burthen; but now that I have, why should I upset it all, and wrench myself away from you? When I lean against you, I have got my home, and my rest, and all I want here. I never go away from you but I feel that I do want you so; and when one feels that, what's the use of looking out for somebody else?'

6

Dear little Sweetheart! Yes!' as she lay contentedly against him, with his arm round her; 'it only makes me tremble, that you should give up a home like that, and risk so much upon my one life. The other boys love you dearly, but they are more likely to make ties for themselves! and if-'

'I should love you better dead than any other man alive!' cried Cherry impetuously. 'I won't do it, Felix! so spare your dutiful remonstrances! I do hate them so, and I know you don't mean them.’

'Mean is not the word, Cherry. The more I hated making them, the more I felt bound to do so.'

'There, then! You've done.'

'Yes, I've done. My Cherry, my Cherry! you don't know how much lighter the world seems to me than it did half an hour ago!'

'O you foolish old Giant! And there come those irrepressible children! Oh! I hope and trust they have not found it out!' cried Cherry, bounding up from her sentimental attitude, as Angela was heard galloping up the stairs.

But there was this benefit in dealing with a veteran, that he knew how to keep his own counsel and other people's. Angela came dashing in. 'Oh! here you both are! Mr. Grinstead said he had forgotten, after all, to give you this letter. He said you had better write to the lady herself. It is a capital order, he said -you've been settling about it, haven't you? What are you going to do?'

'I don't quite know, Angel,' said Cherry, seeing the letter was addressed in a strange hand to the sculptor; and thereupon venturing to open it, and finding it contained a request to obtain from Miss Underwood an engagement for a set of studies similar to those in the exhibition, if it were true that these were not for sale. It was from a lady of wealth and taste, whose name was well known as a patroness in the artist world; and Cherry

CHAP.

XXX.

СНАР.
XXX.

could quite understand that Mr. Grinstead had kept it back,
with the feeling that were she his, no toil should be hers for the
future.

That was little recommendation.

Her first rise out of useless

ness gave her more exultation in its novelty than did even the
exercise of her art or the evidence of its success. There was some-
thing exquisite in the sense of power. She had made up her
mind to give Wilmet quarterly the same amount as was charged
for Lance, to set aside just enough besides to clothe herself, and
that the remainder of her earnings should liquidate Edgar's debts ;
so that some day she should write to him to come home a free
and unburthened man. Viewed in this aspect, that huge carpet-
bag, stuffed to bursting with bills, had not so frightful an aspect,
but rather seemed to her a dragon to be conquered for Edgar's
sake; and Felix laughed at her for tendering him the cheque for
her Acolyte, and asking him just to pay off a few of them before
leaving town. He had to explain to her that equity and custom
required that no one should have the preference, and that she must
wait till she could either pay off the whole, or else make payments
of so much in the pound.

'Like a bankruptcy! That can't be worth while. Those are
your business ways!'

'I fear you little know what you have undertaken. Remember,
there is no call to pay any of it.'

'Indeed! Oh! why does not that tiresome Ferdinand write?'
'There has not been time.'

'He could have telegraphed !'

Marilda was likewise much disappointed at hearing nothing; but discussion was trying to her, and she dreaded her cousins' sharp eyes so much, that it was a relief to her to escape them. Nor could they linger, for Wilmet was anxious about Lance, who was exceedingly miserable; and in his anxiety hardly knew what he was about, scarcely what he said.

If Wilmet wished him to feel what a narrow escape his had been, he broke into despair that he had not been with Edgar. The room and the room-mate that had seemed so disgusting to home-bred Felix, had fascinated him by their charming disregard of wearisome propriety, and their congenial eccentric liberty; and

the picture of Edgar coming home in his distress to his sleepy, half-conscious comrade made him wretched. He treated regret like censure, and alarmed as much as scandalised Wilmet by longings to have been there to share the wanderings, which, even if they amounted to starvation, could not, he averred, be 'half so hateful as standing behind a counter.'

Perhaps he had never before been so near showing temper as in his arguments with Wilmet, and his determination to defend Edgar through thick and thin; and she was almost relieved when after the disappointment of finding that there was no news from Ferdinand, he collapsed into one of his attacks of headache. Nay, for weeks, though about again and at work, the lad was not well nor thoroughly himself; he seemed, like Cherry, to be always watching for tidings that never came, and unlike her, he made light of whatever could be construed into censure of any taste of Edgar's.

Felix, though unwilling to pain him, thought it might be wholesome to let him see for himself the facts of Edgar's life, and accepted his assistance in sorting the bagful of revelations of selfindulgence and dissipation, which he knew Lance's lips might defend, but never his conscience.

Judging as well as they could by the dates and charges, there had not been much amiss except carelessness of expenditure before Alice Knevett's defection, eighteen months back; but this had been succeeded by a launch into every sort of excitement, so increasingly painful and disgraceful, that Felix declared at times. that it was profanation to let the proceeds of Geraldine's pure and high-minded art be spent in discharging such obligations. There were traces of an endeavour to pull up after Tom Underwood's legacy, which would have far more than cleared Edgar, if he had been satisfied to do more than merely pay 'on account,' and stave off difficulties, until the main body of the bequest had vanished between gambling and the crash of the National Minstrelsy.

Meantime the weeks of Edgar's silence and absence were running on to months, and nothing was known. Ferdinand Travis's quest had been an utter failure. Baden, Homburg, Spa, Munich, Paris, Florence, Rome, Monaco, had been searched in vain ; ingenious advertisements in the second column of the 'Times' were unnoticed;

CHAP.

XXX.

CHAP.
XXX.

and though there was no outward difference in the manner of the
two who loved him best, each bore about a heavy yearning heart-
ache and foreboding-the one, that there must be something, worse
than was known, to lead so affectionate a person thus utterly to
efface himself; the other, that some terrible unknown accident,
lake-storm or glacier-crevasse, could alone account for such pitiless
disregard of home suspense.
His relics had been hidden away like
those of the dead, with sad reverence; and his name was never
mentioned except now and then in low sad tones in a tête-à-tête.

CHAP, XXXI.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE BARBE BLONDE.

"And neither toil nor time could mar

Those features, so I saw the last
Of Waring." "You! O never star
Was lost here, but it rose afar.

Look east, where old new thousands are."

Browning.

THE first thing that really cheered Lance was an enforced holiday of the organist, when he was asked to undertake the church music in the interregnum. He threw himself into the work, consulted Dr. Miles, who lent him books, and gave him lessons; and the whole current of his thoughts became so soothed and changed, that Felix attended to no remonstrance on the danger of unsettling him, but truly declared that the few hours he weekly gave to scientific music was more than compensated by his increased power of attention, and steadiness of concentration on his business, as if he there found the balance needed by his sensitive

nature.

His head too, instead of aching more, as Wilmet had feared, suffered less; but there was a change in him. He had experienced the bitterness of sin, as nearly and as bitterly as was possible to one yet intact. He had looked down an abyss, and been forced to recognise that had he followed Edgar into what he had tried to believe merely exciting, artistic, or free, he could hardly have been spared a flaw in his life. It was when wrapt in the grandeurs of

6

sacred harmony that this sense dawned on him. It was most true of him that the joy of the Lord was his strength.' Respectability had no power over him, he had a liking for the disreputable; but his reverence and delight for the glory and beauty of praise seemed, as it were, to force him into guarding his purity of life and innocence of mind, which might otherwise have been perilled by his geniality and love of enterprise. At any rate, after the first shock to health and spirits had passed off, he retained a more staid manner, entirely abstained from his former plentiful admixture of slang, caught more of Felix's demeanour, and ceased from those kinds of sayings and doings which used only not to give his sisters an impression of recklessness because they knew he always did rectify his balance in time.

Meantime another interest arose; for John Harewood had got his promotion, and had obtained leave to come home and try for an appointment. Wilmet had reason to believe him actually on his journey, when one morning, early in October, Lance, who was waiting in the office, was startled by Will's entrance, asking, 'Have you had a telegram ?' in a scarcely audible voice.

'No! What is it, Bill?' said Lance, dismayed at his counte

nance.

'That dear Jack!' and thrusting two telegraph papers into his hand, Will threw himself down on the high desk, hiding his face, with long-drawn gasps of anguished grief, to which he could only now venture to give way; nor did Lance marvel, as he read—

Rameses, Egypt, October 3rd, 2.30 p.m. Major Harewood to Rev. Christopher Harewood, the Bailey, Minsterham,

England.

Boiler explosion. Severe scald. No pain; probably will be none. Dearest love to W. W. and all. Poor Frank Stone killed.

The other, which had arrived at the same time, was dated,

6 p.m.

Charles Chenu, Surgeon, to Christopher Harewood. Injuries not necessarily mortal, unless from extent. Wanted, good nurse, water-bed, linen, and all comforts.

'There's more hope in that!' said Lance.

'I have none ! Don't you remember poor Tom the stoker?

CHAP.

XXXI.