Carità

‘I felt sure you would be going to see her,’ he said. ‘Little Emmy is a lucky little girl. May I hear how she is getting on? though I scarcely deserve it for being so late.’

He turned as he spoke to walk with her, and what could Agnes do? She could not refuse to answer him, or show any prudery. He evidently (she said to herself) thought nothing of it; why should she appear to demur to anything so simple? Give a report about a suffering child? Anyone might do that—to anyone. And she told him that Emmy was making satisfactory progress, though she had been feverish and ill. ‘I was a little frightened, though the nurse said it was nothing. She wandered, and spoke so strangely for a little while. Poor little Emmy! She had a beautiful dream, and thought herself in heaven.’

‘While you were there?’ said Oswald, with a significance in the simple question which covered her face with a sudden blush. Then she blushed deeper still to think what foolish, unpardonable vanity this was—vanity the most extraordinary, the most silly! What he meant, of course, was a simple question, most natural—an inquiry about a fact, not any wicked compliment. How Agnes hated and despised herself for the warm suffusion of shy pleasure which she had felt in her heart and on her face!

‘Yes,’ she said, demurely; ‘but she soon roused up and came quite to herself. She had been in great pain, and they had given her something to deaden it, that was all.’

‘I quite understand,’ he said, with again that appearance of meaning more than he said. No doubt it was merely his way; and it was embarrassing, but not so disagreeable as perhaps it ought to have been. Agnes kept her head down, and slightly turned away, so that this stranger could not see the inappropriate blushes which came and went under the bonnet of the Sisterhood. Then there was a pause; and she wondered within herself whether it would be best to turn down a cross-street and feign an errand, which would take her out of the straight road to the ‘House’—evidently that was his way—and by this means she might escape his close attendance. But then, to invent a fictitious errand would be unquestionably wrong; whereas, to allow a gentleman whom she did not know to walk along the public pavement, to which everybody had an equal right, by her side, was only problematically wrong. Thus Agnes hesitated, in a flutter, between two courses. So long as they were not talking it seemed more simple that he should be walking the same way.

‘What a strange world a hospital must be,’ he said. ‘I have been watching the people coming out’ (‘Then he was not late, after all,’ Agnes remarked to herself), ‘some of them pleased, some anxious, but the most part indifferent. Indifference always carries the day. Is that why the world goes on so steadily, whatever happens? Here and there is one who shows some feeling——’

‘It is because the greater part of the patients are not very ill,’ said Agnes, responding instantly to this challenge. ‘Oh, no, people are not indifferent. I know that is what is said—that we eat our dinners in spite of everything——’

‘And don’t we? or, rather, don’t they? Ourselves are always excepted, I suppose,’ said Oswald, delighted to have set afloat one of those abstract discussions which young talkers, aware of a pleasant faculty of turning sentences, love.

‘Why should ourselves be excepted?’ said Agnes, forgetting her shyness. ‘Why should it always be supposed that we who speak are better than our neighbours? Oh, I have seen so much of that! people who know only a little, little circle setting down all the rest of the world as wicked. Why? If I am unhappy when anyone I love is in trouble, that is a reason for believing that others are so too; not that others are indifferent——’

‘Ah,’ said Oswald, ‘to judge the world by yourself would be well for the world, but disappointing for you, I fear. I am an optimist, too; but I would not go so far as that.’

She gave him a sudden look, half-inquiring, half-impatient. ‘One knows more harm of one’s self than one can know of anyone else,’ she said, with the dogmatism of youth.

He laughed. ‘I see now why you judge people more leniently than I do. What quantities of harm I must know that you could not believe possible! What is life like, I wonder, up on those snowy heights so near the sky?—a beautiful soft psalm, with just a half-tone wrong here and there to show that it is outside heaven——’

‘Indeed, indeed, you are mistaken! I—I am not a Sister—you mistake me,’ said Agnes, in agitation. ‘It is only the dress——’

‘You are doing just what you condemn,’ he said; ‘setting me down as a superficial person able to judge only by the outside. I have superior pretensions. Is my friend Sister Mary Jane the Superior of the convent? But I suppose you don’t call it a convent? I have only known them in France.’

‘We call it only “the House”; but I have never been in France—never out of England at all. Is it not like going into a different world?’ Agnes took up this subject eagerly, to escape the embarrassment of the other; and fortunately the House itself was already in sight.

‘The very same world, only differently dressed. I suppose there is something harmonious in a uniform. All the nuns have a kind of beauty, not the pensive kind one expects; or perhaps it is the white head-dress and the calm life that give the Sisters such pretty complexions, and such clear eyes. Sister Mary Jane, for instance—you will allow that the Sisters are calm——’

‘But not indifferent!’ said Agnes, moved to an answering smile, as they reached the safe door of the House. She threw that smile at him as a farewell defiance as she went up to the locked door which opened to her with an alarming sound of keys turning, like the door of a true convent of romance, though it was in a London street. He lingered, but she did not look back. She was very thankful to reach that safe shelter, and find herself delivered from the doubtful privilege of his attendance. And yet somehow the afternoon darkened suddenly, the sky clouded over as she went in, and her heart sank she could not tell how. Why should her heart sink? She had scarcely got indoors before she was met by Sister Mary Jane, who asked for little Emmy with business-like brevity; then, just pausing for a reply, went on to talk of work, the subject which filled all her thoughts.

‘Go, please, and take care of the middle girls at relaxation; they are in St. Cecilia; and keep your eye on Marian Smith, who has already lost five marks for untidiness; and Araminta Blunt, who is in punishment for talking. And see that relaxation is ended, and they all begin learning their lessons at 6.30. I must take the elder girls myself for an hour before evensong. Have you had tea?’ said Sister Mary Jane. ‘No? Then go quickly, please, my dear, and have some. It is not cleared away yet. The infants have been rather unruly, and I mean to speak to the Vicar about it this evening. We want someone else to help with the infants. In St. Cecilia, yes. Make haste, my dear.’

Agnes went into the large room which was called the refectory—the banqueting-hall of the establishment—where the air was heavy with tea and bread and butter, and the long tables, partially cleared, still bore traces of the repast. It was a large room; the walls enlivened with Spiritual pictures, and rich with lines of coloured bricks unplastered. The servants of the House were not of a very superior class, as may be supposed, and to see them pushing about the cups and saucers, rattling down the heavy trays full of fragments, and hustling each other about the tables, was not exhilarating. How closed in and confined everything looked, how dreary the atmosphere, the evening so much more advanced than out of doors! Agnes tried to drink with contentment her lukewarm cup of tea, and to think with satisfaction of the middle girls who awaited her in St. Cecilia. But it was astonishing how difficult she felt it to do this. The summer afternoon skies, the soft breathing of the spring air, the long distances—though they were but lines of streets—and wide atmosphere—though it was tinged with London smoke—which lay outside these walls, had suggested sentiments so different. The sentiments which they would have suggested to Sister Mary Jane would have been quite unlike those that filled the mind of Agnes. She would have said it was a sweet evening, and hurried in to work. The smell of the tea did not sicken her, nor the sight of the used cups and the stains here and there on the cloth, where an unruly child (doomed to lose her marks for neatness) had pulled over her cup. She thought that to superintend the middle girls at relaxation was as pleasant an occupation as could be found—and that a walk through the streets was a weariness to the flesh. As for Mr. Oswald Meredith, except that it was very nice of him to have given such a good subscription to the House, she would not have considered him worthy a glance—her mind was busy about other things. She had to take the girls for an hour before evensong, and afterwards had to look over their exercises and inspect the books, and hear the reports of the teachers. Araminta Blunt, who was in punishment for talking, and Marian Smith, who had lost five marks for untidiness, were of more interest to her than all the ideals in the world. She was very kind to fanciful Agnes, as well as to everybody else, but she had no time to indulge in fancies for her own part. She gave her directions to one and another as she went along the passage. There was not a minute of her valuable time which she could afford to lose. Agnes thought of all this with a sigh as she went to St. Cecilia, where the middle girls awaited her. Would she ever be as satisfied with her work, as pleased with her surroundings, as Sister Mary Jane? And was it not her duty to endeavour to make herself so? For she could not say to herself as she had done at home that this was mere carelessness and apathetic resignation to the common course of events. Here, on the contrary, it was self-sacrifice that was the rule, and consecration to the service of the helpless. The poor girl was young; perhaps that was the chief drawback in her way. The softness of the skies, the speculative delights of conversation, the look of Oswald Meredith as he spoke of ‘the snowy heights so near the sky,’ what had these mere chance circumstances, which she had encountered unawares, to do with the serious life which she had herself selected as the best? And, alas! was St. Cecilia, with the girls at relaxation, anything like those ‘snowy heights?’ The little squabbles, the little fibs, the little jealousies which the children indulged in none the less for being in the interesting position of orphans, helpless and friendless children, with no father but God, jarred upon her more and more as this poetical imagination of her life came back to her mind. Surely he must be a poet. This was her concluding thought.

CHAPTER XXVI.

IN THE ‘HOUSE.’

Roger had not renewed his visit to Cara for some weeks. He had been too much cast down and discouraged by that first Sunday for which he had prepared so elaborately, and looked forward to with so much eagerness. But discouragement, like everything else, wears out, and when he had gone round the circle from anger to disapproval, from disapproval to contempt, from contempt to pity, Roger found himself with some surprise back at his original point, longing to see Cara, and ready to believe that anything that had come between them had been accidental. The two Merediths would not be there for ever, and Cara no doubt, poor girl, must be pining for someone from her old home, and would be glad to see him, and hear all that everybody was doing. He was sorry he had said a word to his mother about what happened in the Square; indeed he had done nothing but regret ever since the indiscretion which tempted him to complain; for Mrs. Burchell was one of those inconvenient persons who never forget the indignant criticisms of injured feeling, but continue to repeat and harp upon it long after that feeling has sunk into oblivion or changed into contempt. Very soon the softening influences of his early love, and the longing he had after the object of it, made Roger forgive Cara all her imagined sins against him; but his mother could not forget that he had been slighted, and punished his betrayal of his wound by incessant reference to the evils in the Square. This of itself helped on his recovery, since to find fault yourself with those to whom you are attached is a very different thing from hearing them assailed by others. The process ended by a serious quarrel with Mrs. Burchell, who would not give up this favourite subject, and taunted her son with his want of proper pride, and inclination to put up with anything, when she heard of his intention to go back. ‘If I had been so treated anywhere, I would never go near them again. I would not invite people to trample upon me,’ cried the Rector’s wife. ‘I might forgive, but I should never forget.’ ‘My dear,’ the Rector had said, ‘Roger has himself to look to: we are not able to do very much for him; and Cara will be a kind of heiress. I should not mind any trifle of that sort, if he has serious views.’ ‘What do you call serious views?’ cried Roger, ashamed and wretched, and he plunged out of the house without waiting for an answer, and betook himself to those wintry woods of which Agnes was thinking at the ‘House,’ and which even in winter were sweet. Roger had no sordid intentions, which was what his father meant by ‘serious’ views; and though he was well enough satisfied with his daily work, and not, like Agnes, troubled by any ideal, yet he felt, like his sister, the wretched downfall of existence into misery and meanness, between his mother’s prolonged and exaggerated resentment and his father’s serious worldliness. That boyish love of his was the highest thing in the young man’s mind. If nothing else that was visionary existed in his nature, his semi-adoration of Cara, which had lasted as long as he could recollect, was visionary, a touch of poetry amid his prose, and to hear it opposed, or to hear it sordidly encouraged alike shocked and revolted him. He resolved never to mention Cara’s name again, nor to make any reference to the Square, to shut up his sentiments about her in his own bosom, whether these were sentiments of admiration or of offence. Supposing she was cold to him—and it would be very natural that she should be cold, as he had never gone back to her, nor visited her but once—he would bear it and make no sign; never again would he subject her name to comments such as these. Fathers and mothers do badly by their children when they force them to such a resolution. Roger kept his word all through the weary Sunday, and did not say even that he would not return home for the next; but he made his arrangements all the same.

When the next Sunday came the heart of the aunt at Notting Hill was once more gladdened by the sight of him; and in the afternoon he duly set out for the Square. Perhaps his dress was not so elaborate nor his necktie so remarkable as when he first went there. He had sworn to himself that he would form no special expectations and make no grand preparations, and on the whole he was happier on his second visit. Miss Cherry, whom he found at the Square, was very glad to see him, and Mr. Beresford spoke to him kindly enough, and Cara was sweet and friendly. But they treated his visit as a call only; they did not ask him to dinner, which was a disappointment. They offered him a cup of tea, which Roger did not care for, being scarcely fashionable enough to like five o’clock tea, and let him go when they went to dinner, forlorn enough, turning him out as it were upon the streets full of people. To be sure Roger had his aunt at Netting Hill, who was very glad to see him, who would give him supper and make him very comfortable. Still, as he had hoped perhaps to be asked to stay, to spend the evening with Cara, it gave him a very forlorn sensation, when they bade him cheerfully good-by at the sound of the dinner-bell. He went out into the evening streets, where many people were going to church, and many coming back from their afternoon walk, going home to their families in twos and threes. Scarcely anyone seemed to be alone but himself. Still he said to himself he had no right to grumble, for they had been kind—and next Sunday he would go again; and with this melancholy yet courageous resolution he made a little pause at the corner of the street, asking himself where he should go now? His aunt would have taken tea and gone to evening church before he could get to Netting Hill. So he changed his direction and went manfully the other way, to the ‘House,’ to visit his sister, arguing his disappointment down. Why should they have asked him to dinner? Besides, he did not go for dinner, which would have been mercenary, but for Cara—and he had seen Cara, without those Merediths thrusting themselves into his way; and she had been very kind, and Miss Cherry had been kind, and there was no reason why he should not go again next Sunday afternoon. So why should he be discouraged? There was Agnes, whom he had not seen since she had gone into this ‘House,’ as they called it. It was only right that a man should go and look after his own sister, even if he did not approve of her. So Roger employed his undesired hour of leisure in the way of duty, and went to see Agnes, gradually calming himself down out of his disappointment on the way.

The Burchells were not what is called a family devoted to each other. They were good enough friends, and took a proper brotherly and sisterly interest in what happened to each other, especially as every new piece of family news brought a certain amount of enlivenment and variety and a new subject for conversation into the monotonous family life; but they were prosaic, and Agnes was the one among them whom the others did not understand much, and not understanding, set down bluntly as fantastic and incomprehensible. Had she fallen in love with somebody or had a ‘disappointment,’ they would have entered to a certain degree into her feelings, and even now Roger could not quite divest himself of the thought, that, though he knew nothing of it, something of this kind must be at the root of her withdrawal from home. An ideal life, what was that? Neither Roger nor any of the rest understood what she could mean, or really believed that there was any sincerity in such a pretext; and he indeed was one of those who had been most opposed to her purpose; asking scornfully what advantage she supposed she was to get by going among strangers? Was she better than the other girls, that she could not make herself comfortable at home? Was there not plenty to do there, if that was what she wanted? Was there not the parish, if she wanted more work? Roger had been alike indignant and astonished. But the thing was done, and he was in town, not very far off from where she was, with an hour or two to spare. He went with a secret antagonism against everything he was likely to see. The very name of the place nettled him. The ‘House!’ as if it was a penitentiary or shelter for the destitute, which his sister had been obliged to find refuge in. He was admitted on giving full particulars as to who he was, and ushered into the bare little room, covered with dusty matting, with religious prints of the severest character on the walls, and bookshelves full of school-books. St. Monica was emblazoned on the door of it, which name offended him too. Could not the foolish people call it the brown room, or the matted room, or by any common appellation, instead of by the name of a saint, whom nobody had ever heard of? Agnes came to him, not in the dress which she wore out of doors, but in a simple black gown, fortunately for her, for what avalanche of objections would have tumbled upon her head had she come in to him in her cape and poke-bonnet! He was pleased to see his sister and pleased by her delight at the sight of him, but yet he could not smooth his brow out of displeasure. It gave him an outlet for the subdued irritation with which he had received his dismissal from the Square.

‘Well, Agnes,’ he said, ‘so here you are in this papistical place. I had an hour to spare, and I thought I would come and see you.’

‘I am so glad to see you, Roger. I was just thinking of them all at home.’

‘At home! You were anxious enough to get away from home. I wish anyone knew why. I can’t fancy anything so unnatural as a girl wishing to leave home, except on a visit, or if she is going to be married, or that sort of thing—but to come to a place like this! Agnes, I am sure there is no one belonging to you who knows why.’

‘Yes,’ said Agnes, quietly, ‘because I wanted to do something more, to do some duty in the world, not to be like a vegetable in the garden.’

‘That is just the slang of the period,’ said wise Roger. ‘You can’t say there is not plenty to do with all the children to look after; and one never can get a button sewed on now.’

‘Louisa and Liddy were quite able to do all and more than all—why should there be three of us sewing on buttons? And what were we to come to—nothing but buttons all our lives?’

‘Why, I suppose,’ said Roger, doubtfully—‘what do girls ever come to? You would have been married some time.’

‘And that is such a delightful prospect!’ cried Agnes, moved to sarcasm. ‘Oh, Roger, is it such an elevated life to jog along as papa—as we have seen people do, thinking of nothing but how to get through the day, and pay the bills, and have a good dinner when we can, and grumble at our neighbours, the children running wild, and the house getting shabby?’ said Agnes, unconsciously falling into portraiture, ‘and talking about the service of God? What is the service of God? Is it just to be comfortable and do what you are obliged to do?’

‘Well, I suppose it is not to make yourself uncomfortable,’ cried Roger, shirking the more serious question. ‘Though, as for that, if you wished, you could be quite uncomfortable enough at home. What do they mean by calling a room after a woman, St. Monica? and all these crucifixes and things—and that ridiculous dress—I am glad to see you have the sense not to wear it here at least.’

‘I wear it when I go out; it is not ridiculous; one can go where one pleases, that is, wherever one is wanted, in a Sister’s dress, and the roughest people always respect it,’ said Agnes, warmly. ‘Oh, Roger, why should you be so prejudiced? Do you know what kind of people are here? Poor helpless, friendless children, that have got no home, and the Sisters are like mothers to them. Is that no good? What does it matter about the name of the room, if a poor destitute baby is fed and warmed, and made happy in it? Children that would starve and beg and rob in the streets, or die—that would be the alternative, if these Sisters with their absurd dresses and their ridiculous ways, that make you so angry, did not step in.’

‘Well, I suppose they may do some good,’ said Roger, unwillingly. ‘You need not get so hot about it; but you might do just as much good with less fuss. And why should you shut yourself up in a penitentiary as if you had done something you were ashamed of? Why should you slave and teach for your living? We are not so poor as that. If the brothers all work,’ said Roger, with a not unbecoming glow of pride, ‘there ought always to be plenty for the sisters at home.’

‘But I must live my life too, as well as my brothers; and do what I can before the night comes,’ said Agnes, with a little solemnity, ‘when no man can work.’

Roger was subdued by the quotation more than by all her reasons. He could not, as he said to himself, go against Scripture, which certainly did exhort every man to work before the night cometh. Did that mean every woman too?

‘The short and the long of it is,’ he said, half sulkily, half melted, ‘that you were never content at home, Agnes. Are you contented here?’

That was a home question. Agnes shrank a little and faltered, avoiding a direct reply.

‘You do not look very contented yourself. Have you been to see Cara?’ she said. ‘How is she? I have not heard a word of her since I came here.’

‘Oh, Cara is well enough. She is not like you, setting up for eccentric work. She is quite happy at home. Miss Cherry is there at present, looking after her. It is a handsome house, choke full of china and things. And I suppose, from all I hear, she has a very jolly life,’ said Roger, with a certain shade of moroseness creeping over his face, ‘parties and lots of friends.’

‘I daresay she does not forget the people she used to like, for all that,’ said Agnes, more kind than he was, and divining the uncontent in his face.

‘Oh, I don’t know. There are some people who never leave her alone, who pretend to be old friends too,’ said Roger, ruefully. ‘And they live next door, worse luck; they are always there. Other old friends have no chance beside these Merediths.’

‘Oh!—is their name Meredith?’

‘Yes; do you know them? There is one, a palavering fellow, talks twenty to the dozen, and thinks no end of himself—a sneering beggar. I don’t mind the other so much; but that Oswald fellow——’

‘Oh!—is his name Oswald?’

‘I believe you know him. Do swells like that come a-visiting here?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Agnes, anxiously smoothing down suspicion; ‘there is a name—much the same—in Sister Mary Jane’s list of subscriptions. Oh, yes; and the gentleman carried a poor child to the hospital so very kindly. I noticed the name, because—because there is a poet called Oswald, or Owen, or something, Meredith. I wondered,’ said Agnes, faltering, telling the truth but meaning a fib, ‘whether it could be the same.’

‘Quite likely,’ said Roger; ‘the very kind of fellow that would write poetry and stuff—a sentimental duffer. To tell the truth,’ he added, with immense seriousness, ‘I don’t like to have little Cara exposed to all his rubbishing talk. She is as simple as a little angel, and believes all that’s said to her; and when a fellow like that gets a girl into a corner, and whispers and talks stuff——’ Roger continued, growing red and wroth.

Agnes did not make any reply. She turned round to examine the school-books with a sudden start—and, oh me! what curious, sudden pang was that, as if an arrow had been suddenly shot at her, which struck right through her heart?

‘Cara should not let anyone whisper to her in corners,’ she said at last, with a little sharpness, after her first shock. ‘She is too young for anything of that sort; and she is old enough to know better,’ she added, more sharply still. But Roger did not notice this contradiction. He was too much interested to notice exactly what was said.

‘She is too young to be exposed to all that,’ he said, mournfully; ‘how is she to find out at seventeen which is false and which is true? There now, Agnes, see what you might have done, had not you shut yourself up here. Nothing so likely as that Cara would have asked you to go and pay her a visit—and you could have taken care of her. But you know how romantic poor dear Miss Cherry is—and I should not be a bit surprised if that child allowed herself to be taken in, and threw herself away.’

And would this be the fault of Agnes, who had shut herself up in the House, and thus precluded all possibility of being chosen as the guardian and companion of Cara? She smiled a little to herself, not without a touch of bitterness; though, indeed, after all, if help to one’s neighbour is the chief thing to be considered in life, it was as worthy a work to take care of Cara as to teach the orphans their A B C. This news of Roger’s, however, introduced, he did not well know how, a discord in the talk. He fell musing upon the risk to which his little lady was exposed, and she got distracted with other thoughts. She sat beside him, in her plain, long black gown, every ornament of her girlhood put away from her; her hands, which had been very pretty white hands, loosely clasped on the table before her, and showing some signs of injury. It is only in romances that the hands of women engaged in various household labours retain their beauty all the same. Agnes had now a little of everything thrown in her way to do, and was required not to be squeamish about the uses she put these pretty hands to; and it could not be denied that they were a little less pretty already. She looked down upon them in her sudden rush of thought and perceived this. What did it matter to the young handmaid of the poor whether or not her hands were as pretty as usual? but yet, with an instantaneous comparison, her mind rushed to Cara, who had no necessity to soil her pretty fingers, and to the contrast which might be made between them. What did it matter that it was wicked and wrong of Agnes, self-devoted and aspiring to be God’s servant, to feel like this? The wave of nature was too strong for her, and carried her away.

‘Well, I must be going,’ said Roger, with a sigh. ‘I am glad that I have seen you, and found you—comfortable. There does not seem much here to tempt anyone; but still if you like it—I am coming back next Sunday. Aunt Mary is pleased to have me, and they don’t seem to care at home whether one goes or stays. I shall probably look in at the Square. Shall I tell Cara about you? She knows you have gone away from home, but not where you are. She might come to see you.’

‘I don’t want any visitors,’ said Agnes, with a little irritation of feeling, which, with all the rest of her misdeeds, was laid up in her mind to be repented of. ‘We have no time for them, for one thing; and half-measures are of little use. If I do not mean to give myself altogether to my work, I had better not have come at all. Do not mention my name to Cara. I don’t want to see anyone here.’

‘Well, I suppose you are right,’ said Roger. ‘If one does go in for this sort of thing, it is best to do it thoroughly. What is that fearful little cracked kettle of a bell? You that used to be so particular, and disliked the row of the children, and the loud talking, and the bad music, how can you put up with all this? You must be changed somehow since you came here.’

‘I ought to be changed,’ said Agnes, with a pang in her heart. Alas, how little changed she was! how the sharp little bell wore her nerves out, and the rustle of the children preparing for chapel, and the clanging of all the doors! She went with Roger to the gate, which had to be unlocked, to his suppressed derision.

‘Have you to be locked in?’ the irreverent youth said. ‘Do they think you would all run away if you had the chance?’

Agnes took no notice of this unkind question. She herself, when she first arrived, had been a little appalled by the big mediæval key, emblem, apparently, of a very tremendous separation from the world; and she would not acknowledge that it meant no more than any innocent latch. When Roger was gone she had to hasten upstairs to get her poke-bonnet, and rush down again to take her place among her orphans for the evening service in the chapel, which the House took pleasure in calling Evensong. She knelt down among the rustling, restless children, while the cracked bell jangled, and a funny little procession of priests and choristers came from the vestry door. They were all the most excellent people in the world, and worthy of reverence in their way; but no procession of theatrical supers was ever more quaintly comic than that which solemnly marched half-way round the homely little chapel of the House, chanting a hymn very much out of tune, and ending in the best of curates—a good man, worthy of any crowning, civic or sacred, who loved the poor, and whom the poor loved, but who loved the ceremonial of these comic-solemn processions almost more than the poor. With a simple, complaisant sense of what he was doing for the Church, this good man paced slowly past the kneeling figure of the young teacher, motionless in her black drapery, with her head bent down upon her hands. No mediæval Pope in full certainty of conducting the most impressive ceremonial in the world could have been more sincerely convinced of the solemnising effect of his progress, or more simply impressed by its spiritual grandeur; and no mediæval nun, in passionate penitence over a broken vow, could have been more utterly bowed down and prostrate than poor Agnes Burchell, guilty of having been beguiled by the pleasant voice and pleasant looks of Oswald Meredith into the dawn of innocent interest in that mundane person: she, who had so short time since offered herself to God’s service—she, who had made up her mind that to live an ideal life of high duty and self-sacrifice was better than the poor thing which vulgar minds called happiness. The cracked bell tinkled, and the rude choristers chanted, and all the restless children rustled about her, distracting her nerves and her attention. All this outside of devotion, she said to herself, and a heart distracted with vulgar vanities within! Was this the ideal to which she had vowed herself—the dream of a higher life? The children pulled at her black cloak in consternation, and whispered, ‘Teacher, teacher!’ when the service began, and she had to stumble up to her feet, and try to keep them somewhere near the time in their singing. But her mind was too disturbed to follow the hymn, which was a very ecstatic one about the joys of Paradise. Oh, wicked, wicked Agnes! what was she doing, she asked herself—a wolf in sheep’s clothing amid this angelic band?

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.

This was a time of great agitation for the two houses so close to each other, with only a wall dividing the troubles of the one from the excitement of the other, and a kind of strange union between them, linking them more closely in the very attempt at disjunction. The greater part of the private commotion which was going on, as it were, underground was concealed from Cara as not a proper subject of discussion before her; but it was not necessary to take any steps of the kind with Oswald, who, in his light-hearted indifference, ignored it comfortably, and followed his own devices through the whole without giving the other affairs a thought. After all, the idea of anyone exciting him or herself over the question whether a respectable old fogey, like Mr. Beresford, should go on paying perpetual visits to a respectable matron like his mother, touched Oswald’s mind with a sense of the ludicrous which surmounted all seriousness. If they liked it, what possible harm could there be? He had not the uneasy prick of wounded feeling, the sense of profanation which moved Edward at the idea of his mother’s conduct being questioned in any way. Oswald was fond of his mother, and proud of her, though he was disposed to smile at her absurd popularity and the admiration she excited among her friends. He would have thought it a great deal more natural that he himself should be the object of attraction; but, granting the curious taste of society, at which he felt disposed to laugh, it rather pleased him that his mother should be so popular, still admired and followed at her age. He thought, like Mr. Sommerville, that she was something of a humbug, getting up that pretence of sympathy with everybody, which it was impossible anyone in her senses could feel. But so long as it brought its reward, in the shape of so much friendliness from everybody, and gratitude for the words and smiles, which cost nothing, Oswald, at least, saw no reason to complain. And as for scandal arising about Mr. Beresford! he could not but laugh; at their age! So he pursued his easy way as usual, serenely lighthearted, and too much occupied with his own affairs to care much for other people’s. In addition to this, it must be added that Oswald was falling very deep in love. These interviews between the hospital and the House were but meagre fare to feed a passion upon; but the very slightness of the link, the oddity of the circumstances, everything about it delighted the young man, who had already gone through a great many drawing-room flirtations, and required the help of something more piquant. He was very happy while they were all so agitated and uncomfortable. Twice a week were hospital days, at which he might hope to see her; and almost every morning now he managed to cross the path of the little school procession, and, at least see her, if he did not always catch the eye of the demure little teacher in her long cloak. Sometimes she would look at him sternly, sometimes she gave him a semi-indignant, sometimes a wholly friendly glance, sometimes, he feared, did not perceive him at all. But that was not Oswald’s fault. He made a point of taking off his hat, and indeed holding it in his hand a moment longer than was necessary, by way of showing his respect, whether she showed any signs of perceiving him or not. She went softly along the vulgar pavement, with steps which he thought he could distinguish among all the others, ringing upon the stones with a little rhythm of her own, about which he immediately wrote some verses. All this he would tell to Cara, coming to her in the morning before he set out to watch the children defiling out of the House. And all the world thought, as was natural, that the subject of these talks was his love for Cara, not his love, confided to Cara, for someone else.

As for Agnes, she not only saw Oswald every time he made his appearance, whether she allowed him to know it or not, but she felt his presence in every nerve and vein, with anger for the first day or two after Roger’s visit, then with a softening of all her heart towards him as she caught his reverential glance, his eager appeal to her attention. After all, whispers to Cara, whom he had known all her life—little Cara, who even to Agnes herself seemed a child—could not mean half so much as this daily haunting of her own walks, this perpetual appearance wherever she was. That was a totally different question from her own struggle not to notice him, not to think of him. The fact that it was shocking and terrible on her part to allow her mind to dwell on any man, or any man’s attentions, while occupied in the work to which she had devoted herself, and filling almost the position of a consecrated Sister, was quite a different thing from the question whether he was a false and untrustworthy person, following her with the devices of vulgar pursuit, a thing too impious to think of, too humiliating. Agnes was anxious to acquit the man who admired and sought her, as well as determined to reject his admiration; and, for the moment, the first was actually the more important matter of the two. Herself she could be sure of. She had not put her hand to the plough merely to turn back. She was not going to abandon her ideal at the call of the first lover who held out his hand to her. Surely not; there could be no doubt on that subject; but that this generous, gentle young man, with those poetic sentiments which had charmed yet abashed her mind, that he should be false to his fair exterior, and mean something unlovely and untrue, instead of a real devotion, that was too terrible to believe. Therefore, she did not altogether refuse to reply to Oswald’s inquiries when the next hospital day brought about another meeting. This time he did not even pretend that the meeting was accidental, that he had been too late for making the proper inquiries in his own person, but went up to her, eagerly asking for ‘our little patient,’ with all the openness of a recognised acquaintance.

‘Emmy is better—if you mean Emmy,’ said Agnes, with great state. ‘The fever is gone, and I hope she will soon be well.’

‘Poor little Emmy,’ said Oswald; ‘but I don’t want her to be well too soon—that is, it would not do to hurry her recovery. She must want a great deal of care still.’

He hoped she would smile at this, or else take it literally and reply seriously; but Agnes did neither. She walked on, with a stately air, quickening her pace slightly, but not so as to look as if she were trying to escape.

‘I suppose, as the fever is gone, she has ceased to imagine herself in heaven,’ said Oswald. ‘Happy child! when sickness has such illusions, it is a pity to be well. We are not so well off in our commonplace life.’

He thought she would have responded to the temptation and turned upon him to ask what he meant by calling life commonplace; and indeed the wish stirred Agnes so that she had to quicken her pace in order to resist the bait thus offered. She said nothing, however, to Oswald’s great discomfiture, who felt that nothing was so bad as silence, and did not know how to overcome the blank, which had more effect on his lively temperament than any amount of disapproval and opposition. But he made another valorous effort before he would complain.

‘Yours, however, is not a commonplace life,’ he said. ‘We worldlings pay for our ease by the sense that we are living more or less ignobly, but it must be very different with you who are doing good always. Only, forgive me, is there not a want of a little pleasure, a little colour, a little brightness? The world is so beautiful,’ said Oswald, his voice slightly faltering, not so much from feeling, as from fear that he might be venturing on dubious ground. ‘And we are so young.’

That pronoun, so softly said, with such a tender emphasis and meaning, so much more than was ever put into two letters before, went to the heart of Agnes. She was trying so hard to be angry with him, trying to shut herself against the insinuating tone of his voice, and those attempts to beguile her into conversation. All the theoretical fervour that was in her mind had been boiling up to reply, and perhaps her resolution would not have been strong enough to restrain her, had not that we come in, taking the words from her lips and the strength from her mind. She could neither protest against the wickedness and weakness of consenting to live an ignoble life, nor indignantly declare that there was already more than pleasure, happiness, and delight in the path of self-sacrifice, when all the force was stolen out of her by that tiny monosyllable—we! How dared he identify himself with her? draw her into union with him by that little melting yet binding word? She went on faster than ever in the agitation of her thoughts, and was scarcely conscious that she made him no answer; though surely what he had said called for some reply.

Oswald was at his wit’s end. He did not know what to say more. He made a little pause for some answer, and then getting none, suddenly changed his tone into one of pathetic appeal. ‘Are you angry with me? ‘he said. ‘What have I done? Don’t you mean to speak to me any more?’

‘Yes,’ she said, turning suddenly round, so that he could not tell which of his questions she was answering. ‘I am vexed that you will come with me. Gentlemen do not insist on walking with ladies to whom they have not been introduced—whom they have met only by chance——’

He stopped short suddenly, moved by the accusation; but unfortunately Agnes too, startled by his start, stopped also, and gave him a curious, half-defiant, half-appealing look, as if asking what he was going to do; and this look took away all the irritation which her words had produced. He proceeded to excuse himself, walking on, but at a slower pace, compelling her to wait for him—for it did not occur to Agnes, though she had protested against his company, to take the remedy into her own hands, and be so rude as to break away.

‘What could I do?’ he said piteously. ‘You would not tell me even your name—you know mine. I don’t know how to address you, nor how to seek acquaintance in all the proper forms. It is no fault of mine.’

This confused Agnes by a dialectic artifice for which she was not prepared. He gave a very plausible reason, not for the direct accusation against him, but for a lesser collateral fault. She had to pause for a moment before she could see her way out of the maze. ‘I did not mean that. I meant you should not come at all,’ she said.

‘Ah! you cannot surely be so hard upon me,’ cried Oswald, in real terror, for it had not occurred to him that she would, in cold blood, send him away. ‘Don’t banish me!’ he cried. ‘Tell me what I am to do for the introduction—where am I to go? I will do anything. Is it my fault that I did not know you till that day?—till that good child, bless her, broke her leg. I shall always be grateful to poor little Emmy. She shall have a crutch of gold if she likes. She shall never want anything I can give her. Do you think I don’t feel the want of that formula of an introduction? With that I should be happy. I should be able to see you at other times than hospital days, in other places than the streets. The streets are beautiful ever since I knew you,’ cried the young man, warming with his own words, which made him feel the whole situation much more forcibly than before, and moved him at least, whether they moved her or not.

‘Oh!’ cried Agnes, in distress, ‘you must not talk to me so. You must not come with me, Mr. Meredith; is not my dress enough——’

‘There now!’ he said, ‘see what a disadvantage I am under. I dare not call you Agnes, which is the only sweet name I know. And your dress! You told me yourself you were not a Sister.’

‘It is quite true,’ she said, looking at him, trying another experiment. ‘I am a poor teacher, quite out of your sphere.’

‘But then, fortunately, I am not poor,’ said Oswald, almost gaily, in sudden triumph. ‘Only tell me where your people are, where I am to go for that introduction. I thank thee, Lady Agnes, Princess Agnes, for teaching me that word. I will get my introduction or die.’

‘Oh, here we are at the House!’ she cried suddenly, in a low tone of horror, and darted away from him up the steps to the open door. Sister Mary Jane was standing there unsuspicious, but visibly surprised. She had just parted with someone, whom poor Agnes, in her terror, ran against; for in the warmth of the discussion they had come up to the very gate of the House, the entrance to that sanctuary where lovers were unknown. Sister Mary Jane opened a pair of large blue eyes, which Oswald (being full of admiration for all things that were admirable) had already noted, and gazed at him, bewildered, letting Agnes pass without comment. He took off his hat with his most winning look of admiring respectfulness as he went on—no harm in winning over Sister Mary Jane, who was a fair and comely Sister, though no longer young. Would Agnes, he wondered, have the worldly wisdom to make out that he was an old acquaintance, or would she confess the truth? Would Sister Mary Jane prove a dragon, or, softened by her own beauty and the recollection of past homages, excuse the culprit? Oswald knew very well that anyhow, while he walked off unblamed and unblamable, the girl who had been only passive, and guilty of no more than the mildest indiscretion, would have to suffer more or less. This, however, did not move him to any regret for having compromised her. It rather amused him, and seemed to give him a hold over her. She could not take such high ground now and order him away. She was in the same boat, so to speak. Next time they met she would have something to tell which he would almost have a right to know. It was the establishing of confidence between them. Oswald did not reckon at a very serious rate the suffering that might arise from Sister Mary Jane’s rebuke. ‘They have no thumbscrews in those new convents, and they don’t build girls up in holes in the walls now-a-days,’ he said to himself, and, on the whole, the incident was less likely to end in harm than in good.

Agnes did not think so, who rushed in—not to her room, which would have been a little comfort, but to the curtained corner of the dormitory, from which she superintended night and day ‘the middle girls,’ who were her charge, and where she was always afraid of some small pair of peeping eyes prying upon her seclusion. She threw off her bonnet, and flung herself on her knees by the side of her little bed. ‘Oh, what a farce it was,’ she thought, to cover such feelings as surged in her heart under the demure drapery of that black cloak, or to tie the conventual bonnet over cheeks that burned with blushes, called there by such words as she had been hearing! She bent down her face upon the coverlet and cried as if her heart would break, praying for forgiveness, though these same foolish words would run in and out of her prayers, mixing with her heart-broken expressions of penitence in the most bewildering medley. After all, there was no such dreadful harm done. She was not a Sister, nor had she ever intended to be a Sister, but that very simple reflection afforded the fanciful girl no comfort. She had come here to seek a higher life, and lo, at once, at the first temptation, had fallen—fallen, into what? Into the foolishness of the foolishest girl without an ideal—she whose whole soul had longed to lay hold on the ideal, to get into some higher atmosphere, on some loftier level of existence. It was not Sister Mary Jane she was afraid of, it was herself whom she had so offended; for already, could it be possible? insidious traitors in her heart had begun to ply her with suggestions of other kinds of perfection; wicked lines of poetry stole into her head, foolish stories came to her recollection. Oh! even praying, even penitence were not enough to keep out this strife. She sprang to her feet, and rushed to St. Cecilia, the room which was her battleground, and where the noise of the girls putting away their books and work, and preparing to go to tea, promised her exemption, for a little while at least, from any possibility of thought. But Agnes was not to be let off so easily. In the passage she met Sister Mary Jane. ‘I was just going to send for you,’ said the Sister, benign but serious. ‘Come to my room, Agnes. Sister Sarah Ann will take the children to tea.’

Agnes followed, with her heart, she thought, standing still. But it would be a relief to be scolded, to be delivered from the demon of self-reproach in her own bosom. Sister Mary Jane seated herself at a table covered with school-books and account-books, in the little bare room, laid with matting, which was all the House afforded for the comfort of its rulers. She pointed to a low seat which all the elder girls knew well, which was the stool of repentance for the community. ‘My dear,’ said Sister Mary Jane, ‘did you know that gentleman in the world? Tell me truly, Agnes. You are only an associate: you are not under our rule, and there is no harm in speaking to an acquaintance. But so long as anyone wears our dress there must be a certain amount of care. Did you know him, my dear, tell me, in the world?’

Agnes could not meet these serious eyes. Her head drooped upon her breast. She began to cry. ‘I do not think it was my fault. Oh, I have been wrong, but I did not mean it. It was not my fault.’

‘That is not an answer, my dear,’ said Sister Mary Jane.

And then the whole story came rushing forth with sobs and excuses and self-accusations all in one. ‘It is the badness in my heart. I want to be above the world, but I cannot. Things come into my mind that I don’t want to think. I would rather, far rather, be devoted to my work, and think of nothing else, like you, Sister Mary Jane. And then I get tempted to talk, to give my opinion. I was always fond of conversation. Tell me what to do to keep my course straight, to be like you. Oh, if I could keep steady and think only of one thing! It is my thoughts that run off in every direction: it is not this gentleman. Oh, what can one do when one’s heart is so wrong!’

Sister Mary Jane listened with a smile. Oswald’s confidence in her beautiful eyes was perhaps not misplaced. And probably she was conscious now and then of thinking of something else as much as her penitent. She said, ‘My dear, I don’t think you have a vocation. I never thought it. A girl may be a very good girl and not have a vocation. So you need not be very unhappy if your thoughts wander; all of us have not the same gifts. But, Agnes, even if you were in the world, instead of being in this house, which should make you more careful, you would not let a gentleman talk to you whom you did not know. You must not do it again.’

‘It was not meant badly,’ said Agnes, veering to self-defence. ‘He wanted to know how little Emmy was. It was the gentleman who carried her to the hospital. It was kindness; it was not meant for——’

‘Yes, I saw who it was. And I can understand how it came about. But it is so easy to let an acquaintance spring up, and so difficult to end it when it has taken root. Perhaps, my dear, you had better not go to little Emmy again.’

‘Oh!’ Agnes gave a cry of remonstrance and protest. It did not hurt her to be told not to speak to him any more—but not to go to little Emmy! She was not sure herself that it was all for little Emmy’s sake, and this made her still more unhappy, but not willing to relinquish the expedition. Sister Mary Jane, however, took no notice of the cry. She put a heap of exercises into Agnes’s hands to be corrected. ‘They must all be done to-night,’ she said, calculating with benevolent severity that this would occupy all the available time till bedtime. ‘One nail drives out another,’ she said to herself, being an accomplished person, with strange tongues at her command. And thus she sent the culprit away, exhausted with tears and supplied with work. ‘I will send you some tea to St. Monica, where you can be quiet,’ she said. And there Agnes toiled all the evening over her exercises, and had not a moment to spare. ‘Occupation, occupation,’ said the Sister to herself; ‘that is the only thing. She will do very well if she has no time to think.’

But was that the ideal life? I doubt if Sister Mary Jane thought so; but she was old enough to understand the need of such props, which Agnes was still young enough to have indignantly repudiated. For her part, Agnes felt that a little more thought would save her. If she could get vain imaginations out of her head, and those scraps of poetry, and bits of foolish novels, and replace them with real thought—thought upon serious subjects, something worthy the name—how soon would all those confusing, tantalising shadows flee away! But, in the meantime, it is undeniable that the girl left this interview with a sense of relief, such as it is to be supposed, is one of the chief reasons why confession continues to hold its place, named or nameless, in all religious communions more or less. Sister Mary Jane was not the spiritual director of the community, though I think the place would have very well become her; but it was undeniable that the mind of Agnes was lightened after she had poured forth her burdens; also that her sin did not look quite so heinous as it had done before; also that the despair which had enveloped her, and of which the consciousness that she must never so sin again formed no inconsiderable part, was imperceptibly dispelled, and the future as well as the past made less gloomy. Perhaps, if any very searching inspection had been made into those recesses of her soul which were but imperfectly known to Agnes herself, it might have been read there that there was no longer any crushing weight of certainty as to the absolute cessation of the sin; but that was beyond the reach of investigation. Anyhow, she had no time to think any more. Never had exercises so bad come under the young teacher’s inspection; her brain reeled over the mis-spellings, the misunderstandings. Healthy human ignorance, indifference, opacity, desire to get done anyhow, could not have shown to greater advantage. They entirely carried out the intentions of Sister Mary Jane, and left her not a moment for thought, until she got to her recess in the dormitory. And then, after the whisperings were all hushed, and the lights extinguished, Agnes was too tired for anything but sleep—a result of occupation which the wise Sister was well aware of too. Indeed, everything turned out so well in the case of this young penitent, that Sister Mary Jane deemed it advisable not to interfere with the visits to the hospital. If she surmounted temptation, why, then she was safe; if not, other steps must be taken. Anyhow, it was well that her highly-wrought feelings and desire of excellence should be put to the test; and as Agnes was not even a Postulant, but still in ‘the world,’ an unwise backsliding of this kind was less important. No real harm could come to her. Nevertheless, Sister Mary Jane watched her slim figure disappear along the street from her window with unusual interest. Was it mere interest in little Emmy that had made the girl so anxious to go, or was she eager to encounter the test and try her own strength? Or was there still another reason, a wish more weak, more human, more girlish? Agnes walked on very quickly, pleased to find herself at liberty. She was proud of the little patient, whose small face brightened with delight at the sight of her. And she did not like the sensation of being shut up out of danger, and saved arbitrarily from temptation. Her heart rose with determination to keep her own pure ideal path, whatever solicitations or blandishments might assail her. And indeed, to Agnes, as to a knight of romance, it is not to be denied that ‘the danger’s self was lure alone.’

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FIRESIDE.

‘I think so,’ said Edward, angrily—‘old meddler; but she seems to think we must put up with him. I wish my father would come home and look after his own affairs.’

‘It was a mission from your father, then?’ Mr. Beresford was silent for a moment, thinking with somewhat sombre dissatisfaction of the absent Meredith. Would it be so pleasant to see him come home? Would the unaccustomed presence of the master be an advantage to the house? He could not be so insincere as to echo Edward’s wish; but he was moved sympathetically towards the youth, who certainly was quite unsuspicious of him, whatever other people might be. ‘Go upstairs and see Cara,’ he said; ‘she is in the drawing-room.’

The young man’s face brightened. Oswald was absent; he was not as usual in his brother’s way; and though Edward had agreed loyally to accept what he supposed to be the state of affairs and school himself to look upon Cara as his future sister, that was no reason—indeed it was rather the reverse of a reason—for avoiding her now. He went upstairs with a kind of sweet unhappiness in his heart. If Cara was not for him, he must put up with it; he must try to be glad if she had chosen according to her own happiness. But in the meantime he would try to forget that, and take what pleasure heaven might afford him in her society—a modified imperfect happiness with an after-taste of bitterness in it—but still better than no consolation at all.

Cara was with her aunt in the drawing-room, and they both welcomed him with smiles. Miss Cherry, indeed, was quite effusive in her pleasure.

‘Come and tell us all the news and amuse us,’ she said; ‘that is the chief advantage of having men about. My brother is no good, he never goes out; and if he did go out, he never comes upstairs. I thought Oswald would have come this evening,’ Miss Cherry said, in a tone which for her sounded querulous; and she looked from one to the other of the young people with a curious look. She was not pleased to be left out of Cara’s confidence, and when they excused Oswald with one breath, both explaining eagerly that they had known of his engagement, Miss Cherry was if anything worse offended still. Why should not they be open, and tell everything? she thought.

‘Besides,’ said Cara, very calmly, ‘Oswald never comes here in the evening: he has always so many places to go to, and his club. Edward is too young to have a club. Why should people go out always at night? Isn’t it pleasant to stay at home?’

‘My dear, gentlemen are not like us,’ said Miss Cherry, instinctively defending the absent, ‘and to tell the truth, when I have been going to the play, or to a party—I mean in my young days—I used to like to see the lighted streets—all the shops shining, and the people thronging past on the pavement. I am afraid it was a vulgar taste; but I liked it. And men, who can go where they please—— I am very sorry that your mamma has a headache, Edward. She is not seeing anyone? I wonder what James——?’ Here she stopped abruptly and looked conscious, feeling that to discuss her brother with these young persons would be very foolish. Fortunately they were occupied with each other, and did not pay much attention to what she said.

‘Oh, Edward,’ said Cara, ‘stay and read to us! There is nothing I like so much. It is always dull here in the evenings, much duller than at the Hill, except when we go out. And Aunt Cherry has her work, and so have I. Sit here—here is a comfortable chair close to the lamp. You have nothing particular to do, and if your mother has a headache, she does not want you.’

‘I don’t require to be coaxed,’ said Edward, his face glowing with pleasure; and then a certain pallor stole over it as he said to himself, she is treating me like her brother; but even that was pleasant, after a sort. ‘I am quite willing to read,’ he said; ‘what shall it be? Tell me what book you like best.’

‘Poetry,’ said Cara; ‘don’t you like poetry, Aunt Cherry? There is a novel there; but I prefer Tennyson. Mr. Browning is a little too hard for me. Aunt Cherry, Edward is very good when he reads out loud. You would like to hear “Elaine”?’

‘Ye-es,’ said Miss Cherry. She cast a regretful glance at the novel, which was fresh from Mudie’s; but soon cheered up, reflecting that she was half through the second volume, and that it would not be amusing to begin it over again. ‘In my young days stories would bear reading two or three times over,’ she said, unconsciously following out her own thought; ‘but they have fallen off like everything else. Yes, my dear, I am always fond of poetry. Let me get my work. It is the new kind of art-needlework, Edward. I don’t know if you have seen any of it. It is considered a great deal better in design than the Berlin work we used to do, and it is a very easy stitch, and goes quickly. That is what I like in it. I must have the basket with all my crewels, Cara, and my scissors and my thimble, before he begins. I hate interrupting anyone who is reading. But you are only hemming, my dear. You might have prettier work for the drawing-room. I think girls should always have some pretty work in hand; don’t you think so, Edward? It is pleasanter to look at than that plain piece of white work.’

‘I should think anything that Cara worked at pretty,’ said Edward, forgetting precaution. Miss Cherry looked up at him suddenly with a little alarm, but Cara, who was searching for the crewels, and the thimble and the scissors, on a distant table, fortunately did not hear what he said.

‘H-hush!’ said Miss Cherry; ‘we must not make the child vain;’ but, to tell the truth, her lively imagination immediately leaped at a rivalship between the brothers. ‘I suppose we must consider her fate sealed, though she is not so frank about it as I could wish,’ she added, in an undertone.

‘Here are your crewels, Aunt Cherry; and here is the book, Edward. What were you talking about?’ said Cara, coming back into the warm circle of the light.

‘Nothing, my darling—about the art-needlework, and Edward thinks it very pretty; but I am not sure that I don’t prefer the Berlin wool. After all, to work borders to dusters seems scarcely worth while, does it? Oh yes, my dear, I know it is for a chair; but it looks just like a duster. Now we used to work on silk and satin—much better worth it.’

‘Aunt Cherry, you always talk most when someone is beginning to read.’

‘Do I, dear?’ said Miss Cherry, in a wondering, injured tone. ‘Well, then, I shall be silent. I do not think I am much given to be talkative. Have I got everything?—then, my dear boy, please go on.’

It was a pretty scene. The rich warm centre of the fire, the moon-lamps on either table, filled the soft atmosphere with light. Miss Cherry, in her grey gown, which was of glistening silk, full of soft reflections, in the evening, sat on one side, with her crewels in her lap, giving points of subdued colour, and her face full in the light, very intent over the work, which sometimes puzzled her a little. Cara and Edward had the other table between them; he with his book before him, placed so that he could see her when he raised his eyes; she with the muslin she was hemming falling about her pretty hands—a fair white creature, with a rose-light shed upon her from the fire. The rest of the room was less light, enshrining this spot of brightness, but giving forth chance gleams in every corner from mirrors which threw them forth dimly, from china and old Venetian glass, which caught the light, and sent flickers of colour about the walls. Mr. Beresford, who, deprived of his usual rest, was wandering about, an âme en peine, looked in for a moment at the door, and paused to look at them, and then disappeared again. He never spent a moment longer than he could help in that haunted room; but to-night, perhaps, in his restlessness, might have found it a relief to take his natural place there, had he not been checked by the quiet home-like aspect of this pretty group, which seemed complete. It did not look like any chance combination, but seemed so harmonious, so natural to the place, as if it had always been there, and always must possess the warm fireside, that he was incapable of disturbing them. Better to bear the new life alone. This genial party—what had he to do with it, disturbing it by his past, by the ghosts that would come with him? He shut the door noiselessly, and went back again, down to his gloomy library. Poor Annie’s room, in which everything spoke of her—how the loss of her had changed all the world to him, and driven him away for ever from the soft delight of that household centre! Strangely enough, the failure of the refuge which friendship had made for him, renewed all his regrets tenfold for his wife whom he had lost. He seemed almost to lose her again, and the bitterness of the first hours came back upon him as he sat alone, having nowhere to go to. Life was hard on him, and fate.

The party in the drawing-room had not perceived this ghost looking in upon them: they went on tranquilly; Miss Cherry puckering her soft old forehead over her art design, and the firelight throwing its warm ruddiness over Cara’s white dress. Barring the troubles incident upon art-needlework, the two ladies were giving their whole minds to the lily maid of Astolat and her love-tragedy. But the reader was not so much absorbed in ‘Elaine.’ Another current of thought kept flowing through his mind underneath the poetry. He wondered whether this would be his lot through his life, to sit in the light of the warmth which was for his brother, and be the tame spectator of the love which was his brother’s, and make up for the absence of the gay truant who even for that love’s sake would not give up his own pleasures. Edward felt that there would be a certain happiness touched with bitterness even in his lot; but how strange that this, which he would have given his life for, should fall to Oswald’s share, who would give so little for it, and not to him! These thoughts ran through his mind like a cold undercurrent below the warm sunlit surface of the visible stream; but they did not show, and indeed they did not much disturb Edward’s happiness of the moment, but gave it a kind of poignant thrill of feeling, which made it more dear. He knew (he thought) that Oswald was the favoured and chosen, but as yet he had not been told of it, and the uncertainty was still sweet, so long as it might last.

‘Ah!’ said Cara, drawing a long breath: the poetry had got into her head—tears were coming into her eyes, filling them and then ebbing back again somehow, for she would not shed them. She had no thought but for ‘Elaine,’ yet felt somehow, as youth has a way of doing, a soft comparison between herself and Elaine, a wavering of identity—was it that she too was capable of that ‘love of the moth for the star?’ Edward watching her, felt that there was more poetry in Cara’s blue eyes than in the Laureate; and no shame to Mr. Tennyson. Is it not in that tender emotion, that swelling of the heart to all lofty and sorrowful, and beautiful things, that poetry takes its rise? Cara being truly the poet’s vision, even to her own touched and melting consciousness, was all Elaine in her young lover’s eyes.

‘But, my dear, my dear!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘if poor Elaine had only loved someone like herself, some young knight that could respond to her and make her happy, oh, how much better it would have been! It makes my heart ache: for Lancelot, you know, never could have loved her; though indeed I don’t know why not, for men being middle-aged is no guarantee,’ Miss Cherry added, with a little sigh, ‘against their making fools of themselves for young girls; but it would have been far more natural and happier for her had she set her heart on someone of her own age, who would have made her——’

‘Oh,’ cried Cara, ‘don’t say it over again! made her happy! did Elaine want to be made happy? She wanted what was the highest and noblest, not asking what was to become of her. What did it matter about her? It was enough that she found out Lancelot without even knowing his name. I suppose such a thing might be,’ said Cara, sinking her voice in poetic awe, ‘as that Lancelot might come to one’s very door, and one never know him. That would be worse, far worse, than dying for his sake.’

‘Oh, Cara, Lancelot was not such a very fine character after all,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and though I am not so clever about poetry as you are, I have seen many a young girl taken in with an older man, who seemed everything that was noble, but had a very sad past behind him that nobody knew of; but after they are married, it is always found out. I would rather, far rather, see you with a young man of your own age.’

‘Aunt Cherry!’ cried the girl, blushing all over with the hot, sudden, overwhelming blush of her years, and then Cara threw a glance at Edward, seeking sympathy and implying horror at this matter-of-fact view, and caught his eye and blushed all the more; while Edward blushed too, he knew not why. This glance of mutual understanding silenced them both, though neither knew what electric spark had passed between them. Cara in her confusion edged her chair a little further off, and Edward returned to his book. It was an interruption to the delicious calm of the evening. And Miss Cherry began to look at her watch and wonder audibly to find that it was so late. ‘Past ten o’clock! almost time for bed. I thought it was only about eight. Are you really going, Edward? I am sure we are very much obliged—the evening has passed so quickly. And I hope your mamma will be better to-morrow. Tell her how very very sorry we are, and give her my love.’