before," she said, clasping her hands tightly. "I was glad to get Alice out of the way."

Half an hour later the front door was heard to open and close again with a loud bang; but there was no sound of wheels, and Mrs. Davenport knew it was not the Doctor. A fine-looking lad of seventeen sauntered into the room, and the mother's face lit up again, as it had done before, at Alice's appearance, or even more brightly, for Tom was the especial delight and darling of her heart.

I have called Tom Davenport a fine-looking youth, because that was the impression he always made at a first glance. Tall, strongly-built, freshcoloured, straight-limbed, few were keen-sighted enough to discover the abnormal narrowness of forehead, beneath such masses of silky waving hair, or the unsteady, uncertain look in such blue and well-fringed eyes.

Tom walked up instinctively to the mirror over the fire-place, gave a slight twist to the handkerchief round his throat, adjusted his hair, took a circular glance at the sit of his coat behind, flapped a little dust from his shining boots, drew himself up to his full height, and smiling benignly upon his mother, in return for the evident admiration in her look, proceeded to say "Father's late this evening. I met Sir William Pradoe's coachman walking up and down the street, and he said if he was not home and ready to start with him in half an hour, he must take back Mr. Roberts, for that the child was too ill to be neglected any longer. I thought the man very impudent.

Mrs. Davenport's face fell. "He must surely be back in a few minutes, Tom. I am sure, for the child's sake, I hope Mr. Roberts may not be called in an ignorant, inexperienced pretender. He is always ready to undermine your father."

"Well, he can't help going when he's sent for, you know," said Tom with a degree of intuitive justice, that a mere schoolboy often possesses in larger measure than a cultivated woman. "But where's Alice? Gone to the meadows with Carlo? I'll go after them, and give the cld dog a swim in the river. Oh, hang my best trowsers! a little water won't hurt them. Why, mother, you are getting a perfect screw.'

"Poor, dear fellow!" sighed Mrs. Davenport, as the door closed after him, "one cannot expect young creatures to be very careful. But I wish I were a better manager myself. And oh, how I wish, how I do wish that the Doctor would come !" and she sank down in her chair, both hands pressed to her temples, listening intently—

But not to the blackbird who was winding up his evening performance by a few of those long heart-piercing notes, fraught with the sweetness and the sadness of all our vanished springs; not to the low, self-satisfied humming of the bees under the lime-trees; not to the sigh of the evening breeze as it frittered in through the muslin curtains, and stirred the little bells of the tallest lilies in the bowl. There was only one sound which could catch her attention now; the sharp trot ringing on the stable yard, and telling her of her hus

band's return.

While Mrs. Davenport is sitting and waiting there in that attitude of strained attention, to which seconds are minutes, and minutes hours,

we will take such a short retrospective glance at her life's history, as will enable us better to understand the nature of her present anxiety.

His

Nineteen years before the time at which our narrative begins, Mrs. Davenport, then Alicia Hilton, was living with her eldest sister at a charming little home about six miles from the town of Brynford. Their father, a large landed proprietor in a neighbouring county, had recently died; and his estate being entailed on heirs-male had become the possession of a very distant relative. daughters, who naturally felt no little pain on seeing the home of their youth pass into the hands of a perfect stranger, preferred to begin life under its altered conditions in some new locality. For though their own income (Miss Hilton had a fortune of £8000, Alicia's was something less) was indeed sufficient to insure them all needful comforts, and even elegancies, the elder sister, the ruling spirit of the two, was keenly alive to her change of circumstance and position. To the eyes of others, her former life might have seemed dreary; but she had not found it so. Naturally of a commanding temper, her father's confirmed invalidism of many years' standing, had thrown a great deal of authority into her hands. The tenants looked up to Miss Hilton as their virtual landlord, the household deferred to her as to a good though imperious mistress, and her sister Alice, five years younger than herself, had never been known to do anything without her consent. Mr. Hilton, a man of reserved and haughty temper, wretched health, and an income somewhat inadequate to his station, had long led a life of great retirement, and his daughters had grown up without any of the pleasures and excitements that generally fall to a young girl's lot. A very few county balls, a few dinner-parties, stately and dull, a few ceremonious calls, paid and received at stated intervals, made up all their experience of social life. One or two of the smaller squires of the neighbourhood had made formal overtures for the hand of the eldest sister before Alicia left the schoolroom, but they had been at once rejected with disdain. It will therefore be easily understood that when the curate of the parish ventured to write to Mr. Hilton, and request his sanction to his attachment for Miss Alicia, he was dismissed with utmost contumely. Not, however, by the poor girl herself; for, though she cared not for the suitor, it was no part of her nature willingly to hurt the feelings of any creature living. She was not even told of the unwarrantable liberty that had been taken with the family. Shy and retiring in manner, and without any positive charm of ap pearance, at the time of her father's death, Alicia Hilton had never been the object of any other admiration, or indeed of much attention on the part of any one. Her father preferred the companionship of his more energetic eldest daughter, who had herself a way of thinking and talking of her sister as 'poor dear Alicia;" it was only her horse, her dog, a few of the servants who came most closely into contact with her, and the children and old women in the villages round, who seemed strongly attached to her. But she had never suffered from this; probably never discovered it. She had all her placid nature craved, and was in

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collision with his-or inconsiderate of her; she had not been used to be much considered; while as to his being dictatorial-there was no scope for it, so ready was her compliance with every wish of his. And now Alicia Davenport is sitting waiting for her husband's return. It is eight o'clock. The children, as she still called them in her thoughts, would be returning before him. She had not wished that. It would be too late to go to Ashfield Hall, he had promised to be there in good time; that odious Mr. Roberts would get in there too-another family struck off the roll of profitable patients; and in close connexion with this circumstance there flashed across her mind Tom's tailor's bill that morning received, and the stucco and plate-glass and iron railings-all after-thoughts, and none of them included in that estimate for necessary repairs that had made her a little anxious a year ago. Her heart is very heavy, but there is no blame in it for her husband or her boy. The house was shabby before. It was intolerable to see a man, of no pretensions whatever, like Mr. Roberts, occupying that pretty Elm Lodge, and her husband contented with a shabby brick house in a street. She indeed had liked it better in its former condition, but then she was no judge. The doctor said, Thomson had made a very good job of it, and seemed pleased. Dear Stephen! he had such a generous, lavish nature, so unlike her, always anxious about some saving or other, and yet so little able to carry it out. Oh, if she had but been a better manager! Certainly there used not to be this pressure in former days, but her husband never liked her to talk of it, always said they should do very well. He knew best. Poor dear Tom, too. If he could but be a little less expensive, or if she could only reduce a little more efficiently her own personal requirements. And sitting there in her simple print gown, her turned black silk rolled up beside her, reproachful visions rose before her of every handsome dress she had ever bought, every single personal gratification she had ever allowed herself. Somebody must be to blame for the present aspect of affairs. Mrs. Davenport found it most tolerable to blame herself.

But this other fear at her heart, this other shadow that had fallen across her home! Poor Stephen! He was so genial, so witty, so amusing, no wonder they all snatched at his society, and then he got carried away. If she had been a brighter-minded woman-could have made his home more lively! And so she sits and thinks in painful flashes, and listens, to the exclusion of all thought, and it is a quarter-past eight, and the doctor, who ordered dinner punctually at five, has not yet returned home!

CHAPTER II.

"What a sweet place this certainly is," thought Mr. Moore, the young curate of Brynford that same May evening, as, after a hot and dusty walk of six miles, he turned down a shady lane, with its steep north bank still a mass of primroses, and reached the gate that led to Angorfa, Miss Hilton's home. "What an exquisite spot, to be sure!" he said aloud, for Mr. Moore was sufficiently accustomed

to solitude to talk sometimes to himself. "I had no idea there was anything so pretty in this neighbourhood."

There are evenings in spring when any and every country spot looks charming; clear, luminous, still evenings with floods of yellow sunlight shining through the transparent green of the young leaves, and making out of two or three quite commonplace trees, that stand and quiver in glory against the pure blue of the sky, a picture of perfect and most satisfying beauty. But really the trees at Angorfa were not commonplace. To Mr. Moore's right, as he walked along the drive, a rapid river ran cheerily past, well fringed by varied foliage; while to his left, rose steep, undulating ground, with fine old timber, standing detached or in groups-venerable oaks, with their new leaves still of a rich bronze colour, that the evening light turned to gold; great sycamores, a few tall ones still warm red-brown, but for the most part vividly green-dazzlingly green, one would almost say-massive towers of foliage, casting deep, dark shadows on the smooth yellow grass; tall, horse- chestnuts, with their pyramids of blossom nearly out; and here and there, near the top of the hill, a few old Scotch firs, throwing their rugged branches out in bold, defiant attitudes against the sky. The house-long, low, covered with ever-blowing roses, now in their first exuberance-stood in a lawn green as an emerald, and the river swept round, almost encircling it, and then losing itself in thick oak woods beyond. Opposite rose a wooded bank, each tree standing out in the unmistakable individuality of its spring, and casting its own cool shadow over the clear river and the velvet grass. In these days of sanitary science, Angorfa might not, perhaps, have been built so low, but nowhere could there have been found a lovelier site. The sheltered nest, fenced in from all winds except the west, had its own woods, its own river-" almost," as Wordsworth says, "its own sky." There was no view, indeed, of the outer world; but who could miss it with such trees, such flowers, such a very merry, leaping, laughing, companionable river? and then the birds! -that narrow valley seemed all their own. Surely never birds sang as they sang there that evening, Mr. Moore thought, as, just in sight of the house, he stood still beneath the cool canopy of a great sycamore to listen to them.

To listen to them; yes, but also to collect and compose himself a little, after his long walk. Mr. Moore raised the hat from his high, heated brow, passed his hand through his fair hair, and drew a long breath. How dusty his shoes were; his very coat looked a rustier black since he came into this enchanted domain. How would Miss Hilton receive him? Mr. Moore felt decidedly nervous.

Very varied, and by ourselves quite incalculable, the different aspects under which our personality may present itself to others. Often we are objects of deep interest to some we have never heard of; sought or avoided for motives to which we cannot possibly obtain the clue; our names occasioning a throb of pleasure or a spasm of pain without any fault or merit of our own; our opinions valued, our sentiments quoted, not because-as it would be pleasant to believe-of their internal worth, but

because of some distant relationship or association for which we ourselves have not the slightest value. Miss Hilton knew this only of Mr. Moore, that he had recently come to Brynford, had fair hair, and read well. Mr. Moore's impression of her she would have assumed to be indefinite, but respectful,--what else could that of a perfect stranger be? and here he was, almost at her door, agitated, anxious, half-fascinated, half-repelled; feeling that to come into the presence of this middle-aged lady, and ask her for her subscription to the New Clothing Club, was an errand of supremest importance; because, though not, he understood, a kind relative, still she was a relative, because he had repeatedly heard Alice Davenport talk of Aunt Laura-poor Aunt Laura.

Poor Aunt Laura; why did the fair Alice call her so? With this charming home, a comfortable income, a large circle of friendly acquaintance, a still handsome person, and a quick, strong, intellect. Why was it that Miss Hilton's lot struck her as a dreary one-deeply dreary; spite of all its adjuncts, utterly forlorn?

It was not only because different ages are mysteries to each other, and the young have an insuperable difficulty in understanding the compensations of more advanced years; nor was it only because Alice was of a romantic and impassioned temperament, peculiarly "mad after persons," as Emerson says in youth we all are; not only because in her ideal of life, the glorious earth was good only as the stage for one footstep, the sky as canopy for one head, all nature to be valued only as fellowhandmaid and ministering servant to some one beloved, but that there really were traces of melancholy on Miss Hilton's fine features which the young girl's quick eye had caught. Perhaps, indeed, that the most contented and cheerful single life would have struck the somewhat morbid imagination of Alice with terror, but this life was neither contented nor cheerful. Miss Hilton might well be called "poor Aunt Laura."

As soon as Mr. Moore had recovered a comfortable degree of coolness and composure, he walked briskly up the gravelled sweep, and rang the bell all the more loudly because of his past paroxysm of shyness. The neatest, gravest, demurest of pages appeared, and ushered him up into an elegantly furnished room where Miss Hilton sat alone reading.

She received him with dignified courtesy, looked full at him with her large handsome eyes-they were like Alice's, they took his breath away-then waited a little listlessly for him to open the conversation, and explain the motive of his call at this rather unusual hour.

Mr. Moore was a shy man; Miss Hilton's manner was not calculated to dispel shyness. All his introductory commonplaces fell flat-the beauty of the evening, the loveliness of the place-he could almost have fancied that she thought his admiration of it a liberty-no response beyond a few calm, cold, unsuggestive words. He tried a little personal talk next, but with no better success; the alarming illness of the poor little Pradoe-Miss Hilton knew it, had already sent her servant to inquire. The proposed marriage between Mr. Gibson, the leading lawyer of Brynford, and a young lady belonging to a neighbouring town; a slight elevation of Miss

Hilton's eyebrows suggested that she took no manner of interest in the proceedings of people of that class. He would try literature; took up the book she had laid down on his entrance. It was one of the heterodox works of the day. Mr. Moore had not nerve to enter upon a discussion of its demerits with this haughty, impassive lady. He plunged into the subject of the local charities, and proceeded to explain the peculiar advantages of the New Clothing Club about to be established. Miss Hilton was willing that her name should be put down amongst the list of subscribers, but had no expectation of any very marked success. In a few calm, sensible sentences she contrived to divest the rules he had been dilating upon-they were his own devising-of all originality or peculiar merit; to make his most sanguine hopes of materially ameliorating the condition of the poor appear extravagant and illusory. He wished himself out of her cold, paralysing presence, and yet he lingered on awhile, in desperate hope or fear-which you will—of her naming her niece, or at least Dr. or Mrs. Davenport, or Tom, or even Carlo-anything connected with Alice. He talked round them, at them, unnecessarily trembling at his own daring, for Miss Hilton apparently did not in the least observe the drift of his remarks, and then-refreshments being brought in, he jumped up in haste, nervously declined them, and set out again on his homeward way.

The birds were still singing as sweetly as half an hour before. Mr. Moore did not listen to them now. He walked along quickly, striking at the closed daisies in the meadow grass, the placid primroses in the lane, irritable, uncomfortable; with a vague consciousness of having throughout his visit done and looked and said the wrong thing; and, you may be sure, no very charitable feelings towards the lady who had brought on that consciousness. Is it indeed true, that what we chiefly value or dislike in our acquaintance is their reflex action upon ourselves; that we have a tendency to make of them mirrors wherein to watch our own reflection, positively pronouncing those to be best in which we show to most advantage? Mr. Moore did not perplex himself with such subtleties, but he could not help contrasting the two sisters as he went along. In Mrs. Davenport's society he invariably felt himself a superior man. She had a kindly habit of warm acquiescence which seemed to imply a degree of force and novelty in the remarks made to her, a willingness always to listen and to learn. How plainly she had seen the advantages of his proposed schemes for teaching the people of Brynford, self-help. Ah! she was the right kind of woman, indeed, but he feared there was trouble in store for her, impending difficulty if not distress; and that proud, unlovable woman had all that the world could give! So unequally, thought Mr. Moore, are the gifts of fortune divided.

When he was gone, Miss Hilton again took up her book, and moved nearer to the open window. The sun had just reached the brow of the wooded hill, the highest trees still vividly bright, the lower ones cool, misty, blue-green; the river running in deep shadow. What an evening it was! not breeze enough to stir one of those rich round roses clustering about the window, but every now