CHAPTER VIII.

AN INVITATION.

T is late in the afternoon when at last the curate reaches home. Gertrude, the very first spare moment she can get, runs to the study, hoping to have a full and particular account of his visit to

Grey Towers.

But the scene that meets her eyes makes her pause at the door, then creep noiselessly into the room.

Leonard is fast asleep in his arm-chair, his head thrown back in an uneasy position, his whole attitude that of a man who is fairly worn out with weariness of mind and body.

Lotty, his favourite companion, and "study kitten," as he is wont to call her, is lying in his arms in a sound slumber also. Her rich masses of sunny curls are clustering like floss silk on his shoulder; her sweet, calm, pink face looks like a very rose-bud as it nestles against his black coat.

Gertrude, with a soundless step, goes over to the open window, the air from which is swaying the curtain to and fro behind Leonard's head with a dangerous draught; she closes it gently, draws down the blind to shut out the slanting rays of the setting sun, and then quietly stands contemplating the group.

Her husband looks very pale; there are deep lines on his brow she has not noticed before, and there is an expression of anxiety in his countenance that touches Gertrude's very heart.

"I ought to have gone to Grey Towers with him," muses

she.

"What a selfish creature I was to shrink from encountering the mere fatigue, when I might have kept him from feeling the going there so much! Of course it was a trial to him to see the dear old place under such circumstances-he, a mere stranger in what was once a well-loved home. Poor old fellow! how it must have half broken his heart; mere bodily fatigue would never make him sleep like that."

Then with a low sigh, Gertrude slips out of the room, and leaves the sleeping pair to their repose.

The intense heat and closeness of the weather culminates at length in a heavy thunder-storm. In the evening Mrs. Thwaites sits with her work at a small round table near the dining-room window, and tries to set in her stitches despite the fast gathering darkness. The rain comes down in torrents, forming miniature inky rivulets in the dirty street outside.

Presently Leonard comes in from the study, still looking pale and weary.

“

"I've shut up my books, Gerty; for I find my head won't stand much study this evening."

"What can be the matter with you?" asked Gertrude quickly.

"Nothing much, I believe; perhaps I have been feeling the effects of the coming thunder-storm."

He draws a chair near the round table and watches the dreary splash of the rain outside.

"This rain will do a great deal of good. Burges was telling me this morning the ground is all cracked and broken into fissures with the intense dryness. By-the-bye, I have a note in my pocket for you, Gerty."

"For me! Who is it from?"

"It is merely an invitation from Mrs. Burges; she wants us to dine at Grey Towers to-morrow week."

"Oh, Leonard! need we go there?"

"I half accepted the invitation, Gerty. Mrs. Burges was so overwhelmingly pressing-but of course if you really have

any great objection to going, the remedy is in your own hands-you can decline for us both."

"It isn't that I altogether object, Leonard, but it seems so strange to be on visiting terms there. I verily believe all Eastown had decided you and Tom Burges were to be mortal foes. Everybody here says it was all by trickery he got Aunt Hetty to make that odious will in his own favour, to the exclusion of Ralph and yourself.""

"Strange how a rumour of that sort takes root and spreads." "But if it is not a rumour, Leonard-but a real, positive fact, oughtn't you to show some resentment about it? People here say Aunt Hetty's own maid was a paid spy in Tom's service, and that every single thing that went on at Grey Towers or Eastown, was reported to him during Mrs. Burges last years. Did Tom say much about her, or her strange will, this morning?"

"Aunt Hetty's name was never once mentioned, and mind you, Gertrude, I don't think Tom considers the will at all a strange one. He is perfectly satisfied with it, and accepts his inheritance as a right."

"Satisfied! I should think he is satisfied, now he has got all he has been scheming for," exclaims Gertrude in an indignant tone of voice, and with a very visible flashing of her brown eyes.

"Now don't get angry, little woman! We shall never know the true state of the case, I suppose-so it behoves us not to be prejudiced by these reports that after all may be but the hatching of some mischievous minds. For myself I dare not be actuated either by malice or envy towards Tom; nay, I would not encourage those hateful feelings in my heart towards him for ten times the value of Grey Towers."

Mrs. Thwaites breaks off her cotton with a jerk, and tries to thread her needle in the dim twilight, to the great danger of spoiling her sight-but she does not reply—and presently the curate adds,—

"The more I consider the case the more I am convinced

E