General Information

Dear readers,

Solas To are Latin words meaning 'only' and 'to', so this website is dedicated to Only To Be Married by Florence Williamson published in 1867.

This book has been digitalized and made available on Archive.org. The scanning process resulted in many strange characters, spelling errors, poor quality pictures, and other problems in the file. I have tried to correct as many errors as I could find, but you may still find other issues occasionally. I hope you'll accept the imperfections but still find value in reading this story.

The image is courtesy of Pixabay.


K. C. Lee
Story Collector
July 24, 2013

The Old Woman's Story

The old woman, whose story had tempted Patty to stay so long was, as I have said, one Mr. Piatt's tenants, and one of the oldest inhabitants of Leigh. Yet she was not a native of the place, and nobody seemed clearly to know who she was, or whence she had come. She had not the broad, rough dialect of the Leigh people, and she seemed to have had more schoolinor than Leio-h manners and customs could account for.

" Where did I leave off, Patty ? " said old Lucy Wylde.

" Begin it again, granny, won't you ? " said Patty. "You can hurry over the first part ; but I should lilvc to hear it all at once."

''God bless you, lovey/' said the old woman ; " it's a hard life that makes a pretty story. Years ago, long before Clayton's factory was built and the Hall on the other side of the new bridge, there was, where the new Hall stands now, a dull old house with broken windows, almost tumbling to pieces for want of somebody to take care of it. The garden was full of weeds, and the wall and fence were broken down wherever boys or stray cattle had minded to pass through. Nobody seemed to care what was done for the old Hall, and it would have been but a dull house at the best. There was the dark wood behind, and only a footway through it to the Leigh Road; and the old bridge was narrower and more dangerous than the one just below. A house like that would have needed happy hearts and merry laughs, and true, true love to make it homelike."

"Why, granny, you look as dull," said Patty, "as if you'd been moping there yourself all that time."

" Nay, lovey, Tm not dull," said old Lucy ; " it's all over now, but it was a weary time."

She seemed almost living the story over in silent memory instead of telling it, so long her pause seemed to Patty.

" Well, granny, go on. Who lived there ? "

" Ay, ay, who lived there, do you say ? Well, the old Hall was standing, lovey, as I told you ; it was what they called in Chaneery, but I don't know what that means. Only it was all tumbling to pieces, and nobody seemed able to give orders to have it set right. But at last a man came doAvn all the way from London to look at the place. He had the wall and fences mended and the old house made somethinsf decent-like : and he lived there for two or three months till all was finished to his mind. Then he put old Betty Tyler there to be housekeeper - poor old body, it's years now since old Betty's gone - and told her she might have two servants to keep all in order, and then went away again to London. So old Betty did as he bid her, and Mary Briggs and Ann Ashton were the lasses she had to help her. It wasn't to call a hard place ; hut, for all their bits o' sweethearting and good wages, it was but dull living in the old Hall. 'We couldn't make anybody hear us,' old Betty used to say, ' if we Avere all getting murdered together.' And many a stormy night I sat with her there, and we've half trembled to hear the wind in the wood, and the splashing and roaring of the water, and like a shrieking and howling all round. Betty was a good old body, a Methodist, and many a night when it was thundering and lightening, and howling and yeUing all round, she'd get out her little Bible and read and pray ; and ' Lucy,' she'd say, ' we'll be found watching ; perhaps the Lord's
coming.' "

"I can't bear thunder and lightning," said Patty.

*' Well, lovey," said the old woman, " it never hurt old Betty Tyler. But, however, one dark, wild night, just about the beginning of September, there came a loud knocking at the door, and startled all of us, for I was keeping Betty company a bit. We all went to the door together, and there stood the gentleman from London, and two strong men, holding between them a lady, who seemed crazedlike and stared about her without saying a word, like a poor mad thing.

" ' Get her in,' said the gentleman, ' and then you go over the liridge, Tom, and fetch her luggage. Tic the horse to a post, and then the driver can help you. Betty, get a nice bright fire and lights in the parlour, and in the two best bedrooms.'

" Of course Betty did as she was told, but we'd a deal of whispering and wonderment, and were half frightened of the poor prettydarling, though she looked so pale and weak. However, she was very tired, and we soon got her to bed, and one of us was to sleep with her. ' Sleep you with her, Lucy,' they said ; 'you're knowinger-like than us, and you'll manage her best, and you can call us if there's any need.' So the clock was just striking eleven as I went up to her room. She started when she saw me and gave a sort of scream ; but I sat down by her and kissed her, and she began to cry, poor dear, and it seemed to comfort her, and I cried too, lovey, you may be sure.

" ' Has my guardian gone away ? ' she said. * Mr. Windham, has he gone ? '

" ' No, my dear,' I said, ' it's not likely he'd go and never say good-bye. He's sleeping in the large room at the back.'

" ' I wish he would never wake again ! ' she said, and her eyes flashed and glared. ' More cruel than all devils ! Only one day together, and he tore us apart, and swore we should never see each other more. God ! how couldst thou bear to see our helpless misery ? '

" And then she wrung her hands and cried piteously, sitting on the Led and rocking herself backwards and forwards, till she grew quite faint and dead-like, and so fell asleep. But over and over again she kept starting up and calling for Edwin. ' Come, come, my own Edwin, they're taking me away. Save me, my love, my husband ! ' It was little sleep, lovey, I had that nio;ht, and when morning came she was too ill to get up - almost too ill to speak. Of course we sent for the doctor, but he was drunk before he got here, for he never could pass a beer-shop without drinking, and there was many a one between his house and the old Hall. So Mr. Windham just sent liim home again and went to Manchester for another. The new doctor told us to keep her quiet and she would come round in a day or two ; so as soon as she seemed out of danger, Mr. Windham left us and went back to London. ' She'll be sure to tell you all about it when she gets a little better/ he said ; ' all you have to do is to be very kind to her, and see that nobody visits her, and that she does not run away. Make her as happy as you can, poor child.'

"It was nearly tliree months, for all the doctor said, before she could walk ; and all that time I stayed with Betty and the lasses. They seemed fair terrified. Never a sweetheart would they have come to the old Hall. They said it was never lucky ; and besides that, God bless 'em, they'd kind hearts, and they couldn't bring sweethearts and love-making in her way, poor thing. So it was dull enough, and all the duller for her trying to make us cheerful. About the end of June "

" Well, granny, but what did she come for ? did she tell you all about it ?"

" Yes, lovey, didn't I tell you ? She was what they call 'a ward in Chancery' I don't know what that is, but it was bad enough for her, poor dear ; for she was married, or thought she was, and went away with her husband to spend a happy honeymoon. They were down in the other end of England, at a place they call Torquay. It was the evening of the day after their marriage, - just been married a day; they had been walking over the downs, looking at the blue, blue sea. I don't think there can be such lovely water anywhere else, darling, for I've seen it. I went down there for her, poor thing, to try and hear news of her husband. I asked for every place where she told me they'd been together, and I'd have walked in every one of their footsteps if I could have found them ; but it was no use. The people at the hotel remembered all about it, but he'd gone away, left all his luggage behind him, and they half thought he'd drowned himself But I never told her that, lovey. ' Oh, Lucy, Lucy,' she said, ' it was my last hope ; and now I know I shall never see him again. Married for a day, for one day!"

And then Lucy stopped, and rocked herself backwards and forwards, aiid seemed to go back a score of years, and live the misery over again. Patty, too, was feeling very miserable and half afraid, but she was getting impatient for the end of the story.

" Go on, granny, go on ; you have not told me half yet. It was evening, you know - the day after the wedding ; what next ?"

" Yes, lovey ; but it's a long way to Torquay and back, and I've just been going there again. Well, they were walking in front of the hotel, thinking they'd just see the streets and the best of the shops before supper time, when she suddenly seized her husband's arm with both her hands, and said, 'Oh, Edwin! there's Mr. Windham ; what can have brought him here ?' He soon came up to them, and two other gentlemen were with him. ' Well, sir ! ' said Mr. Windham to her husband, ' do you call this the conduct of a gentleman, to huriy this poor trusting child away when you knew you could never marry her ?' He began to say they were married already, and my poor darling was beginning to tell them all about it : ' Yes, guardian, we really are married ; and I am very, very happy. It was at St. -- ' but Mr. Windham soon stopped them both, ' Nonsense ! nonsense ! ' he said ; ' you might as well have been married on the sofa. He cannot marry you, poor child/ And then my poor pet grew so frightened, she fainted away. And then they took her into the hotel, and the gentlemen explained to her husband all about it, and got him to another hotel for that night, and she never saw him any more.

" The next day they brought her here, as I told you, lovey, one wild autumn night, and she stayed at tlie old liall till the end of the next June. That month, the very last day - we could hardly be sure it wasn't the day after - her pretty baby was born. She was very, very ill, she said she was sure she must die. So the clergyman came from Leigh to see her, and to christen the baby, Edwin Marie, after father and mother. ' It didn't matter,' she said, ' boys often have girls' names abroad, and perhaps it's the only thing that will ever remind him of his mother.' But it was only too true that she would never get better. She just lived ten days after the baby was born, and then she died. The clergyman and the doctor had persuaded her to make a will to prevent any mistake ; and she left everything that belonged to her to her boy. Of course we had to do the best we could with the poor little thing, and when it was about a month old, Mr. Windham came down from London with a nurse, and fetched it away. The girls stayed about six months longer at the old Hall, and then Mr. Windham came down again from London, and paid them the wages that were due, and made them some very pretty presents besides, and then the old Hall was shut up. It soon began to look as it used to do, - the fences were broken down by every idle boy who wanted to steal a flower or fruit from the trees, and it was just as much in Chanceiy as ever it was. At last I suppose they got matters settled, and the old place was pulled down altogether and the new one built, - the one you know, Patty. So that's all my story, lovey, and a very dull story too. And now get your bonnet, and run home, or they'll begin to wonder where you are. The sun will soon be behind the hill, and it's rough, dangerous walking over the bridge and by the water-side."

So old Lucy bid Patty good-bye, and Patty went away, as we know already, to sleep in the wood, and lose herself in the darkness and storm.

And where was Patty now ? She was in Clayton Hall, and Edwin Marie was watching over her. How odd that the old woman should have been driven to tell her story on that particular night of all the year.

Motherless

Dirty and miserable enough the Manchester streets appeared to Patty and her mother when they first walked through them together after then* return from Leigh. The very sparrows seemed to belong to a totally different race from the sparrows of the country ; and the town boys and gnls, swarming in the poorer streets, seemed more dirty and impudent than the sparrows. The din of traffic and machinery, and the innumerable blended sounds which make the roar and hum of a great city, seemed utterly bewildering after the perfect stillness of field and wood, broken by nothing louder or harsher than the bleating of sheep. or the songs of birds, or tlie music of the shallow, rapid river. The bright colour soon faded from Patty's cheeks, when she could no longer spend whole days in the open air watching the fishes and the birds, gathering wild flowers in the fields and lanes, and reading in the cool shade of the wood. Yet she really loved the town, its everlasting stir, its endless stream of human life. She always took town with her into the country ; her favourite birds and fishes and flowers were, to her fancy, busy with such work, happy with such joy, sometimes oppressed with such anxieties as belong to men and women. She was not shy, no way afraid of strangers ; indeed, nothing pleased her better than to ask questions of those who were wise enough to perceive how much the oldest and wisest may learn even from children, and who were simple enough and humble enough to teach those who really wish to be taught. But she had so often been disappointed and deceived by people who made very great professions of wisdom ; she had so often been told that little girls couldn't understand the very things she was for ever puzzling herself about, and she had become so sure that such an answer was only a cloak for ignorance or an excuse for lazmess, that she had given up asking questions, and simply thought and waited till the facts she was in search of might come of themselves. Only with her mother had she any real intimacy. Her father loved her with a deep, fervent affection that he sometimes feared might be idolatrous ; but he could never have understood her. The conventionalisms of his religious life were as far removed from Patty's simpler virtues as the etiquette of a drawing-room, or the stiffness of a stateceremony, from the honest good nature of a rustic. He had a notion that all inquiry was dangerous, and that a sceptical " turn of mind " was almost a sure token of reprobation.

He fancied that, in spite of Patty's sagacity, and gentleness, and obedience, and strict sense of honour, she knew nothing of " the great change," and must be treated as an inferior and benighted creature in all spiritual matters. He Avas glad, as much as possible, to forget her shortcomings, and to refrain from actually applying to her his narrow religious tests ; and, indeed, he had a good hope that one day she mio'ht be " born ao-ain." But once or twice her doubts and inquiries had almost wrung from him the solemn warning which found better expression in his prayers - ''Oh, deliver my poor child, if indeed she is in Thy bundle of life, from the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity." Patty loved her father with a most honest reverence ; but she never could tell him her " experiences," or ask his counsel in the inmost struggles which every true heart must know. Like Job's friends he would have mistaken her very righteousness for sin, and her trust in God for reLellion against Him. But to her mother Patty was never reserved. The mother's shyness, her gentle spirit, her child-like simplicity, and the daughter's pensiveness and haljits of quiet meditation, seemed to bring them together almost as sisters. They were scarcely ever separated in work, or thought, or rest - each seemed a part of the other's very self, the other's one true friend on earth.

But ever since Patty's birth Mrs. Wilson had been losing strength ; she had come to be known as " quite an invalid," and it was only by summer holidays and avoiding all eflfort and excitement which were not absolutely necessary, that she could be kept alive. It was every year more doubtful how her battle with autumn and winter would end. "Creaking gates may hang longest," but even " creaking gates" cannot hang on for ever.

Not long after her return from Leigh Mrs. Wilson had a very severe illness, from which she very slowly and imperfectly recovered. Still she did recover, and all but herself began to hope that the worst was over, and that the raw cold months had once again been conquered. Patty had been with her continually, not only nursing her, but by her mere presence imparting more comfort to the gentle mother than anything else on earth could bring. The poor father seemed utterly bewildered, as one round whom on every side great calamities were gathering, from which he could see no way of escape. So Patty and her mother clung together with that desperate love which grows ever fonder as the inevitable separation draws near. "Patty, my love, how kind and good you are to me," said her mother ; " and when you were lying on my bosom, and your little baby brother was lying cold and dead in his cradle, I wished you had died instead and that my little boy had been spared." .

" Father, forgive us," she murmured, pressing Patty closer to her heart ; " we know not what we do."

" Perhaps he would have helped you more, mother," said Patty, "though he could never have loved you better than I do. Besides it was natural enough for you to think most of the one that died."

" Well, my pet, I thought of father and a helper for him in his business, and that a boy is easier provided for, and many such things. But God knows best. Always try to believe that He knows best," she continued, "though I know it's often very hard for all of us : and it will soon be hard for you, darling, very hard indeed."

She was lying on the sofa, and Patty was sitting on a footstool by her side. She drew her child's hand to her lips and kissed it ; and Patty rose without a word and sat on the sofo by her, their hands clasped together. They could only weep and love. Mrs. Wilson was first to speak again, for it is not those who are nearest their dying whom death terrifies ; it is those who are to live on alone.

"You needn't shrink from thinking about losing me, dearest," she said ; "we shall not love each other less, though I may go so far away we cannot hear each other speak. But youVe been more to me, Patty, than I can ever tell you. I sometimes think it is I who have most to lose."

They sat together talking with strange calmness of the happy past, and the future that, to Patty, at least, would be so lonely. They had both come to know that everything they wanted to say to each other must be said soon.

The slight improvement soon passed away, and by the beginning of November Mrs. Wilson was quite unable to leave her room, unable even for more than one hour or two, on her best days, to leave her bed. Patty was still her only nurse, her constant companion.

" Patty," she said, one day - one of her best days - " there's something on my mind I want to say to you ; and yet I don't know whether it's well for you to know it before it comes. God grant it may never come at all."

She was silent and very thoughtful for some time, till Patty said -

" Never mind, mother, tell me some other time, when you feel stronger ; or don't tell me at all, if you think that will be best."

" Ah, my darling," said the mother, " I never shall be stronger ; and I'm sure you'd better know, and yet it may after all be one of my weak fancies, one of the many useless fears that have spoilt my life. But I fancy that there must be something wrong with father's affairs ; he seems so perfectly bewildered when he comes into my room ; so very kind, so very sorry to lose me, and yet sometimes I fancy almost relieved to think that I shall soon be in a better world. Only yesterday, when he left me, he was crying very much, and I could hear him murmuring as he was going out, ' Thank God ! shell be taken away from the evil to come.' Well, I do thank God for it,'' she went on, " for I scarcely know how I should bear it. It's hard enough to see pain that we cannot relieve ; it must be far harder to increase it. I have often wondered, Patty, what you'll do if father's business fails."

Patty was seriously alarmed by what her mother said to her, though she knew well enough there was something wrong - some trouble that made the kind old man more irritable than he ever meant to be. We can't always help it ; but it's surely rather hard to visit our own troubles upon the innocent ones around us, as if it were possible to make our own hearts lighter by making others sad. Poor Mr. Wilson was so burdened, so entangled and bewildered by the fast accumulating difficulties of his position, that everything approaching to cheerfulness seemed a personal unkindness to himself. How cnielly selfish it was for people to be happy, pleased with any paltry trifle, while he was so utterly wretched and hopeless. His prayers, too, night and morning, had often puzzled and half-terrified his child. Her own prayers were rather thanksgivings than requests, the expressions of simple trust in the all-providing love ; but her father often prayed as if he were in the midst of some fierce conflict with implacable enemies, and with a strong efibrt, far enough from being wholly successful, to submit to the irrevocable will of Him who seemed known to Mr. Wilson only by the clouds and darkness that are round about Him.

" Yes, mother," said Patty, trying to master her fears, lest she should add to her mother's trouble and excitement, "I'm sure there must be something that father is afraid of ; he often seems quite frightened even to set off to business. What will happen to us all '? - what must we do, mother ? "

"Well, darling," said Mrs. WHson, "the others seem almost provided for ; but you, Patty - I've been so selfish - I've kept you all to myself, to be my little maid and friend, and now, when youll need more care than ever, I can't stay with you at all. No, Patty, I don't even know what to advise you, except to remember what we have so often said to one another about the love of God, and the beauty of goodness, and the treasure that we may lay up in heaven, and the peace which passeth all understanding. I know you won't, Patty ''

" Won't what, mother ? " said Patty, as her mother hesitated.

" Well she went on, " you won't let father see more of your trouble than you can help, Patty ; he's getting an old man now, and he's much kinder than he sometimes seems, and he will be constantly blaming himself for having brought grief upon you ; and we know he would not do it if he could help it, don't we, Patty ? "

" Yes, mother, yes," said the child ; " he shall never have a minute's pain that I can save him."

" And when you have to get your own living," said the mother, " even if you have to work hard amono; strano-ers, who will never trouble to notice whether you are merry or dull ; and if you are ever sorely tempted to rebel against God, and to make life easier by bowing down to him who tempted Christ, you will fight against it all, darling, won't you ? trying to be a good, brave girl, fearing nothing so much as to grieve your Heavenly Father and doubt His goodness ; and Patty, dearest," she went on, her eyes glowing with strange, unwonted light, "perhaps I shall be able to help you still. I shall be sure to love you better when I am nearer God who gave you - I shall be sure to know better what to do to help you. I shall never be able to keep quite away from you, Patty ; and perhaps sometimes when you are sad and lonely, and when suddenly your heart beats, as bright thoughts of hope and comfort enter your soul, it will just be me whispering to your heart, and making you understand that God is dealing with you ' as one whom a mother comforteth.' ' In the resurrection,' " she said, speaking more to herself than to Patty, "'they shall be like the angels of God;' " and then again, with a faint, far-off voice, " ' are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation ? ' "

And then they kissed one another - a long kiss of pure, true love. Mrs. Wilson seemed at last exhausted and fell into a quiet sleep.

For an hour Patty watched her as she lay, her face seeming to grow almost every moment more beautiful with the peace of God. The child gently stirred the fire, looked once again on her mother's face, and left the room. She was busy with one household duty or another for about an hour, and when she came back to the chamber her mother was calmly sleeping still, and the darkness of evening was gathering all around. There was no light in the room but the flicker of the fire, which Patty would not stir now, lest it should rob her mother of so sweet a rest. For another hour she sat, till the fire was almost out and the room was in almost total darkness. Very quietly she rose from her chair and went down for a light ; she found her father below, with the same careworn face, the same timid, anxious restlessness, the same sad bewilderment which had now become so habitual to him.

" How is mother now ? " he said.

" Oh, sleeping so sweetly," said Patty. " It has been one of her best clays. She was talkino' to me for a lono; time, almost too long: for her strength ; but it seemed only to tire her into a calm, beautiful sleep. Come and see her, father."

They went up together with the light into the quiet chamber where Patty's mother still lay, and still lay sleeping ; but the knees of the poor old man were loosened as he looked into his wife's face, and he sank heavily to the ground by her bedside, for the mark of God was upon her - the perfect peace of those who love Him - the infinite rest of those who sleep in Jesus.

" I heard a voice from heaven saying to me : Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours."

An Adopted Child -- Heir Peesumptive

Very few strangers, especially when they come from so large a town as Manchester, are so much surprised by the first sight of London as they expect to be. One large towm is very much like another, and it is only by very slow degrees that any one can come to realize that it would take something like fifty large towns to make one London. Mr. Carlisle's house was in Islington, in Canonbury Square. So as the cab drove thither from King's Cross there was nothing beyond what Patty had been quite used to see. Pentonville and the rows of shops in Islington were not startlingiy difierent from Oxford Street in Manchester; and Mr. Carlisle's house was certainly neither grander nor prettier than that Avhich had been built for the Rhodeses, with so much consideration and good taste. It was, however, exceedinglycomfortable ; the rooms were bright and warm to receive the travellers ; and if it was impossible for Patty so soon to feel "at home," she at least hoped that it would very soon be, not only possible, but easy.

Mr. Carlisle had been very successful in business, and had richly deserved to succeed. He had a large shop in Oxford Street, and there were many people who considered that having a shop in Oxford Street was entirely incompatible with being a gentleman. I can scarcely say what sort of shop it was ; perhaps it might be called a general furnishing shop ; and Mr. Carlisle having perfect confidence in his own honesty, and knowing well that so far as he could secure it, the quality of everything he sold was in strict agreement with the price, felt sure that there could be no impropriety in making known that fact through the medium of advertisements. There were, of course, many people even in Islington, a suburb of London which is perhaps more snobbish than aristocratic, who were perfectly certain that no ti-ue gentleman would ever be guilty of imploring the British public, in the columns of a newspaper, to " furnish your house at Carhsle's, No. 378, Oxford Street, with the best, &c., &c., &c" But really what is to be done in this noisy, self-asserting, competing age ? When everybody in a street is shouting out at the top of his voice his own merits and the excellence of his wares, what customer can you possibly expect to get, if you stand behind your counter as patiently as Lot's pillar of salt, without a word to say for youi*self ? Moreover, Mr. Carlisle gave his eustomei's a security for his honesty, which was also regarded with mean suspicion in some of the Islington circles, by ticketing his goods. " The price of every article/' said the advertisements, " is marked in plain figures." Small profits and quick returns was Mr. Carlisle's business motto. He was exceedingly polite to all liis customers, and while his sweet persuasiveness was almost irresistible, as with the utmost patience he took them from room to room, exhibiting almost everything that he thought might tempt them to become purchasers, he seemed to have the gift of perceiving the exact moment at which the unselfish attentions of a shopkeeper become too much for human nature to bear. He was in politics, if anything, a somewhat extreme Liberal, though a little toned down by his increasing prosperity. That is to say, he had a kind of vague notion that everybody has a right to something, and " what right," he would ask, " has one class of society to try to monopolise everything for itself ? " Of course, as his business increased, and especially after he bought himself a private house in Islington, he began to understand that tliere is also a something to which everybody unquestionably has oiot a ridit. In religion he was a churchman, and living in the parish of Islington, it is perhaps superfluous to add that he was a aood Protestant, and an " Evanorelical." *' I haven't time to go into the subject/' he would say, with charming candour, " but if England isn't a Protestant country, Ichabod is written on our walls." As to rationalism, to which allusion was made by his revered ministers nearly every Sunday, he had not the ftiintest notion what it meant, except that it had something to do with wolves in sheep's clothing, which ate the bread of the church, and were Anathema, JMaranatha. He never read books ; " For when I g(ii home from lousiness of an evening, I'm tired, you know, and these books, though very good, are a little heavy." He was, however, a diligent reader of the '* Record," and generally managed to spread thinly over the four Sundays of a month, the exhilarating contents of the Churchman's Penny Magazine. But for all that, though he was narrow-minded to begin with, and exceedingly uncultivated to end with, he was far more of a gentleman than many of the snobs who looked down upon him and his wife with a sort of patronising contempt. Many of them would have regarded his generosity as reckless and preposterous folly; and though their vanity might have been something more sensitive than Mr. Carlisle's, as to the modes of making money, they were very far indeed from knowing half as well as Mr. Carlisle did, how to spend it. For the first few days everything of course was strange to Patty ; even the Carlisles themselves were strange. They scarcely seemed to have made up their minds what they ought to call her, and kept hovering in a good-natured imbecile way, between " Miss AYilson," and " Miss Patty," and "Patty," with a decided tendency to settle on the neutral ground of " dear." " What an astonishing thing it is, Miss Wilson," said Mr. Carlisle one evening, as they were sitting at supper, " that we should ever have met with you ; but it's very wonderful how many things take place that we never expected." This remark was so obviously true, and implied so easy a generalization from a universal experience, that Patty found no difficulty whatever in assenting to it. Indeed, she could hardly help smiling as she paralleled the remark by an equally sagacious answer. " You see, Mr. Carlisle, I was staying at ' Our House,' when you and Mrs. Carlisle came down to visit the Rhodeses, and so in that way we came to know each other."

Nothing is harder to describe than the everyday life of very common-place people. Shop, politics, and religion - or shop, religion, and politics, are the only subjects on which they ever converse ; excepting that kitchen stuffs and servants may impart a monotonous variety to the cares and conversation of the womankind.

Not, indeed, that tliey have anytliing to say on these subjects beyond repeating hearsays or the universal experience of harassed matrons. But these topics furnish the stream of verbiage which seems to relieve the overburdened mind, and constitute a difference between animals and articulate-speaking men. Patty seemed at first, to the Carlisles, even more uninteresting than they themselves seemed to some of their friends ; for she had completely lost, or had never acquired, the habit of talking about those innumerable nothings which are scarcely worth thinking about, and which at any rate may well be suffered to die out of thought, almost as soon as they are born into it. She and her mother had not been without their household cares. They had been obliged, like most other grown-up women, to manage servants and to give orders for dinner, and sometimes even to do the work themselves that otherwise must have been left undone, in their very moderate establishment. But they never thought it necessary to occupy half their time by talking about meat and the kitchen ; and as to servants, they had sense enough to know that they were human beings mth a very monotonous life, subject to all the infirmities of temperant beset masters and mistresses ; and that it Avas no way to be wondered at if they were occasionally hard to manage and hard to please. Patty was perfectly amazed that Mrs. Carlisle could live so much in the kitchen, and overwhelm herself so needlessly with domestic cares. She was far enough from thinkinor such cares either unwomanly or mean ; but then she thought the best work in the world only requires to be done, and she could see no advantage whatever in pottering about it all day long, not to mention the risk of spoiling it, and having to do it all over again. Mrs. Carlisle was one of those good housekeepers who go very often into their own kitchens ; but when she had baked a pie, or triumphed over the inherent difficulties of a jelly, she never could let it alone ; she would come from the lower regions hot and red with the pie in her hands ; she would insist upon Patty's observing how well it had risen, or how beautifully it was browned, and she would spend half the morning talking about the oven or the flues, and how much better the new range was than the old one, and what a silly stupid creature that Jane was ; and how, in another minute, the pie would have been burnt to a cinder if she had not herself opened the oven door. A jelly was even worse than a pie ; for if it happened to be clear, which of course it always ought to be, she would bring it up and show it to Patty, as if nobody had made a clear jelly before. " Isn t that beautiful, dear ? I don't think they could send a better jelly than that from the pastry-cook's." Very likely not - but to Patty's undomesticated mind, there only seemed to be two stages in the existence of a jelly - first making it, and then eating it ; and she couldn't for the life of her understand why the intervening period should be filled up with mere "jelly " conversation. She could make jellies and pies too, with which even Mrs. Carlisle could scarcely find a fault ; but that lady felt in her inmost soul that Patt}' was rather a strange girl, and did not seem to be much interested in domestic affairs. As to servants, Patty had the most provoking habit of always taking the part of the domestic against the mistress. Not that she would have taken a part at all, if ]Mrs. Carlisle had not in a way compelled her, but that estimable woman had a rooted belief that all servants are in a conspiracy to aggravate and ruin their mistresses. If Mrs. Carlisle broke a tumbler, or even if Mr. Carlisle broke a tumbler, though that was much less excusable, the worthy matron was perfectly certain that nothing could have prevented the accident but a superhuman control of the powers of nature ; but if Jane or Betsey broke a tumbler, of course it was part of the conspiracy, a clear proof of the total and ineradicable depravity of servant girls. In the same way Mrs. Carlisle could see nothing but immodest forwardness in any little affectionate passages between the cook and the baker, whereas it was perfectly plain to the unsophisticated mind of Patty, that there must also have been similar love-passages between Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle - that they also must have had their little cooings and murmurings, breaking out at last into articulate speech ; and that, until that happy day, when the progress of science shall enable us to eradicate the distinctions of sex, there always will be an Isaac pretending to meditate in the fields whenever a good-looking Eebekah is riding towards him on a camel.

While Patty was thus uninterested, or seemingly antagonistic, where the Carlisles (and especially Mrs. Carlisle) were absorbed ; she was far more antagonistic where she was really interested - stirred to the lowest depths of her soul. Of the limited topics of conversation in the house in Canonbury Square, religion was that on which Patty had thought most anxiously and most sincerely, and in the judgment of the Islington clergy utterly wrongly. She was as diffident and as teachable as the haughtiest priest could have desired ; but then she wanted real teaching, and not empty verbiage. She did not care to know who was wrong ; she wanted to know what was right ; and she had a notion that if people were wrong they must be to that extent unhappy, and needing great love and pity from their wiser fellow-creatures. But the religious people she met with in the IsHngton circle, and especially the clergy whom she heard always on Sundays, and often at Mrs. Carlisle's tea-table, seemed to think that mistake was a sin deserving damnation, and very much more dangerous than cruelty or craft. They were mostly " Eecordites ; " finding their best confession of faith, not in the Bible or Prayer-book, but in the rabid dogmatism of a crazed newspaper.

" I'm glad to see you reading that," said the Eeverend Jonas Faithful, as he found Patty one day with the * Record ' in her hand, and a queer smile on her face ; " we need a trumpet that will give a certain sound in these times."

" Well, this trumpet gives a certain sound, Mr. Faithful," said Patty, mth a strong emphasis on the adjective.

'' Yes, Miss Wilson," said the divine ; " there's nothing here of mistiness and disguise, and the use of sacred words to deceive the trustinsf reader, and lure him on to perdition."

'' Then you like the ' Eecord,' Mr. Faithful ?" said Pattv.

" Yes, indeed I do, Miss Wilson ; it seems to me one of the strongest bulwarks of our Holy Church."

" I can't bear it," said Patty', with honest impulsiveness.

" Miss Wilson ! " said the parson, absolutely overwhelmed with pain and astonishment ; " Miss Wilson, what can you mean ? ''

" I mean that I very much dishke the ' Record ' newspaper, and always feel very much the worse for reading it."

" I can't the least understand you," said Mr. Faithful, with perfectly genuine surprise and bewilderment ; " how can it possibly make you worse 1 "

" Because it asks me to do what I know is wrong ; to call ill-names ; to condemn books that it advises me not to read ; and to pass judgment upon ministers of the Church and laymen whom I do not know, and who are most likely to be much better people than I am.''

" Ah, my dear lady, but they deny the tnith - the truth as it is in Jesus," said the clergyman.

" How do I know that ? " said Patty ; " the ' Record ' may be mistaken ; Mr. Carlisle would never repeat slanders against one of his neighbours in Oxford Street because heVl heard somebody say something to his injury. Besides the 'Record' never helps to set people right, it only curses them for being wrong."

" But they are wrong," said the divine, " and you know what St. Paul and St. John say about such, Miss "Wilson. They are anathema; we are not to eat with them, or bid them Godspeed."

"Well, then, Mr. Faithful," said the little heretic, " I won't adopt that plan ; I'll go by what Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount - that we are to bless our enemies because God blesses His."

'' Yes, my dear young lady," said the minister; " but we must not let one part of Scripture contradict another ; St. Paul wrote by inspiration of God."

" And therefore," interrupted Patty, '' couldn't have meant to contradict Jesus Christ, and teach us to curse instead of Tjlessing."

At this point Mrs. Carhsle entered the room, and Patty was glad to make her escape, not without uneasiness, and the feeling that she had made an enemy, who might come to think that in cursing her he would be doing God service. There was no danger that excellent, matronly Mrs. Carlisle would ever venture into heresy. She had far too much to do ; a person with pies and jellies on her mind can't be wasting her thought and energy on controversy. The good woman never inquii'ed, and of course never doubted. She remained perfectly loyal to such scraps of creed as had got first possession of her mind ; and stuck to " what she had been used to." She was much too kind and good-natured to be a bigot, after Mr. Faithfuls own heart ; but she had great reverence for the clergy, and felt it very shocldng that anybody should deny what her favourite divines assured her were the essential doctrines of Christianity. It seemed very hard that they should go to hell for it ; but if the Bible said so, there was nothing for us but to believe it, " and God knew best." It was, therefore, with much anxiety that she listened as the Eeverend Jonas Faithful delivered his soul.

" I'm almost thankful, Mrs. Carlisle," he said, "that you have no children of your own.''

"Eh, sir," said the lady, thinking of the unpmictual Samuel, and wondering how it could possibly be better for him not to come. "Why thankful for that, Mr. Faithful? it's a thing Fve besought the Lord for more than thrice."

"There are many prayers, ma'am, that it's better for us should be unanswered."

"But why do you think so of this, Mr. Faithful ? " said the childless woman, to the man who seemed to care more for doctrine than for all the human spirits in the world.

" Because I'm very much afraid, my dear Mrs. Carlisle, that your young friend. Miss Patty, is not quite sound in the faith. She seems abeady infected vdiii that dreadful spirit of doubt, which ' eats as doth a canker.' Our conversation before you came into the room was to me exceedingly painful."

And then he told Mrs. Carlisle that Patty hated the " Record ;" and he made her understand that her young charge was herself in the utmost danger, and would be a dangerous companion to any other. He had touched the very tenderest place in the good woman's whole nature - the love she had for the child that had never been born ; a love that was growing keener, more overpowering, more strangely selfish every day. She gave poor Patty many solemn warnings ; but she was too ignorant of any theology to do more than vaguely warn her. At tlie same time a cold shadow seemed to be creeping over her love for the girl that she was meaning to take for her own daughter ; and those reverend hands, that should have had far other work to do, had sown the first seeds of distrust and mischief. Poor man ! he thought that was a chief part of the work of those who watch for souls as they who must give account.

But as time rolled on, the dark shadows seemed to pass off from Mrs. Carlisle's heart. Patty might or might not be a heretic, but she was unquestionably a very good girl. Never had the house in Canonbury Square seemed so homelike. Never had its mistress's wants been so skilfully and so unobtrusively anticipated and supplied. Moreover, to the good old Oxford Street tradesman, Patty Wilson was becoming a pearl of great price. He couldn't explain how it was, but home was no longer home if she were missing. He could scarcely spare her for a holiday, or to visit her old friends the Rhodeses, and her father getting further and further from her continually, till it seemed that even death could scarcely make the breach wider. Mr. Carlisle knew that Patty couJd be more than trusted ; he could see that her quicksighted love gave her a wisdom and energy far beyond her years, and he loved her with a deep, pure love.

So, about three years after Patty came to London, there was solemn consultation between the worthy couple who had brought her from Manchester.

" Well, Hannah," said the gudeman, '' let's have a kiss and talk this matter over ; it'll be a weight off our minds."

" That it will," said the gude wife ; " you know, Johnnie, it shall be just as you please. I've always my fears about everything," she added, with a sigh.

" No, no, no, that 'll never do, old woman," said the good-natured husband ; " it's not to be as I like, but as we hoth like. If you re sometimes timid, you know, Hannah, I'm very often rash. We'd better not do it, if we think we should come to wish it undone."

" Well you know Johnnie," said Mrs. Carlisle, with a sigh for Samuel, " there's only that:'

"But we haven't got that," said the husband ; " and I scarcely think we ever shall. I suppose it's best for us."

A shade passed over the heart and face of Mrs. Carlisle when her husband said this. Was it not the echo of Mr. Faithful's illomened warning ?

" What's the matter, old girl ? " he said ; '' what frightens you ? "

" Well, Johnnie, that's just what Mr. Faithful said more than two years ago ; and he seemed to think that Patty was hindering our prayers."

"Well, dear," said Mr. Carlisle, a little indignant that a stranger should come, even though a clergyman, between him and his cherished desire, and not sorry that he had a good excuse for speaking warmly without contradicting or offending his wife. " Well, dear, I don't often disagree with our minister, but I did then - I think we've more reason to know what a good, loving little creature Patty is, than he can have to say anything against her. And I'm sure I don't know what fault we have to find with her religion."

" No, Johnnie, no ; not a word of faultfinding: will ever come from this mouth " - whereupon Johnnie kissed it - " and I wish Mr. Faithful somehow had said nothing about it. But let us do what we so often talked of."

" Adopt her altogether ? " said the husband, with honest joy shining in his face.

" Yes, Johnnie," said his wife, " but we'll agree not to tell her so ; at least for a year or two. It will make no difference to her."

Still, the bad seed of Mr. Faithful's sowing was growing in her heart.

Nevertheless, Mr. Carlisle called the next day on his lawyer with instructions for a will. It was made with complete reserve ; and if Patty had been Samuel himself she couldn't have been more generously provided for. There were many legacies ; one even to Mr. Faithful, well-meaning sower of evil seed - but mth these charitable deductions, " Patty Wilson, our beloved, adopted child,'' was heiress presumptive to all the lands and goods of John Carlisle.

Cruel Kindnesses

There is scarcely any step of more doubtful prudence tlian to adopt a child, unless, indeed, the foster-parents are a great deal older than Abraham and Sarah, when Sarah laughed. Very few people could be trusted even with children of their own, if they had power, whenever they thought fit, to sever those bonds which bind parents and children together. A fit of passion, and much more the prodigal behaviour of children, or the lessenino: resources of the father, worfld be continually breaking up famihes, if families were things that could be broken up. Very wisely, both matrimony and parentage have been rendered indestructible, and can only be in some degree suspended in very extreme cases, and after the most solemn formalities. But an adopted cliild is bound to its foster-parents neither by blood nor law. All the hopes they have encouraged it to cherish can be destroyed in a moment ; all the habits they have compelled it to form can, by a single act of caprice, be rendered useless or injurious. For adopted children, there is often but a step between affluence and beggary ; between a life of ease and luxury, and the sternest hardships with which human natiu'e can be required to battle.

On the other hand, there is no stronger temptation to do injustice to an adopted cliild, than the birth of a genuine child of the house. Maternal love is almost as diiSerent from every other kind of affection as love itself is from hatred. Nothino; can exceed a mother s selfdevotion, the courage with which she will face danger, the patience wdth which she will endure all manner of liardsliijDS for tlie sake of lier children. And nothing can exceed a mother s bitter hatred, and unrelenting ferocity and fiendish cruelty, when she thinks that her children are wronged, or that other people are standing in their way. Women seem too often incapable of believing that there is any genuine love at all, which is not selfish, exacting, monopolising; and to love their own children often seems to them incompatible with perfectly loving anybody else's children. So, what is an adopted child to do ? If she is a naughty, illconducted child, above all, if she quarrels with the child of her foster-parents, there is of course an immediate and open breach; while even her gentleness and love may be too winning, and the mother may feel that the child of a stranger is stealing the affection that belongs to her own flesh and blood.

From the very first Mrs. Carlisle had doubted the wisdom of taking Patty home to their own house. Of course she did not go to them at first as an adopted child ; but it was very difficult to discover in what capacity she really did go. Mrs. Carlisle was a woman of strong common sense, and she never could bear to have to do with what she could not clearly understand, and accurately describe. If Patty had been a servant, or a companion, or a governess, or even an adopted child (though for that Mrs. Carlisle was by no means prepared), the worthy matron would have understood their mutual relationships, and the duties arising out of them. But Patty was neither one thing nor another. Mrs. Carlisle did not know what to say to people who asked about her. Was she a niece, or was she the orphan ghl of some dear and cherished friend, or was she a kinswoman of Mr. Carlisle's '? No, she was none of these, and Mrs. Carlisle began to think it was almost disreputable to have so pretty a girl in the house, when she could give so indifferent an account of her. So, when it was proposed that she should be adopted, though Airs. Carlisle's mind was far from satisfied, she felt that that course would at least give a sort of definiteness to their relationship, and so far make their way easier. Yet she never could give up hoping that one day her own child would come, and she could not doubt that Patty would then be in the way ; nay, she had a kind of instinct, which taught her that there might arise a terrible conflict in her own heart, until she might come even to hate the gentle, inoffensive girl she was now adopting.

No such perplexities troubled her husband. He loved with a man's love, not with a woman's ; with a father's love, not with a mother's. Patty had become truly a daughter to him, and no other daughter could be more dear. Children mio'ht be born to him, whom he would love with equal fondness, but they would never turn Patty out of his heart. He never analysed his own feelings : but if he had done so, he would have found that he regarded the merely physical relation of parent and child as consisting simply of a set of circumstances which necessitate the dependence, and care, and intimate mutual knowledge, out of which a deep, lasting, ineradicable affection and unalterable obligations spring. But the circumstances were comparatively unimportant, he thought, so long as the true affection was really produced, and the oblio'ations of father and child recoognised and accepted. Some circumstances had brought him and Patty together and united their hearts in bonds of tenderest love ; and it mattered nothing to him that they were not ties of blood. He meant to treat his adopted daughter exactly as he would treat any other child that God might send him.

And he did treat her well ; more and more tenderly after little Samuel was born : partly, perhaps, because she had become more useful to him, and his wife more occupied with a mother s cares and duties ; partly, also, because of a vague dread that a change was coming, and that he might have soon to choose between his wife and his adopted child. He knew which he must choose ; but it would be to him a bitter pang - the sorest trial he had ever known.

By what subtle power is it that spirits have their presentiments of coming evils, cruel separations, cooling love ? Long before any outward sign is given they feel that the storm is gathering, that they are falling into the power of some malign Influence, of which they can give no account, but that it thrills their whole being with restlessness and pain. In the cosy house in Canonbury Square there was this restless foreboding of calamity. Everybody felt it ; Patty, Mr. Carlisle, Mrs. Carlisle. They loved one another still ; but not without fear - fear, which hath torment. Mrs. Carlisle was seeking occasion against Patty ; though she Avould have strenuously denied it, and, in fact, did not know it. Mr. Carlisle felt as if he was beinir dragged into a conspiracy ; that he soon would be expected to do violence to his best and tenderest feelings ; and that, anyhow, he could not escape inflicting cruel wounds, both on others and on himself. Patty was simply miserable. She was a woman, now ; sensitive - almost morbidly sensitive - to every slightest change in that atmosphere in which her affections lived. Mrs. Carlisle was cooler, Mr. Carlisle Avas warmer than ever : but both chances meant the same thing, and were equally ominous of disaster. It is dreadful to be divided ; to be even caressed and fondled by those who can scarcely keep the tears from their eyes while they lavish love upon us, and who seem to say, by every endearment, " Alas ! how soon it must be over ; how bitter will be the change! " It was quite impossible that the change could come without much cruelty and injustice. There was absolutely no reason for disinheriting Patty ; she deserved a child's place as much as any child could possibly have deserved it - though " blood is blood." There was no possibility of quarrelling with her, or of justifying any unkindness towards her ; and even Mrs. Carlisle did not mean to quarrel with her or to be unkind. But she quite forgot how life is filled full of implied promises, and that we have no right to begin a course of conduct involving the happiness of our fellow-creatures, if we are not prepared to follow it to the utmost end. She fancied that Patty could have a happy home for some years, and then be turned out of it, and be hapiner than she would have been without those years of peace at all. " Those years," she would say to herself, " were as happy as we could make them, and she had no claim upon us even for them." But Mrs. Carlisle did not reason ; she had the awful, selfish love of Samuel eating up every other affection, and becoming a curse to herself and evciybody else. " She's older than baby,'' she said to herself, as she thought of Patty ; " she's a sort of advantage over him in that. And I believe Johnnie loves her better than his own child. And she's not our own child, after all, and nothino; can make her - and go she shall." Of course when Mrs. Carlisle had arrived at this point, there Avas nothing left for her to do but lie in wait for the least offensive occasion of carrying her purpose into effect. AMiat would she not have given for some burst of ill-temper or impatience from Patty ? nay, she would almost have been thankful if, for the first time in his life, her husband would have treated her with unkindness. But nothing of the kind occurred ; Patty was patient and Johnnie was kind, and even little Samuel grew plump and hearty, and laughed and cooed when he was in Patty's arms, as if he hadn't tlie smallest notion that he was in the arms of liis worst enemy. Nothing is more aggravating than the persevering goodness of people that you intend to harm, and it was quite plain that Mrs. Carlisle must begin the quarrel, if there was to be any quarrel at all. Of course, when it did come, the innocent Samuel was the occasion of it. Mr. CarKsle and Patty were chatting together after supper, and Mrs. Carlisle was vainly trying to get baby to sleep ; baby, on the other hand, seemed to have made up his mind that he would not go to sleep till morning, till daylight did appear. He was screaming as loudly as if his voice had been born the first moment he himself had been expected, and had been growing stronger and stronger ever since.

" Don't you think, Hannah," said Mr. Carlisle, with a suffering tone, " that you could get baby better to sleep up-stairs ? "

Of course fathers are brutes ; or they would enjoy hearing the shrieks of an exasperating infant.

" Oh yes, Johnnie," said Samuel's mother, " I can take him up-stairs, poor Httle fellow ;" and in that solemn moment it seemed borne in upon her that the hour of settlement had come. She went up-stairs, taking little Samuel with her, howling fearfully all the way, and then she began to consider how she might strike the fatal blow. And while she hushed her baby to sleep she was going through all that frantic self-justification which, in her inmost heart, she knew to be perfectly false and hollow. In about half an hour the baby was asleep, and she gave three or four impatient knocks on the floor to intimate to her husband, in the diningroom below, that it was quite time for him to seek repose, or at any rate to seek the chamber where rest and quiet sleep had often come to him. There was to be not much rest or sleep that night for Samuel's unhappy father.

" I should have thought," said Mrs. Carlisle (for every woman who is bent upon doing an injury, is obliged to pretend that she is suffering one), ''that you might have heard that baby was asleep long ago."

" Why, my love," said good-natured Johnnie, " I quite thought that I heard him cry till within the last five minutes ;" which was perfectly true.

" I'm very unhappy and disappointed," said Mrs. Carlisle, bursting into tears.

" Why, Hannah," said her husband, " what's the matter, old woman? You're quite tired and ill ; that great, big boy is too much for you ; you must try and get rid of him a bit, or he'll pull all your strength down."

" Oh, Johnnie," said Mrs. Carlisle, " I wish you loved him as much as I do."

" Well, I think I do love him as much as you do," said her husband.

" No, my dear, no," said his wife ; "no man can have a mother's feelings ; and there are other reasons, Johnnie ; you Ve been used to a child that never was a baby ; you never had to bear with its poor little troubles ; it came to you when they were all over, when it was nearly full grown ; and now, when poor little Samuel cries, you think it a hardship, and don't seem at all to like it."

" I don't the least know what you mean," said her husband, entirely baffled by this highly figurative mode of expression.

" Well, then, Johnnie, I mean Patty," said his wife.

" Well, what's Patty been doing ? " said Mr. Carlisle, who began to feel that he was drawn into the conspiracy at last.

" Doing; ? she's been doincc nothing;," said Hannah ; " but you know when we brought her here she wasn't a baby, Johnnie ; she did not cry and need putting to sleep, and wake you in the middle of the night, and sometimes just need walking up and down the bed-room for a few minutes. And I'm sure that's not much to do for any dear little baby like Sammy."

Of course not. To be waked up out of your first sleep, and compelled to march up and down like a sentinel in the dead of the night, with a baby in your arms, measuring the yards from your bed-room window to the fire-place, till youVe walked about two miles - of course that's nothing in any woman's judgment. At any rate, to do Mr. Carlisle justice, he had never complained, and he said so.

" No, Johnnie, you don't complain ; but I can see you don't hke it," said his spouse, with a penetration into the feelings of the male bosom truly wonderful.

" No, of course, I don't like it," said Mr. Carlisle ; " and I should think there is no human being who does."

" No, Johnnie, and you never will like it," said the wife, uttering each word more slowly and more emphatically than the one before it ; "until" and there she stopped.

" Well, until what, dear ? Until I can't sleep, and want something to occupy my attention in the dead of nvAit ? "

" No, Johnnie. But I know it's Patty," she said, bursting once more into hysterical tears and sobs.

Now, there is a point at which even the best-tempered men give way - a last straw that breaks even the strongest camel's back ; and Mr. Carlisle had been driven up to that last point, and upon her fiiithful camel, patient bearer of her burdens, Mrs. Carlisle had laid that last straw.

" Come, come, Hannah," said her husband ; " stop that stupid crying about nothing. We have never had any words yet since we were married, and God forbid we should begin ; but if you're going to work yourself up into hysterics, you'll have Sammy's bowels all out of order tomorrow, not to mention a bad headache for yourself, and all about nothing too. Wliat have you got to complain of in Patty ? ''

" Oh no, no, no, Johnnie ! " said his wife, " I've nothing to complain of, and it's no use being cross with me, but I know you'll never love him till she's gone."

Though Mr. Carlisle had of course known for a long time that something was coming, he was scarely prepared for this. Indeed, nobody is ever prepared for being crashed against a disagreeable destiny. He was exceedingly anxious to give no unnecessary pain to his wife, and he tried with all his power to speak with the utmost coolness in quiet, well-measured words. What better can a man do under such circumstances? And yet, is there anything more completely aggravating ?

" You talk to me," said Hannah, " as coldly as if we were perfect strangers to each other ; and I'm sure I wouldn't have said a word if it hadn't been for baby. I can't bear the thought of your loving anybody better than him."

" Well, my dear old woman," said the bewildered man, " don't I love you and baby, and all of you, as much as anybody can love ? Should I make any of you happier by making Patty miserable ? or should I love you more by loving her less ? Besides, I love her as much as if she were your own child, Hannah, and I'm very glad I do. She's a sweet, loving creature as ever made a man's home happy. God bless her ! "

" I wish she'd never darkened our doors," sobbed out Mrs. Carlisle. " We never had a word till she came."

" And has she brought us to words ? '' said the husband. '' What has the poor dear child done ? You haven't a complaint to make against her; it's all your own jealous temper."

" No, Jolm," said Mrs. Carlisle, with strongest emphasis ; " jealous I am not, and God grant I may have no occasion."

" There you go," said John ; " that's the way when people begin quarrelling ; they never understand each other. I don't supj)ose you're jealous about me, old woman. I know it's all your love for baby. But we should have thought of this before we adopted Patty ; it would be cruel and wicked to send her away now. And where could we send her ? "

" Oh, if you will only agree that she shall go," said Hannah, hugging her husband, " you may do what you like for her, and I'm sure I'll do anything I can. But do let us have home to ourselves, Johnnie, and then we shall have no more words."

A Visitor From The Old Hall

Mr. Jessop was not the medical attendant at Oak Villa, where unhappily much medical attendance was often necessary. Wicked ways are always hard and dangerous ways, and they make even a return to goodness perilous. The fierce stimulants of vice cannot always be safely withdrawn ; the very abstinence seems even to hurry on the delirium that excess had prepared. No doubt the body must be sacrificed, if there be no other way of sa\ang the spirit from demoralizing and degrading vices ; but Mr. Whitchouse thought that there might be other ways. He was a firm believer in all manner of modern doctrines ; which moreover often fit themselves very oddly into old beliefs. He was sure, for instance, that when men or women are possessed with devils, they need the help of Him who was not only the Kedeemer of the soul, but "the Saviour of the body," and who has bestowed the gift of healing not less on physicians than on apostles.

Mr. Jessop was not an " old fogie ;" but he was not the man for Oak Villa. He was far too chatty and far too conventional. The sort of treatment which never failed to soothe such patients as Mrs. Carlisle would have driven half the inmates of Oak Villa into madness or incurable insubordination. For naturally enough they were almost all of them hysterical to begin with, constantly thinking far too much about themselves and their own symptoms, both moral and physical. The chatty Jessop would have half killed them, by encouraging them minutely to describe everything they felt, or thought they felt; and suffering them to diverge, not improbably, into numerous and sensational biographies and lengthy autobiographies. Just as the Reverend Jonas Faithful would have ruined their souls, by requiring them to spend the greater part of their time in painful and laborious self-examination, so with equally good intentions, and in a very similar way, would the amiable Mr. Jessop have ruined theii' health. Besides, which was of course an additional proof of his amiability, no sane person would ever have trusted Mr. Jessop wdth a secret. His notion of being good-natured, was imparting the greatest possible amount of pleasure to the greatest possible number of persons ; and everybody knows that that is wholly incompatible with keeping secrets. You always have to choose between giving pleasure to A., and giving pleasure to all the other letters of the alphabet ; and Avith such an alternative, Mr. Jessop was not the man to hesitate for a single moment. Of course lie sacrificed A. with, as it were, a pang of delight ; and yet, after all, he did not exactly sacrifice A., for it was one of his rules, what he called one of " the laws of the Medes and Persians," never to mention names. For instance, he would never speak of Mrs. Johnson, but he would speak of the lady who lived at one of three houses on the other side of the square, which was not No. 13, nor yet No. 15, and indeed he would not say what number it was. If by your unassisted penetration, you arrived at the happy guess that it was No. 14, he would say with a smile, "Ah, well, well, well, my dear madam, it is really no use trying to keep one's little secrets from a lady of such quick perceptions as yours ; but, however, I have not said that it's No. 14. Indeed, with me, it's a 'law of the Medes and Persians' never to mention names." His weak, good-natured tongue, would have made the most important secrets of Oak Villa the common property of all his patients before six months were over. Moreover, he would have been utterly shocked and confounded by the cases which he would have been required to treat. Doctors, like ministers of religion, often receive stranofe confidences, but Mr. Jessop's practice had, for many years, been among the quietest and most orderly of respectable Islingtonians. He had never been a " fast " young man," and he had had very little to do with people of that order. He had exceedingly little knowledge of *'life," and would have been unable to restrain the expression of astonishment or horror or disgust which he might naturally enough have felt when dealing with patients " possessed of devils '' - which nevertheless it might have been very indiscreet and even dangerous to manifest. In fact, he might have thought his own reputation almost compromised, and his private practice endangered, if he had become the recognized physician in such a household as that of Mr. Whitehouse.

So, though they were quite intimate, though, in fact, he had been Mrs. Whitehouse's own doctor when her only son was born, he was never asked to visit one of the poor, unhappy sufierers whom the good people at Oak Villa were trying to restore to peace and virtue. They wanted a man of great skill and wisdom, and with a perfect command of temper and face and tongue. Nobody in the refuge, excepting the actual managers, the doctor and the " divine," knew anything whatever about the previous history of any of the young women admitted into the house ; and they were pledged to one another by the most solemn considerations of piety and honour to maintain a perpetual and inviolable secrecy.

Many of the inmates of the refuge had been simply unfortunate. One, for instance, had been beguiled into a marriage with a man who at the same time had a wife living, whom he had cruelly forsaken and left to shift for herself in one of the colonies. The poor girl soon found out her mistake and the incurable life-long misery into which she had fallen ; but she had married the villain without her parents' consent and against theii* wishes. So, when it had all come to shame, and she came to her father's house with a baby in her aims, and asked them to take her in once more, they simply took her by the shoulders and put her outside the front door ; telling her that, as she had thought fit to make her own bed, it might do her good to lie on it. It was perfectly well known, on the other hand, that there were youngwomen at Oak Villa who had siimed quite as much as they had suffered ; and nobody knew out of what dejths of vice and ruin. Whitehouse might have raised those whom he was seeking to benefit. He would give no explanation, even to those whom he asked so far to help him, as to provide what he might consider suitable employment for those whom he thought he might now safely trust, away from the gentle restraints and loving watchfulness of his own house. He would only say to them, "You know that I am trying to do what good I can to those poor unhappy girls who have fallen into trouble. Some of them have been very wicked, and some of them, thank God, are as virtuous as my own wife. I cannot tell you to which class this girl that I want you to take belongs ; for we never, under any circumstances whatever, reveal the previous history of any of those whom we take into our home. If you will take this girl into your employment, it will be on my own recommendation. I believe she is a very good girl, one whom you may always safely trust, as she has always been safely trusted with us. You will be saved even from the passing temptation of reproaching her with the sins of her former life, because we shall never tell you what her former life has been. Don't think for a moment that she comes to you without a character, for I give her one ; and for her own sake, no less than yours, I would never send her to you at all if I could not give her a good one."

Fortunately Mr. Whitehouse was not compelled to avail himself of the services of a committee of ladies ; and it was, perhaps, equally fortunate that his expenditure was not under the control of any committee of gentlemen. He did and spent exactly what he liked. When the work became too burdensome for his wife and himself, he chose, as we have seen, his own assistant. And in the same spirit, with no need to consider what subscribers might think extravagant, or red-tapists think conventional, he had long before that appointed a doctor.

The doctor was a comparatively young man, perhaps eight-and-twenty ; with a good practice for so young a man, but one that by no means occupied all his time. He was moderately tall, a little above the average height, with a very handsome face - kind, firm, mse. His manner always inspired confidence ; his patients felt at once that they were in the hands of one who knew their case, and had a clear notion what to do with them. Or, what is perhaps better still, they felt that they could trust him even when he did not clearly understand their case ; they were confident that he would do his utmost to penetrate its obscurity, and treat them as msely as they could at all expect to be treated by any one who had not had time to make many careful examinations, and possibly some fruitless trials of useless remedies. . Young as he was, scarcely a practitioner in Islington had need of fewer consultations ; or it would be truer to say, that he was in continual consultation with the leaders of his profession. He never could have become a mere routinist, but as yet his practice had not so entirely absorl3ed his time and thought as to leave him no leisure for reading and experiment. Moreover, he was no mere " doctor ;'' he was a thoroughly well-educated English gentleman, with the healthiest interest in every great social movement, and especially at home in that obscure and fascinating region where physics and metaphysics, nature and spirit, body and soul meet - and in meeting, seem for awhile almost utterly lost. Mr. Whitehouse had first met with him, soon after he came to the parish, at the house of the Eeverend Jonas Faithful.

"You see, Mr. Faithful," he was saying, when Mr. Whitehouse came up to them to hear and join in the conversation, " we medical men see so much to make us cautious in adopting what seem to some of us very extreme theories of human nature and of sin."

" Well, Mr. Leigliton/' said the clergyman - (Frank Leigliton was the doctor's name) - " but you yourself admit that the misery and vice of parents is transmitted to their children.''

" Aye, to be sure ; but whose fault is that, Mr. Faithful ? For instance, I know people Avhose ancestors have been drunkards for several generations back ; and it might perhaps be conjectured that a sort of dijDsomania has become hereditary in their families. But surely that lessens the guilt of the unhappy children, does it not?"

" Yes, no doubt it must," said Mr. Faithful ; "but how dano'crous it would be to confound sin with mere misfortune or even mistake. If we must be in doubt about the criminality of drunkenness, is there any such thing as crime at all, Mr. Leigliton V

" If you mean unmixed crime without any palliation, simple moral Avrong without any physical element whatever, such a case may exist, Mr. Faithful ; but I must confess, I never met with one," said the doctor.

" Vm half inclined to agree with you, doctor," said Mr. Whitehouse ; " but have you quite settled which comes first, the moral wrong or the physical ? I sometimes think it must be the moral"

" Very possibly," said the doctor ; " but now the complication of symptoms is not much affected by the priority, whichever side it may have been on. If we could have examined and questioned the hypothetical first man "

*' The hypothetical first man, Mr. Leighton ?" interrupted the clerg}mian. " You surely must believe that there is no doubt about the inspired history we have of Adam and Eve ? Science doesn't require us to destroy our Bibles, eh, doctor ? "

" Certainly not, Mr. Faithful ; but our Bibles give us a very meagre account of the first sin and the first pain."

"Well, well" said Mr. Whitehouse ; "it doesn't much matter. We can't alter tlie good old Book, even if we wished ; but it is of the greatest practical importance that we should have a sound principle for our guidance in the treatment of those cases in which physical and moral symptoms seem so terribly complicated."

" What would vou do in such cases, doctor ?" said Mr. Faithful. " How could you and I, for instance, harmoniously visit the same patient?"

"I don't see," he said, "why there need be any discord or difficulty. I should do my best for the body, and you'd do your best for the soul. I don't see how curing the body could possibly hurt the soul, and if your treatment of the soul seemed to hinder or neutralize my treatment of the body, I'd ask you to defer it till the patient was stronger."

" And if, meanwhile, the patient died instead of becoming stronger - what then, doctor ? "

"Well, then, I'd leave him to God, Mr. Faithful. I should not like to run the risk of killing him, even to save the soul," said Mr. Leighton.

" Ah ! my dear sir," said the clergyman, " I should be much more afraid to leave a man's soul in danger, for the sake of keeping his poor body in the world a little longer."

Even that brief conversation made ISh. Whitehouse understand that he had found a man to his mind ; one who could truly help him in his great and good work. So the very next time one of his " family " was ill, he sent for Mr. Leighton, " to come and prescribe in a case where the moral and physical symptoms were terribly complicated." That was the beginning of a true and intimate friendship, and JNIr. Leijxhton was forthwith included in the little confederacy at Oak Villa of wise and earnest workers for those who are deepest in need - those who are in need of goodness.

But was it altogether prudent for Mr. Whitehouse, with such a physician for the Oak Villa family, to admit into the confederacy such an assistant as Patty Wilson ? It would have been impossible for him to have put a stronger temptation in the way of her affections, if he had known all her preferences and all her longings, and what sort of ideal man he was that her heart was seeking. She was very self-reliant, where self-reliance was necessary ; but she knew quite well that there was something very much better for human beings than self-rehance ; and that mutual dependence was much better. Unhappily, there are very few men upon whom self-reliant women can depend without losing self-respect. Now, Mr. Leighton was just the sort of man to win the esteem and the reasonable love of a true woman. After all, what is it that the majority of women do fall in love with, or even the majority of men ? Shall we say, a creature of the other sex, Hving sufficiently near to admit of moderately frequent interviews ; not repulsively ugly, and who has had the good or the ill-luck to seize some opportunity of popping the question ? Indeed, for mankind in general, this poor list of quahfications is dreadfully extravagant. Not long ago, thou oil this it must be confessed is an extreme case, a woman whose right eye had been gouged out by her first husband, took out a summons against her second husband for tlireatening to gouge out her left eye. And people with clulv feet, or mis-shapen humps on their backs, or blind, or totally deaf, are almost always married. Perhaps on the whole, it is most important for the sake of securing the permanence of being in love, to seize a favourable opportunity of " putting the question." There is not the least reason in the world why Miss A. should accept Mr. B., which would not be equally valid for accepting any other letter in the alphabet. But, on the other hand, she does not see any strong reason why she should not accept him, and no otlier letter has happened to propose. During the temporary insanity of courtship it is immeasurably more agreeable to receive the enthusiastic attentions of a devoted lover, than the half-reluctant, matter-of-course civilities which are wrung from brothers by their sisters. Moreover, a person must be somewhere ; and surely it is likely that it will be as pleasant to keep house for a gentleman nearly of one's own age, as to keep house for papa. There will always be ties to bind husband and wife together - probably children ; certainly the responsibility of the husband for the wife's debts - or, to put it more good-naturedly, the anxiety of the husband to secure a comfortable home. Surely that's quite enough. If husband and wife are both intelligent, with very many pursuits and objects of desire in common, so much the better. But such advantages seem to be considered rather the ornaments of married life, than the very stuff it is made of.

But Patty was not exactly a girl to fall weakly in love, and huny on as fast as possible to matrimony. What she wanted was true fellowship, the union of kindred spirits ; and whether that fellowship took the form of marriage or not, was to her a matter of comparative indifference. Mamage, she thought, was pure, genuine, thorough friendship, with certain common interests and duties and experiences in addition ; and of these components she thought the friendship very far the most valuable. It was quite impossible that she and Mr. Leighton should often meet, and be occupied with different parts of the same great and difficult work, without becoming friends ; and for Patty that was enough. They found that all their lives they had been thinking the same thoughts, and fighting their way to the same results. They had sympathy with each other, not merely on the uppermost surface of their lives, but in the region of profoundest realities, strongest beliefs and worthiest aspirations and efforts. Perhaps it was because they were so perfectly suited to make each other happy that they never thought about marrying at all ; or, at any rate, if they thought about it they did not do it. They were friends. Mr. Leighton had yet to achieve success ; and for Patty, nothing seemed more impossible than that she should ever go away from Oak Villa. And yet there had been a time when Patty was not there ; and if Mr. Leighton had only thought seriously about it, it might have been as well to guard against any possibility of losing her. Generally speaking, it does not much matter if you lose a girl by waiting for her two or three years ; there are plenty more to be found quite as good. But every man is not a Frank Leighton and every woman is not a Patty Wilson ; and when two such people meet, it is wise not to separate if they can help it.

For, suppose any one ivere to come to Oak Villa and offer to take Patty away and give her a home of her own, and give her all the dignity and happiness of matronly life, what would she be likely to say to him ? Of course she could not say she was waiting for Mr. Leighton. And was she not veiy often lonely with good Mr. Whitehouse and his wife ? The position of a hired servant, even in those very rare cases in which the service is dignified and the remuneration ample, is not, after all, the position with which any woman can feel perfectly satisfied. Might she not be at any moment dismissed ? and would she be willins: then to thrust herself upon the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle, or the hospitality of *' Our House " ? And that was by no means all. Patty wanted to be bound to people by indissoluble bonds ; and bonds, moreover, if it were possible, not wholly of her ovm choosing. She longed for kindred, those to love and care for wlio should be, as it were, her own flesh and blood. Just as Mrs. Carlisle had never been able to feel that Patty was her own child, so Patty felt that the best of friends could never be to her what her mother had been, or Avhat she had been to her mother, or what her father and mother had been to each other. She knew quite well that though she had no fortune, she would he a fortune to any trueliearted man ; and perhaps, if anybody she could believe in were really to ask her to be his wife, she might not say no. And why did not Mr. Leighton remember that there are some men who can make women believe so very much, though they mean so very little ?

There was a patient of his, for instance, from the country ; a tall, weak, confiding, coaxing sort of person. He was from the neighbourhood of Manchester ; not fabulously rich, but in a very good social position, living, as was supposed, on his own estate, and by no means condemned to that hard structure for life which is to so many young men their first and bitterest experience. He was a great puzzle to Mr. Leighton, who was not quite sure wliich of his virtues were really virtues, and which were weaknesses and vice. The young man had been run over in the street almost opposite the doctor s door ; and the doctor had taken him in, till he should be able to bear the journey to his own home. He was not very seriously hurt, and was indeed very soon quite able to go home ; Imt he seemed to enjoy staying with Mr. Leighton, and he found no difficulty in making himself an agreeable companion. He had come, therefore, to be rather a boai'der in the doctor's house than a patient. He seemed to be interested in everying that interested his host, even in the progress of medical science and surgical skill. He seemed yet more deeply interested in every social movement, eveiy new scheme for rendering human beings happier and better. And yet somcliow Mr. Leighton could not quite admire liim, as he often fancied he ought to do. It seems necessary to the perfection of a man's character that he should have a fair share of aversions and hatreds. Being deeply interested in everything often amounts to being genuinely interested in nothing. Universal sympathy may be mere sentimentalism or even affectation, and at any rate the due proportions of feelings must be maintained. A dead donkey may be a very touching spectacle, but surely it is scarcely so worthy of our tears as the deadj mother of orphan children. Besides, Mr. Leighton was never able to discover that his guest had anything better to offer than pity, as the remedy for those many terrible evils with which he appeared so deeply to sympathize. He never did anything to lessen them, though he was often so profoundly anxious that somebody else would do something to lessen them; or that at any rate they would get lessened, and with as much rapidity as possible finally disappear. The doctor was sometimes afraid that his patient was no better than a mere idler ; who found it rather less exhausting, especially after an accident, to manifest a boundless sympathy for all his fellow creatures, than to be coldly out of harmony with the man upon whose society he had become dependent. And perhaps the doctor wasn't far wrong. His guest ivas an idler ; that was, to begin with, his peculiar form of selfishness. He was immeasurably too lazy even to take care of his own interests. He seemed to think that life was no way more serious than lying on your back in a boat on some sunny day, floating down with the current, just exerting yourself now and then sufficiently to pull to shore and take some friend on board, just to lie on Jiis back and help you to do nothing. Like people who sit in boats, and suffer them to go where they will, or where the tide can carry them, so did the doctor's Sliest and his fellow idlers find themselves not seldom aground, and their boat in danger of being upset ; and then each idler was sure to accuse the other of being the cause of the accident. Or sometimes he would find himself hurried on to utmost danger, compelled to struggle in some grim life and death encounter, and for his own preservation would change the selfishness of idleness into the selfishness of cruelty. And then when it was all over, he would just lazily lie down, and bask in the warmest sunshine he could find, exactly as if nothing had happened, and find himself in the most delightful sympathy with all mankind. " Let me alone," he seemed to be saying to everybody ; " or rather let us make one another as cozy and comfortable as we can ; I don't like the bother of quarrelling with anybody if I can help it, but of course if you get in my way and won't come out of it, I shall have to do what I can to knock you out of it." Idleness, after all, is a much more malignant devil than he is often taken for.

The doctor's guest was Edwin Marie Forester ; and, though he didn't know it, he had come to London to meet the pretty little girl whom he had found lying on the bridge above the reservoirs at Leigh. London is, perhaps, the biggest contradiction in all the universe, combining in itself all manner of opposites. It is the densest crowd, and the loneliest wilderness, in all the world ; the place where it is, above all others, the hardest to meet, and the hardest not to meet. Go to meet A. B. in London, and you may wander from Bcthnal Green to Brompton, and never see him. Go to London with a firm conviction that A.' B. is in the Highlands, and you stumble upon him in the middle of Cheapside. Everybody, who is anybody at all, has to come to London, sometimes ; and you'll see your friends oftener by living there, even though their home be in Lancashire or Yorkshire, than you would by living in the next village.

So Forester, expecting nothing less than to meet Patty, really did meet her at Mr. Leighton's house. She had come with some message from the household at Oak Villa, and was chatting comfortably with the doctor, when Forester came back from a stroll to the West End, and, knowing of no visitor, walked as usual into the doctor s room. He was apologising, and retiring ; but Patty looked so hard at him, and he felt so sure he had seen a face like hers before, that he stopped at the door, turned back again, and quietly sat do\vn in his accustomed corner.

" Well, doctor," he said, " I am tired. My foot aches most disgracefully, considering the excellence of your surgery ; and, besides that, I could never go away without saying a word about this very pleasant surprise you've prepared for me. I feel perfectly certain - more and more certain every minute - that this lady and I are quite old friends. What do you think, Miss Wilson ? "

He rose to shake hands with her, with his wonderful confiding stoop, and sweet coaxing voice, and his not unhandsome face - there could be no mistake.

" Indeed," said Patty, " if I had met you almost anywhere else, I should have said you were Mr. Forester, from the Hall, at dear old Leigh."

" AVell, well. Miss Wilson," he said, " let me assure you I'm no one else, even though you meet me at Mr. Leighton s house. Everybody's sure to meet everybody in London. I had my foot run over on purpose to meet you again, plainly enough."

" Well, at any rate, ]\L\ Forester," said Patty, " I am very glad to see you ; and I am very glad to find that your foot is nearly well ; but when you know as many of Mr. Leighton s patients as I do, you will have found out that he makes everybody well."

" Then I am very thankful, Miss Wilson," "aid Forester, with just a twinge of foolish jealousy (for he was not at all in love), " that I happened to be run over in front of his door, instead of that other person's door - I forget his name - that nice, stout, chatty gentleman."

" Ah ! Mr. Jessop, I suppose, you mean," said Patty ; " but then, you know, Mr. Forester, he doesn't pretend to be a surgeon, and you ought not to expect anybody to have such superhuman humility, as to pretend to know less than he does."

" Oh, certainly not. Miss Wilson ; and I was very far from intending any ojffence to Mr. Jessop, whom, in truth, I like very much. But if Mr. Leighton were not present, I should tell you I do not think Mr. Jessop quite so good a surgeon as our friend here."

" But have you nothing to tell me about Leigh, Mr. Forester ? " said Patty. " I suppose it's just as beautiful as ever ; just the same view from your window as ever ; the same fields, the same river, the same wooded hill, and Inroad reservoirs ? "

" Just the same, Miss Wilson ; just as dull as ever. A man mth the slightest pretensions to a sociable disposition may be moped to death there in a month. Though I really ought to praise the place, especially as people say that I've improved it a good deal."

" I'm sure it deserves the best praise you can give it. There is no place in the world I like so much as Leigh," said Patty ; '' though I've never been there since poor mamma died."

"Then your last visit. Miss Wilson," said Forester, "must have been that summer when 1 found a little girl on a very dangerous bridge, one very dark night. By the way, if ever you come to Leigh again, you'll find that we have made that bridge much safer. That very summer I had iron rails put on both sides ; it's a pity nobody thought of it before the poor old doctor was drownied."

And so they went on talking about old times and places famihar to both of them, while Mr. L eight on listened, half-pleased, halfdispleased that there seemed to be so many bonds connecting his friend with his strange patient. In fact, he really was beginning to understand that he would not be altogether himself if Patty were to leave him ; and if she went away to spend a holiday month at "dear old Leigh," she might perhaps never come back again.

Meantime Patty and Forester went on talking about old Mr. Piatt and Lucy ; and Forester told Patty how he had seen the good old woman buried in Leigh churchyard. He had been quite unable, notwithstanding all that he could learn from Lucy, to find out where his father had gone, after his mother's guardians had refused their consent to the marriage ; and indeed he had begun to fear that all hope of solving that mystery must be given up for ever.

" And after all, Miss Wilson" said Forester, " it may be just as well as it is. A man must make himself, and no father can save him that trouble. And possibly I should never get satisfied about my father's leaving my poor mother to such loneliness and sorrow as that which killed her in the old Hall. It's better as it is."

That nevertheless was Forester's sore point. He didn't know his father, and people would be all too ready to shrug their shoulders, and whisper to each other that there must have been dishonour somewhere, in father, or mother, or both.

Of course Forester and Patty met tolerably often, after this first interview at Mr. Leighton's house ; and somehow it is always dangerous for unmarried people to meet often, if they wish never to marry each other. Probably Patty did not think enough about the matter to have a wish on either side, but she was certainly glad to meet once more odc of her old friends, somebody who had known her before she came to London, and who might therefore be worth the attention and friendship even of her London friends. Everybody finds it, if not more blessed, at any rate more pleasant to give than to receive ; and though Patty abundantly deserved all the attention she ever had received, yet she could not help thinking that it would be very pleasant if, after loving her for her own sake, her friends in London should find she was not altogether without the power to make some return for those generous services that had been so freely rendered to her. As for Forester, this was one of those times in his life when he was, so to speak, lying comfortably on his back in his boat, drifting down the stream, without taking the trouble even to row. Why not, just for a minute or two, exert himself sufficiently to take at least one oar in his hand and pull towards that bank where Patty was standing, and take her into the boat with him ? - could he not float down the stream more cozily than ever ? Possibly not ; for in spite of arithmetic, two human beings, when they come to Kve together, are very widely different from twice one.

Patty At The Hall Once More

If Patty had only waited a day longer ! If Mr. Leighton had only had courage to speak instead of writing ! We little know how near we often are to the very blessedness we most earnestly desire. Somehow or other Mr. Leighton had been growing more and more jealous of Foresters intimacy with his old friend. That his guest-patient should be glad to meet once again the little gui whom he had saved some years before, that he should be charmed, and in a way surprised, to find her grown to womanhood, beautiful and good, and still almost as simple-minded as any child could be, that was natural enough. But everybody must have found out that love is the most meanly selfish of passions ; and it may be doubted whether Mr. Leighton would not have been willing that Patty should have been neglected by all the world, if only he could have retained her all the more completely for himself. He did not love her any the more because Forester had come, but he unquestionably became far more completely convinced that he really did love her ; and often, when Forester was speaking to her, he would watch her face with an acutely-painful eagerness, to see, if it were only possible, all the memories and thoughts that were in her heart. The human face is a very puzzling book to read ; though, after all, Patty's thoughts at that time were not very far beneath the surface. Mr. Leighton was tormenting himself by half taking it for granted that she must necessarily be thinking, or hoping, or intending, or wishing something or other, he did not clearly know what, Lut which would at any rate destroy his own happiness, and heap up some impassable barrier of separation between himself and her. So every day, as the certainty of his love grew stronger, he determined that before the night came he would tell Patty how dear she was to him, and with what a manly reverence he honoured her, and how unspeakably grateful he would be if she would become his own true wife that they might work their life's work together. And then he thouorht again, that perhaps there was no real danger, that it might be premature to speak to her on such a subject, and might defeat his own purpose. He imagined that it must surely be impossible that Forester should ever seem to her a man truly worthy to be her husband, and indeed he doubted, foro;ettinohow the extremes of a lazy indiiference and a reckless impetuosity often meet, whether Forester had earnestness enough even to care to marry the girl who was every day filling more completely the world of his own thoughts. And so another day would pass over ; and perhaps, as they were sitting together in the evening, he and his guest, some single word from Forester, the mere mention for instance of Patty's name, would raise a storm of fears and doubts in his heart, and he would again determine that before another day had ended he would know what his lot was to be. He had no need to fear ; no truer man had ever asked a woman for her love, and no one had a quicker eye than Patty to discern truth and worth. And yet he trembled, as only strong, brave men can tremble, when he asked himself in what words he should tell her how utterly he loved her, and ask her for the priceless gift of her heart and hand. No, he could not speak to her at all - he would write to her ; he could do that more calmly, and moreover would it not be more generous to her ? She could answer more calmly ; and he persuaded himself that his love was far too generous even to win her love against her will, if that were possible. Surely he should have remembered that in love and war all stratagems are fail* ; and in love to speak out in the purest and strongest words everything that the heart feels is of all stratagems the fairest. But Mr. Leicjhton was too timid and gentle in this matter that lay so near to his own interests, so near to the interests of one who had become dearer to him than himself. No, he would not, could not, speak to her ; he would write.

So while Patty was writing to Forester, and when the letter was finished, and she lay dreaming of her ill-omened dream, and far on into that night, Mr. Leighton was writing to her. The letter was not long ; perhaps if it had been longer, it might have been sooner written. But even short letters sometimes need very careful writing. Mr. Leighton meant every word that he said ; he wanted to say all that he did mean and nothing more. And so he had all manner of mistakes to correct asfain and again, and after all he had to make a clear copy of the letter.

Knowing what he had done, and more afraid than ever that it might be too late, it was with a kind of terror that he recognised Patty's handwriting on an envelope addressed to Forester ; and with greater alarm still that he watched Forester's face while he was reading: the letter. Perhaps Forester noticed the strange expression of his countenance, and at any rate he found his new secret a kind of burden. AVhat is the use of being happy if nobody knows it? He knew that Mr. Leighton was fond of Patty ; and perhaps he had a faint suspicion that his doctor and himself had, without quite knowing it, been running a kind of race for the same prize. At any rate he soon solved any mystery that might have been involved in a letter from Patty to himself.

" I think," he said, " you ought to congrar tulatc mc, Mr. Leighton, this morning ; and I am quite certain that I ought to be very thankful to you."

'' Why, what service have I rendered you, Mr. Forester ? " said the doctor.

" Cured my lame foot, of course," said Forester, " only you knew that before. But the best thing you have done for me was to find the little friend I saved and had lost, and bring us together again. Do you know that Miss Wilson has promised to come down to the old Hall and really make a man of me ? "

" No," said Mr. Leighton, '' I really did not know it ; but I've not the least doubt that it will give her the greatest pleasm*e to visit Leigh again. I scarcely know what they can do without her at Oak Villa ; she seems to me just one of those people who never can get a holiday because she deserves one so well."

" Why, what funny, prosy people you doctors are," said Forester. " It's a very long holiday she will take. Why can't you congratulate me at once ? Miss Wilson has promised to marry me."

" Well, indeed," said Mr. Leighton, " I do congratulate you most sincerely. It seems to me scarcely possible that any human being could have found a better wife."

Poor wretched Leighton ; at that very moment his own letter to Patty was in the breast-pocket of his coat. It was not very easy to make the conversation cheerful; and indeed he was only meditating how he could least offensively and most naturally rid himself of his guest altogether.

"I suppose," he said, after a good deal of irrelevant conversation, " that you'll soon want to be going down to the Hall, and making all needful preparations for this great event ? "

" Yes," he said, " I thought of going down in a very few days, for both Miss Wilson and myself are so entirely free, so completely under our own control, that there is nothing to gain, and a great deal to lose by deferring the marriage. I shall of course leave the time entirely to Miss Wilson ; but, for my part, most decidedly, the sooner the better.'*'

" Why I should quite tliink so," said Mr. Leighton ; " and, indeed, as you must leave London in a few days, I need make no 'alteration in my own plans for securing a very short holiday. I shall be very glad to get away from town myself at the beginning of next week."

"I am sure you must need a hoHday," Forester said ; "and you may depend upon my getting out of your way by Saturday."

And there the talk ended ; and Mr. Leighton went to his own room, tore his letter to Patty into very small pieces and then burnt them, and set out to comfort himself with a long day of hard work among his patients. Work is by far the best comfort that any one can have in trouble, at least for those who have strength of mind enough to take it ; and yet, for all his work, Mr. Leighton knew quite well that he had suffered a great loss, and that, somehow, if he worked for ever, the great success that above all others he had desired, had passed for ever out of his reach.

Of course there was no reason for deferring the marriage, excepting one; and as Mr. Leighton had burnt his letter, it was impossible for Patty to know what that one reason was. So she and Mr. Forester were to be married in about three months. Mr. Leighton took his little holiday, and fought out his battle with disappointment, and gained strength even to face Patty once more, and tell her how heartily he wished for her that happiness which somehow in his heart he could scarcely help fearing she would never have. Meantime, Forester was at Leigh, taxing to the utmost his slender purse and lessening credit for such decorations and improvements as he thought the Hall should have, to make it fit for its master's bride. It did not seem to occur to him that he was only decorating it with debt, and that if he could have sold it altogether and rented a little cottage, and taken Patty there, and endowed her with the sacred love of a true man's heart, that would have been immeasurably grander than the most magnificent palace in the world. If there was one thing in the world that Forester despised it was love in a cottage ; and indeed he was delighted and astonished, and even amused, at the childish credulity with which people in all directions were confiding in him, simply on the ground of his intended marriage. Before his engagement with Patty his credit had been rapidly declining. Of course his tradesmen had for years been imposing upon him, rendering to him every half-year the most amusing variations of his oriorinal accounts. But, thouo cliaring hiorh interest for lono: credit is not altoo;etlier unprofitable, every tradesman is not unnaturally anxious to behold, at least in remote distance, some chance of ultimate payment. It was far from Forester's intention deliberately to cheat his tradespeople ; but when a profitable deception is deliberately put in a young man s way, and in a manner actually forced upon his acceptance, what virtue can be expected to resist the temptation ? The first person that Forester called upon when he went down to Leigh, after his engagement with Patty, was a builder and house-decorator, whose bill for rebuilding the Hall was only about half paid.

"I really have not come, Mr. Thompson,'' he said, with charming candour - and somehow or other he managed to make all his tradespeople like him, and actually help him to swindle them - " to pay your little bill, nor even to pay you the interest upon it, for I really want every penny I can get for a new investment."

"A new investment," said Mr. Thompson, with a very solemn air ; " I hope you will remember old "

''Why, don't be frightened," said Forester, stopping him short., "I'm not going to build a palace, or start a company, or anything of that sort. I'm only going to get married, Mr. Thompson."

Thereupon Mr. Thompson relaxed, and seized Forester's hand and shook it heartily.

" Well done, Mr. Forester," he said ; " I'm very glad indeed to hear it. Nothing settles a young man down into a quiet, well-conducted prosperous gentleman like matrimony, and when it's a little investment as well," he said, with a sly laugh; "why you know, Mr. Forester, love in a cottage is all very well, but it's not the kind of thing for you. No, no, no ; an investment is very much better, and I hope you will let me have tlie honour of preparing Clayton's Hall for Mrs. Forester's reception."

" Why really," said Forester, " you have the instinct of a prophet ; that's the very thing I came to tell you. I really want the old place to be made - well, suppose I say, to be made as handsome and comfortable as you can possibly make it, Mr. Thompson. These London ladies are used to a good deal more show than country folks seem to care for."

" All right, Mr. Forester," said Thompson ; " if you will just leave it to me, you may depend upon it that nothing shall be wanting on your side of the investment."

"What a fool that fellow is," said Forester to himself, as he walked away ; " and the best of it is he thinks himself so particularly knowing. He evidently thinks that I am going to marry an heiress, and that therefore he may just as well have a picking out of her estate as not. It can't possibly be any business of mine to tell him that he has found a mare's nest."

So of course Mr. Thompson set to work with the utmost energy to decorate the Hall, suggesting innumerable improvements that would never have occurred to Forester himself, and which it would have needed a very good investment indeed to justify. But he rendered to Forester far more important service than even decorating the Hall ; he set an example of trust to all the neighbourhood. Every gossip for miles round was informed of Forester's engagement to a very wealthy London lady, and those who had begun to complain of long-standing accounts, and to refuse further credit, were eager to force both credit and goods upon the man whose prospects of affluence their selfishness and stupidity had so preposterously magnified. He had no need to lie ; he found it far more difficult to gain belief for the truth. Thompson and the gossips had so determined tlie matter in their own minds, that every disclaimer was regarded as the mere affectation of modesty, or as an attempt to hide from them some part of the good fortune which they had firmly resolved to share.

So the works went on until Clayton's Hall was a little palace of loveliness and comfort. The gardens and conservatories were replenished. Trees were cut down where they shut out the beauty of the view, and shrubs were planted to make the walks shadier, fitter for lovers - such lovers as Patty and Forester were to be to the end of the chapter. And Forester was praised by everybody. Happy they thought must be the bonny bride who would have so generous a bridegroom. " London is a big place," said Thompson to the workpeople and gossips, " but if it can beat this, I don't mind eating my head." And Thompsons was a very pardonable pride ; and if his customer had been as good as his work, he might have congratulatcd himself on one of the best bargains he had ever made.

And the customer himself was as completely deceived as Thompson, long before the wedding came. It was so charming to give orders and have them executed, not only without grudging, but with the utmost alacrity ; to see beauty springing forth on every side as if by enchantment ; to write to Patty and tell her how the improvements were so great that she would scarcely recognise the Hall ; to receive letters from her overflowino: with grateful affection and loving vows. He quite forgot that he was laying heavy burdens upon her even more than on himself, which only long years of such pinching economy as he was little likely to submit to, could ever remove. He quite forgot that he was preparing for himself such bitter and vairi regret, such a long series of humiliations, such a necessity for ever-thickening complications of trickery and deceit, as would turn even the fairest paradise into a place of torment. Nay, lie quite forgot that the Hall and everything he had was so heavily encumbered, that there was scarcely anything in the world he could call his own, except the memory of sin and folly in the past, and the foreboding of misery and shame in the future.

But there was nothing in that to put off a wedding. It was now the beginning of July, and Patty and Forester were to be married at the end of August ; so that they might be at the Hall when the wood on the hill-side would be at the loveHest, adorned with all the ripe, rich hues of autumn. They were to be married in Manchester, that so they might be near to good old Mr. Wilson, though he was too infirm now to understand what all the bustle and excitement could mean. They were to breakfast at " Our House,'' after the marriage ceremony, and to spend a week or a fortnight at the Lakes, and then to settle down at Clayton's Hall like good, staid, old married folk. And so the weeks rolled on - six, five, four, three, two - the ever-lessening space vanishing with a solemn swiftness. At last Patty began to count, not weeks, but days. The last week had come, and nothing remained but the farewell visit to all her London friends. They were not many ; but "good-bye," for all its blessed meaning, is a word we never care to speak.

As to Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle, the parting was the less painful because they were going dowTi to Manchester to spend a few weeks with the Rhodeses, and to be present at the marriage. Mrs. Carlisle had received the news of Patty's engagement with undisguised pleasure ; and if the pleasure was partly selfish, not unmixed with the reflection that all responsibility for their foster-child was now coming to a natm'al and not unhappy end, all one can say is, that there is very little good in the world at all which is not mixed with some baser element. As for Mr. Carlisle, lie was almost as silly as on the morning when he received Patty's letter to tell him that she had made up her mind to leave Canonbury Square, and had offered herself as an assistant to Mr. and Mrs. Whitehouse. He kissed her with the sincerest and gentlest affection, but he could find no words in which to express his good wishes ; and when he took her into another room to show her the presents he had bought for her, he could just do nothing but sob and weep, and point to his gifts, and try to stammer out that they were for her, as a poor token of his love. He was a poor, blundering, goodnatured old soul - ''a good man, for whom, peradventure, one would even dare to die" - but with no power of speech, no pretty sentiments and flowery words. So much the better, thought Patty, as she saw him hurrying away down the Square with his handkerchief to his eyes - hurrying off to Oxford Street, as was his way in any trouble, to see if honest work would not dull the shar][)ness of its edge. For somehow this parting with Patty, even though she was only going to be married, was a trouble to him. Only going to be married indeed !

" Ah, he's very tender-hearted," said Mrs. Carlisle, *'but he's just gone down to business to work it off a little. You must not think he does not approve of it, Patty, or anything of that sort, because he's a little overcome."

And then this active, strong-minded matron began to ask all manner of questions about the dresses, and the breakfast, and the innumerable trifles Ijy which the melanclioly uncertainties that always surround a wedding are partly disguised.

" Well, well, dear," she said, " I don't know how they manage these things in Manchester, but I've no doubt the Ehodescs will have everything as it slioulcl be. I lialf wish we could have had the wedding in London, but of course it's all right to consider your father/'

It was a thousand pities that Mrs. Carlisle could not have cooked the breakfast, and occupied all the wedding morning in talking of its merits. However, she took good care, in her bustling way, to show to Patty each and all of those presents which poor Mr. Carlisle had so inarticulately exhibited.

"We mig:ht have made them look much more," she said; "but then it's all real." Whereupon she exhibited the mark. "Of course there are many handsome things in the plated way ; but what I always think is - silver's silver, and it will always fetch its worth, dear, however fashions may alter."

"Why, my dear Mrs. Carlisle," said Patty, " your presents are really splendid ; but you must not think that I should have valued them less, whatever they had been."

" Yes, yes, my dear, that's very well, indeed ; and if we could not have afforded real, we must have bought plated : but, thank God, we can. And how do you like the decanters ? " she went on, putting a stopper into Patty's hand ; " they are the very best cut glass we could get, as you may tell by feeling."

Of course Patty admired them very much, and thanked Mrs. Carlisle very sincerely for them, and for much more, though Mrs. Carlisle's mode of making presents was not in all respects the one she would have herself adopted. The good lady Avas very generous, though her generosity was not so refined and reticent as with advantage it might have been. But, after all, is not love and real silver decidedly better than love and plated goods ? and is a thing less pretty or less worthy of admiration because you are giving it away to somebody else ? Mrs. Carlisle was not really glorifying herself while she was making the most of the presents that she had bought for Patty ; she was only trying to make them yield the full amount of satisfaction which they were capable of yielding ; and Patty really was pleased with the gifts, and pleased even more with the givers. And when she left the house in Canonbury Square, it was almost with a feeling of dread that she reflected how immeasurably her condition would be altered before she crossed that threshold again.

At Oak Villa, on her last evening, there was a very different scene. There also were presents and kind wishes, and all the terrible grief and pain of separation which everybody has some time or other to go through. But Oak Villa had been for Patty almost the beginning of real life ; not, indeed, that she went there without experience, but her experience before had been all of the passive, receptive sort ; whereas at Oak Villa she had begun to work.

Moreover, it was the sort of work that follows people, work upon the hearts and characters of human beings, living men and women. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever ! '' and there is doubtless a sort of sympathy between the artist and his work, which is a far nobler and completer reward than the loud applause of those admirers, the great majority of whom must be very incompetent judges. In the statue or painting, the artist may often read the record of his own imnost life ; months, or even years of his profoundest thought and deepest emotion. He will remember, as he gazes upon his work, what visions were granted him of ideal and eternal beauty, that never in this world can find full and perfect expression. He will remember lofty aspirations, and the purifying power of perfect beauty, which made him a true man. And yet, how little can it be said, that there is any 'perfect sympathy between the artist and even the noblest work of art. What does the picture care for the painter, or the statue for the sculptor? The whole beauty of his work is that which the artist has himself given to it ; and there is no new beauty gained to make his spirit richer. Nay, does not the canvas and the marble limit and spoil that grand ideal which the man's spirit had beheld and tried to copy ? But when Patty was working for those poor unhappy, erring sisters who were brought to the peaceful home of Oak Villa, she could see in them far more than she ever gave. Their own life was renewed. Their love responded to hers. As she taught them, they seemed rather to remember than to learn ; and out of their gratitude and recovered womanhood they gave even more than they had received.

Far into the last night she was passing from room to room, strengthening each inmate with words of love and trust ; with the genuine love of a sister. Hearts that no cruellest punishment could have softened, melted in the divine fire of her charity. And when at last she retired to her own chamber, worn out with fatigue and emotion, she knelt down to thank God that she had not lived utterly in vain ; and to pray that if ever her own hour of need should come, some loving lips might with equal sincerity speak God's message to her weary heart. She was full of hope ; but her last night at Oak Villa seemed to reproach her. Was she not going away to ease and selfish rest, just as if all the dreadful problems of human sin and misery had been solved for ever ?

The next morning she was up early ; she wanted to get to Manchester by the fast train, and to have some brief respite from the pain and excitement of leave-taking, before the wedding-day. But there was one friend, not unremembered or unloved, to whom she had not yet continued to say the inevitable adieu.

Should slie see him at all ? And yet would it not seem utterly unaccountable to leave London without the " good-bye," which each of them could say to the other so sincerely ? And what meant the strange tumult in her heart, as she thought of Mr. Leighton ? Were not all those old hopes dead and buried - buried in the grave of her new love ? Why not go and see him and say " good-bye ? " Why not, indeed ! She could no more have left London without that, than she could have unlived the last few years of her life. So she stopped the cab at the doctor's door and went in. He was at home.

" I quite expected you this morning, Miss Wilson,'' he said.

"Well, Mr. Leighton, I could not leave London without bidding you good-bye - though I'm only going to be married, and I hope often to see my old friends again."

Poor Leighton ! he was as pale as death ; fighting with all manner of mad impulses.

"Why, indeed, should you leave us, Miss Patty, without good-bye," he said ; " of course you are only going to be married, but marriage brings many cares and duties, which render the intercourse of friends rare and difficult."

"I shouldn't like to think, Mr. Leirfiton, that one love can kill another.''

" No, no, Miss Wilson, but there are many kinds of death. Perhaps a lonely, lingering life is the worst death of all."

There was a pause. It seemed as if he had lost all command of his voice. At last he said -

" How did the girls bear your leaving them, Miss Patty ? "

Patty could bear it no longer. She fairly broke down, and wept passionately.

"Oh spare me, Mr. Leighton," she said.

" That is my one trouble. Is it right to leave them ? As they spoke to me last night, I felt the most selfish, wretchcd creature in the world. And what can I do at Clayton s Hall but enjoy myself - while there is so much misery unrelieved ? ''

" God grant that you may have nothing but joy for evermore. But if it should be otherwise - which God forbid ! - if ever you are disappointed, lonely, miserable, will you remember me - that I am always your friend ? I will come at your call from the world's end. I shall hear your voice, your faintest whisper, wherever I may be, and I will be with you as swift as thought ---"

He seemed scarcely to know what he was saying, borne along in the great rush of his feeling.

" No, no, forgive me. Miss Patty,'' he said ; " these are ill-omened words. Good-bye. May you be so utterly happy that you may never need to consider what friends you have that you may reckon upon to the uttermost."

She was gone. He had seen the last he could see ; and still he stood at the window, as if he were rooted to the spot. Slowly, at last, he turned away. " My patients must do as best they can today," he said ; and then he scorned his cowardice, fought his battle out, and won once more.

" The best comforter is duty."

Yes, truly ; there could be no solace in idleness ; but while he went from house to house, trying to forget his own grief in ministering to the wants of others, he could no way escape that heavy burden that was weighing down his heart. It was not onlv that he had lost Patty, but he had no confidence whatever in Forester. Perhaps jealousy made him quickeyed, for every fault or weakness of his rival ; but he believed him to be utterly unprincipled. He believed that he was lazily unprincipled now, and might remain so until he had stung some victim of his cold-hearted recklessness into fierce retaliation ; and then he too would fight with the unprincipled ferocity of an enraged beast of prey. And now, whatever he might be or become, Patty was going down to Manchester to take him " for better for worse - until death should them part." And he could do nothing for her - not even warn ; only in a half frantic way assure her of his help if she should ever come to need it.

And now the very day had come, and the hour ; and Patty Wilson and Edwin Marie Forester stood side by side in Cheetham Hill Church, that they might be made man and widfe together. How short is the time, how few are the irrevocable words which bring such hopeless misery, where they do not bring pure and holy joy. One poor quarter of an hour, and Patty Forester's very life was either won or thrown away beyond recovery.

But there is scarcely time for a bride to fear on her wedding morning. Forester was somewhat graver than usual, but Patty was well pleased to have it so ; and he was very gentle and affectionate, almost as tender as if he were pitying the fair young girl, who was so confiding and good. They went away, as had been arranged, to the Lakes ; though Forester never stayed more than a day at one place.

"You know, my darling," he said, - "you can't think how delightful it is to have you with me, and know that no one can ever take you away - but that is not what I was going to say." No, it was only a little parenthetic burst of affection ; - " but what I was going to say is, that it's all very well for an artist to sit on a cold stone on a hill-side, and spend a whole morning in looking on another cold stone on the other side of the valley - but we are not artists, we are not going to paint the Lakes, nor write an interesting narrative of a honeymoon. So we just stand here, for instance, and open our eyes wide and look about us, and we see a lake and blue sky, and a hill, and green trees, and we rapidly observe the various combinations of all these different elements, and we go on our way rejoicing to something else. Besides," he said, turning round and looking into her face, " I've nothing to do, but turn my head round, when I have you at my side, and then I can see the very sight in all the world that I like best ; always the same and always different."

And then he walked on of course ; and what would have been the use of her saying that there was a good deal that she wanted to see more of She was hardly prepared in the first week of her married life to face the absurdity of being an artist. So they went on from place to place taking a rapid glance at everything Forester's way of making an excursion was this. He first obtained a Bradshaw's Railway Guide ; or rather, he first determined where he should go, and then he provided himself with a Railway Guide. He ascertained which would be the fastest and most luxurious train to travel by, and then the best hotel to stop at. When he arrived at the place that he had determined to honour with a visit, he of course went at once to the hotel that he had determined to stop at. He immediately ordered dinner - four or five courses, and plenty of wine ; for what's the use of staying at an hotel if you do not live sumptuously ? Dinner and dessert would naturally occupy the best part of the day of arrival ; then in the evening he would stroll out at his leisure to ascertain what there was worth seeing in the neighborhood ; then he would order a carriage, or guide, or whatever might be necessary, and then about the middle of the next morning he would go and see it.

At dinner, after having seen what was to be seen, he would once more consult his Bradshaw, and would set off the next morning by the fastest train to the next place he had determined to visit. In this manner he could make the tour of several counties in a fortnight ; and know much more about them too, than many people would have supposed possible.

" Yes," he would say, for instance, " the Peak - I have been to the Peak ; no railway at that time, nor anything comfortable ; a miserable tumble-down old coach ; heaps of nasty tiresome hills, that they make you get out of the coach to walk up, just as if you hadn't paid the coach-fare for the very purpose of being carried up. The last time I Avent up the Peak there was a disgusting cockatoo in the inside of the coach, belonging to a charming old lady, the clergyman's wife apparently. The animal was continually hopping down from its perch, and biting the knees of everybody who didn't give it biscuit. Of course the clergyman's wife rebuked the cockatoo for such ill-regulated behaviour; but what comfort is it, when youve had a piece bitten out of your knee, to have the cockatoo reproved ? But after all," he would say, " I think the Peak is a very wonderful piece of scenery - wonderful place for artists ; no end of cold stones to sit on, and draw fogs in the valley."

It must be very obvious that Mr. Edwin Forester was destitute of what is called an eye for nature ; but when he had plenty of money, his own or anybody else's, as the case might be, and nothing on his mind, he was not by any means an insufferable companion. In his little wedding-tour, though Patty may have wanted to see more, she was at least enjoying her first visit to the Lakes. Everything was provided for her with an almost princely magnificence ; for everybody knows the best people in the world to spend money are those who have no money to spend. When you are really spending your own money, the fear of extravagance and ultimate penury is ever before your eyes ; but when you positively have nothing, and can only spend other people's money, you can't possibly be poorer than you are, and you may just as well be comfortable as not. At the same time, Patty was not sorry that the honeymoon was to be short. She longed to see Leigh once more, and she longed above all to settle in her own house, and face the life that was before her. She had no misgivings - at least she thought not, hoped not, tried to beheve not. And yet Forester, in this first fortnight of their married life, was very different from the earnest, lonely man who had pleaded so hard for love, and help, and fellowship in the Eegent's Park. He was very amusing; but he seemed to find his fun in surrounding great and holy things with ridiculous circumstances and degrading associations. He was very kind and affectionate ; but somehow Patty seemed to feel that he cared most for that which had least to do with her truest womanliness and deepest nature.

However, short or long, all trips come to an end at last ; and Patty found herself one glorious autumn evening at Clayton's Hall, almost on the very spot where Edwin Marie was born, and where Marie, his mother, desolate and broken-hearted, had died.

END