"He was like Fred, was he not, mother?" I interposed quickly.

"Yes, the resemblance is striking. You would see it, above all, in the portrait which was taken of your cousin Frederick, at the age of fifteen, and which your uncle, from some odd whim, had inserted in the wall at the head of the back staircase. His own room was then just at the top of the flight, and I fancy he liked to gaze on this well-loved face as he went slowly up steps"

the steps

"Then he was fond of him once ?" I murmured.

"Fond, Ellie! Ah, it was more than that-there was the danger. He idolised him, adored him, and as we never enshrine anything or any one in this world in too high a place but it is shattered from its throne, thus he had to look later upon a ruin. Love is a rightful instinct of our nature, but not idolatry. That is a false, failing feeling, and the proof is, that let us be disappointed in the object of our devotion, and anger instantly chases away affection; we would crush what we once worshipped."

"But what did he do, mother? What did this poor Fred do?"

"You shall hear it all, Ellie, but I must tell you first of what happened beforehand. Your uncle grew daily more strange and miserly. He had his son educated, it is true, at a good school, but in small

minor matters which would have given him pleasure, and have responded to the needs and wishes of his young buoyant heart, he was kept sternly in check. There was the capricious, contradictory system of allowances and restraints adopted which is peculiar to some phases of the penurious mind. Fred never knew exactly what extravagance might be sanctioned or what petty expenditure would be condemned. It is scarcely surprising that under such discipline he grew both reckless and reticent. He could not make a friend or confidant of his father, for he reproved him often for an act of generosity, and again, showed little or no concern about money which went in some ostentatious outlay. He entered a college at Oxford, and I believe he fell in here with a wild set of companions. In any case, debts were contracted which he feared to disclose, and he grew less and less open with his father. It was just at this time that your brother Fred was born, and was named after his grandfather Merlin and his cousin. I was living then in a small house in a country town, where your father practised as a physician. My mother had died a few years previously, and the heirloom of her valuable diamonds had descended to me, as her only daughter."

My mother paused here for a second, and at the moment we heard a step in the passage outside, and Willis opened the door.

"My master is awake," he said, "but he doesn't seem no better. I think we ought to send for the doctor."

Uncle had such a distaste to the presence of a physician, or possibly rather to the fees which it entailed, that none had been summoned as yet. He saw my father occasionally in a friendly way, and allowed him to prescribe for him; and it was a visit from him that my mother thought it best to propose

now.

"He could come early in the morning, Willis,” she said. "It might only alarm your master to bring any one in to-night.”

Willis agreed to this. In fact, I think he had intruded on us without any special cause, or wish for immediate action, merely with the design of being disagreeable. I had never liked the man from the time I was a child, and he knew this so well that he took revenge for my prejudice by a temper bordering upon incivility. He had contrived to interrupt the conversation now which I so much wished to prolong, and he bustled over his miserable tea-things and their removal with the same provoking dilatoriness as before.

CHAPTER XII.

TOLD IN THE NIGHT.

"A sacred burden is this life ye bear,
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly.
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,

But onward, upward, till the goal ye win."
F. A. KEMble.

AN interruption is always irritating, but I must say I rebelled against it, especially when it came from the part of Willis. As if he had wished purposely to provoke me, he did not retire with his tea-tray, but lingered on, talking to my mother about uncle and his failing health, and emphasising his own attention and devotion to him as something priceless and unprecedented. It was well known that uncle had remembered the man liberally in his will, and thus the disinterested nature of his care was not to me particularly striking.

His oration ended, my mother had to go up to see the invalid, and thus she had no opportunity for continuing her recital till we were together in our room

at night. She told me then of a sudden shock she had had while our Fred was still a baby, by hearing of a dreadful rupture between her brother and his son. The latter had been forced at last by pressing necessity to confess his debts, and his father's rage knew no bounds. To require of him his treasured hoards to satisfy rapacious and disreputable claimants was like the demand of a burglar. He would as soon have given up his life, and his son was literally driven from his doors.

"He had been disappointed and deceived in him, it is true," pursued my mother; "but he was his child. still, and this was treating him like a hireling. He rushed thence to ruin, to despair, tried at races and gambling-tables to gain what no entreaties could get, and became more deeply involved."

She paused again, and remembering where she had broken off before, I interposed with eagerness :

"And the diamonds, mother? You were telling me something about them when Willis came in tonight."

"Yes, Ellie, and I will end all in a word or two now. These gems being very precious, had been enclosed in an ancient casket, and as my mother, Lady Eleanor, had been in failing health for some years before her death, and unable to go into company, they were deposited at her banker's. At her decease, your uncle George came in for a good deal of money which was lying there, and when he was removing it, he