CHAPTER XII.

EDITH MAULEVERER.

"There is nothing certain but the unforeseen."

IN the quaint old hall of the Grange sat -Mrs. Herbert, Sullivan,

four persons

and the two Mauleverers. She whom we may still call Helen Fitzmaurice was confined to her room by illness. She would see her husband to-morrow. Hugh took the intimation with his customary cool

ness.

The old journalist leaned back in his arm-chair, placid and venerable. His

part of the work was done. He had introduced Mrs. Herbert to her kinsmen as his daughter the grandchild of that first Hugh Mauleverer who built the stately house in which they dwelt-and therefore the rightful owner of that house, and of all its wide and wealthy domains. But there was more to be told, and it was for her to tell it.

"I

"When I was quite young," she said,

grew tired of home. My father was away from breakfast till late at night, and I soon exhausted my resources. I could not play the piano, and draw, and read novels without ever getting tired. I wanted change. This is a natural instinct of girlhood, and ought not to be discouraged. But it was a very long time before my father would let me leave him,

I know now that I was a great solace to him amid his toil; that to see me and talk to me, if only for half an hour daily, was his best refreshment. But of this I at the time thought nothing. So at last he allowed me to take a situation as governess in the family of a clergyman.

"This gentleman, the perpetual curate of Irton, was very good-tempered, but very ignorant. He had been educated at St. Bees. It seemed his destiny to vegetate in his perpetual curacy for ever. But his fortune took a turn. One morning he and his wife were intoxicated with joy by a letter announcing that Mr. Mauleverer had bestowed on him the rectory of Mauleverer, worth about eight hundred a-year. In his delight he told me he would raise my salary from twenty

pounds to fifty, for which I believe his wife thoroughly scolded him afterwards. It seems that a few years before he had done your father a slight service, when on the Continent; and as I learnt in time, no Mauleverer can rest under an obligation; so, in return for something very trivial, poor Mr. Henderson was made happy for life.

"When I wrote home to say we were all going to Mauleverer, my father tried to persuade me to give up my situation. But he would not tell me why, and I, being a self-willed girl, resolved to remain where I was. I knew nothing then of my connection with your family. So it chanced that as I took the little Hendersons out for their walks, I sometimes met your father. I think he spoke to me

the second time he saw me. At any rate, within a fortnight he asked me to marry him. I consented."

The two young men were struck silent with amazement. Mrs. Herbert then was the mother whom Harry had never seen since he lay a baby on her breast. She was the beautiful young stepmother whom Hugh had chivalrously worshipped, but whom, after a lapse of twenty years, he had failed to recognise. Now he recognised her, though changed by anxiety and matured by time. Harry rose from his seat, and taking his place on the sofa beside her, with his arm around her, exclaimed:

"Well, whatever happens, I have found my mother."

"When I ran away from Mauleverer,"