since the calamity, and he hoped it was the presage of better things. It was, in reality, only the lifting of the clouds for a brief moment. Stephen had never shown himself more kindly, more thoughtful, more sympathetic, than on this occasion. Alison wondered how they had all come to overlook these fine qualities of geniality and tenderness. They accounted fully, she concluded, for her father's steady affection for him. By what sad accident was it that the cousins regarded the Black Hamblin, and had taught her to regard him, with so much dislike and suspicion? What was it in him, what had he done, that her father should so often have been rendered moody for days together? Why, this spendthrift, this prodigal, this man who was the Awful Example quoted by Aunt Flora to young Nicolas in a solemn warning, was a delightful companion, full of anecdote, of ready sympathy, quick to feel, of kind heart, and wide experience. Occasionally something was said which jarred. That, however, was due, no doubt, to his inexperience of the calm, domestic life. Thinking thus, while Stephen talked, Alison caught the eyes of young Nick, who blushed immediately with an unwonted confusion. They were both thinking the same things. Mrs. Cridland was not so ready to accept the new aspect of things without suspicion. She naturally reserved her opinions until they were in the drawing-room. "Stephen," she said, when arrived there, "reminds me of what he used to be five-andtwenty years ago, when he wanted to get anything out of his mother. Poor soul! he would cajole and caress her until she gave it him, and then he was away at once and back to his profligate courses in town. A heartless and wicked boy!" "My dear auntie," Alison expostulated, "surely we ought to forget old stories if we can. I suppose my uncle is no longer what you say he was. "I don't know, my dear," said her aunt, sharply. "We never inquired into Stephen's private life after his mother died. He may be repentant, but I doubt it." other set of cousins, that there was a peculiar Hamblin face, common to all-" but you are wonderfully like your grandmother, the Señora, just as Stephen is." At this moment the door flew open, and young Nick appeared, his hands in his pockets, his cheeks flushed, tears standing in his eyes. "What is the matter, my boy?" cried his mother. "I thought you were with your uncle Stephen." "He is not my uncle; I will never call him by that name again!" cried the boy, bursting into tears. He is only a first cousin once removed." "Why-" "First cousin, once removed," he repeated; "let him be proud of that, if he likes. Never mind, mother. I'll be even with him.” The prospect of retributive justice pleased the boy so much that he instantly mopped up his tears, and, though he sat in a corner with an assumption of resentment, he had really resumed his cheerfulness. In fact, Stephen, after the ladies left him, did not observe that Nicolas remained behind, and was seated beside the fire with a plate of preserved ginger before him. Stephen, with his shoulder turned to the boy, and thinking himself alone, began to meditate. His meditations led him, presumably, into irritating grooves, for presently he brought his fist down upon the table with a loud and emphatic "D-n!" Young Nick had just finished his preserved ginger, and was considering what topic would be best to begin upon with this genial successor of Uncle Anthony, when the ejaculation startled him. "Birds in their little nests agree,'" said the boy, softly, "to do without the wicked D." Stephen turned round sharply. "What the devil," he cried, springing to his feet, "do you mean by watching me? Go away; go to your mother; get out, I say!" The injunction, being enforced by a box on the ear, left no room for doubt; and Nicolas, outraged, insulted, and humiliated, retreated, as we have seen, to a place where he could revolve "Perhaps," said Alison, “every one was hard a stroke of revenge. But his confidence in Steupon him for the follies of his youth." phen Hamblin was rudely destroyed, and it never returned. "I do not know whether they were unduly hard upon him. He caused them terrible anxiety. However, that is all over. Let us, as you say, forget it. What a strange thing it is, child, that you are so like him! Sometimes, when I see you side by side, it seems as if you are more like Stephen than your poor father. You have the Hamblin face, of course-we all have that" -it was a theory among the cousins, who perhaps no more resembled each other than any Stephen, with bland smile, presently appeared, and asked for a cup of tea. He took no notice of the boy, who turned his back, and pretended to be absorbed in a book. He was considering whether cobbler's wax, popguns, powder in tobacco, apple-pie beds, nettle-beds, watered beds, detonating powders, booby-traps, deceptive telegrams, alarming letters, or anonymous postcard libels would give him the readiest and most complete revenge, and his enemy the greatest annoyance. At the same time, "Of course-of course. you may give me those I. O. U.'s." He exchanged a bundle of childish letters for His indignation was very great when, his cup of tea finished, Stephen invited Alison to go with a roll, docketed and endorsed, which Alison gave him to the study. "Like him," he cried, when the door was shut." Old lady, it's clear that you and me will have to pack up. You think this house big enough to hold Stephen the First Cousin once removed—bah !—and you and me, do you? That's your greenness. Mark my words. it is!" Bunk "Nicolas, dear, pray do not use those vulgar words. At the same time, if I only knew how far Stephen is sincere—” The words were wrung out of the poor lady by anxiety on her own account, and not from the habit of discussing delicate affairs with her only son. Nicolas, indeed, could not know that his mother's only income had been that granted her by Anthony Hamblin for acting as housekeeper, duenna, companion, and first lady of the establishment for Alison his daughter. And as yet she did not know, and was still prayerfully considering, the possible limitations of the new guardian's powers. "I am going to ask you, Alison," said Stephen, "to assist me in going through some of your father's letters and papers. We must do it, and it will save me the feeling of-of-prying into things if you will help me with the letters. Not to-night, you know. It will take several days to go through them all." Alison acceded, and Stephen began opening the drawers and desks and taking out the papers, to show her the nature of the task before them. A man of fifty, if he be of methodical habits, has accumulated a tolerable pile of papers, of all kinds. A City man's papers are generally a collection of records connected with money. Anthony Hamblin was no exception to the rule. He had kept diaries, journals, bills, and receipts with that thoughtfulness which belongs especially to rich men. They have already made their money, they know what it is worth, they are careful not to lose it, and they are determined to get good value for it if they can. Men who are still piling up the dollars are much less careful. The bulk of the papers consisted of such documents. Besides them, there were bundles of Alison's let ters. “Alison," said Stephen, softly, "here are your early letters tied up. Take them. It would be like prying into your little secrets to read them." She laughed, and then sighed. "Here are more bills," she said, "and here are papers marked 'I. O. U.' As for my letters, anybody might read them." VOL. VII.-4 him. He opened the packet with a curious smile. "Ah!" he said, "twenty years old." He rapidly selected those which bore his own name, and placed them aside. "These are a form of receipt. I see your cousin Alderney Codd's name among them. He was one of those who abused your father's kindness shamelessly, I think.” Presently Stephen grew tired of sorting the papers. He leaned back in his chair, sighed, and asked if he might take a cigar without Alison running away. She explained that her father had always smoked a cigar in the evening. Then they drew chairs to the fire-it had been a cold day of east wind-and sat opposite each other below the portrait of the Señora. And they were both so like her! Alison thought her grandmother's eyes were resting sadly on Stephen. "He never told you of his intention as regards myself—you know that it was always intended that the injury done me under my father's will should be repaired by Anthony." "I did not know," said Alison; "but I suppose that my cousin Augustus knows." "There seems to have been no will, so that the carrying out of your father's wishes"-Stephen said this carelessly, as if there could be no doubt what they were-" will devolve entirely upon you. Fortunately, I have a note, somewhere, of his proposed intentions." It was an inspiration, and he immediately began to consider how much he might ask for. Of course my father's wishes will be law to me," Alison said, with a little break in her voice. "Naturally," Stephen replied, with solemnity. "You know, I suppose, something of the fortune which you will inherit ?" "No, I have never asked." "I know"-Stephen had pondered over it for years; "the personalty will be sworn under two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The real property consists of the little estate in Sussex, this house and garden, and a few other houses. Then there are the pictures, furniture, books, and collections: you are a very fortunate girl. If I had all the money-" He stopped and hesitated. "If I had had it twenty years ago, when Alderney Codd and I were young fools together, I dare say it would have gone on the turf, or in lansque " net, baccarat, and hazard. A very good thing, Alison, that the fortune went to the steady one.' He laughed and tossed his head with so genial and careless a grace that Alison's heart was entirely won. She put out her hand timidly, and took his. "Dear Uncle Stephen," she said, "he did not see enough of you in the old days. We were somehow estranged. You did not let us know you. Promise me that you will relieve me of some part of this great load of money." "Poor Alison!" Stephen replied, blowing a beautiful horizontal circle of blue smoke into the air, "you overrate the spending capacities of your fortune. They are great, but not inexhaustible. Still I am not above helping you, provided my demands fall well within your father's expressed intentions." What could be more honorable than this? and who was to know that Stephen was at the very moment considering at what figure he could put those intentions? Then he changed the subject. 'I hope," he said softly, "that we may find something among all these papers that will tell us of your mother." "My father never spoke of her," said Alison. "It seems hard that I am never to know anything about my own mother and her relationsnot even to know when and how she died." "It is hard," replied Stephen. "And your father never spoke of her, not even to you?" "Never, except once, when he warned me solemnly that I must never speak of her." "It is very strange!" Stephen sat up and laid aside his cigar. "Tell me your earliest recollections, Alison. Let us see if something can not be made out." "I remember," said the girl, "the sea, and Brighton, and Mrs. Duncombe. Nobody ever came to see me except papa. We knew no one. Mrs. Duncombe did not tell me anything except that my mother was dead. Then, when I was ten years of age, papa came and took me away." "Why did he hide you so long?" "I did not ask him. I was too happy to be with him always. Yes, he said that he could not get on without me any longer. That made me happier still." "I see," Stephen answered, reflectively. "Of course it did. Naturally. But it made you no wiser." "I suppose papa had a reason. I have sometimes thought that he must have married beneath him, and that he did not wish me to know my mother's relations." "Yes; that is possible." He mused in silence for a while, and presently lifted his head. Somehow his face was changed. The light had gone out of his eyes; they were hard; his voice was harsh and grating; his manner was constrained. "I have kept you too long over business details," he said, rising and holding out his hand. "Good night, Alison. If I find any documents that will interest you, I will set them aside. Take your own letters. I shall learn nothing from them, that is very certain." It was the old, harsh, ungracious Stephen Hamblin whom she had always known. What was the matter with him? He When Anthony, ten years before, brought home with him unexpectedly, and without preparing anybody's mind for such an apparition, a little girl whom he introduced as his daughter, there was no one more surprised than Stephen, or more disgusted. He had regarded himself as the heir to the Hamblin estates and wealth. had pleased his selfish spirit in imagining himself the successor: only one life between himself and this great fortune. His brother was eight years his senior. He might drop off any day, though it is not usual for men in their forties to drop off suddenly. Still it was on the cards, and Stephen Hamblin was by no means above desiring the death of any man who stood between himself and the sun. And then came this girl, this unlooked-for, inopportune girl, with the ungrateful assurance that Anthony was a widower, and this was his child. It was not in nature that such a man should receive in a spirit of meekness such a blow. Stephen hated the girl. As he grew older, and became, through his own wastefulness, entirely dependent on his brother, he hated her more and more, daily saying to himself that if it had not been for her he would have been the heir. Yet he might have known that no insurance company, which could have got at the facts, would consider his life as so good as his brother's, although there were eight years between them. At first he accepted Anthony's statement. The girl was his child; his wife was dead: no use asking any more questions. There was nothing left but to sulk. Then suspicions awakened in his mind. Who was the girl's mother? When had Anthony married her? He had encouraged these suspicions, and brooded over them, until they assumed in his mind almost the shape and distinct outline of certainty. He was wronged and cheated by his brother, because, he declared to himself, his brother could never have been married at all. Such a man could never have had such a secret. But time passed on, and he forgot his old suspicions. At his brother's death they did not at first return. He belonged, by nature, to the fine old order boy. Alderney Codd may come to see me, now of murdering uncles. He could have been a and then. None of the rest. Flora Cridland rival Richard III.; yet the softening touch of and her pink and white brat may go to the devil. civilization prevented him from so disposing of And as for Alison, I suppose I shall have to his niece. Then the partners' proposal seemed make her an allowance. Yes. I will certainly to offer some sort of compromise; and he thought make her an allowance." he would arrange with his niece, on her coming of age, for some solid grant, "in accordance with her father's expressed intentions." Plenty of time to put them on paper. Plenty of time. Now, the old dream came back to him. It returned suddenly. The talk with Alison revived it. He lay back in his easy-chair when she was gone, and gave the reins to a vigorous imagination. He saw, in his dream, the girl dispossessed, because her father was never married: he saw her taken away by some newly-found relations, quite common people who let lodgings, say, at Ford or Hackney. And he saw himself in actual possession: a rich man, with the way of life still stretching far before him. "Forty-five," he said, "is the true time for enjoyment. Hang it! we take our fling too early; if we only knew, we should reserve ourselves till five-and-thirty at earliest. Why do they let the young fellows of one-and-twenty fling themselves away, waste, and spend, get rid of their money and their health, before they know what pleasure means? One must be forty before the full flavor comes into the cup of life. I shall enjoy-I shall commit no excesses, but I shall enjoy. "I suppose I shall be senior partner in the house. Well, I will stay there long enough to sack those respectable Christians, my cousins. They shall go out into the cold, where they sent He felt so virtuous as he made this resolution that he became thirsty again, and proceeded no further until he had taken off the greater portion of a second soda-and-brandy. Then he sat down and resumed his dream. "Yes. Alison shall have an allowance. The world shall not say that I am stingy, and treat her badly. How much? I should say five hundred a year, paid quarterly, would well meet the case. Just what they propose to give me." He thought a little over this, because it was an important thing to decide, and drank more brandy-and-soda. "These cigars of Anthony's are quite the best I ever smoked," he said. "I shall not sell them. Nor the wine. Nor the brandy, by Jove!" He filled another glass of brandy-andsoda. "Five hundred a year is too much, altogether too much for a girl in such a position. I think anybody will say I have done the thing handsomely if I make it three. Yes, three hundred a year will be an ample-a generous allowance." Then he went on thinking and drinking alternately. The dream was the most delicious flight of fancy he had ever essayed. "Three hundred?" he murmured sweetly. "Too much. It would only tempt adventurers on the lookout for a girl with money. What she requires is to have her actual wants supplied. And that," he said with firmness, “is what Alison, poor girl! shall have from me. Her position is certainly not her own fault. A hundred pounds a year. Two pounds a week! Why, it means more than three thousand pounds at three per cent. Three thousand pounds! Quite a large slice out of the cake. A really handsome sum." THE HE thoughts I am about to set down are not my thoughts, for, as my friends say, I have gived up the practice of thinking, or it may be, as my enemies say, I never had it. They are the thoughts of an acquaintance who thinks for me. I call him an acquaintance, though I pass as much of my time with him as with my nearest and dearest; perhaps at the club, perhaps at the office, perhaps in metaphysical discussion, perhaps at billiards-what does it matter? Thousands of men in town have such acquaintances, in whose company they spend, by necessity or custom, half the sum of their lives. It is not rational. doubtless; but then "Consider, sir," said the great talking philosopher, "should we become purely rational, how our friendships would be cut off. We form many such with bad men because they have agreeable qualities, or may be useful to us. We form many such by mistake, imagining people to be different from what they really are." And he goes on complacently to observe that we shall either have the satisfaction of meeting these gentlemen in a future state, or be satisfied without meeting them. For my part, I do not feel that the scheme of future happiness, which ought by rights to be in preparation for me, will be at all interfered with by my not meeting again the man I have in my mind. To have seen him in the flesh is sufficient for me. In the spirit I can not imagine him; the consideration is too subtile; for, unlike "the little man who had (for certain) a little soul," I don't believe he has a soul at all. He is middle-aged, rich, lethargic, sententious, dogmatic, and, in short, is the quintessence of the commonplace. I need not say, therefore, that he is credited by the world with unlimited common sense. And for once the world is right. He has nothing original about him, save so much of sin as he may have inherited from our first parents; there is no more at the back of him than at the back of a looking-glass-indeed less, for he has not a grain of quicksilver; but, like the looking-glass, he reflects. Having nothing else to do, he hangs, as it were, on the wall of the world, and mirrors it for me as it unconsciously passes by him-not, however, as in a glass darkly, but with singular clearness. His vision is never disturbed by passion or prejudice; he has no enthusiasm and no illusions. Nor do I believe he has ever had any. If the noblest study of mankind is man, my friend has devoted himself to a high calling; the living page of human life has been his favorite, and indeed, for these many years, his only reading. And for this he has had exceptional opportunities. Always a man of wealth and leisure, he has never wasted himself in that superficial observation which is the only harvest of foreign travel. He despises it, and in relation to travelers is wont to quote the famous parallel of the copper wire, “which grows the narrower by going farther." A confirmed stay-at-home, he has mingled much in society of all sorts, and exercised a keen but quite unsympathetic observation. His very reserve in company (though, when he catches you alone, he is a button-holder of great tenacity) encourages free speech in others; they have no more reticence in his presence than if he were the butler. He has belonged to no cliques, and thereby escaped the greatest peril which can beset the student of human nature. A man of genius, indeed, in these days is almost certain, sooner or later, to become the center of a mutual admiration society; but the person I have in my mind is no genius, nor anything like one, and he thanks Heaven for it. To an opinion of his own he does not pretend, but his views upon the opinions of other people he believes to be infallible. I have called him dogmatic, but that does not at all express the absolute certainty with which he delivers judgment. "I know no more,” he says, "about the problems of human life than you do" (taking me as an illustration of the lowest prevailing ignorance), “but I know what everybody is thinking about." He is didactic, and therefore often dull, and will eventually, no doubt, become one of the greatest bores in Great Britain. At present, however, he is worth knowing; and I propose to myself to be his Boswell, and to introduce him-or, at least, his views-to other people. I have entitled them the Midway Inn, partly from my own inveterate habit of storytelling, but chiefly from an image of his own, by which he once described to me, in his fine egotistic, rolling style, the position he seems to himself to occupy in the world. When I was a boy, he said [which I don't believe he ever was], I had a long journey to take between home and school. Exactly midway there was a hill with an Inn upon it, at which we changed horses. It was a point to which I looked forward with very different feel |