How Grace had ever left her own Hannah could not imagine; but found afterwards it was the hard necessity of earning money, the grandmother being very poor, and Jim Dixon having gone off in search of work, and left the whole combined families on the old woman's hands. Now he reclaimed his three eldest; but disowned Grace's unfortunate babe.

"My boy-remember my boy!" implored she, as in the dim dawn of the morning her mistress left her, hoping her utter exhaustion would incline her to sleep. "Promise me that you will speak to the master, if only for the sake of my poor boy."

Rosie behaved beautifully for about five minutes! and then began to perpetrate a few ignorant naughtinesses; such as pulling down a silver fork, and a butter knife, with a great clatter; then creeping beneath the table, and trying to stand upright there, which naturally caused a bump on the head and a scream so violent, that Aunt Hannah, frightened out of all proprieties, quitted her seat and walked up and down the room, soothing in her arms the piteous little wailer.

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"This will never do," said papa sternly. Pray take the child up-stairs."

Which Hannah thankfully did, and stayed away some minutes; feeling that, after all, the nursery was the safest, the most peaceful, and the pleasantest room in the house.

Hannah promised; but when she went back to her room and thought it all over - for she could not sleep - she was sorely perplexed. There might be some mistake, even though Mr. Rivers, who was a magistrate as well as a clergyman, spoke so decidedly. Grace's arguments were strong; and the case of Mr. Melville, whom she had herself met at the Moat-House, was, to say the least, curious. She herself knew nothing of the law. If she could only speak to anybody who did know, instead of to her brother-in-law ! Once she When she came back, her brother-inthought of writing to Lady Dunsmore; law had finished breakfast, and was standbut, then, what would the Countess imag-ing gazing out of the sunshiny window in ine? No doubt, that she wanted the in- a sort of dream. His temporary crossformation for herself. And Hannah grew ness had subsided; his face, though grave, hot all over with shame and pain, and an- was exceedingly sweet. Now that she had other feeling which was neither the one grown used to it, and it had gradually nor the other, and which she did not stay brightened, if not into happiness, at least to analyze, except that it made her feel into composure and peace, Hannah somemore reluctant than ever to name the sub-times thought she had seldom seen ject again to Mr. Rivers.

Still, Grace was so unfortunate; so innocently wicked-if wickedness there was. And the projected marriage of Dixon semed much more so.

"Mr. Rivers will never allow it in his church. He surely would not sanction such a cruel thing, even if it be legal. And there is no time to lose. Whatever it costs me, I must speak to him at once."

So

thoroughly sweet a face — such a combination of the man and the woman — that beautiful woman whose picture at the MoatHouse she often looked at, and wondered what kind of young creature the first Lady Rivers had been. Apparently, not like the second Lady Rivers at all.

It was exactly his mother's smile with which Mr. Rivers turned round now.

"So the little maid is comforted at last. What influence you women have over babies, and what helpless beings we men are with them! Why, it is as much as papa can do to keep Miss Rosie quiet for five minutes, and Aunt Hannah has her the whole day. Do you never tire of her?"

With this resolution, and deadening her mind to any other thoughts, Hannah lay down, and tried to sleep, but in vain. After an hour or two of restless tossing, she dressed herself, and descended to the breakfast-room. There she found Mr. Rivers playing "Never. Nor more does Grace, who with little Rosie-contrary to his habit; has an instinctive love for children for he seldom saw her of mornings. He which all women have not, I assure you. looked a little confused at being discovered. This is what makes her so valuable as a "I sent for the child," said he. "Don't nurse." you think, Aunt Hannah, she is old enough to come down to breakfast with us?

Hannah said this intentionally; for, not two minutes before, the girl had run after

"Pardon me," she answered gently; "it is something to me to see any human being in great misery, if by any possibility that misery could be removed. Are you quite sure you are right as to the law? "I hope the young woman is better this It cannot always have been what you say, morning, and that you did not fatigue because Grace tells me of a certain Mr. yourself too much with her last night," Melville who visits at the Moat-House" said Mr. Rivers coldly; and then began and Hannah repeated the story. "Can it speaking of something else. But Hannah, be possible," added she, "that there is one bracing up her courage, determined to dis-law for the rich and another for the charge her unpleasant duty at once.

was a crime or it was not. If it was, punish it by law; if not

"You reason like a woman," interrupted Mr. Rivers angrily. "When I, a man, have already argued the question with myself in every possible way He stopped abruptly. "I mean, that you women will only see two sides of a subject the right and the wrong." "Yes, thank heaven!"

"Whereas there are many sides, and a man requires to see them all. But we are slipping into ethical discussion, which you and I are rather prone to, Aunt Hannah. Suppose, instead, we go and look at our roses?"

to say an actual wrong; and Miss Thelluson was not the woman to stand tamely by and see a wrong done to any human being if she could help it.

-

Still it was needful to be very guarded, and she might have been less courageous, had not the allusion to the Moat-House and its opinions- always more or less shallow and worldly stirred up in her something of that righteous indignation which blazed up, quite unexpectedly sometimes, in Aunt Hannah's quiet bosom.

---

"Excuse me," she said, more formally than she was used to speak, in the free and pleasant, even affectionate relations that now subsisted between Mr. Rivers Go and look at roses when a fellow- and herself. "Lady Rivers is mistress of creature was hanging on every breath of the Moat-House, but not of the House on theirs for hope or despair! Hannah had the Hill. When you did me the honour to never thought her brother-in-law so hard-give me that position, you distinctly said hearted. I should manage it as I chose. I claim my right. For Rosie's sake I must beg of you not to send away her nurse."

"I can't go," she said. "I must first speak to poor Grace. What shall I say to her?" "Whatever you like. But I think the less you say the better. And perhaps, if you could gently hint it, the sooner she leaves us the better. Of course she will have to leave."

"Do you not see? But no, you cannot you see nothing at all! muttered Bernard Rivers to himself. "Do you not perceive," continued he earnestly, "that we live in a house on a hill, morally as well as physically? That a clergyman must keep himself out of the slightest shadow of evil comment? I especially, both as rector of Easterham and as Sir Austin's son, must expect to have my acts and motives sharply criticised, and perhaps many a motive ascribed to me which does not exist. No; I have been thinking the matter over all morning, and I see no alternative. Grace ought to go. I believe Lady Rivers and all at the Moat-House would say the same."

"Good heavens! you will not see! How can I, placed as I am, keep in my house a woman who is disgraced for life?"

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Not disgraced; only unfortunate. She is a very good girl indeed. She protests solemnly she had not an idea that in marrying James Dixon she was doing wrong.'

"How you women do hold to your point!" said Mr. Rivers in great irritation almost agitation. "But she has done wrong. She has broken the law. In the eye of the law she is neither more nor less than a poor seduced girl, mother of a bastard child."

Now Hannah Thelluson was an exceedingly "proper" person. That is, though not ignorant of the wickedness of the world—the things "done in secret," as St. Paul terms them - she agreed with St. Paul that it was a shame to speak of them, unless unavoidable, and for some good end. If duty required, she would have waded through any quantity of filth; but she did not like it; she preferred keeping in clean paths if possible. Oftentimes she had been startled, not to say shocked, by Hannah drew back. She had never re- the light way in which some fast young sisted her brother-in-law before not even ladies who came about the Moat-House, in cases where she had thought him a little and even the Misses Rivers themselves, wrong though this happened seldom. talked of things which she and the girls of She had found out that, like most men who her generation scarcely knew existed, and are neither selfish nor egotistical, he was certainly would never have spoken about, remarkably just. Now she felt him to be except to their own mothers. And among unjust. To send away Rosie's fond and the qualities in Mr. Rivers which first faithful nurse would be to the child her- drew her towards him was one which woself a very harmful thing-to Grace, in men soon instinctively find out in men her circumstances, a bitter unkindness, not as men, they say, in women

- that rare

delicacy of thought and action which no outward decorum can ever imitate, because it springs from an innate chastity of soul. Thus, when in his excitement Mr. Rivers used such exceedingly plain, ugly words, Miss Thelluson looked at him in intense astonishment, and blushed all over her face.

Some people called Hannah a plain woman- - that is, she was tall, and thin, and colourless, not unlike the white lily she had been compared to; but when she blushed, it was like the white lily with a rosy sunset glow upon it. For the moment she looked absolutely pretty. Something in Mr. Rivers's eyes made her conscious that he thought so- or at least that he was thinking of her, and not of poor Grace or the subject in hand at all.

may be; and I hope, too, that you will save me from doing any more in the defiant line," added she, smiling, "by retracting what you said, and letting Grace stay."

"But how can she stay? How can you keep her miserable story a secret?"

"I should not keep it a secret at all. I would tell everybody the whole truth, explaining that we drew the line between guilt and innocence; that you refused to marry James Dixon to this new wife of his, but that the poor creature whom he had made believe she was his wife should stay under the shelter of your roof as long as she liked. That, I am sure, would be the just and right way to act. "Shall it be so?"

turing on our frozen pond there: they do not know how deep it is. No, no; I cannot thus run counter to my own people and to all the world. In truth, I dare not."

"You are a courageous woman, Hannah. But," added he, with a sad kind of smile, Why do you not oftener wear white;" it is like the courage of little boys venI like it so much," he said, softly touching her gown, a thick muslin, embroidered with black, which she thought would be a sort of medieval compromise. She was so fond of white, that it was half-regret-¡ fully she had decided she was too old to wear it. But among her new dresses she could not resist this one. It pleased her to have it noticed, or would have done, had not her mind been full of other things.

"I was going to the picnic in Langmead Wood, you know; but never mind that just now. Before I start I shall have to tell poor Grace her doom. A heavy blow it will be. Do not ask me to make it worse by telling her she must leave

us."

Bernard was silent.

"I cannot bear to resist your will," pleaded she. "When I first came here, I made up my mind to obey you that is, in all domestic things even as she would have done. But even she would have resisted you in this. Were she living now, I am sure she would say exactly as I do dear, tender-hearted Rosa!"

"Why do you name her?" said Mr. Rivers in a low tone. "Are you not afraid?"

Afraid! Why should I be? Of all women I ever knew, my sister had the truest heart, the quickest sense of justice. If she thought a thing was right, she would say itay, and do it, too-in face of the whole world. So would I."

"Would you? Are you one of those women who have courage to defy the world?"

"I think I am, if I were tried; but I never have been tried. I hope I never

"Dare not!" Hannah blazed up in that sudden way of hers, whenever she saw a wrong done-doubly so when any one she cared for did it. She had lived with Mr. Rivers nearly a year now, and whether she cared for him or not, she had never seen anything in him which made her cease to respect him, until now. "Dare not!" she repeated, almost doubting if she had heard truly. "When there is a certain course of conduct open to him, be it right or wrong, I always believed that the last reason an honest man gave for declining it would be, 'I dare not!""

The moment she had made this bitter speech one of the old sarcastic speeches of her girlhood - Hannah saw it was a mistake, that she was taking with Mr. Rivers a liberty which even a flesh-andblood sister had no right to take, and she was certain he felt it so. All the proud Norman blood rushed up to his forehead.

"I never knew I was a coward, Miss Thelluson. Since you think me one, I will relieve you of my company."

Opening the French window at once, he passed out of it into the garden, and disappeared.

Hannah stood, overwhelmed. During all the months they had lived under the same roof, and in the close intimacy that was inevitable under the circumstances, she and her brother-in-law had never had anything approaching to a quarrel. They had differed widely sometimes, but always

amicably and upon_abstract_rather than up by-and-by. Don't let us bother about personal grounds. Those "sharp words," him. Such a splendid day it is for a picwhich even the dearest friends say to one nic, and Langmead Wood at its loveliest another sometimes, had never passed be- time! Do let us enjoy ourselves." tween them. His extraordinarily sweet They did enjoy themselves, and certaintemper-oh, how keenly Hannah now ly, Hannah thought, were not much appreciated her sister's fond praise of the "bothered" by their brother's sulkiness, blessing it was to have a sweet-tempered or afflicted by his absence. The fraternal husband! his utter absence of worldli- bond is so free and easy, that, except in ness and self-conceit; and that warm good cases of very special affection, brothers heart, which, as the cloud of misery slowly and sisters can speedily console themselves passed away from him, shone out in with somebody else. everything he did and said; - all these things made quarrelling with Bernard Rivers almost impossible.