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I only sent to you, to tell you that it was all over. Poor boy!" Her hard eyes softened and became beautiful again, as she laid her hand upon his sleeve. "You feel it now, but you will forget. You will go about in the world and do great work, and so learn to forget, and then you will find some other girl whom you will love as much as ever you loved me-and who will have a—a— story that can be told without shame."

"Stay!" cried Gilbert-" stay, Alison. We are going far too quickly. All is not over yet. Whose word have you besides your uncle's?"

"No one's. He would not dare to say such a thing unless it were true."

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'He says, Nicolas tells me, that he has proof that there was no marriage. We shall believe that story when we see the proofs."

“There must be proofs."

"Let us first learn what they are. Until we can examine the proofs for ourselves, I for one, Alison, shall disbelieve the statement. What would the proof be? Are we to believe that your father deliberately left a paper among his private documents, stating that he was never married? This seems ridiculous. What other proof has he, or can he have?

"I believe," Gilbert continued, "that the statement is a pure fabrication. See, Alison, Mr. Stephen Hamblin is, and always has been, a man of low principle. It is his interest to make out this charge. He knows that there is no will. He knows, further, that your father was unwilling, for some reason best known to himself, to talk about his married life; and so, he calmly frames this gigantic LIE, in hope that it will be believed."

Alison shook her head.

"Let us not be the first to believe it. Until it is proved—and it never can be proved-let us -if only you and I remain loyal-go on believing in the honor of your father. My dear, you must believe it."

"You say so, Gilbert, to comfort me."

"Perhaps, partly to comfort you; but I believe solemnly that it is the truth. Surely it is more easy to believe that your father was always what you knew him to be in every relation of life-a good man—than that he lived perpetually in an atmosphere of deceit and treachery. Shake off that distrust, Alison. It is a nightmare born of the base insinuations and suggestions of that man. Hold up your head and face the world. Let us say simply, Anthony Hamblin could not have done this thing.' And even if the law allows him, which I do not think, to lay his unrighteous hand upon your fortune, go on in your belief and loyalty to your father."

"They are brave words, Gilbert," she said. "You are a strong man: you can dare and do.

I am only a weak woman. When things are said, the words are like daggers and pierce my heart. But you are right. I am fallen indeed if I can cease to believe in the goodness of my father."

"And this ring, Alison?" He held up the engaged ring.

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No," she said, "I am resolved upon that. You and I, Gilbert, will believe in my fatheryou, because you are loyal to the memory of a man who loved you, and I, because it will be all my comfort. But I will not put on that ring again until it has been proved to all the world that I need not blush with shame when my mother's name is mentioned."

Gilbert hesitated for a moment, thinking what to say, what comfort to bring.

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'In that case," he said at length with a forced smile, "we must try to penetrate the mystery and find the truth about your father's marriage. At least you will let me work for you."

"I shall be deeply grateful to you," she replied, holding out her hand to him. The hard light in her eyes was gone, but the lip trembled ́ still: "I shall be grateful, even if you find nothing. But you must remember one thing, Gilbert: until you have found out—what we seek— there must be no word of love; and, if we never find out, there must never be word of love between us.

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Do you promise not to break this

"It is a very hard promise, Alison. If you knew how I love you, you would not ask it of me."

"It is because I do know, and because-O Gilbert !-because it is as hard for me to ask as for you to promise, and because whatever happens, I must try to keep my self-respect. Promise me."

He promised, at length, kissing her fingers.

"And now," he said, "I shall go to your cousins and offer my services to unravel the mystery. I shall do nothing else until we have learned the truth."

Oh, Gilbert!" She was going to have one devoted friend at least. To be sure, she had known that he would be her knight. "But you must not ruin your practice at the bar for my sake."

The young member of the Inner Temple laughed sarcastically.

"

"My practice?" he asked. What does not exist can not be very well ruined, my dear child. I have no practice. No doubt I shall get some in course of time if I go on. At present, solicitors do not know my name, and I am briefless. Do not be disturbed about my practice."

Meantime Nicolas had found his way home and discovered his mother again in tears. This

was disagreeable. It was still more disagreeable, when he inquired the cause, to learn that, if Alison lost her inheritance, his mother would lose that three hundred pounds a year which formed, as Nicolas for the first time learned, her sole in

come.

man into an early grave. But we don't want to give him anything luxurious. This is a lovely thing from Mauritius, see: clouded and mounted; it's trustworthy, too, and heavy; but I'm not going to treat such a fellow as that to anything expensive. He'd boast of it afterward. Common

"I suppose we shall all three go to the work- ware, sir, and tough, and apt to curl about the house!" the poor lady sobbed.

"No, mother," said Nicolas. "You and Alison may go there, if you like, and if you prefer skilly to chops. I sha'n't. Come, old lady"-he rammed his hands into his pockets, and stood with his legs apart-" come, cheer up. Workhouse, indeed! Haven't you got ME? For the present, I suppose, I must enlist. I can have stoppages made for you and Alison out of the pay. That will carry you on till I'm old enough -provided I am not in the mean time killed in action to enter the firm. The least they can do for me after cheeking Uncle Stephen—and, of course, I shall horsewhip him when the time comes-is to give me a desk. Then I can support you both in comfort, with boiled rabbit and onions and pickled pig every day. That fellow Yorke, unless I am greatly mistaken in the man, which isn't usual with me, will want to cry off when he hears that Alison has got no money. I don't much like that style of man: blue eyes, curly brown hair, regular features-barber's-block features, long legs, and broad shoulders. I hope she won't take it too much to heart. After all, it will be only waiting for me. I'm the sort of man to make her really happy. I feel it in me. Cheer up, old lady."

He kissed his mother and patted her cheek. I think Mrs. Cridland was greatly comforted by the thought that her boy would be so great a stay and prop to her.

Then the boy heard Gilbert's step in the hall, and ran out.

"

Done with Alison ?" he asked. "Come this way." He led him into the study, where there stood a rack of choice canes, walkingsticks, and bamboos, brought to the Head of the House from foreign parts. It was a really valuable and beautiful collection, which Anthony had been accumulating for many years.

"This way." He stood before the rack and examined the contents critically. "I will find something that will just do for you, Yorke. See: don't take this Malacca, because it is too light for serious business: Malaccas are apt to break in the hand. Here's a Penang Lawyer, which I should like to lend you if I could trust your temper. But I can't, and you might kill your man. This Persuader is from Singapore, but they've loaded it with lead, and we must stick to the legitimate thing. The Tickler at your left hand is from Shanghai: it has tickled many a China

legs. That's all he shall get from me."

Gilbert looked on in amazement. What did the boy mean?

"Now here "-he took down a thin and longish bamboo. “This is the very thing. Common and cheap, effective, and tough. You can lay on with this without fear of its breaking. It's as springy, too, as India-rubber. That thing, sir, judiciously handled, will raise the most enormous weals, and hurt like winkin'. Phew! Ey-oh!" What do you mean?"

"You've been spooning again," said Nicolas severely, “and it's made you go silly. Didn't I promise you should stand in with me about the cowhiding? Very well, then. Take and go and do it."

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STEPHEN slept at his chambers that night. But in the morning, the strange feeling of nervous terror, under the influence of which he had left the house at Clapham, had disappeared with the impression produced by Alison's eyes and words. He began to consider whether it was prudent to retract from the stronghold of constructive possession.

It was matter of simple evidence that he went to the house on the very day of his brother's death: that might be with the view of assuming the guardianship which naturally devolved upon him, or that of asserting his own claim. He had lived there for three months, by tacit acknowledgment, he might say, the master. And yet,

on the day when he distinctly laid his pretensions monds, peaches, white-thorn, and laburnum-for before the partners, he returned to his own it was an early season-were all blossoming tochambers. Perhaps that would look something gether: the air of the young spring was heavy like distrust of his own claims. with perfume: a blackbird was singing in the garden: all round him were the delicate leaves of spring, the young foliage, yellow rather than green: a broad horse-chestnut over the stables was showing on its branches the great sticky cone, oozing all over with gum, out of which would shortly spring blossom and leaf: the dark cedars of Lebanon showed black beyond it. At his feet were all the spring flowers that he remembered of old-the London-pride, the pale primrose, the wallflower, the violet, the auricula, the polyanthus, the narcissus, and the jonquil.

This knotty point gave him uneasiness. He really did not wish to return: he was afraid of meeting his niece: he was afraid of those black eyes in the portrait which followed him round the room with reproachful gaze; but, on the other hand, he was bound to show a bold front. He had taken up a position from which there was no retreat. He had gone beyond the truth in asserting that he held written proof that there never had been any marriage at all; whereas all that he could really prove was that he had found no mention of any marriage. And there was always the terrible doubt in the background that, after all, there might have been a secret marriage, a marriage under an assumed name which further search might reveal. If it were discovered, he would be indeed ruined.

It was more than possible: it even seemed probable, now that it was too late, now that he had incurred the wrath of the other side and played his trump cards. Why was it that it seemed so impossible the day before?

Given a man of absolutely unblemished character, living a life open for all the world to see; given the fact of a child strongly resembling him, and even more strongly resembling his mother; add to these the open production and acknowledgment of the girl as his own daughter-these things made up a very strong case; so strong, that when Stephen put them together he felt cold, and began to wish that he had not been so precipitate.

It became, therefore, the more necessary to maintain the boldest bearing. He would go back to the house, install himself there, and let the servants know that he was master. As for Alison, it was her part, not his, to turn out.

The house, when he admitted himself with a latch-key, was perfectly silent. The two ladies were in the breakfast-room; Nicolas was at school; the servants were engaged in the light and leisurely occupations which they called work. They made no noise; if they talked, it was in low tones, so as not to disturb the silence which, for three months, save for the voice and the steps of Nicolas, had been almost unbroken. He stepped hurriedly, as if afraid of meeting some one, into the study. The eyes of his mother's portrait met his as he closed the door, and again the odd feeling of cold, as if the dead were reproaching him, fell upon him. He threw down his bag: took a cigar from the box nearest, lit it, and went out of this silence, which was sepulchral and oppressive, into the gardens.

The memory of those accusing eyes of the portrait followed Stephen into the garden; the lawns and flower-beds, the lilacs and laburnums, awakened unexpected associations.

"I have not seen the old garden," he murmured, "for twenty years. It is not changed at all. My mother might be on the lawn now, as she was one morning-just such a morning— thirty years ago and more, when I was a boy-"

As he spoke, Alison, coming from the vinery, crossed the lawn on her way to the house. She paused for a moment, and standing on the springy turf, not seeing her uncle, she looked round her and breathed the soft sigh of contentment which the early summer air pours into the heart of maidenhood. She had tied a handkerchief round her head. Her black eyes were full of softness, heavy with the sweet influences of the hour: her lips were parted: her head drooped a little, like a flower too happy in the sun; her figure, svelte et gracieuse, seemed soft and yielding, a very figure of Venus-how different from the wrathful eyes, the angry voice, the set lips, of yesterday!

Stephen dropped his cigar.

"My God!" he said, "I thought it was my mother! How like her she is!"

He dropped into thought, standing where he was, gazing through the shrubs upon the vacant lawn, peopled again in imagination by just such a woman as Alison, only older, by a child of five or six, himself, and a tall, raw schoolboy, his brother.

"Anthony!" he murmured, with something like a choke in his throat. He saw again in his imagination the little boy running backward and forward, shouting, laughing, dancing, while the elder boy played for him and with him, and the lady with her black mantilla watched them both with soft and loving eyes.

Stephen's own eyes softened as he recalled the pretty scene, so old, so long gone by, himself

The morning was delightful: the lilacs, al- the only survivor.

Now, to what length this softening process might have gone, had it not been interrupted, I do not know. One can only speculate. It was, in point of fact, stopped, ruined, and hopelessly destroyed, all in a moment, and in the very bud and opening. For just then a stable-boy-this was on the way to the stables-who was engaged in polishing harness, became suddenly possessed by the devil. I think, indeed, that he was the devil himself. He laughed aloud—a strident, mocking laugh, which seemed to Stephen as if his one newly-conceived germ of call it a tendency to a readiness to accept the softening influence of repentance-were the object of the stable-boy's derision.

Stephen's temper was arbitrary; his own personal submission to that temper was abject. He stepped hastily into the stable-yard and cursed that young assistant, who, to outward view, was as meek as Moses, till he trembled and shook in his shoes.

Then Stephen entered the stables themselves and began to examine them. The profitable vision of the lawn had already faded from his mind. When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, even in imagination, and for a few brief moments only, he does not like to be laughed at. He would rather relapse. Stephen relapsed. He remembered, too, that he was there to show himself as the master; he therefore cursed the groom a second time.

pulled down the blind, but the sight of him brought back the horror of the day before, and her brief joy in the season of spring was destroyed.

The garden, both broad and long, had a great lawn, set with flower-beds, immediately behind the house. At the back of the lawn was a goodly show of glass, with vineries, conservatories, hot-houses, every kind of luxurious garden-house. And at the back of the glass houses lay the kitchen-garden.

Most of the glass houses were new to Stephen. He began to reckon up the expense of keeping them up, and resolved on one more economy. It is curious to observe how jealous the prodigal son has always shown himself over the reckless extravagance of his brother.

"Who are you?" he asked a man without a coat, who was pottering among some plants, set out to enjoy the morning sun. The man was tall and spare; he had red hair; his cheek-bones were high. They called him Andrew, and he never boasted any other name.

"Who are you?" he repeated, because the man only looked at him and replied not. In fact, Andrew did not know Stephen by sight, and was just slowly beginning to make out that the stranger bore a resemblance to Miss Hamblin. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"I'm head gardener," replied Andrew, with dignity," and that's what I'm doing." "Head gardener! Why, how many of you are there?”

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"Three," said Andrew. 'Myself, a man, and Three!" Stephen echoed. "And four lazy devils for the stables. What a household! what reckless profusion !"

"Two fat coach-horses and two riding-horses and a pony," said Stephen, standing at the door of the stable, while the groom trembled outside, "and four lazy scoundrels to wait on them! a boy." You, groom-fellow, take a month's notice. Tell the coachman to take a month's notice. Tell the other men to take a month's notice. I am going to sell off all the horses-do you hear?-and this coach and the pony-carriage. A hansom cab is good enough for me. Such mad expenditure," he added, "would swamp the income of a Rothschild!"

The groom made no reply, resolving to lay the whole case immediately before the young lady. Miss Hamblin's riding-horse, Master Nicolas's pony, and all to be sold off! And the coachman, grown old in the Hamblin service, to be dismissed! And himself to take a month's notice, who hoped to remain, like the coachman, among the Hamblins all his life! "Why," thought the boy, watching Stephen's receding figure, "who's Mr. Stephen, to come and order people out of the house?" But he was alarmed.

Stephen passed through the shrubs and came into the garden itself. Alison was sitting at the window of her own room, called the breakfastroom, and saw her uncle. Instantly the day became cold to her, and the sunshine paled. She

Andrew looked stolidly at him.

"I suppose "-Stephen addressed the chief of this watchful band of three-"I suppose you think that this extravagance will be allowed to continue?"

"It's accordin' to the young leddy,” said Andrew. "You and me, we've just got to do what she says."

"You and I?" cried Stephen. "What the devil do you mean?”

"Dinna swere," said Andrew. "What I mean is that the young leddy is the maister since poor Mr. Hamblin got drouned. If ye don't like this extravagance, go and tell her, and leave me and my wark."

"I tell you what," cried Stephen, in a rage, and again obedient to that hard taskmaster, his temper, "I'll soon show you who's master here! Go and put on your coat; you shall have a month's wages instead of notice."

"Eh, eh?” said Andrew, no way discon

certed. "I reckon I'll just wait till the young arm meets such an impediment in the sleeve, the leddy tells me go."

"You scoundrel!" cried Stephen, raising his stick, "I'll break every bone in your insolent body!"

Andrew quietly allowed the spud in his hand to assume a horizontal position, so that it became at once a spear leveled at vital parts.

"Aweel," he said, with a smile of resolution, "if there's ony breaking of bones, there's always the spud."

Stephen turned away. Hitherto he had not gained much by assuming the air of the master.

He returned sulkily to the study, where he sat down, angry, ashamed, and unquiet, to examine and turn over for the tenth time those diaries of Anthony's life.

The day was not destined to be a propitious one for him. He had not been more than half an hour at his work when he became aware of a most intolerable and exasperating noise.

Unfortunately, it was Wednesday.

Any misfortunes which might happen in that household on that day were always, from a rude, instinctive recognition of the principles of cause and effect, associated with the fact that it was young Nick's half-holiday.

He was wont on Wednesdays to return home a little before one o'clock, with idle hands and a mind free from care, and therefore ready for the reception of temptation; in fact, anxious to be tempted.

Let us do the boy justice. On this occasion he thought that Stephen had left the house, after the awful row, for good, and was not coming back any more. Otherwise he would have proceeded with more discretion. Thus, he would not certainly have whistled so loudly as he ran up the steps which led from the garden entrance into the hall; nor would he, on arriving in the hall, have followed up the rich and creamy notes of his whistling- he always chose those airs which most madden and drive wild the adult hearer-by singing the same melody at the top of a voice which was not by nature musically soft, and was strident in the upper notes.

Had he known, too, that the great-coat hanging in the hall belonged to his Uncle Stephen and not to the family doctor, who, he presumed, was at the moment in conversation with his mother, he would have hesitated before drawing from his pocket a small case containing needles and thread and sewing up the lining of the sleeves. This, however, he did lightly, but with judgment, about six inches above the cuff, so that the arm on reaching the obstacle would have acquired a certain amount of momentum. Nicolas had not yet studied dynamics, but he knew that the greater the force with which a human

greater is the shock to the system. Young Nick, therefore, executing his task with the sweet smile of anticipated delight, which he proposed to enjoy from ambush, sewed up the sleeves very low down.

This done, still in ignorance of his uncle's presence, he began to whistle again, and bethought him of a certain double-shuffle which he had seen at the Christmas pantomime, and had practiced without success ever since. The noise caused by a double-shuffle on canvas is in itself far from soothing to the nerves. After the dance he proceeded to try a new figure in gymnastics, which also necessitated a good deal of inharmonious sound. He had just inverted himself, and was balancing on his two hands, trying to acquire complete control over his feet, when the door of the study opened and Stephen came out. He had been goaded almost to madness by the stamping, dancing, and whistling combined. He had borne it for a quarter of an hour. When it became intolerable he rushed out. The boy, thinking it was one of the footmen, began at once to spar at him with his feet.

"You little devil!" roared Stephen, enraged at this last insult. "Get up at once, and I'll break your neck for you!"

Young Nick sprang to his feet, and was instantly collared by the angry Stephen and dragged into the study. He realized in a moment the danger of the situation. He was hurried thither because there was the choice collection of canes to which he had himself only the day before introduced Gilbert Yorke. "How swift," observes the poet of Olney, "is a glance of the mind!" In a moment the boy remembered every cane in the rack, and wondered whether he should be operated upon by Penang Lawyer, by Malacca cane, by Singapore Persuader, or by Chinese Tickler. For the moment he gave himself up for lost. Yesterday's defiance would be also reckoned in. A caning, grim and great, was imminent. It was, however, only for a moment that young Nick abandoned hope. Stephen dragged him across the room, making swiftly for the sticks. There was not an instant to be wasted in reflection. Suddenly Stephen found the boy's legs curled round and mixed up with his own. He staggered, let go the collar of his prisoner's jacket, and fell heavily, tripped up by the craft and subtlety of the artful youth. The next moment there was a mighty crash, as the heavy table-cloth, with all its books, inkstands, papers, cigar-cases, and heterogeneous litter which piled it, was dragged down upon him. When, after a few moments of struggle, he disengaged himself and stood upright among the débris, the boy was gone. What was worse, he

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