sit down; you are so tall that it quite makes me ache to look up at you," she said, with that pretty attempt at a pout; "and then I want to speak to you seriously."

Garth might be pardoned if he took that petulant command as an invitation to draw his chair rather closely. But though Dora saw her mistake she went on calmly, quite ignoring the near neighborhood of the infatuated young man.

"When one sees a thing clearly it is always best to speak of it," began Dora, busily sorting her crewels, and making believe not to notice that Garth had his elbow on the back of her chair. "Langley is too lenient, and then Miss Cosie is not one for lecturing; but still some one ought to speak."

"On what subject?" demanded Garth absently. He was wondering how he ought to begin.

"Why, on the subject of Miss Marriott's dress, of course," returned Dora briskly and with emphasis. "If no one will speak, neither Langley nor Miss Cosie, and then Cathy is such a child, it seems to me as though I ought not to keep silence."

"Miss Marriott's dress!" interrupted Garth in an astonished voice. "Why, Dora, what can you be meaning? The subject has nothing to do with us—with you and me—at all."

"Every subject has to do with me that touches on questions of right and wrong," she returned with dignity. "I consider Miss Marriott's general style of dress and appearance is perfectly unsuitable to a village school-mistress, and sets the worst possible example to the grown-up girls in Hepshaw."

"This is perfectly incomprehensible," he replied, secretly exasperated by the turn the conversation was taking, and rather resenting this undeserved attack on his protégée. "Langley and I are always praising Miss Marriott's quiet, unobtrusive style."

"One knows what to expect of a gentleman when there is a pretty face in question," retorted Dora, with a touch of scorn in her voice. "Not that I call Miss Marriott pretty. She has such singular eyes, and then I never admire a brown skin. But I must own I thought better things of Langley."

"I am completely at sea," returned Garth, lifting his eyebrows in comical perplexity.

That little speech of Dora's about Miss Marriott's eyes and brown skin amused him. Could she be jealous of the young stranger he had taken under his brotherly protection? Garth's elbow rested still more comfortably on the back of her chair as this little bit of self-flattery intruded itself.

"I always see Miss Marriott in a plain black stuff gown, with just a bit of white lace or frilling round her throat. I don't see how any one could dress more plainly."

"That shows how much you men notice things," returned Dora still more scornfully, and somewhat irate at his incredulity. Garth was never very easy to convince, "Black stuff! a fine cashmere, that cost four shillings a yard if it cost a penny, and looking as if it were made by the most finished dress-maker in Carlisle, and a Leghorn hat trimmed with an ostrich feather."

Garth looked a little sheepish at this. The feather had certainly non-plussed him. It was quite true that during the last few Sundays Miss Marriott had appeared in church in a shady hat with a long drooping feather that had suited her remarkably well.

"I cannot deny the feather," he rejoined, with a rueful smile at his defeat.

The admission mollified Dora.

"And then her boots and gloves—best Paris kid, and boots that look certainly as though they were from a French maker. Ah, you cannot deceive me! Do you think such a fine lady is likely to benefit the village girls? Why, if Miss Stapleton were to mount a feather like that papa and I would be down upon her at once."

"I should not compare Miss Marriott and Miss Stapleton," a little testily. "Miss Marriott is better born and educated. She is a country vicar's daughter. I am sure that you cannot deny that she is a perfect gentlewoman."

"I do not deny that she is a very pleasant-mannered, well-looking young woman," returned Dora, in an aggravating manner, crossing her plump hands on her lap and looking up at Garth serenely. "I take a great interest in Miss Marriott, not only for her own sake, but because she is yours and Langley's protégée. When one sees a thing is wrong it is a duty to speak, and I hope I shall always do my duty," finished Dora, virtuously.

Garth was silent. He was quite used to these sort of lectures from the young mistress of Crossgill Vicarage. It had long been an admitted fact between them that her mission extended to Hepshaw. The village school-mistresses had been perpetual thorns in her side; their dress and demeanor, their teaching and morals, had always been carefully investigated. The last Hepshaw mistress had been a weak, pale-eyed creature, with no will of her own, and no particular views,—a washed-out piece of humanity, as Garth termed her,—but highly esteemed and lamented by Miss Cunningham.

Garth could not forbear a smile of secret amusement at Dora's persevering efforts to draw Miss Marriott under her yoke. The contest between the two interested and provoked him. He had taken upon himself to lecture Queenie on her stiff-necked demeanor towards Miss Cunningham, and now he was ready to take up cudgels in her defence.

"I think you are a little hard upon her," he began at last slowly, and then he stopped.

Why should he concern himself with things so wholly feminine? most likely Dora was right, at least he had never found her wrong in anything yet. Perhaps that drooping hat and feather might be a snare to the female population of Hepshaw. It had startled even him as she had walked up the aisle that Sunday. Let them fight it out; he was not sitting there in that lamp-lit fragrant drawing-room to talk about Miss Marriott. He was Dora's guest, summoned there by her own will and behest. Mr. Cunningham did not often leave them alone like this, the opportunity was too precious to be wasted.

Garth moved a little restlessly as he pondered thus with his arm against Dora's chair. The shapely head was very close to him. For the first time he felt an irresistible impulse to touch the smooth coil of fair hair with his hand, it looked as fine and silky as a child's.

"Dora," he began, and then again he stopped. "Dora," and this time he came a little closer, almost leaning over her, but not touching her, "shall things be different between you and me?"

He had taken her by surprise, and for an instant she turned pale, but she recovered herself immediately.

"Mr. Clayton," she returned, carefully avoiding his eyes, and sorting her crewels industriously, "I thought I had broken you of that foolish habit of calling me Dora."

Garth drew back, stung by her tone.

"What does that mean?" he inquired hotly. "If I am not to call you Dora how are things to be put straight between us? I thought we understood each other, and that the time had come for me to speak. What does this mean?" continued the fiery young man, twisting his moustache in sudden excitement and wrath.

"Did you think to-night was a fitting opportunity," inquired Dora with mournful gentleness, "with poor darling Flo, and papa in such a state? How could you be so inconsiderate and selfish," looking at him with appealing blue eyes.

But Garth's feelings had been outraged, and no soft looks could mollify him. He was a well-meaning, plain-spoken young fellow, and he had brought himself with much searching of conscience to the brink of an honest resolution. Dora's coldness of rebuke had wounded his susceptibility and grazed his pride. No woman should trifle with his affections, so he told himself, and least of all his old friend Dora.

"I am sure you did not mean to be inconsiderate," she said, looking up at him with a beseeching glance.

"I do not know what you call want of consideration," returned Garth, with one of his rare frowns. "I should have thought if you cared for me that trouble would have drawn us closer together, that this was the time of all others to speak."

"If I cared for you!" with reproachful sweetness. "Oh, Mr. Clayton, how can you say such harsh things? and to me of all persons in the world! Is it my fault that darling Flo is ill, and that Beattie is so young and such a wretched manager that one dares not trust things to her for a long time yet? Can I help not being my own mistress like other women, and having so many responsibilities—poor papa, and the girls, and the school, and hundreds of things?" she finished with a little pathos.

But Garth was not to be so easily appeased. His strong will was roused by opposition, and Dora must learn that he was not a man to be trifled with. A moment before he had felt a longing to press his lips to that smooth, golden coil, but now all such desire had left him.

"This is all nonsense," he returned, almost harshly. "We have known each other all our lives, and this has been understood between us. There are no insuperable obstacles—none, or I would not have spoken. Beatrix is seventeen, and she must learn to manage as other girls do. If you mean to sacrifice your life for a mistaken sense of duty you have no right to spoil mine with all this waiting. I am not to call you Dora; I am not to be any more to you than I have been. What does all this folly mean," finished Garth, with angry excitement.

"It means that things cannot be different just now," replied Dora, with real tremulousness in her voice, and now again there came that soft mistiness in her eyes. She was not offended at her lover's plain speaking; she liked Garth all the better for that manly outburst of independence. He was a little more difficult to manage than she had thought, but she was in no fear of ultimate results; he was straining at his curb, that was all.

"You must not be angry with me because I am disappointing you," she went on, laying her hand upon his coat-sleeve. "It is not my fault that everything depends on me, and that Beattie is so helpless. Of course if one could do as one wished—" and here there was a swift downward glance, but Garth broke in upon her impatiently.

"All this is worse than nothing," observed the exasperated young man. "It must be yea, yea, or nay, nay, with me; this going backwards and forwards and holding one's faith in a leash would never do for me. How could a man answer for himself under such circumstances? If you send me away from you you will find it very hard to recall me, Dora!" with a sudden change of voice, at once injured and affectionate, and which went far to mollify the effect of his former harshness.

"You will always know I cared, and that one could not do as one wished. If we are Christians we know that duty cannot be shirked," began Dora with beautiful solemnity, and a certain brightness of earnestness in her blue eyes; but at that moment her father entered.

"Papa," she said, as Garth rose hastily, almost shaking off her hand in his excitement, "what a long nap you have been taking! Mr. Clayton and I have been talking for ever so long, and the tea is quite cold."

"I hope not, Dorrie," observed Mr. Cunningham, seating himself comfortably in his elbow-chair and warming his white hand over the blaze.

"Ah, but it is perfectly lukewarm," returned his daughter cheerfully, as she walked to the tea-table and poured out the soothing beverage. She was quite tranquil as she sat there under the shaded lamps. The danger had been met and encountered, but she had remained mistress of the situation. It was natural for him to feel a little downcast and aggrieved over his defeat. Men were such creatures of impulse.

"He is angry with me now, but he will come round by-and-bye," thought Dora, watching him with affectionate solicitude. In her breast she was very fond and proud of him, though the young mistress of Crossgill was not ready to lay down her prerogative and rights at his behests. "I am not afraid of his taking the bit between his teeth," she said to herself, with a smile of incredulity at the bare idea. How was Garth Clayton, her old friend and playmate, to prove unfaithful to her?

As for Garth, he conducted himself as most high-spirited young men do under the circumstances. He took his cup of cold tea from her hand mutely, much as though it were a dose of poison, and stood aloof, glowering at her at intervals, and talking faster than usual to Mr. Cunningham.

He did not make much of a reply when, after prayers, Dora lighted his silver candlestick as well as her father's, and hoped he would sleep well.

"Good night, Dorrie my dear," observed her father, kissing her smooth forehead just above her eyes. "Don't forget you have a long journey before you to-morrow."

"Good night, Miss Cunningham," said Garth with pointed emphasis as he just touched her hand.

He thought the coldness of his tone would have cut her to the heart, but she merely smiled in his face.

Garth went up-stairs in a tumult of vexation and excitement. The porch-chamber, with its sweet perfume of fresh lavender, no longer charmed him. The girlish reflection of Dora with its arms full of lilies angered him. He turned his back upon it and sat down by the open window.

He was bitterly mortified and disappointed. Dora had been his fate, he told himself, and now his fate had eluded him. She had drawn him on with sweet looks and half-sentences of fondness all these years, and now she had declined to yield to his first honest efforts of persuasion. Well, he was not the man to be fooled by any girl, though she had golden hair and knew how to use her eyes. She was managing him for her own purposes, but he would prove to her that he was not to be managed. He would shake off her influence much as he had done her hand on his coat-sleeve just now; all the more that such shaking off might be difficult to him. There were other women in the world, thank heaven, beside Dora—women who would be more subservient to his masculine royalty, whose wills and lives could be moulded by his.

His heart was still whole within him, though his pride was so grievously wounded. He knew that, as he turned his back upon her picture, and sat down in his sullen resentment. There was no inward bleeding, no sickness of repressed hopes driven back upon themselves, no yearning void, only the bitterness of an angry wound, against which he called out in his young man's impatience. The golden head would not come and nestle against him when he longed for it, and now he thrust it from him.

As for Dora, she went up to her room in perfect tranquillity. "Foolish fellow, how angry he was with me," she said to herself as she brushed out the long fair hair that fell round her in a halo. Her blue eyes looked through it like Undine's. "I wonder if all lovers would be so troublesome; it wanted all one's tact to keep him within bounds. I wish Flo were not so young, and that Beattie were less helpless," she went on, with a sigh. "It will be hard work keeping him in good humor the next year or two, but it would never do to engage myself to him as things are now. I have enough on my hands without that," and with another involuntary sigh, as she thought of Garth's handsome countenance, Dora Cunningham, like a right-minded young woman, put away the subject from her mind and went to sleep.

END OF VOL. II.

BUNGAY: CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74806 ***

QUEENIE'S WHIM

CHAPTER I. THE NEW SCHOOL-MISTRESS.

CHAPTER II. DORA.

CHAPTER III. TANGLED.

CHAPTER IV. THE KING OF KARLDALE.

CHAPTER V. A GOLDEN HARVEST.

CHAPTER VI. QUEENIE'S WHIM.

CHAPTER VII. WEAVING IN THE SUNSET.

CHAPTER VIII. THE MISTRESS OF BRIERWOOD COTTAGE.

CHAPTER IX. FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM.

CHAPTER X. THE NEW DOCTOR.

CHAPTER XI. NEXT DOOR TO THE EVERGREENS.

CHAPTER XII. LITTLE NAN.

CHAPTER XIII. "I KNEW YOU WOULD BE SORRY FOR US."

CHAPTER XIV. "IT MUST BE YEA, YEA, OR NAY, NAY, WITH ME."

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW SCHOOL-MISTRESS.