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this frail Lily than he had ever been even to his own Charles.

Miss Gibbins took advantage of this mood, to suggest that, in the circumstances, it would be better to remove the child to Arlton, lest (she said) the sight of it should retard the father's recovery by recalling his terrible loss. This was agreed to at once, and from out the vague conflicting notions which this proposal excited in Mr. Barton's brain, one seemed to linger until it grew definite and fixed, and that one was that Charles had been smitten thus fearfully by the stroke which laid his wife in the dust; hence the forbearance of the sympathizing father, who would not for very mercy's sake allude to the painful truth that Sarah was indeed gone.

Bethia was at once installed in the double capacity of housekeeper at Arlton and nurse to the child which the dying mother had bequeathed to her especial care. For this great charge she had no particular qualification beyond that of scrupulous fidelity and a heart brimful of genuine kindness. She had had little or no experience in the management of either house or child, for in early life she had been left to make her own way in the world with a small property which she converted into an annuity, and which she sought to eke out by a system of private millinery combined with a genteel sort of general usefulness. Her unaffected piety had won from the first upon the kindred sympathies of Sarah, and especially as the hour of her great trial drew on, and her dependence on religious consolations became needful as her daily bread, when the brief luxury of human love had failed her. She had drawn the faithful companion nearer and nearer to her heart; until, in that black hour of perished human hope and fleeting human life, she had bequeathed the solemn charge to her care. And truly few mothers could match the nurse hired with a mother's dying love and blessing, in the wise and kindly solicitude of every hour through each day and the many years of childhood, until infirmity overtook Bethia, and the return of the father from his long wanderings, rendered it desirable that she should remove from the immediate charge of the house and its beautiful young mistress. We have already seen her in circumstances which show her quaint benevolence,

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and it is hardly too much to say that the lessons of practical goodness which her own affectionate nature drank in from the gentle duties of her former life, have been scattered like prized gifts among the homes of Arlton, to which, though amongst the latest professed, she had long been, and still is— "The Friend of the 'Friends of Home.'"

CHAPTER X.

REMORSE AND DESPAIR.

WHEN Charles was sufficiently recovered, he rose apparently an altered man. He was taciturn and peevish. He made no inquiries concerning that dreadful night, and when he had gathered from his father's conversation that the child was gone, was well, and well cared for, he gravely announced his intention of breaking up the establishment and going abroad. Once only did he steal from the house in the grey evening to visit the resting-place of his lost wife. In loneliness, in uttermost despair, and as he afterwards would say with shame, each thought a reproach, inviting to self-murder, he stood by the grave which he knew that his own cruelty had dug out for the beloved one. Months ago they had stood together there, and she had said, "Surely now God would show compassion to the race which had been so often smitten with untimely death." And now? He was himself the curse the death-dealer, whose untimely blows she had so humbly deprecated. Aghast, and riveted to the awful spot, still no prayer of repentance broke the appalling silence of the temple of death; no purpose of amendment, and no vow of self-sacrifice, even with a view to self-redemption. He felt as almost all do feel who have clouded their moral nature by the insidious self-indulgence to which he had yielded-that he had been hardly dealt with—that his punishment was not only greater than he could bear, but for such trifling, amiable sin as his, far greater than he deserved. His state of mind was rebellion-fierce resentment against the God who had sought in so many ways to warn him, and thus to save him from this hour.

Mr. Barton felt that he was under all conceivable obligation to leave no means untried, if by any means he might lead this dear boy to the paths of righteousness and peace. He approached the theme with more than his ordinary confidence, for he judged that affliction had softened the heart of his son, as it had ever softened his own. But he misread those signs of deep dejection; they were the index of rage rather than of subduing grief. Then, again, he relied upon his own tender and self-neglecting watch through the long weeks of sickness. Surely Charles would perceive the greatness of his love and recognize its well-earned right to counsel; now, too, when they were about to part for years, perhaps for ever—the tie of sonship to be severed almost as much as had the tie of marriage been. But as he looked into the retreating, expressionless eye of his child, he misinterpreted still. Bitter was this first pang of downright defeat. He had held off for months from the direct attack, deterred by fears of failure, and of that which comes after failure of loving endeavours estrangement; but he had considered well all favourable circumstances, and inspired with the most joyous faith in his approaching triumph, he had advanced only to encounter a resolute and final shock, to be trampled on and spurned by the foot which he sought to turn aside from the ways of death. He appealed by all those arguments, again and again, which, if ever they had been used to him, he knew would have converted him at once. He touched with gentle and then with severe hand, the sore points of his boy's experience, reserving only the fatal secret, which even that intense passionate desire to save could not wring from his closed heart. All in vain ! The reply was simple, clear, cruel, final. "Father, forbear, and do not hope to change me; for I desire no change; Í accept my fate as it is; it is not of my seeking; it shall not be modified by my consent. I did not merit all this cruel suffering. I could not baffle the Eternal, so as to ward off the blow; but my pride will sustain me. I need no other grace; it is the grace of resistance and true endurance; such grace is mine, and none shall defraud me of it. Besides, hear me, father, for the last time; do not hope to turn me, for I tell that you you do not know me at all. I thought you did;

now I am sure you do not; for had you, indeed, known me, your affection would have prevented you from using arguments and appeals every one of which has done more than all I have gone through to confirm me in utter self-abandonment, and in defiance of my fate. Let us part in peace; for believe me, if there be a spark of human kindness left within me, I will feed it with kind thoughts of you, as with incense, and may God, for your sake (not mine) waft the scanty fragrance towards you in your sorrowful and lonely age."

Mere human love, then, failed to turn the wanderer from his errors, or, at least, to guide him homewards, as all milder influences had failed before. Decency, courtesy, the demands of social and public life, had wasted their welcome, and their frown alike, on the self-abandoned. Remained there any power above all these; or must the warm heart of a pious father, there, and then, and henceforth for ever grow chill and callous? Hope did not die; in such a heart it was immortal, but it changed wholly into prayer. Arrangements were made in the course of two months for carrying out the intention of the still ailing and stricken widower. His departure would have taken place earlier, but for the sudden death of his neighbour, Sir Ethelred, and the arrival of his heir-at-law, Colonel O'Risk, in the neighbourhood. Singularly enough Charles recognized in him one of his old acquaintances and former partisans in London, though he had never supposed it possible that this light-hearted, affectionate, generous O'Risk, could be that same blood-thirsty, evil-designing, mean, halfcrazed devil, whom he had so often helped to curse in company with the late worthy Sir Ethelred. O'Risk was fond enough of the O appurtenance in the old days, but he thought it rather an encumbrance in the altered circumstances of the present, and accordingly Charles was not in a position to identify or recall the man himself by the aid of the superb mourning card" with Colonel Risque's compliments." When they met, however, it would have seemed to an observer that there must have been a very great amount of devoted friendship at the bottom of both hearts under the show of very ordinary civilities in the old days of political friendship. For a time it was just possible that Charles's plan might be conside

rably modified by this event; but it turned out, after a process of mutual unbosoming, that Colonel Risque had not recanted his Radical notions on becoming a great landed proprietor, and that Charles had by no means cordially and thoroughly recanted; further, it appeared that the old leaven of Toryism was at present far too strong, and fusty, and fermenting, to allow a Radical any chance of peaceful residence in those parts. Accordingly both jumped to the conclusion at once, that they could do no wiser thing than pack up traps, and emigrate everywhere for a few years.

CHAPTER XI.

GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION.

As the necessary arrangements drew to a close, Mr. Grogram was, of course, in great bustle and high feather. Here indeed was an opportunity not to be lost. His own life was verging to the climacteric, but still, what might not be accomplished in “several years,” by unceasing regard to his own interests in close connection with these neighbouring estates, ownerless to all (his) intents and purposes, and a helpless prey to such intents, whatever they might be. Brought into frequent contact with the menial Mottram, that contact became collision and mutual suspicion. The faithful body-servant, following his usual most trusty method, gave way to the most injurious suspicions of the man of law, injurious mainly because they were all correct. He never voluntarily allowed the parchment-faced thief to be alone with the master or the master's papers, contriving at all turns to obtain some secondary employment which would keep him within reach of deedboxes, clasped ledgers, and the like, whithersoever they wandered, and even going so far as to request the favour of being left on the spot to look after things, alleging his aversion to foreign travel as the sole reason for this request. This application was refused by Charles, but with so much genuine compliment that Mottram's soul was touched deeply, and he solemnly wished he were cut in halves, that the eye part might stay in England and the feet part go with the

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