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the soft fall of her mother's steps, in the stupor that fell upon her. Her father said something, but she had not the heart to answer. It seemed incredible, impossible. After ten minutes or so, which seemed to Rose so many hours, during which she continued to sit dumb, listening to her father's stirrings in his restless bed and the pattering of the rain, the same maid came to the door again and handed in a little scrap of paper folded like a note. She opened it mechanically. It was from Mrs. Wodehouse. "Dear Rose, dearest Rose, come and bid my boy good-bye, if it is only for a moment," it said. She put it down on the table, and rose up and looked at her father. "If only for a moment," he was not so ill that any harm could happen to him if he were left for a moment. He did not look ill at all, as he lay there with his eyes closed. Was he asleep?and surely, surely for that moment she might go!

While she looked at him, her heart beating wildly, and something singing and throbbing in her ears, he opened his eyes. "What is it?" he said.

"It is-oh, papa! may I go for one moment-only for a moment— I should come back directly; to bid-poor-Mr. Wodehouse goodbye?"

"What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" said the Rector, with perhaps unintentional profaneness, smiling at her a smile which seemed to make Rose wild. He put out his hand again and took hers. "Never mind poor Mr. Wodehouse," he said; "he will get on very well without you. Stay with me, my Rose in June; to see you thus does me good."

"I should only stay one moment." Her heart beat so that it almost stifled her voice.

"No, my darling," he said, coaxingly; "stay with me."

And he held her hand fast. Rose stood gazing at him with a kind of desperation till he closed his eyes again, holding her tightly by the wrist. I think even then she made a little movement to get free-a movement balked by the closer clasping of his feverish fingers. Then she sat down suddenly on her mother's chair. The pulsations were in her ears like great roars of sound coming and going. "Very well, papa," she said, with a stifled voice.

I do not know how long it was before she heard steps below, for her senses were preternaturally quickened-and then the sound of the hall door closed, and then the rain again, as if nothing had happened. What had happened? Nothing, indeed, except that Mrs. Damerel herself had seen the visitors, which was a great compliment to them, as she never left her husband's side. By-and-by her soft steps came back again, approaching gradually up the stairs and the long corridor. The sound of them fell upon Rose's heart-was it all over then? ended for ever? Then her mother came in, calm and composed, and relieved her. She did not even look at Rose, as if there were anything out of the ordinary in this very simple proceeding. She told her husband quietly that she had said goodbye to young Wodehouse; that he was going early next morning; that

she was very sorry for his poor mother. "Yes, my dear; but if mothers were always to be considered, sons would never do anything. Mayn't I have something to drink?" said the patient: and thus the subject was dismissed at once and for ever.

"Go and see if Mary has made some fresh lemonade," said Mrs. Damerel. Rose obeyed mechanically. The pulses were still beating so that her blood seemed like the tide at sea beating upon a broad beach, echoing hollow and wild in huge rolling waves. She went downstairs like one in a dream and got the lemonade and carried it back again, hearing her own steps as she had heard her mother's. When this piece of business was over, and Rose found herself again in the little ante-room, all alone, with nothing but the sound of the rain to fill up the silence, and the great waves of sound in her ears beginning to die into moans and dreary sobbing echoes, what can I say of her feelings? Was it possible that all was over and ended-that she would never more see him again-that he was gone without even a good-bye? It was not only incredible to her, but it was intolerable; must she bear it? She could not bear it; yet she must. She stood at the window and looked out, and the bluish-grey world and the falling rain looked in at Rose, and no other sound came to console the aching in her heart. He was gone, and there was no hope that he would come back; and she could not, dared not, go to him. The evening went on while she sat in this train of excited feelings, wondering whether the anguish in her heart would not call for an answer somehow, and unable to believe that neither God nor man would interfere. When it was dark she broke forth from all control, and left her post, as she could not do when leaving it was of any use; but there is a point at which the intolerable cannot be borne any longer. She put a blue waterproof cloak on her, and went out into the rain and the dark; but what was poor Rose to do, even when her pain became past bearing? She strayed round the dark lawn, and looked, but in vain, for the lights of the cottage at Ankerwyke; and then she ventured to the gate, and stood there looking out helpless and wistful. But no good angel whispered to Edward Wodehouse, heartsore and wounded, what poor little watcher there was looking helplessly, piteously out upon the little gulf of distance which separated them as much as continents and oceans could have done. He was packing for his early journey, and she, poor maiden soul, could not go to him, nor could the cry of her heart reach him. When she had waited there a while, she went in again, speechless and heartbroken, feeling indeed that all was over, and that neither light nor happiness would ever return to her more.

Poor child! I don't think it occurred to her to blame those who had done it, or even to ask herself whether they knew what they were doing. Perhaps she did not believe that they had done it willingly. I do not think she asked herself any question on the subject. She had to bear it, and she could not bear it. Her mind was capable of little more.

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THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1874.

Far from the Madding Crowd.

XP

CHAPTER XXI.

TROUBLES IN THE FOLD: A MESSAGE.

[graphic]

ABRIEL OAK had ceased to feed the Weatherbury flock for about four-andtwenty hours, when on Sunday afternoon the elderly gentlemen, Joseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, Fray, and half-a-dozen others came running up to the house of the mistress of the Upper Farm.

"Whatever is the matter, men?" she said, meeting them at the door just as she was on the point of coming out on her way to church, and ceasing in a moment from the close compression of her two

red lips, with which she had accompanied the exertion of pulling on a

tight glove.

"Sisty!" said Joseph Poorgrass.

"Seventy!" said Moon.

"Fifty-nine!" said Susan Tall's husband.

25.

VOL. XXIX.-No. 173.

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