angry and wags his tail when he is pleased; but if he had a reasoning faculty he would very likely growl when he is pleased and wag his tail when he is angry, just for the purpose of taking me in. And who is to make a fresh beginning? we can't go back all at once into Paradise, and know each other as Adam and Eve knew each 'other." "Not all at once, certainly, Miss Cleasby," said the clergyman, “not all at once, if ever in this world. Can we suppose that perfect sympathy existed after the fall? It is only the old question of the origin of evil.” 66 But you will allow it is perplexing. Why do we so easily get out of tune with ourselves and with everything else?" "There is harmony nevertheless," said Mr. Warde. He was not accustomed to speak in metaphors, but he was strong in his own belief, and Augusta could not altogether bewilder him. "The notes, may seem to jar, but there is harmony in the universe; we are part of the great plan, and even now we can foretell the effect of our actions.' Christina gave a rapid retrospective glance upon her life, and exclaimed against his doctrine. "No," she said, "it is all unexpected; it is all a surprise. I like not to know what is coming; it is better not to know." "Well, it is a strange world!" said Augusta. "I wish I could understand it." rejoice in her happiness," he said; and Augusta perceived with surprise and pleasure that there was nothing of the disappointed lover in his tone; "no doubt it is better as it is, and, in this world, one must lose where another gains." "Yes, I lose something," said Augusta, skilfully turning the conversation away from him. "It is pleasant to come first with somebody, and until the last month I had held the first place in my brother's thoughts. I don't want to complain, and I know that it is all as it should be; but it feels a little strange and forlorn sometimes." She turned to him as she spoke; and in the dusky light he could just see her clear grey eyes turned upon him for the first time with a look of appeal; but he strode on in silence and could make no answer. He was accustomed to hear his poor people's griefs and perplexities and to give them his ready sympathy, joined, as the case might be, with counsel or reproof; but when Miss Cleasby, whom he had always regarded as unapproachably prosperous, unbent so far as to tell him that she too had troubles and privations, — when she turned, to him of all people, to say that it felt a little strange and forlorn sometimes," he was for once puzzled, and was not ready, as a clergyman should have been, to improve the occasion. 66 gusta, thoughtfully; "I am one of your flock, you know, Mr. Warde, and you ought to be able to tell me. Has one to light one's own lamp and put on the fresh flowers oneself?" "What does one do, I wonder, when, as one goes on in life, one's friends drop away, "Then where would be the need for and one's own particular worshipper walks faith?" said Mr. Warde; and at that mo-off to kneel at another shrine?" said Aument Mrs. North interrupted the current of their talk, coming in to tell them the doctor's opinion. He did not apprehend any immediate danger, she said, nor did he see any material change in his patient; but Mr. North was an old man, and no doubt he was failing. There remained nothing to be done, and Miss Cleasby walked up the hill to her house under Mr. Warde's escort in quite as serious a frame of mind as her companion could have desired. "One cannot help being glad that Christina is not to spend the rest of her life in that dismal house," she said; and then stopped suddenly, remembering that Mr. Warde had no doubt thought of this before, when he had hoped that she would leave it, but not in the way in which she was leaving it now. "No doubt one must be glad," he said; and then, as if to relieve her from the awkwardness of having touched, however lightly, upon his private affairs, he pursued the subject: "I am not so selfish as not to 66 I suppose that it would not be difficult for most people to find a more worthy object of worship," said Mr. Warde; and then he feared that he had been unkind and severe, and went on, suddenly embarrassed, and hesitating under the difficulty of expressing his meaning. "I understand,” he said; “it must make a great difference to you; you must of course feel the change. I am sure if I could ever if I could be of any service to you I should be very glad if I could do anything." "Oh yes, thanks," said Augusta; and she laughed a little softly at his offer, thinking of her own speech a moment before, and wondering if he could mean that he would be ready to kneel at "her shrine," as she had called it; "but I don't know that you could do anything, and you broad church people ought to have nothing to do with shrines. Still I will remember, and if I am ever in a difficulty I will certainly look to you as a friend. Good night, Mr. Warde. Thank you so much for bringing me home." She ran up the steps as the door was opened, and disappeared into the flood of lamp-light which streamed out at it; and the door was shut upon Mr. Warde, and he strode down the hill, more rapidly than he had mounted it, telling himself, as Christina had told herself on that evening in the summer, that he had nothing to do with the Park, and that he would never have anything to do with it. But whilst Christina had cried out, in her girlish, impatient way, against the hardness of her fate, he set his face as a man to the work which lay before him, in the cottages on the heath, and in the little village church, and in the hearts of his parishioners. Though a momentary chill had fallen upon him as he turned from the closed door, he had warmed again to his duty before he came out upon the public road. CHAPTER XIX. "I am cold and hungry, as you would be after a three-mile drive in November. If there is any dinner to be had, suppose you go in to it, instead of staring at me as if I was the tenth wonder of the world."' His jaded, irritated tone was so unlike himself that his sister turned away in silent astonishment; yet the next moment she heard him make some joking remark to Lewis, and he lingered in the hall playing with the dogs. She had looked forward to their little social meal as the time when she would hear all his news: the gossip and talk about acquaintances whilst the servants were present, and afterwards the more serious and important part of it. But he was moody and uncommunicative, and her questions seemed to annoy him. He asked for home news, but he did not listen to what she told him. He drank more wine tban usual, and she noticed that he hardly touched food; yet when she remonstrated he answered lightly. "I was not prepared for feasting to such an extent," he said, "and I don't know that I think it is quite delicate of you to celebrate my return in this manner. You know, as an historical fact, it is not the praiseworthy characters who are greeted with turtle soup and champagne," “Have you been dining out much in London? NINE o'clock had struck a quarter of an hour ago, and Miss Cleasby sat in the drawing-room, waiting for her brother's arrival. She had made the fire burn brightly, and the little round table was laid for their tête-à-tête dinner, because she "Oh yes, occasionally. Would you thought that it would look more comforta- oblige me by boxing Don's ears, or is ble than spread in the cold magnificence he allowed to take things off the table?" of the dining-room. She was thinking "My dear Don," said Augusta, mildly, how nice it would be to have him at home"you should wait until you are asked." again, and to have him, for one evening at least, all to herself. "We will have some champagne, Lewis," she had said to the butler, who had lived with them all their lives and had grown into a confidential servant: "we will have some champagne, as Mr. Walter is coming home." She was quite excited by the prospect of seeing him and of hearing all that he had to tell; and when she heard the sound of wheels she ran out and met him in the hall. "Walter, how pale you look!" she said, the moment after she had kissed him; "what have you been doing to yourself?" "Nothing special," he said, rather shortly, and made no response to her affectionate greeting. He threw his hat down upon the table, and busied himself searching for something in his coat pocket. "Is there anything the matter?" his sister went on, so much struck by his changed looks that she could not help commenting upon them. And so the conversation went on upon trivialities until dessert was upon the table and the servants had all left the room. "I have been a brute, Gusty," said Captain Cleasby, abruptly, leaning his arms upon the table and looking over at her; "I have been abominably cross; but when a man is tired and cold, you know "It is not only that, Walter," said Miss Cleasby. She divined that there was something more, and yet she feared to hear her apprehensions confirmed. She felt that she must know, but she put the question falteringly. 66 "No, it is not only that," said Walter. He rose up as he spoke, and wheeled an arm-chair round in front of the fire and flung himself into it. Look here, Gusty." he said; "it is a long story: and a confused one; but it must be told some time or another, and I suppose you may as well hear it now." "Oh, Walter, you have not been getting into some scrape?" "Why should I?" he said, and laughed a little unsteadily at the idea; "no, Gusty, it is something rather more serious than that. Do you remember before I went up to London, I think it was a month before, that there was a letter from old Waltham which you opened, and which neither of us could understand. It was that same day that I heard that he was going out of town, and there was some rigmarole or other about accumulated interest, which was incomprehensible to us both?" "Yes, I remember," said Augusta. As yet it was all vague and uncertain, and she did not know what to expect; but an undefined fear sent a slight shiver through her frame. Walter saw it, and, stretching out his hand, clasped one of hers; it was not a caress, but rather the act of a protector. She felt that he was holding her hand as he would have held it if there had been some threatening of danger, and he had expected her to feel a shock, and be, perhaps, unnerved. "That interest which Watham referred to, said Walter, slowly," was interest which had accumulated upon a mortgage. This estate has been mortgaged for years, and the interest has never been paid." "I-I don't understand," she said, in her bewilderment. Why was it mortgaged? Who mortgaged it?" "My father mortgaged it to a banker in London, Waltham's brother; which accounts for the ambiguous manner in which he has chosen to put the claim before me; for of course the longer an explanation was deferred the more interest there was to be paid. It must have been running on now for twenty years or so. It must have been some years before we went abroad that my father made the arrangement." "And put this incumbrance upon your inheritance!" said Augusta, indignantly; and she drew her hand out of his and trembled, not, as before, with apprehension, but with passionate recoil from the injustice: "at least he might have told you, but he never said a word. How could "Hush, Gusty," he said, gently; "you forget, I was a little boy, a sickly little boy; it was not natural that he should think much of my future then: and afterwards Well, it could not be undone, and it is not for us to say hard words about the dead. It cannot be helped, and we must meet it as best we cau." There was a silence, and they both sat gazing into the fire; Walter's mind traveling over a thousand different possibilities, seeking, as it had done so often and so wearily, to arrive at some means by which the blow should strike him alone, searching for comfort and finding none. Augusta was absorbed in a dull feeling of a present misfortune and a blank dread of the future. "How far is it involved?" she said at last; "what does it amonnt to?" "Do you remember when we were little children," he said, "how we used to imagine ourselves poor and working for our daily bread? I was to be a carpenter, I believe, and you were to be my housekeeper. Well, our present situation stops a little short of that; but, when all is paid, there will be but a few hundreds left. I must look out for something to do, of course; you see I have not even my pay to fall back upon." "Oh, Walter, it can't be so bad as that! Are you sure? How is the money to be paid? 66 By the sale of this place, of course. You know you wanted the truth, and I don't see how it can be glossed over. Oh, Gusty! I wish that you had been happily married to some prosperous banker-a worldly man, with a town house and a country house cushioned with comfort and luxury. You were meant to be rich, and if he had been a little mercantile and stupid it would not have mattered: you would have represented the taste and intellect of the family." But Augusta could not respond in the same tone. "Then we shall have to leave," she said, as if she could as yet hardly comprehend it. "Yes," he answered; and standing with his back to the fire, leaning against the chimney-piece with his hands in his pockets, he looked at it all ::- the row of narrow windows with the velvet curtains drawn over them, the wax lights reflected in the tall mirrors, the gilded furniture shining in the firelight, the family pictures in their frames, the choice old china on the shelves, and the table glittering with plate before him. 66 Yes, we shall leave our magnificence behind us; there will be no more turtle and champagne for us, Gusty. I don't know that we have played our parts particularly well as the squire and his sister, but at any rate, no one will have to complain of the act as being tediously long." "It does no good to talk in that way, Walter. What amusement can there be in it? One side of it at least is serious enough." "And do you suppose I have not looked at it? No, my dear Augusta, I am not such a blind fool. But of what use are laments? Those who cannot defend themselves are not to be blamed," he said with gentle authority; "and as to the rest, why you and I have weathered many storms together, and now, I suppose, we must make a new beginning.' The peculiar sweetness of his smile lighted up his face, but to his sister it did but reveal the depth of his sadness. Had he not been without hope, she knew that she could not have seen the single sweetness of a despairing smile which was sadder than tears. There must be another long night of weary struggle, fighting the same battle that he had been fighting for the last week; but it could not go on for ever. Twelve hours more and he said to himself that a resolution must be taken for or against. He was worn by conflicting convictions and desires, and also by something higher than his own convictions. The fight had raged fiercely, and he was faint from sustained effort; his better nature was urging him to his own destruction; something higher than his better nature was striving for his salvation: but he resisted the diviner impulse, not discerning its divinity; and when he threw himself at last upon his bed, as the faint pink light of morning spread itself over the eastern sky, he knew that he was victorious; but he did not know that worldly generosity and honour had triumphed over CHAPTER XX. They sat on late into the night, talking over plans,- of his future and of hers. Their uncle Robert was rich and a widower, and he had asked that she might a nobler generosity and a heavenly honmake her home with him. "It is not what our which the world neither knows nor I could have wished for you, Gusty." recognizes. Walter said; "but it is what people call a suitable arrangement, and I don't know that at present you could do better." IT was late the next morning when Augusta made no objections. She could Walter Cleasby came down and found his not bear to be a burden upon him, and sister waiting breakfast for him. His few she knew well that he would never allow hours of sleep had done something towards her to do anything towards her own main-effacing the traces of fatigue and mental tenance; so she acquiesced; feeling in- disturbance; but he was still paler than deed, after the blow she had received, as his wont, and there was a half-concealed if it mattered little what happened to her effort in the attempts he made to mainnext. Then she asked about himself; but tain his ordinary manner. It hurt his sishis brow contracted; he said that he had ter a little she would have been so glad not time to form any distinct plan, and if he had been unreserved and given way went back to speak of their uncle and of to his mood before her; it was hard that the arrangements that had been made for they should have to suffer under the same her. All this time, notwithstanding their misfortune, and yet that she should be nearness to each other, notwithstanding unable to offer sympathy or speak of that her sisterly familiarity and acknowledged part of it which touched him most nearly. privileges, she had not dared to put to Still, as he chose to talk of other things, him the question which had risen up in her she did not as yet venture even to promind what would become of Christina? nounce Christina's name. : So the dreary how would this affect her? A great misfortune had fallen upon them; they had to meet it together; and he had no cause to dissemble with her; their eyes were alike open to the extent of the danger which threatened them: but yet she felt that she might drive him to desperation if she spoke of it openly; or even if she showed her consciousness of it. So they talked calmly enough of their money matters and of their cuange of life, and lingered as they separated for the night, each with a dread of the solitude and silence of the dark hours; but neither of them had spoken of the one renunciation, beside which, in his mind at least, every other was as nothing. half-hour passed whilst they sat, each at their end of the table, striving to look to each other as if everything were as usual; and when the breakfast things were carried away, Walter took up the newspaper and pretended to interest himself in it. Augusta began to feel that she could not much longer exercise the same forbearance; they must speak of it some time, and if he would not make a begining, it must be for her to do it. "Walter," she said at last, in as indifferent a tone as she could command, when Lewis had carried off his tray and shut the door behind him, and the room was once more in silence," Walter, are you going out this morning?' "I don't know," he said, without looking up. "Yes, I suppose that I must go out presently. I have business in Overton.' Then, shall you call at the White House on your way?" said Augusta: but she trembled as she spoke; and she knelt down on the rug and began to stir the fire and make a clatter with the fire-irons, as if to drown the sound of her own voice. "No," he said; and his voice sounded hard; and after that one word there was another oppressive silence, until Augusta spoke again. "Would you rather she came up here, Walter? Would you like me to go and see her? Can I do anything? She was still kneeling on the rug, with her back turned to him, for she dared not ask the question face to face. "Do anything! no, how could you do anything?" he said with the impatience of a wounded man whose hurt she was unneccessarily probing. Then at last she took courage; and when she raised her eyes to his face and saw that everything else had given way to the restless look of suffering, joined to the determination of despair, a compassionate yearning brought the unwonted tears in a rush to her eyes. though I am sinking, I have not lost my senses so far as to wish to take it to the bottom with me." This, then, was what she had dimly feared: and yet, though she had entertained the fear, its confirmation struck coldly upon her heart, and her woman's nature exclaimed against it. She understood the ways of the world, she accepted its decrees, she recognized, in some sort, the necessity of conforming to its laws, and she was not altogether out of reach of its spirit. Yet it was not without being moved that she had watched Christina. She understood, in part, what the blow would be to her; and now she felt the sympathetic thrill of a generous nature, and recoiled from her brother's words, and cried out indignantly against him. "You cannot do it, Walter," she said; "how can you tell her? You cannot take back what you have given. She would not understand you. It is everything to her; it would kill her to have it taken away." "Would it be better that she should die slowly and by degrees?" he said. "Is it in my power to save her? She could not bear years of waiting, to end perhaps in disappointment. She is brave, but she "Oh, Walter!" she cried, with a sob in is not patient; her pride will help her her voice. After all, though he held his now, and her natural indignation. It is fate in his own hands, though he was al- the only thing to be done. It is new to most cold in his independence, he was still you, but remember that for the last week her younger brother whom she had loved it has been horribly near to me. I have since the time when he was a delicate lit-seen that it is the only right and honorable tle boy, and they had clung together, and course. I must fall, but why should I drag he had looked to her, not having any her down with me?" mother to look to.- She went to him now, and clung to him and cried, "Oh, Walter, what shall you do?" without giving any more thought to the immediate consequence of her words. Perhaps it was a relief to him to have the barrier of reserve between them thus suddenly broken down; at all events he made no attempt to re-establish it. 66 Why, Gusty, you must keep up your heart," he said, with a faint smile; "you must keep up your courage. We must face things as they are. It is no use fighting against the inevitable. I don't pretend to be what people call resigned; I would undo it all if I could; but at least I am capable of recognizing the fact that it cannot be undone." "You may rise again," she said — and even now she could not conquer her first repulsion. "But when? No, Augusta, there is no use in deceiving ourselves. A man who has left the only profession he ever entered upon, and who is, at my age, once more thrown upon his own resources, stands a poor chance of making anything like a competency for many years to come. Even if my uncle did offer me a junior clerkship in his bank, what would it amount to? A salary of a hundred or so to begin with, and the prospect of a small yearly increase. Besides, I never could do a sum in my life. No, Gusty, when it is a question of earning ny bread, I am a useless drug in the market. I can do most things a little, and nothing well: then, whatever line you take up, you must have capital to make any be"There is nothing but the one thing ginning that is worth while making. Think which I hold in my hands,” he continued, what it would be, even if I could manage now speaking with the quietness which to stay in England; ten or twelve years belongs to a hardly-won resolution; "and, of drudgery, to end perhaps in disappoint "Yes," she said; and held her breath and waited for what would follow. |