"Mr. Sowerby's asking for you, ma'am," said a voice at the door.

They parted, Mrs. Sowerby looking once more round as they left the room to say, "What fun it'll be comparing notes about our two babies!" Her laugh seemed to linger like sunshine in the passage after she was gone.

"It's good-bye for ever for me," said Lady Pike, half to herself, as the door closed upon her. And indeed she spoke truly. Her strength rapidly ebbed away after this, each day making it more certain that the end could not be far off. Long ere the winter came she was laid in Thornwell churchyard, to the bitter grief of her husband, on whom the blow had fallen more unexpectedly than on any one, while to Lady Grizel the sorrow seemed to have brought a fixed and silent gloom.

Miss Hooker saw but little of the dying mother until just at the last, when, by

Lady Pike's own request, she was sent for. She was in the sick-room at the moment of death, and the last sounds that fell from the dying lips were a murmur of assent to some words of prayer uttered by her brother's voice. Lady Pike died holding her husband's hand, happy in her full trust in him and in her mother, and in their care for her baby boy.

But as all this belongs to a period somewhat earlier than the main course of our story, we will not describe any further the events of that sorrowful time. We must pass over a space of some fifteen years and enter on the history of the young persons to whom the foregoing pages have relation.

CHAPTER VI.

66 Sweet peace, where dost thou dwell?"

G. Herbert.

Ir is Sunday morning at Thornwell. Mr. and Miss Hooker, considerably older than when we saw them last, are again at breakfast; not tête-à-tête, however, for they have a new inmate, their niece Irene, who has been with them now for some time, and is in fact almost like their adopted daughter. She is a rather tall, thin girl at present, dressed with a plainness that is more to please herself than her aunt: black hair in a knot at the back of her head, a plain grey woollen dress set off with a crimson neck ribbon, and no rings or ornaments of

any kind. Still it is a face that hardly depends on dress. Irene is a trying name, and we know very few people who could

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carry it off," but this girl's face and head might, undeveloped as they were, have been introduced in a grand classical fresco without altering a line. The hair grew low and picturesquely on the forehead, the brows had that rare and beautiful curve with which we are so familiar in the antique. The eyes were dark, steady, earnest and simple; the mouth was chiefly remarkable for its regularity of form, and the absence of all humorous lines and mischievous nuances of expression. Every movement of the fine but still immature figure was decisive, vigorous, and unconventional, though by no means ungraceful. At this moment, look at her cutting the bread. It is but for a party of three (and Mr. Hooker always eats toast), but she is felling slice after slice as energetically as if

she had to provide for a large starving

family.

"There, that'll do, Lina," says her aunt. "Now you need not scald yourself with that cup of tea, or hurry over your breakfast. School will not be for half an hour."

"No, auntie, I know it isn't. Our clock's five minutes slow, though, by the church, and Dot will be here directly, and I shall have to help her. She gets so puzzled with the hard words in her reading for Uncle George."

For Mr. Hooker always spent half-anhour on Sundays in instructing his niece and Veronica Pike (alias Dot) in Church History, and gave them books to read up for him in the week.

Why does not she get Walter to help her, now he's at home, instead of coming to you?" said Mr. Hooker.

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Oh, I don't know. She's afraid of bothering him."