Innocent

CHAPTER IX.

AT HOME.

When Mrs. Eastwood received, after a long and anxious waiting, Frederick’s letter from Leghorn, telling her of his illness and detention in Paris (“the last place in the world one would like to be ill in,” she said in her innocence), she was, as might be supposed, greatly agitated and distressed. Her first thought was for his health, poor fellow! her second for the office, and whether he could get an extension of leave, or if this staying away without permission would injure him. She did not quite know which of her counsellors to send for in such an emergency, and therefore she did what she would have done in any case, whether her advisers had bidden her or not. After she had wondered with Ellinor what it could have been, and why he gave them no details, and had cried over the bad news, and taken comfort at the thought he was better, she sent for her habitual fly, the vehicle which she had patronized ever since she put down her carriage. It was a very respectable fly, with a sensible brown horse, which never got into any trouble, as the horses of private individuals do, but would stand as patiently at a door of its own free will as if it knew there was a place round the corner where its inferior brother, the coachman, went to refresh himself, and sympathized in his thirst. Mrs. Eastwood and Ellinor got into this respectable vehicle about twelve o’clock, and drove by Whitehall and the Horse Guards to the Sealing-Wax Office. There they found the head of the office, Mr. Bellingham, who had just come in from his cottage in the country, with a rosebud in his coat, which came from his own conservatory, and had roused the envy of all the young men as he came by. Mrs. Eastwood explained that Frederick had been detained by illness in Paris. He had not written sooner in order that his friends might not be anxious, she explained, and she hoped, as it was totally unforeseen, and very, very inconvenient to himself, that there would be no difficulty in the office. Mr. Bellingham smiled upon her, and said he would make all that right. “Jolly place to be ill in,” he said with a little nod and smile. “Indeed, I thought it the very last place in the world for a sick person,” said Mrs. Eastwood, feeling somehow that her boy’s sufferings were held too lightly; “so little privacy, so much noise and bustle; and in a hotel, of course, the comforts of home are not to be looked for.” It seemed to Ellinor that Mr. Bellingham’s countenance bore traces of a suppressed grin, but he said nothing more than that a letter had been received at the office from the sufferer, and that, of course, under the circumstances, there would be no question about the extended leave. “That is all right, at least,” Mrs. Eastwood said as they left the office; but it may well be supposed that to wait ten days for any news whatever of the absent son, and at the end of that period, when they began to expect his return, to hear that he had been ill all the time within reach of them was not pleasant. The mother and daughter could talk of nothing else as they drove home.

“If he had but written at first, when he felt himself getting ill, you or I, or both of us, might have gone to him, Nelly. I cannot think of anything more dreary than being ill in an inn. And then the expense! I wonder if he has money enough, poor boy, to bring him home?”

“If he wanted money he would have told you so,” said Nelly, half uneasy, she could not quite tell why.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “boys are so odd. To be sure, when they want money they generally let one know. But there never was anything so tiresome, so vague, as men’s letters about themselves. ‘I have been ill.’—Now if it had been you or me, Nelly, we should have said, ‘I took cold, or I got a bad headache,’ or whatever it was, on such a day—and how it got worse or better; and when we were able to get up again, or to get out again. It is not Frederick alone. It is every man. They tell you just enough to make you unhappy—never any details. I suppose,” she added, with a sigh, “it is because that sort of meagre information is enough for themselves. They don’t care to know all about it as women do. They don’t understand what it is to be really anxious. In a great many ways, Nelly, men have the advantage over us—things, too, that no laws can change.”

“I don’t think it is an advantage not to care,” said Nelly indignantly.

“I am not so sure of that,” said her mother. “We care so much that we can’t think of anything else. We can’t take things calmly as they do. And they have an advantage in it. Frederick is a very good son, but if I were to write to him, ‘I have been ill, and I am better,’ he would be quite satisfied, he would want nothing more. Whereas I want a great deal more,” Mrs. Eastwood said, flicking off with her finger the ghost of a tear which had gathered, in spite of her, in the corner of her eye, and giving a short little broken laugh. The path of fathers and mothers is often strewn with roses, but the roses have very big thorns. Even Nelly, who was young, whose heart leapt forward to a future of her own, in which brothers had but little share, did not here quite comprehend her mother. For her own part, had she been left to herself, it is possible that Frederick’s “I have been ill, but I am better,” would have satisfied all her anxieties; but as the girl by force of sympathy was but half herself and half her mother, she entered into the feelings which she did not altogether share with a warmth which was increased by partisanship, if such a word can be used in such a case.

“It is wicked of him not to write more fully,” she said.

“No, Nelly, dear, not wicked, only thoughtless; all men are the same,” said Mrs. Eastwood. And to be sure this large generalization affords a little comfort now and then to women, as the same principle does to men in different circumstances; for there is nothing about which the two halves of humanity are so fond of generalizing as each other. It seems to afford a certain consolation that “all men are just the same,” or that “women are like that everywhere”—an explanation which, at least, partially exonerates the immediate offender.

Another week elapsed, during which the Eastwoods carried on their existence much as usual, unmoved to appearance by the delay, and not deeply disturbed by the prospect of the new arrival. Mrs. Eastwood spoke to Mr. Brotherton, her rector and adviser about “the boys,” on the subject, but not much came of it; for Mr. Brotherton, though fond, like most people, of giving advice, and feeling, like most people, that a widow with sons to educate was his lawful prey, was yet shy of saying anything on the subject of Frederick, who was no longer a boy. Whether any more serious uneasiness lay underneath her anxiety for her son’s health, no one, not even Mrs. Eastwood’s chief and privy councillor, could have told; but when appealed to as to what he thought on the subject, whether another messenger or the mother herself should go to the succour of the invalid, Mr. Brotherton shook his head and did not know what to advise. “If he has been able to go on to Leghorn, I think you may feel very confident that he is all right again,” he said. “You must not make yourself unhappy about him. From Leghorn to Pisa is but a step,” added the Rector, pleased to be able to recall his own experience on this subject. But Mrs. Everard, the Privy Councillor, was of a different opinion. She was always for action in every case. To sit still and wait was a policy which had no attractions for her. She was a slight and eager woman, who had been a great beauty in her day. Her husband had been a judge in India, and she was, or thought she was, deeply instructed in the law, and able to be “of real service” to her friends, when legal knowledge was requisite. It is almost unnecessary to say that she was as unlike Mrs. Eastwood as one woman could be to another. The one was eager, slight, and restless, with a mind much too active for her body, and an absolute incapacity for letting anything alone; the other plump and peaceable, not deficient in energy when it was necessary, but slightly inert and slow to move when the emergency did not strike her as serious. Of course it is equally unnecessary to add that Mrs. Everard also was a widow. This fact acts upon the character like other great facts in life. It makes many and important modifications in the aspect of affairs. Life à deux (I don’t know any English phrase which quite expresses this) is scarcely more different from the primitive and original single life than is the life which, after having been à deux, becomes single, without the possibility of going back to the original standing ground. That curious mingling of a man’s position and responsibilities with a woman’s position and responsibilities, cannot possibly fail to mould a type of character in many respects individual. A man who is widowed is not similarly affected, partly perhaps because in most cases he throws the responsibility from him, and either marries again or places some woman in the deputy position of governess or housekeeper to represent the feminine side of life, which he does not choose to take upon himself. Women, however, abandon their post much less frequently, and sometimes, I suspect, get quite reconciled to the double burden, and do not object to do all for, and be all to, their children. Sometimes they attempt too much, and often enough they fail; but so does everybody in everything, and widows’ sons have not shown badly in general life. I hope the gentle reader will pardon me this digression, which, after all, is scarcely necessary, since it is the business of the ladies in this history to speak for themselves.

“I would go if I were in your place,” said Mrs. Everard, talking over all these circumstances in the twilight over the fire the same evening. “A man, as we both know, never tells you anything fully. Of course you cannot tell in the least what is the matter with him. He may have overtasked his strength going on to Pisa. He may break down on the road home, with no one to look after him. I suppose this girl will be a helpless foreign thing without any knowledge of the world. Girls are brought up so absurdly abroad. You know my opinion, dear, on the whole subject. I always advised you—instead of taking this trouble and bringing her here with great expense and inconvenience, to make her an inmate of your own house—I always advised you to settle her where she is, paying her expenses among the people she knows. You remember what I told you about poor Adelaide Forbes?—what a mistake she made, meaning to be kind! You know your own affairs best; but still on this point I think I was right.”

“Perhaps you may have been,” said Mrs. Eastwood, from the gloom of the corner in which she was seated, “but there are some things that one cannot do, however much one’s judgment may be convinced. Leave my own flesh and blood to languish among strangers? I could not do it; it would have been impossible.”

“If your flesh and blood had been a duchess, you would have done it without a thought,” said Mrs. Everard. “She is happy where she is (I suppose). You don’t know her temper nor her ways of thinking, nor what kind of girl she is, and yet you will insist upon bringing her here——”

“You speak as if Frederick’s illness was mamma’s doing,” said Nelly, with a little indignation, coming in from one of her many occupations, and placing herself on a stool in front of the fire, in the full glow of the firelight. Nelly was not afraid of her complexion. She did everything a girl ought not to do in this way. She would run out in the sunshine unprotected by veil or parasol, and she had a child’s trick of reading by firelight, which, considering how she scorched her cheeks, can scarcely be called anything short of wicked. This was a point upon which Mrs. Everard kept up a vigorous but unsuccessful struggle.

“Nelly, Nelly! you will burn your eyes out. By the time you are my age how much eyesight will you have left, do you think?”

“I don’t much care,” said Nelly, in an undertone. She thought that by the time she reached Mrs. Everard’s age (which was under fifty) she would have become indifferent to eyesight and everything else, in the chills of that advanced age.

“Nelly, you are not too civil,” said Mrs. Eastwood, touching the toe of Nelly’s pretty shoe with her own velvet slipper, in warning and reproof. The girl drew her toes out of the way, but did not make any apology. She was not fond of Mrs. Everard, nor indeed was any one in the house.

“Of course, I don’t mean that your decision had anything whatever to do with Frederick’s illness,” Mrs. Everard resumed, “that I don’t need to say. He might have been ill at home as much as abroad. I am speaking now on the original question. Of course, if Frederick had not gone away, you would have been spared this anxiety, and might have nursed him comfortably at home. But that is incidental. What I am sorry for is that you are bringing a girl into your house whom you know nothing of. She may be very nice, but she may be quite the reverse. Of course one can never tell whether it may or may not be a happy change even for her—but it is a great risk for you. It is a very brave thing to do. I should not have the courage to make such an experiment, though it would be a great deal simpler in my house, where there is no one to be affected but myself.”

“I don’t see where the courage lies,” said Nelly; “a girl of sixteen. What harm could she do to any one?”

“Oh, a great deal of harm, if she chose,” said Mrs. Everard; “a girl of sixteen, in a house full of young men! One or the other of them will fall in love with her to a certainty if she is at all pretty——”

“Oh, please!” said Mrs. Eastwood; “you do think so oddly, pardon me for saying so, about the boys. Frederick is grown up, of course, but the last young man in the world to think of a little cousin. And as for Dick, he is a mere boy; and Jenny? Don’t be vexed if I laugh. This is too funny.”

“I hope you will always think it as funny,” said the Privy Councillor solemnly, “but I know you and I don’t think alike on these subjects. Half the ridiculous marriages in the world spring out of the fact that parents will not see when boys and girls start up into men and women. I don’t mean to say that harm will come of it immediately—but once she is in your house there is no telling how you are to get rid of her. However, I suppose your mind is made up. About the other matter here are the facts of the case. Frederick is ill, you don’t know how or with what; he has taken a long and dangerous journey——”

“Not dangerous, dear, not dangerous——”

“Well, not dangerous if you please, but long and fatiguing, and troublesome to a man who is ill. He has gone on to Pisa in a bad state of health. You know that he has reached so far; and you know no more. Of course he will be anxious to get home again as quickly as possible. What if he were to get worse on the road? There is nothing more likely, and the torturing anxiety you would feel in such circumstances I need not suggest to you. You will be terribly unhappy. You will wait for news until you feel it impossible to wait any longer, and then when your strength and patience are exhausted, you will rush off to go to him—most likely too late.”

“Oh, have a little pity upon me! Don’t talk so—don’t think so——”

“I can’t stop my thoughts,” said Mrs. Everard, not without a little complacency, “and I have known such things to happen before now. What more likely than that he should start before he is equal to the journey, and break down on the way home? Then you would certainly go to him; and my advice is, go to him now. Anticipating the evil in that way, you would probably prevent it. In your place I would not lose a day.”

“But I could not reach Pisa,” said Mrs. Eastwood, nervously taking out her watch, “I could not reach Pisa, even if I were to start to-night, before they had left it; and how can I tell which way they would come? I should miss them to a certainty. I should get there just when they were arriving here. I should have double anxiety, and double expense——”

“If they ever arrived here,” said Mrs. Everard ominously; “but indeed it is not my part to interfere. Some people can bear anxiety so much better than others. I know it would kill me.”

Mrs. Eastwood very naturally objected to such a conclusion. To put up with the imputation of feeling less than her friend, or any other woman, in the circumstances, was unbearable. “Then you really think I have reason to be alarmed?” she said in a tremulous voice.

“I should not have any doubt on the subject,” said her adviser. “A young man in delicate health, a long journey, cold February weather, and not even a doctor whom you can rely upon to see him before he starts. Recollect I would not say half so much if I did not feel quite sure that you would be forced to go at last—and probably too late.”

“Oh, don’t say those awful words!” said the poor woman. And thus the conversation went on, till Brownlow appeared with the lamp, interrupting the agitating discussion. Then Mrs. Everard went her way, leaving her friend in very low spirits with Nelly, who, though kept up by a wholesome spirit of opposition, was yet moved, in spite of herself, by the gloomy picture upon which she had been looking. They sat together over the fire for a little longer, very tearful and miserable, while Mrs. Everard went home, strong in the sense of having done her duty “however things might turn out.”

“Must you really go, mamma?” said Nelly, much subdued, consulting her watch, in her turn, and thinking of the hurried start at eight o’clock to catch the night train, and of the dismal midnight crossing of that Channel which travellers hate and fear. “It will be a dreadful journey. Must you really go?”

“What do you think, Nelly?” said Mrs. Eastwood, beginning to recover a little. “I have the greatest respect for Jane Everard’s opinion, but she does always take the darkest view of everything. Oh, Nelly, what would you advise me to do?”

This was an infallible sign that the mercury had begun to rise. “Pressure had decreased,” to use a scientific term. The mother and daughter made up their minds, after much discussion, that to catch the night train would be impossible, and that there might perhaps be further news next day. “If that is your opinion, Nelly?” Mrs. Eastwood said, as they went up-stairs, supporting herself with natural casuistry upon her child’s counsel. The fact was that she herself saw very clearly all the practical difficulties of the question. She loved advice, and did not think it correct for “a woman in my position” to take any important step without consulting her friends; and their counsel moved her deeply. She gave all her attention to it, and received it with respectful conviction; but she did not take it. It would be impossible to overestimate the advantage this gave her over all her advisers.

“I knew she had made up her mind,” Mrs. Everard said next day, with resignation. Whatever might happen she had done her duty; and the consequences must certainly fall on the culprit’s own head.

CHAPTER X.

THE ARRIVAL.

To the reader who is better acquainted with the causes and character of Frederick Eastwood’s detention on his journey than either his mother or her Privy Councillor, the fears entertained by these ladies in respect to his health will scarcely appear deserving of much consideration. His health, indeed, very soon came right again. Two days’ rest at Pisa, the substitution of the vin du pays for champagne, and the absence of other excitements, made him quite equal to contemplate the journey home without anxiety, so far as his own interesting person was concerned. He had difficulties enough, however, of another kind. He was obliged to stay a day longer than he intended, in order to fit out his cousin with various things pronounced by Mrs. Drainham to be indispensable. She had to be clothed in something more fit for a journey than the thin black frock which Niccolo had ordered for her at her father’s death. Pisa did not afford much in the way of toilette; but still the dress and cloak procured by Mrs. Drainham were presentable; and the fastidious young man was extremely grateful to the physician’s pretty wife for clothing his companion so that he should not be ashamed to be seen with her, which would have been the case had the poor child travelled, as she intended, in her only warm garment, the velvet cloak.

“It must have been a stage property in its day,” Frederick said, looking at the many tints of its old age with disgust.

Innocent hid it away instantly in the depths of her old trunk, and sat proudly shivering with cold in her thin frock through all the long evening,—the cold, long, lingering night which preceded their departure. She thought her cousin would have come to her; but Frederick wisely reflected that he would have enough of her society for the next few days, and preferred the Drainhams’ comfortable drawing-room instead. Poor Innocent! she stood in the old way at the window, but not impassive as of old, looking for some one this time, and trying with a beating heart to make him out among the crowd that moved along the Lung’ Arno. This expectation engrossed her so much that she forgot to think of the change that was about to come upon her life. I do not know, indeed, that she was capable of thinking of anything so complex as this change. She had wandered from one place to another with her father, living always the same dreary, secluded life, having such simple wants as she was conscious of supplied, and nothing ever required of her. I believe, had it been suggested to her unawakened mind that thenceforward she must do without Niccolo, this would have been the most forcible way of rousing her to thought of what was about to happen. And, indeed, this was exactly the course which was about to be taken, though without any idea on the part of Niccolo of the effect it would produce. He came in as usual with his little tray, the salad heaped up, green and glistening with oil just as he liked it himself. Beside it, as this was the last evening, was a small, but smoking hot, dish of maccaroni, a morsel of cheese on a plate, and a petit pain, more delicate than the dry Italian bread. The usual small flask of red wine flanked this meal, which Niccolo brought in with some state, as became the little festa which he had prepared for his charge. Tears were in the good fellow’s eyes, though his beard was divided in its blackness by the kind smile which displayed his red lips and white teeth. He arranged it on the little table close by the stove, placed the chair beside it, and trimmed the lamp before he called upon his Signorina, whose position by the window he had immediately remarked with a shrug of his shoulders. He had taken care of her all her life; but I am not sure that the good Niccolo was not glad to be relieved of a charge so embarrassing. His own prospects were certainly brightened by her departure. He had served her father faithfully and long with but poor recompense, and now the reward of his faithfulness was coming to Niccolo in the shape of a better place, with higher wages, and a position which was very splendid in his eyes. Never was heart more disposed to entertain a romantic devotion for the child he had nurtured; but it is difficult for the warmest heart to give itself up in blind love to an utterly unresponsive being, whether child or man, and as Innocent did not love Niccolo or any one else the separation from her was less hard than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless there were tears in his eyes, and his heart was softened and melting when he arranged her supper for her, and went to the cold window to call her to her solitary meal. He touched her shoulder caressingly with his hand.

“Santissima Madonna!” cried Niccolo, “you will die of cold, my poor young lady; you have nothing but this thin dress, which cannot keep you warm. Where in the name of all the saints is your cloak?”

“I have put it away. It is ugly; it is not fit to wear,” cried Innocent. “It is a thing of the theatre. Why did you let me wear it?” and she put off his hand gently enough, but coldly, and continued her watch.

“A thing of the theatre!” cried Niccolo, indignant, “when I bought it myself at the sale of the pittore Inglese, who died over the way; and you looked like a princess when you put it on, and warm as a bird in a nest. But I know who it is that turns you against your old dresses, and your old way of living, and your poor old Niccolo. It is the cousin. I hope he will be to you all we have been, Signorina. But in the meantime my young lady is served, and if she does not eat, the maccaroni will be cold. Cold maccaroni is good for no one. The cousin will not come to-night.”

“You do not know,” said Innocent, turning a momentary look upon him, which was half a defiance and half a question.

“But I do know,” said Niccolo; “he went to the house of the English doctor half an hour ago, and bid me tell the Signorina to be prepared at ten to-morrow. Come, then, to the maccaroni. When everything else fails it is always good to have maccaroni to fall back upon. Chi ha buon pane, e buon vino, ha troppo un micolino.”

“I do not care for maccaroni,” said Innocent. She turned from the window, however, with a dawning of the pride of a woman who feels herself slighted. “Niccolo, I do not want anything: you can go away.”

“And this is how she parts with the old Niccolo!” he cried. “I have carried her in my arms when she was little. I have dressed her, and prepared for her to eat and drink all her life. I have taken her to the festa, and to the church. I have done all for her—all! and the last night she tells me, ‘I do not want anything, Niccolo; you may go away.’”

“The last night?” said Innocent, moved a little. She shivered with the cold, and with the pang of desertion, and with that new-born sense of her loneliness which had never struck her before. She knelt down by the stove to get a little warmth, and turned her eyes inquiringly upon him. She knew what he meant very well, and yet she did not know.

“The last night” said Niccolo. “To-morrow evening you will be upon the great sea; you will be on your way to your relations, to your England, which cannot be colder than your heart, Signorina. I weep, for I cannot forget that you were once a little child, and that I carried you in my arms. When I reflect that it is fifteen years, fifteen years that I have taken care of you, from the moment your nurse left you, disgraziata! and that after to-morrow I shall see you no more! Whatever has to be done for you must be done by others, or will not be done at all, which is more likely. When you want anything you may call ‘Niccolo, Niccolo;’ but there will be no Niccolo to reply. If I were to permit myself to think of all this I should become pazzo, Signorina—though you don’t care.”

Innocent said nothing; but slowly the reality of this tremendous alteration in her lot made itself apparent to her. No Niccolo! She could not realize it. With Niccolo, too, many other things would disappear. She looked round the lofty bare walls, which, indeed, had few attractions except those of use and wont, and faintly it dawned upon her that her whole life and everything that was familiar to her was about to vanish away. Large tears filled her eyes; she turned to Niccolo an appealing, beseeching look. “I do not understand,” she cried, with a panting breath; and put out her hands, and clung to him. He who was about to be left behind was the emblem of all the known, the familiar—I do not say the dear, for the girl’s heart and soul had been sealed up, and she loved nothing. But she knew him, and relied upon him, and had that child’s trust that he would never fail her, which is often all that a child knows of love. No Niccolo! She did not understand how existence was to go on without him. She clung to him with a look of sudden alarm and dismay in her dilated eyes.

The good Niccolo was satisfied. He had not wished or attempted to rouse that miserable, vague sense of desertion and abandonment of which he had no comprehension; but he was satisfied to have brought out some evidence of feeling, and also that his dramatic appeal had produced the due effect. “My dearest young lady!” he said, wiping the great tears from her eyes with his own red handkerchief, a service which he, indeed, had performed many a time before. “Carissima Signorina mia! There will never be a day of my life that I will not think of you, nor shall I ever enter a church without putting the blessed Madonna in mind of my poor, dear, well-beloved young lady who has no mother! Never, carina! never, my child, my little mistress! You may always rely upon your old Niccolo; and when my young lady marries a rich milordo she will come back to Pisa, and seek out her old servant, and say to the handsome, beautiful young husband, ‘This is my old Niccolo, that brought me up!’ Ah, carina mia,” cried the good fellow, laughing and crying, and applying the red handkerchief first to Innocent’s cheeks and then to his own, “that will be a magnificent day to look forward to! The young milordo will say immediately, ‘Niccolo shall be the maestro della casa; he shall live and die in my service.’ Ah, my beautiful Signorina, what happiness! I will go with you to England or anywhere. You were born to be our delight!” cried Niccolo, carried away by his feelings, and evidently imagining that the giorno magnifico had arrived already. Innocent, however, did not follow these rapid vicissitudes of feeling. To get one clear idea into her mind was difficult enough. Sometimes she looked at him, sometimes into the little fire, with its ruddy embers. Her head was giddy, her heart dully aching. All was going away from her; the room, the walls, seemed to turn slowly round, as if they would dissolve and break up into vapour. The very dumbness of her heart made this vague sense of misery the more terrible; she could say nothing. She could not have told what she felt or what she feared; but all the world seemed to be dissolving about her into coldness and darkness and loneliness; the cold penetrated to her very soul; she was miserable, as we may imagine a dumb animal to be, without any way of relieving itself of the confused pain in its mind.

Niccolo, after a while, became alarmed, and devoted himself to her restoration with all the tender kindness of his race. He rushed to the trunk, and got out the old mantle, in which he wrapped her; he put the scaldino into her hands, he brought her wine, and petted and smiled her back into composure. He carried the largest scaldino in the house, full of the reddest embers, into her stony bedroom. “It is not the cold,” he said to himself, “it is the sorrow, poverina! poverina! Let no one say after this that she has not a tender heart.” And when she went to bed Niccolo stayed up all night—cheerful, yet sad—to finish the packing, to set everything straight, and to leave the apartment in such order that the Marchese Scaramucci might have no grievance against his tenant, and as small a bill of repairs as possible. Good, kindly soul; he was rather glad though, on the whole, that to-morrow he was going to the new master, who was rich, and kept a number of servants, and who, being a milordo, might perhaps be cheated now and then in a friendly way.

And next morning Innocent’s old world did break up into clouds and vapours. For the last time she stole over to the little church in the dark morning, and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then sat still, looking at the little altar, where this time the candles were lighted, and a priest saying mass. The mass had nothing to do with Innocent. The drone of the monotonous voice, the gleam of the candles, made no sort of impression upon her. Her imagination was as little awakened as her heart was. If she thought of anything at all it was, with a sore sense of a wound somewhere, that Frederick had left her, that he had not come near her, that he was happy away from her; but all quite vague; nothing definite in it, except the pang. And then Santa Maria della Spina, and the high houses opposite, and the yellow river below, and the clustered buildings about the Duomo, and all Pisa, in short, melted into the clouds, and rolled away like a passing storm, and the new world began.

What kind of a strange phantasmagoric world this was, full of glares of light and long stretches of darkness; of black, plunging, angry waves, ready to drown the quivering, creaking, struggling vessel, which carried her and her fortunes; then of lights again wavering and dancing before the eyes, which were still unsteady from the sea; and once more the long sweep of the railway through the night, more lights, more darkness, succeeding and succeeding each other like the changes in a dream—we need not attempt to describe. It was four days after their start from Pisa, when her strength was quite worn out by the continuous and unusual fatigue both to body and mind, her nerves shaken, and all her powers of sensation dulled, when, shuddering at the sight, she came again to the short but angry sea which had to be crossed to England. It was not a “silver streak” that day. There are a great many days in the year, as the traveller knows, in which it is anything but a “silver streak.” In short, few things wilder, darker, more tempestuous, and terrible could be conceived than the black belt of Channel across which Innocent fought her way in the Dover steamboat to where a darker shadow lay upon the edge of the boiling water, a shadow which was England. For a wonder, she was not sea-sick. Frederick, whose self-control under such circumstances was dubious, had established her in a corner, and then had left her, not coming near her again till they entered the harbour, which was no unkindness on his part, but an effort of self-preservation, which the most exigeant would have approved. He had been very good to her on the journey, studying her comfort in every way, taking care of her almost as Niccolo had done, excusing all her little misadventures with her hand-bag, and the shawl she carried over her arm. He had let her head rest upon his shoulder; he had allowed her to hold his hand fast when the steamboat went up and down on the Mediterranean. These days of fatigue had been halcyon days of perfect repose and confidence in her companion. The poor child had never known any love in her barren life, and this kindness, which she did not know either, seemed in her eyes something heavenly, delicious beyond power of description. It had never been possible for her to cling to any one before, and yet her nature and breeding both made her dependent and helpless in her ignorance. Frederick appeared to her in such a light as had as yet touched nothing else in earth or heaven. Her heart woke to him and clung to him, but went no further. Her eyes searched all the dark figures on the deck in search of him when self-preservation drove him from her side. A cloud—an additional cloud—came on the world when he was absent. She felt no interest in the darksome England which loomed out of the mists; no curiosity even about the home it enclosed, or the unknown women who would hereafter so strangely affect her happiness. She gazed blankly at the cliffs rising through the fog, at the lights blown about by the wind, which shone out upon the stormy sea, and the bustle on the shore of the crowd which awaited the arrival of the steamer. All that she felt was again that ache (but slighter than before) to think that Frederick liked to be away from her, chose to leave her. For her part, she felt only half living and not at all real when he was not near enough to be touched. He was all she had left of reality out of the dissolving views into which the past had broken up; she might be dreaming but for him. When he came to her side at last in Dover Harbour, she caught at his arm and clasped it, and stood close up to him, holding on as to an anchor in the midst of all her confusion. Frederick did not dislike the heavy claim thus made upon him. The girl was very young, and almost beautiful in her strange way. She was ice except to him. She had thrown herself into his arms the first time they met, and a certain complacency of superiority, which was very sweet, mingled with the sense of protecting and sustaining care with which he looked upon the creature thus entirely dependent on him.

“Now the worst of our troubles is over,” he said cheerfully, though he was very white and even greenish in colour after the last hour’s sufferings. “Two hours more and we shall be at home.”

Innocent made no answer. She did not think at all of home; she only clung a little closer to him, as the only interpreter of all the vague and misty wonders which loomed about her. They were just about to step out of the boat, she always clinging to him, when Frederick heard himself called in a coarse but jovial voice, which at first bewildered him with surprise before he recognized it, and then gave him anything but a pleasant sensation.

“Glad to see you again, Mr. Eastwood,” it said. “Horrid passage, sir; a thing not to be endured if one could help it. I’ve been as sick as a dog, and, judging by your colour, so have you.”

“No,” said Frederick coldly; but it is not easy to be politely calm to a man who has you in his power, and who could “sell you up” to-morrow if he liked without benefit of clergy. He shivered as he replied, feeling such a terror of the consequences as I should vainly attempt to describe. It was like the death’s head at the feast, suddenly presenting itself when his mind was for the moment free from all dread of it. He turned round (though he had recognized the voice) with supercilious surprise, as if he could not imagine who the speaker was.

“Oh, Mr.——! You have been in Paris, I presume, ever since I saw you there?”

“Just so,” said Batty, “and some jolly evenings we’ve managed to have since, I can tell you. Not your way—unlimited, you know; but in moderation. By Jove! your way was too good to last. Made out your journey comfortable, eh, Mr. Eastwood? Got a companion now, I see.”

Oh, how Frederick blessed that companion for the opaqueness of her observation, for her want of interest in what was done and said around. “Yes, my cousin,” he said in a quiet undertone; and added, “Now I must get her into the train, and find a place for her. I am sorry I have no time to talk to you just now. Don’t be afraid that I shall forget the—the business—between us.”

“No, I don’t think you will,” said Batty, with a horse-laugh. “You couldn’t if you would, and I shouldn’t let you if you wanted to. And, by the way,” he said, keeping them back from the wished-for landing, “I recollected after I left you that I had never given you my address. Stop a moment, I’ll find it directly.”

“I will come back to you,” cried Frederick, desperate, “as soon as I have placed this lady in the train.”

“Just a moment,” said the man, pulling out his pocket-book. “I have your address, you know. There I have the advantage,” he added, with a leer into Frederick’s face.

Perhaps there is no ill-doing in this world which escapes punishment one way or other. Frederick had escaped a great deal better than he had any right to hope for till this moment. But now the Fates avenged themselves. Though he was cold and shivering, he grew red to his hair with suppressed passion.

“Let me pass, for Heaven’s sake!” he cried, bursting into involuntary entreaty.

“Here it is,” said Mr. Batty, thrusting a card into his hand, and with a chuckle he turned round to some people behind, who were with him, and let his victim go. Frederick hurried his silent companion on shore in a tumult of miserable and angry feeling. It was the first time he had felt the prick of the obligation under which he lay. He did not make the kind and pleasant little speech which he had intended to make to Innocent as he led her on to English soil. It had been driven out of his head by this odious encounter. Heavens! he thought, if it had been Nelly instead of Innocent! and next time it might be Nelly. He hurried the girl into the train without one word, and threw in his coat, and went off to get some brandy to restore his nerves and his courage. “Hallo! Eastwood!” some one else called out to him. “Bless my life, how green you are! been ill on the crossing, eh?” This is not a confession which the young Englishman is fond of making in a general way, but Frederick nodded and hurried on, ready to confess to anything, so long as he could be left alone. The brandy did him good, driving out the shuddering cold and putting some sort of spirit into him; for indeed it was quite true that, in addition to the mental shock, he had been ill on the crossing too.

Innocent had paid no attention to this colloquy; she received into her passive memory the voice and face of the man who had addressed her cousin; but she was not herself aware that she had done so. She was grieved when Frederick left her, and glad when he came back in a few minutes to ask if she would have anything. “No; only if you will come,” she said, putting out her hand. That was all she thought of. A kind of tremor had taken possession of her, not of expectation, for she was too passive to speculate—a thrill of the nerves as she approached the end of her journey. “You will not go away from me when we get there?” she said piteously. What with his disagreeable acquaintances, and his too clinging charge, poor Frederick had enough on his hands.

“Of course, I shall not go away; but, Innocent, you must put me in the second place now,” he said, patting her shoulder kindly as he sat down beside her. The answer she made was to put her hand softly within his arm. I don’t think Mrs. Eastwood would have approved of it, and Frederick found it rather embarrassing, and hoped the old lady did not observe it who was in the other corner of the railway carriage; she dozed all the way to town, and he did not know her; but still a man does not like to look ridiculous. Otherwise it was not unpleasant of itself.

And then Innocent’s bewildered eyes were dazzled by a blaze of lights, and noise, and crowding figures. Out of that she was put into the silence of a dingy cab, and left there, feeling unutterably lonely, and not at all sure that now at the last moment he had not forsaken her, while Frederick was absent looking after the luggage, that dismal concluding piece of misery after a long journey. By the time he came back to her she was crying, and sick with suspense and terror. And then came a last quick drive, through gleaming lights and intervals of darkness, by shop-windows and through dim lanes, till at last a door flew open in the gloom, sending forth light and warmth, and two figures rushed out of it and took her passive into their arms. She held Frederick fast with one hand while she gazed at them. This was how she came home.

CHAPTER XI.

AT HOME AND NOT AT HOME.

“Let her alone,” he said, with some impatience. “Don’t you see she is frightened and tired, and scarcely understands you? We have been travelling day and night since Tuesday. Innocent, are you very much tired? Should you like to go to bed? or are you able to sit up to dinner? Don’t be afraid.”

She looked up at him instantly responsive. She put out her hand to him, and grasped his, though this was a formula which he could have dispensed with. “Are you to sit up to dinner?” she asked. “Then I will too.”

“I am the only one she knows,” he said, turning to the others, half pleased, half ashamed; perhaps more than half ashamed, the young man being English, and in deadly terror of being laughed at. “I hope I am old enough to sit up to dinner,” he said, carrying off a little confusion in a laugh; “but I confess after all this travelling I am tired too.”

“Let me look at you, Frederick,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I see you are better; you are not so pale as when you went away. Your illness, on the whole, must have agreed with you. Why didn’t you write, you unkind boy? Nelly and I would have gone over to nurse you——”

Heaven forbid! Frederick said to himself; the bare suggestion gave him a livelier idea of the dangers he had escaped than anything else had done. “No, no,” he said, “a journey at this time of the year is no joke. That was the very reason I did not write; and then, of course, I was anxious to get on as quickly as I could to poor Innocent, who was being made a victim of by all the ladies, the doctress and the clergywoman, and all the rest——”

“Was she made a victim of?” said Nelly, looking at the new comer in her easy-chair, with doubtful wonder.

Innocent divined rather than understood that they were talking of her, and once more raised her eyes to Frederick with a soft smile which seemed to consent to everything he said. She seemed to the ladies to be giving confirmation to his words, whereas, in reality, it was but like the holding out of her hand—another way of showing her confidence and dependence on him.

“I took her out of their hands,” said Frederick, with a delightful indifference to facts; “they would have sent her to you with a Pisan outfit, peasant costume for anything I can tell. I was very glad to get there in time. I found the poor child living in the house all alone, not even with a maid, and a dark ghostly dismal sort of house, which you would have thought would have frightened her to death.”

“Poor child!” said Mrs. Eastwood, “alone without even a maid? Oh, that is dreadful! Were you frightened, my poor darling?”

“No,” said Innocent, glancing at her questioner quickly, and then returning to her habitual gaze upon Frederick. This was not encouraging, but of course Frederick had been her first acquaintance, and she had come to know him. His mother dismissed him summarily to wash his hands before dinner. “Don’t think of dressing,” she said; and Innocent was left alone with them. She sat quite passive, as she had done with Mrs. Drainham, turning her eyes from one to the other with a wistful sort of fear, which half amused, half angered them. To be sure, in her fatigued state, there was every excuse to be made.

“You must not be afraid of us, my dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “Nelly and I will love you very much if you will let us. It will be a great change for you, and everything is very different here from what it is in Italy. I have lived in Italy myself when your poor dear mamma was a young girl like you. Do you remember your mamma, Innocent?”

“No.”

“I think you must remember her a little. You are not like her. You must be like the Vanes, I suppose. Have you ever seen any of the Vanes, your father’s relations?”

“No,” said Innocent, again getting bewildered, and feeling that this time she ought to say yes. Nelly came to the other side of the chair and took her hand, looking kindly at her. Why would these people say so much—do so much? Why did not they leave her alone?

“Mamma, she is stupefied with cold and fatigue,” said Nelly. “To-morrow she will be quite different. Lean back in the chair, and never mind us. We will not talk to you any more.”

But she did not lean back in her chair; she had not been accustomed to chairs that you could lean back in. She sat bolt upright, and looked at them with her eyes wide open, and looked at everything, taking in the picture before her with the quick eyes of a savage, though she was confused about what they said. How close and warm everything was, how shut in, no space to walk about or to see round the crowded furniture! The room, in English eyes, though very well filled, was not at all crowded with furniture; but Innocent compared it with the Palazzo Scaramucci, where every chair and table stood distinct in its own perspective. How different was the aspect of everything! the very tables were clothed, the windows draped to their feet, the room crammed with pictures, books, things, and people. Innocent seemed to want space; the walls closed and crowded upon her as they do upon people who have just recovered their sight. Mrs. Drainham’s drawing-room had been made very comfortable, but it was not like this. The want of height and size struck her more than the wealth and comfort. She was not used to comfort—never having had it—and did not feel the want of it. Even the fire, after the first few minutes of revived animation produced by its warmth, felt stifling to her, as to all Italians. The ladies by her side thought she was admiring everything, which disposed them amiably towards her, but this was very far from the feeling in Innocent’s mind.

And after dinner, when they took her to her room, this effect increased. She was led through Mrs. Eastwood’s room and Nelly’s to that little snug, bright chamber, with its bright fire blazing, the candles burning on the toilette-table, the pretty chintz surrounding her with garlands, and the pictures on the walls which had been chosen for her pleasure. With what wonder and partial dismay she looked upon it all! It was not much larger than the great carved chest which stood in a corner of her chamber at the Palazzo Scaramucci, and yet how much had been put into it! The girl was like a savage sighing for her wigwam, and to be shut up here was terrible to her. Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly both led her to this room, explaining, poor simple souls, how they had placed her in the very heart of the house, as it were, that she might not feel lonely. “Both of us, you see, are within call, my dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “but the room is very small.”

“Yes,” said Innocent. They had, no doubt, expected her to say in answer to this that the room was delightful, and to show her sense of their kindness by some word of pleasure or admiration. But nothing of the kind followed. She looked vacantly round, with a scared, half-stupefied expression. She had no desire to be put into the heart of the house. And there can be no doubt that this absolute want of all effusion, all response even on her part, chilled the warm hearts of her relations. “She is tired,” they said to each other, excusing her; but that was an imperfect kind of satisfaction. Nelly herself had meant to stay with her to help her to undress. “But perhaps you would rather be alone?” said Nelly.

“Yes,” was Innocent’s answer; and you may imagine how discomfited poor Nelly felt, who was used to the gregarious way of girls, and did not understand what this could mean.

“I will leave you, then,” she said, so completely taken aback that her self-possession failed her. She turned to go away, blushing and disturbed, feeling herself an unwelcome intruder in the room which she had spent so much care upon. Nelly did not know what to make of it. She had never encountered anything like it in her life, and it puzzled her beyond expression.

“I am here, Miss Ellinor,” said the voice of old Alice behind her, which startled Nelly once more; for Alice had disapproved of all the fuss about Innocent’s arrival, and had done everything she could to discourage it. “I’ll put her to her bed,” said Alice. “It’s me that am the proper person. Go to your mamma, my dear, and I’ll come and tell you when she’s comfortable. She canna be expected to be pleasant to-night, for she’s tired, and all’s new to her. I’ve done the same for her mother many a day. Leave her to me.”

Innocent took no part in the discussion. She stood in the centre of the little room, longing to be alone. Oh, if they would only go away and leave her to herself! “I never have a maid,” she exerted herself to say, when she saw that the tall old woman remained in the room; “I do not want anything. Please go away.”

“Maybe it’s me that wants something,” said Alice, authoritatively, and began her ministrations at once, paying very little attention to the girl’s reluctance. “Hair clipped short, like a boy’s—that’s her outlandish breeding,” said Alice to herself. “A wild look, like a bit sauvage out of the woods—that’s loneliness; and two great glowering een. But no like her mother—no like her mother, the Lord be thanked!”

Then this homely old woman said two or three words, somewhat stiffly and foreignly, in Italian, which made Innocent stare, and roused her up at once. She had no enthusiasm for the country in which she had lived all her life; but still, she had lived there, and the sound of the familiar tongue woke her up out of her stupor. “Are you not English,” she said, “like all the rest?”

“God be thanked, no, I’m no English,” said Alice, “but I’m Scotch, and it’s no likely that you would ken the difference. I used to be with your mother when she was young like you. I was in Pisa with the family, where you’ve come from. I have never forgotten it. Do you mind your mother? Turn your head round, like a good bairn, that I may untie this ribbon about your neck.”

“Why do you all ask me about my mother?” said Innocent, in a pettish tone. “No, I never knew her; why should I? The lady down-stairs asked me too.”

“Because she was your mother’s sister, and I was your mother’s woman,” said Alice. “I’m much feared, my honey, that you’ve no heart. Neither had your mother before you. Do you mean aye to call my mistress ‘the lady down-stairs’?”

“I don’t know,” said Innocent, in dull stupor. She felt disposed to cry, but could not tell why she had this inclination. “What should I call her? No one ever told me her name,” she added, after a moment’s pause.

“This will be a bonnie handful,” said Alice to herself, reflectively. “Did Mr. Frederick never tell you she was your aunt? But maybe you do not ken what that means? She’s your nearest kin now you’ve lost that ill man, your father. She’s the one that will take care of you and help you, if you’re good to her—or whether or no,” Alice added, under her breath.

“Take care of me? He promised to take care of me,” said Innocent, with her eyes lightening up; “I do not want any one else.”

“‘He,’ meaning your cousin?” said Alice grimly.

“Frederick. I like his name. I cannot remember the other names. I never have been used to see so many people,” said Innocent, at length bursting into speech after her long silence. She could speak to this woman, who was a servant, but she did not understand the ladies in their pretty dresses, who oppressed her with their kindness. “Shall I have to see them every day?” she continued, with a dismal tone in her voice. The corners of her mouth drooped. At this thought she was ready to cry again.

“Go to your bed,” said Alice authoritatively. “If I thought you knew what you were saying, my bonnie woman, I would like to put you to the door. The creature’s no a changeling, for it says its prayers,” she added to herself, when she had extinguished the candles, and left the stranger in her chamber; “but here’s a bonnie handful for the mistress,” Alice went on, talking to herself while she arranged Mrs. Eastwood’s room for the night, “and plenty of mischief begun already. She’s no like her mother, which is a comfort: but there’s ane that is.”

Nobody heard these oracular mutterings, however, and nobody in the house knew as much as Alice did, who had no thought in the world but the Eastwoods, and kept her mental life up by diligently putting one thing to another, and keeping watch and ward over the children she had nursed. It was common in the Elms to say that Alice was “a character;” but I do not think any of them had the least idea how distinct and marked her character was, or how deeply aware she was of the various currents which were shaping unconsciously the life of the “family.” She was nearly ten years older than Mrs. Eastwood, and had brought her up as well as her daughter, commencing life as a nursery-maid in the house of her present mistress’s father, when Mrs. Eastwood was six or seven years old, and her young attendant sixteen. She knew everything, and more than everything, that had taken place in the family since; more than everything, for Alice in her private musings had thought out the mingled story, and divined everybody’s motives, as, perhaps, they scarcely divined them themselves. She had married, when she was thirty, the gardener who took charge of a shooting-box in Scotland, which belonged to Admiral Forbes, the Eastwoods’ grandfather, but had been absent from them only about two years, returning at her husband’s death to accompany them to Italy, and to settle down afterwards into the personal attendant and superintendent of her young lady’s married life. She knew all about them; she knew how it was that the old Admiral had made his second marriage, and how his second daughter, Isabel, had developed by the side of her more innocent and simple sister. She recollected a great deal more about Innocent’s father and mother than Mrs. Eastwood herself did—more than it was at all expedient or profitable to recollect. And it was not only the past that occupied her mind; she understood the present, and studied it with a ceaseless interest, which the subjects of her study were scarcely aware of; though they had all long ago consented to the fact that Alice knew everything. Mrs. Eastwood thought it right to inform Alice of all the greater events that affected the family, but generally ended such confidences abruptly, with a half-amused, half-angry consciousness that Alice already knew all about them, and more of them than she herself did. Alice was the only one in all the house who had divined the real character of Frederick. As for the others, she said to herself, with affectionate contempt, that they were “Just nothing, just nothing—honest lads and lasses, with no harm in them.” She loved them, but dismissed them summarily from her mind as persons not likely to supply her life with any striking interest; but here was something very different. Life quickened for the observant old woman, and a certain thrill of excitement came into her mind as she put out Mrs. Eastwood’s comfortable dressing-gown and arranged all her “things.” Mrs. Eastwood herself had furnished but little mental excitement to Alice, but something worth looking into seemed now about to come.

Down-stairs, the two ladies looked at each other doubtfully when Nelly went back to the drawing-room. They did not know what to say. Dick was shut up in his own room at work, or pretending to be at work, and Frederick had gone out into the garden to smoke his cigar, though the night was dark and cold. “Well, Nelly?” said Mrs. Eastwood to Nelly; and “Well, mamma?” Nelly replied.

“I do not understand the girl,” was Mrs. Eastwood’s next speech.

“How could we expect to understand her, just come off a long journey, and stupefied by coming into a strange place? Remember, she never saw any of us before. Don’t let us be unreasonable, mamma,” cried Nelly; and then she added, in a more subdued tone, “She must be affectionate, for she seemed to cling so to Frederick.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a long-drawn breath. “My dear,” she added, after a pause, “I don’t want to anticipate difficulties which may never come; but on the whole it might have been better to send some one else than Frederick. A young man, you know; it is always a risk. I wish I had made up my mind at once to spare Alice——”

“Nonsense, mamma!”

“It is all very well to say nonsense, Nelly, but when you have lived as long as I have——” Mrs. Eastwood said slowly: “However, it cannot be helped now. Do you think she is pretty, Nelly? It’s rather a remarkable face.”

“I don’t know,” said Nelly, puzzled. “It would be beautiful in a picture. Wait till she wakes up and comes to life, and then we shall know. Here is Frederick, all perfumed with his cigar. We were talking her over——”

“Yes, I knew you must be pulling the poor child to pieces,” said Frederick, seating himself by the fire. “What have you got to say against her? She is not cut in the common fashion, like all the other girls whom one sees about—and is sick of.”

“I should think the other girls cared very little whether you were sick of them or not,” retorted Nelly, affronted.

Mr. Frederick Eastwood was one of the young men who entertain a contempt for women, founded on the incontestable consciousness of their own superiority; and it was one of his theories that all women were jealous of each other. Even his mother, he felt, would “pull” the new comer “to pieces,” out of pure feminine spite.

“Hush, children,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “we have nothing to do with other girls for the moment. This one is very unresponsive, I am afraid. You have seen more of her than we have, Frederick. Had she any friends out yonder? Did she seem to you affectionate?”

Frederick laughed. “I have no reason to complain of any want of affectionateness,” he said, pulling his peaked beard with that supreme satisfaction of gratified vanity which no woman can tolerate. Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly looked at each other with a common wrath, but the mother put up a finger to suppress the impatience of her child.

“Yes, she seemed to turn to you,” she said, with as much indifference in her voice as was practicable. “Ring for tea now, Nelly. Frederick will like to get up-stairs early after his journey. I saw Mr. Bellingham at the office after I got your letter, Frederick. He made rather a joke of your illness, poor boy. I hope you will not wish to go away for some time again. I am told that, though promotion is by seniority, those young men who are most to be depended on are the ones who get secretaryships, and so forth—and you know your income, my dear boy, is but small——”

“Those who get secretaryships, and so forth, are those who have private influence,” said Frederick loftily, “which is not my case, mother. Whoever told you so told you stuff and nonsense. Men in office take their own sons and nephews, or their friends’ sons and nephews, for their private secretaries—and fellows like me have no chance.”

“But Mr. Bellingham, I am sure, had no private influence,” urged Mrs. Eastwood; “it must have been merit in his case——”

“There was some political reason, I suppose,” said Frederick. “Merit is humbug, you may take my word for that. By-the-bye, I think I will just step out to the club for half an hour to see what is going on. It is rather a fine night——”

“But after your illness, Frederick——”

“Oh, I am all right,” he said, going out of the room. If I am obliged to tell the truth, I must say that I do not think his departure was any great loss to his mother and sister. Mrs. Eastwood sighed, half because it was the first night of his return, and she felt the slight of his speedy withdrawal, and half because of an old prejudice in her mind that it was best for young men when not engaged to spend their evenings at home. But Frederick never made himself at all delightful at home, after an absence like this, for reasons of which she was altogether unconscious. Nelly did not sigh at all, and if she felt her brother’s departure, did so more in anger than in sorrow.

“Are all young men coxcombs like that, I wonder?” she said.

“Hush, Nelly, you are always hard upon Frederick. Most of them are disposed that way, I am afraid; and not much wonder either when girls flatter their vanity. We must teach Innocent not to be so demonstrative,” said Mrs. Eastwood. She sighed again, remembering her friend’s warning. “Perhaps Jane Everard was not so much in the wrong, Nelly, after all.”

“I suppose people who take the worst view of everything and everybody must be in the right sometimes,” said Nelly indignantly—a saying in which there was more truth than she thought.