the position. Mr. Gibson was a good deal embarrassed, and evinced it by arranging his hair before his wife's looking-glass, and humming a very indefinite attempt at a tune. "You are keeping the Doctor waiting, dear," said Mrs. Gibson, still absorbed in the manœuvres going on beneath those pretty little pink curtains; "I wish you would tell him that I am quite well enough to see dear Mrs. Davenport; I long to show her baby; I know so well how she will admire him." nothing, but he turns the heads of the other young "I am very sorry to hear this, Gibson, very idle ways, but his mother always makes the best of him to me. However, I'll speak to him very seriously, and I trust you will find him improve. And then about that other little matter-you can lend me the two hundred pounds at once, eh?" And here we would remark that there was not a lady in, or near, the town of Brynford, nor a poor woman either, who did not invariably pre-sorry indeed. I was afraid the lad had got into sume, with the utmost confidence, upon Mrs. Davenport's deep interest in, and just appreciation of, her baby. If it was healthy, her warm praise of its beauty was wanted; if sick, her sympathy with its suffering. There was such essential and unconscious motherliness about her that all felt they could safely draw upon it at will, and leave it unwearied and unexhausted. "I wish you had got my letter, Doctor," said Mr. Gibson, pinching his chin more severely than ever. "The fact is that I am, I really am, from By this time Mr. Gibson, still humming his one cause and another, a good deal in want of a tune, had opened the door of the room where his little ready money myself. You see, my property visitor sat. At the sound, Dr. Davenport sprang is for the most part invested in railroads, and they up and held out his hand cordially. Evidently are heavy just now-can't sell out-and furnishing the note had not reached him. That was a pre-and-and, in short, one thing with another. It's sent relief, at all events; but then, what in the world brings him now? There is a little talk upon general subjects, not particularly pertinent or suggestive-the customary commonplaces of men, each of whom has something else upon his | mind which the other is listening for through that pretence at conversation-and then Dr. Davenport, the more prompt of the two, suddenly dashes to his point of attack. "The fact is, Gibson, I am in want of two hundred pounds. I owe you two already. I'll give you a bond for four hundred at five per cent. Could you accommodate me, eh? I like better coming to an old friend like you, than going to the bank, that new manager is such an intolerable prig." The Doctor was an accomplished borrower, had acquired by long habit, and much success, an easy, pleasant way of setting about it, and had come, indeed, to view the transaction rather as a mutual accommodation than an obligation incurred; but he was shattered and out of health now, and besides there was an expression about Mr. Gibson's face, as he pursed his mouth tight, and pinched his chin into a point, which Dr. Davenport had not hitherto been used to meet there. His heart beat fast, and again he wiped back the hair from his forehead with an air of exhaustion. "The fact is, my dear sir," said Mr. Gibson in return, still pinching his chin, and balancing himself on the rug as if a rather overpowering fire were burning behind him, "the fact is that-that I have written to you this morning." "Indeed," said the Doctor, shifting his position with as much sang froid as he could command with that beating in the heart and temples, "I had occasion," said Mr. Gibson, gaining confidence as he went on, "I had occasion to make some rather decided complaints about Tom. His idleness and inattention are-intolerable, I may say, and he not only does nothing himself, or worse than a curious coincidence, really, but do you know If it was a good joke, there was not much mirth in the laugh with which Dr. Davenport responded to it. And yet there was some bravery in that effort made to laugh at all, akin to that which prompts the death-song of the tortured Indian. 66 Why, Gibson, I thought you lawyers were made of money. And so you are hard up now. I suppose you can give me a week or two? Thank you. I'll speak to Tom, you may depend upon it. I must not take up your time. Mrs. Gibson going on well?" and the two shake hands, and the lawyer thinks the reports of Davenport's embarrassments must be a good deal exaggerated; but to be sure, how broke he is, and a man in his prime, not five years older than himself! Not long for this world, he fears. As Dr. Davenport left that house, ruin stared him in the face. No more miserable man, he fully believed, walked that summer day beneath God's blue sky, and perhaps he was right. To this precipice, then, that long flowery slope he had been sauntering down for years had led at last. He had sometimes foreboded that it led here, but had always so fully meant to stop in time. Now he hung over the abyss, clutching desperately with bleeding nails at the grass, the thorns; would they hold him up? There was indeed one alternative, but, oh! how he shrank from it. As he walked down the street, a poor woman, a profitless patient, curtsies to himwould like to tell him how much good that last bottle of his did her. He stops; he listens kindly; he gives her good hopes of a cure. "God bless you, sir! God for ever bless you!" says the poor woman, shaking her head as she looks after him. "He's gone to nothing, and he's as white as my cap. poor!" God help him, he was always good to the We too will say-God help him! This man had ventured on an inclined plane, had not-how should he?-kept his footing there; but his nature was a kindly one originally, else in this moment of bitter self-reproach, of almost despairing perplexity, he could not have listened to another's troubles. And see how mutually dependent we all are! How the humblest and meanest among us may be really helping those they appeal to as strong to succour them! Something of a lull in his terrible anguish seemed to follow upon that poor sickly woman's fervent blessing. That evening Tom, arriving rather late for dinner, after an afternoon's fishing, for the sake of which he had a good deal curtailed office hours, had no sooner taken his place at the table than he became aware of an impending storm. He saw it in the nervous, timid look on Alice's colourless face; in his father's lowering brow, but most of all in the tearful tenderness of his mother's gaze. Dinner was often a painful ordeal to pass through now. The Doctor, dark and moody, Mrs. Davenport, anxious and constrained, Alice, who was afraid of her father, painfully silent-Tom was used to this, but to-day there was evidently something more than usually wrong, and his conscience, though not by any means generally officious or importunate in suggestions of the kind, did upon this occasion whisper to him that his own conduct might perhaps have had something to do with it. The moment his mother rose he hurried after her, and as soon as he reached the shelter of the drawing-room, expressed his fear that "Old Gibson had been kicking up a row about a word or two that he had happened to leave out in some stupid law-paper or other that morning, and setting the Governor against him for nothing." Such was Tom's version of the case. His mother passed her white fingers through his hair, and gathered up all her courage to speak reprovingly to her boy. He seemed to read her resolve in her sorrowful face. Now, mother, don't you begin to jaw me. You know as well as possible how I hated the thought of the law from the very first; you know how I begged and prayed a year ago that I might be sent to an army tutor. There is my godfather's legacy of £500. Why could not I have had that advanced to me to purchase a commission, if there was no other money to be had? A fellow never does any good in a profession he has no taste for, and I say it was a shame of the Governor to tie me down to a snob like old Gibson, and he has no right to complain because I don't work myself to death in that confounded office of his." port," "My boy, my dear boy," pleaded Mrs. Davenyou have a good, true heart at bottom. I want to speak to that now. I want you to be a help and support to your father and me, not to weigh us down by an anxiety heavier than all the rest." Tom seemed softened. His was a ductile nature, but just because an impression was so easily made there, it was with equal ease effaced. This, however, Mrs. Davenport had never realized. Her mother's heart had a gift of " believing all things," "hoping all things," and, despite the ex Who perience of years, she had still undiminished faith in every fresh assurance of Tom that he would try to work a little more, and to spend a little less; and would often shed tears of grateful emotion as she repeated to Nanny some off-hand, skindeep, good resolution of the kind the youth had made in haste, and forgotten at leisure. This evening she spoke more earnestly than usual, and produced apparently a deeper impression. could have wished her to analyse very closely its value or its source? It was enough, that under the dark lashes of Tom's blue eyes, some moisture shone as she talked to him of his father's altered health and spirits, and prayed him to help her in saving him all painful emotion. Had she possessed a keener insight into Tom's character, "unstable as water," though not devoid of a sort of surface beauty, she would have lost the ray of hope she needed in the gathering gloom. When we thank God for his tender mercies towards us, let us not forget to thank him for the comfort of our illu sions; for the strength derived from our "true heart of hope," even where often, as regarded its fulfilment, the "hope was vain!" While mother and son were talking thus, the Doctor was alone in his library. This evening he would not sit over his customary bottle; he would not trust himself with it; this evening letters had to be written, which required all the clear thinking he was master of. Poor Alicia! He little thought when he married her that it would ever come to this. The fortune she so unreservedly made over into his hands, he had fully meant-God knew he had-to preserve intact for her and her children. In those first prosperous years, it seemed impossible that he should ever be even tempted to have recourse to it; more, it seemed certain that he should be able, by insuring his life, to double the provision it made for her and her family. The convenient season for doing this had not indeed ever arrived, but when that hope was over, when he found year by year that increased expenses necessitated his drawing upon their capi tal, his next firm resolve had been to make up by a life insurance at least the original sum, and now he could no longer pay the premium-nay-only from the bonus which the relinquishment of this insurance would secure him, could he possibly derive the means of liquidating pressing claims. Gibson-the Doctor cursed him in his heartGibson even would trust him no longer. The bills for the house too were urgent. Last year it seemed that they at least would be met with the utmost ease. But everything had gone against him. How his practice had fallen off! How ungrateful former patients had proved! How that slippery fellow Roberts had crept in, supplanted him in all directions! It never occurred to him that his own want of punctuality, his intellect too often clouded by intemperance, had anything to do with this. No; it was injustice, caprice, cruelty on the part of a whole neighbourhood. His hand was raised in fierce, impotent enmity, not only against all mankind, but against the moral government of the world, against the great Lawgiver whose unalterable laws he had arrayed against himself. Extravagance! Embarrassment! A venial sin, a minor misery in the estimation of the unthinking, and especially of the young; a shadow cast by a generous, genial temperament; nothing more, nothing worse than this. Alas! as we live on, taught by wider and deeper observation, by sad experience, if not actually in our own case, in that of some relative or early friend, indirectly bearing upon ours, we learn a juster appreciation of all the misery and wrong the words comprehend. It is not too strong a statement to affirm, that he who wilfully offends in this one point is "guilty of all." The embarrassed man cannot afford a single virtue. First and foremost, truth must go. Life would be unbearable without a cultivated selfdeception, the "lie that eateth in ;" the next step is inevitable and very easy, a careful deceiving of others. A sense of honour goes, the measures that would have startled him once, now practically commend themselves as ways of extrication,-"the empty bag cannot stand upright." Good temper goes. How can a man live serene with a sword hanging over his head? how can he stand the friction of family intercourse, with some hidden sore which any unguarded touch may torture? Natural affection goes. The death of a once loved relative grows to be the mere preamble to the falling in of a legacy; children are viewed as expenses rather than pleasures; the wronged, untrusted wife, be she ever so gentle, appears an enemy and accuser. Where all is so wretched, who can wonder if the stimulant be sought, which at least can procure the temporary forgetfulness of all? And to this a man, by nature intelligent, kindly, generous, cheerful, may be brought by small and slow degrees! Well if it be not lower still! Well if, to the unscrupulous character that could carelessly run up bills without any certainty of power to pay them,-could purchase selfish indulgence by the degradation of the loan,-swindling, more palpable still, forging and theft, nay, murder itself, has not been presented as the only means of self-preservation. fore his conscience half an hour ago; till at length At length there is a pause in the angry voices that ever and anon have reached and tortured Mrs. Davenport. She thanks God that the painful if necessary discussion is over. The door bursts open. Tom, pale as death, drags her by the arm. Something is wrong with my father; he was very angry,-then, all of a sudden, he stopped talking. Come, mother, I think there is something very much the matter; I think he has fainted away!" 66 CHAPTER V. While all this misery was going on within the Doctor's home, Alice was unconsciously enjoying the beauty of the pure evening on a rather lonely common about two miles from Brynford. Aware that her father was even more than usually gloomy and morose, and nervously dreading some explosion or other, she had stolen away just as Tom followed his mother into the drawing-room; had hurriedly tied on her hat, stepped into the yard to unloose Carlo, and then walked off as fast as she could along an old and now little frequented road, that lay between Brynford and the neighbouring town of Nant. Poor Alice's heart was heavy at first; but Carlo's gratitude for his release, and evident appreciation of the walk, soon lightened it a little. There was no resisting the contagion of his high spirits as he dashed on out of sight; then returned to jump up almost to her shoulder, to worry the skirt of her dress with much friendly growling and ecstatic bursts of barking; Dr. Davenport's letters-one of them to the and suddenly dash off again farther than before. insurance company-were written and posted. Carlo was very young; so was his mistress: both And now, now that his whole nervous system is 'felt their life in every limb;" both soon forgot tortured by the step he has just taken, he will try their home grievances-Carlo, that dull barrel in the a little counter-irritation—turn away from the con- yard, sloping and uncomfortable, in which he never templation of his own conduct to that of Tom's. could arrange the straw to his mind; Alice, the How unwarrantable and inexcusable that boy's transient cloud her father's angry gloom had cast extravagance and idleness were ! He would stand over her spirits. Her mother had so carefully it no longer. He vehemently rings his bell. screened her from any definite knowledge of Dr. Nanny appears "Send Mr. Tom here." Nanny, Davenport's embarrassments or unfortunate habit, instinctively aware that her darling is in disgrace, that though Alice felt of late years a vague shrinksuggests that probably he is gone out with Missing from him, and was always secretly relieved Alice, believes it fully, saw him, indeed, she thinks. Dr. Davenport is not to be so deceived "Send him here, instantly." There is nothing for it "Oh, Tom, be dutiful to your father!" cried his poor mother as he leaves the room. We have said that Tom was not a very hopeful subject for the best, calmest, wisest moral teaching; but at least such would always have excited in him a transient penitence and purpose to amend. His father's violence woke all the anger and resistance of his inconstant nature. As the altercation went on, Tom more and more lost sight of all those delinquencies of his own, which his mother's gentle words had brought out in strong relief be when he was away from home, she had no positive apprehension of domestic calamity, and no sense of selfishness in making her escape alone this particular evening. There were few things Alice more intensely enjoyed than this walking alone. She had no intimate female friends, and Tom's companionship only disturbed the day-dreams her too vivid imagination delighted to conjure up, and gave her nothing in return. She was inexpressibly tired of hearing him complain of office work and home life; and he on his part never took the least interest in the books she had been reading, the poetry she loved. This exquisite evening, if Tom had been with her, she should not have been able to stand as her rescue. you are, how fortunate that you chose this upper road! But for you, my poor Carlo would have been killed by that dreadful creature. I always knew I should love you if ever I knew you, and so I do." And she smiles up in the elder lady's face; smiles brightly in spite of her tears; looks trustingly into the large brown eyes, so like in their form and colour, in all but the light of youth and hope so like her own. 66 "she was Another moment, and she is seated beside her aunt, the ponies trotting rather reluctantly back again towards the town they had so lately left. Miss Hilton applied her whip pretty smartly to the more unwilling of the two, who resented the hint by a plunge which a little frightened the timid girl. "How courageous you are, Aunt Laura! I would not drive such spirited ponies for the world." Miss Hilton looked down very kindly on the young, innocent face. "You are like your mother in that," she replied; always timid in a carriage." Then, after a pause, Alice, how is your poor mother? We have not met for many years. Circumstances over which I had no control-" and again Miss Hilton startled that relapsing pony by a sharp cut. "Distressing cases of the kind will sometimes occur in families; but my poor sister can never be | indifferent to me, nor," added she, with a something of tenderness in her tone, "nor from henceforth can her daughter be so." Again Alice bent down as if to kiss her aunt's hand. There was to her an intense charm in the handsome face, so stately and sad, in the ring of the clear, decided voice. It must be remembered that she had never heard from her mother a single disparaging word respecting Aunt Laura. Dr. Davenport, indeed, would sometimes blurt out an uncomplimentary allusion to her pride and cold-heartedness; but his opinion had little weight with his daughter. She had even more than once thought that it was no wonder Aunt Laura had not liked him. And then the romantic character of the whole occurrence. It was like a chapter in a work of fiction. It was the most exciting incident of Alice's whole life. This unapproachable relative, whom she had been accustomed only to look at in church from the other side of the aisle; whom to meet by chance in Brynford was a rare and interesting circumstance; why, here Alice was, sitting by her, talking to her, henceforth to be often with her no doubt, to love her, to make her life happier, to be the agent in bringing her and her mother together again! All these delightful probabilities presented themselves at once to her mind. Meanwhile Miss Hilton's question remained unanswered. "I was asking for your poor mother, Alice," she resumed; "I fear home anxiety tells upon her health just now." "Mamma is well," replied Alice; "at least she always says she is well, but sometimes she looks very pale, and Nanny often tells us she should take more care of herself. It is papa who is not well," the young girl continued in a lower voice. "Papa is very much changed the last three or four years. When I was At any other time the young girl might have felt her present position an embarrassing one. Not so now. In moments of excitement we are never shy, never awkward, because we are lifted out of self-consciousness. To Alice it is the simplest thing in the world to bend forward and kiss the small, strong, neatly-gloved hand that grasps the reins. "Dear Aunt Laura, how good and kind feels her heart beat very fast. There is something a child, I remember him so different, so cheerful, so kind. Mamma is uneasy about him, I am sure." No reply, only a jerk at the reins. Alice she so longs to say; shall she be able to muster throwing herself heart and soul into the wants and courage in time? Here is Brynford in sight, and interests of the poor around, such trifling ailments it is but to the entrance of the town that she has as hers might be surmounted at home as well as asked to be driven. If the ponies would not go at elsewhere; but as the case stands, a foreign tour such a breathless pace! In another moment it will is her best chance. Failing change of pursuit, be too late. "Oh, Aunt Laura, if you would come change of scene must be tried. Of all idlenesses and see mamma! If you only would!" "I am travelling is the least burdensome, the most unsusleaving home to-morrow, Alice; leaving it for many pected. Miss Hilton, as she moves from place to months, perhaps years. A residence on the Conti- | place ostensibly in search of health, may possibly nent is considered advisable for my health. Tell forget the aimlessness, and uselessness, and selfishyour mamma this. Tell her I often think of the ness of her life,-may be less intolerably unhappy days when we were happy together. And now, my than she is at home. dear, good-bye! Is the poor dog out? Yes;-see, he is better now. I am glad I met you. We shall meet again, perhaps, some day. Good-bye, Alice." And that is all, and she is gone! Out of sight in a few moments, the ponies eager now as they were reluctant before; and she is leaving the country, and not one of Alice's bright visions will come true! For a moment she stands bewildered there, then starts off homeward,-Carlo limping still, but with head and tail once more pretty erect, determined before the town dogs to put as good a face on the matter as he can. "At least," Alice consoles herself, "how much I have to tell mamma and Nanny! How surprised they will be -how interested!" And she quickens her pace. Alas! in the house she is hurrying to, there is only confusion and distress. She will find no one this night at leisure to listen to her tale-no one tomorrow-no one for days and days,-till the memory of it grows dim under the pressure of painful, present experience, and dies away unspoken. As Miss Hilton drove rapidly on her homeward way, her thoughts, too, were engrossed by this singular and unexpected occurrence. No face had looked into hers with such love and trust since, by her severity, she estranged her younger sister's heart. Alice was not like her mother in features or complexion, but the dark eyes had the same admiring, innocent, appealing look the blue ones used to wear. At all events, she was not in the least like her unfortunate father, Miss Hilton mentally pronounced. If she had not been leaving the country, a young girl like that, who loved and looked up to her, would have made Angorfa a different place. Well, it was too late now for unavailing regrets, her plans were fixed. Mr. Roberts had that very day agreed with her that she imperatively needed change. Is Miss Hilton, then, an invalid? She did not look like one, sitting there so statelily erect, urging her ponies on with so firm a hand. The cool breeze had brought a colour into her usually pale face, and the excitement of the meeting with her niece given a brightness to her large, melancholy eyes. Certainly she has by no means the air of an invalid this evening. And yet Mr. Roberts is right, some change is needed. The listless, unsatisfied mind is telling upon the body, the body reacting upon the mind. There is danger lest Miss Hilton sink into a lamentable state of depression, both mental and physical. If she were a poor woman, indeed, compelled by a happy necessity to work for bread, her latent energy aroused, demanded alike and increased by some regular compulsory occupation; or if she were an actively benevolent and sympathizing woman, capable of It is written, "No man liveth unto himself." The poor and barren existence of the self-concentrated does not indeed deserve the name of life. Loving no one more than self, self becomes at last distasteful. Better the most fussy and injudicious benevolence; better even the most disproportionate doating upon a dog, a cat, a parrot, than the heartisolation to which Miss Hilton had doomed herself. As years went on, she seemed to have less strength to bear up under its burden. She found a positive relief in attributing this change in her feelings to physical disease, and had for several weeks been one of Mr. Roberts' patients; and he, after exhausting all the ineffectual resources of his pharmacopoeia, has seriously advised foreign travel. Accordingly, Miss Hilton, and a French maid whom she has engaged, set out on the morrow. Alas! "the eye is not filled with seeing, nor the ear with hearing.' "The mind is its own place" even in Switzerland, even in Rome, whether face to face with the highest snow-peak that blushes in the sunset, or while the music rolls most richly beneath the colossal cathedral dome. Miss Hilton's experience has taught her thus much, and if you were to question her now, she would tell you that she anticipated but little pleasure in her journeyings, that she only went at her doctor's desire. Her French maid, who has to pack, to see after the luggage, to catch a glimpse of her old mother as she passes through Paris, comes in for all the excitement, the energy, the prospective enjoyment. Félicie's laugh is intolerably loud to Miss Hilton this last evening. For her own part, she wishes her health would allow her to remain where she is; wishes-it is very weak, no doubt, but still she cannot help it, with her niece's smile so vividly present with her wishes that she could, consistently with her duty to herself, have forgiven poor dear Alicia that degrading mésalliance ! CHAPTER VI. Three weeks later, Dr. Davenport came down to his study for the first time since the fainting fit that had so terrified his household. He had been confined to his bed by a severe attack of jaundice, accompanied occasionally by acute pain, and for some days had been critically ill. So said Dr. Allen, one of the leading physicians of the good old city of Chester, whom Dr. Davenport allowed his poor distracted wife to send for, on condition that if this professional brother took the same view of his case he himself did, and prescribed the same treatment, he should not be harassed again about calling in advice, so long as his own brain remained clear. And as Dr. Allen's |