CHAPTER XV.

Death found strange beauty on that infant brow,

And dashed it out.
On cheek and lip.
And the rose faded.

There was a tint of rose

He touched the veins with ice,

With ruthless haste he bound

The silken fringes of those curtaining lids
For ever.

MRS. SIGOURney.

It is many years since we were called upon to witness that sad union of May and December. What has the time brought forth for our joyous friend of former days, for the little golden-haired Mary Newnham? Has she passed these cycles and rounds of cycles in repinings and murmurings against a hard and yet in part self-chosen fate? Has it been spent in revengeful endeavours to mar the happiness of the once hated lover? If we glance at the little party assembled in the drawing-room of Morington Hall these conjectures are at once negatived.

Mrs. Finch, still fair and pretty-looking, is seated on a prie Dieu chair, near an old-fashioned sofa on which old Mr. Newnham reclines. This some

what unsightly piece of furniture has been reserved for his especial use when on a visit at the Hall. A little girl with much such a sunny face as he can remember in her mother, is turning over a new and splendidly illuminated picture-book. I wonder any relatives know so well as grandparents the exact gifts which will please the young. Perhaps as their second childhood creeps imperceptibly over them, it recals the joys and pleasures of their first.

if

Another little girl, unperceived by her elders, is trying the strength of the sofa cushion bobs. The baby of the time being is on mamma's lap; she has pulled down her neatly braided hair, and, unconsciously to herself, poor infant, she is assisting the aged man to weave with those golden tresses a tale of the past.

Presently nurse fetches the little ones away to their tea, and Mary and her uncle are left together. Of course such a moment gives a grand opportunity for a chat; and of course the conversation falls on the united interests of the two-of the grandparent and young mother. We who can remember other scenes are surprised to hear Mary talking with affectionate love of the despised Richard Finch. But in her mind the past is forgottenhas in very truth "buried its dead," and she is acting in the living present.

That horrid old man, uglier than ever, more repulsive-looking than ever to a stranger's eye, is now regarded by her with different feelings. He is the

father of her children, the lord and master of her own heart. Have you ever been in a little room in Gravesend, where through different glasses you are shown the four seasons; one and the same view regarded through different coloured glasses gives a tout ensemble of a very dissimilar character? True, the change was not altogether in Mary's fancy or in Mary's feelings. The moral nature of the Richard Finch of to-day was a grand improvement on the soured mind of the bachelor money-lender. During even the first few weeks of her married life, Mary had thoroughly appreciated the difficulties of her position. She had not shut her eyes to the fact that much of the happiness or misery of the future depended upon herself. She had mentally acknowledged that he was not a pleasing companion with whom to tread the daily round; he was by nature passionate and revengeful; ill-treatment had rendered him morose and sour. She knew the task of making the Ethiopian white or changing the spots of the leopard was comparatively easy to that of correcting the vices of a man twice her own age. She knew all this, and wisely and prudently she did not set herself to work on impossibilities; but with a woman's peculiar virtue-patience, she bore the roughs and unevennesses of the road before her. With a woman's gentle trustfulness, she relied on her husband's judgment; believed in and saw kind intentions where none were designed; and more than this, she kept in mind the oath of her girl

hood, and to the utmost of her power obeyed him she was bound to honour and serve. She forgave him his faults, and loved him in spite of his infirmities. She allowed no room for the display of the jealousy which tortured him, which would, had circumstances been different, have been the torment of his life.

Thus nobly and bravely Mary had borne the burden of the first few years of her married existence. In a greater measure than Richard Finch had ever dared to hope, the light of Eastwood had become the brightness and happiness of his own home and heart.

Mary's conversation during the afternoon of which we have already spoken, included something more than the usual talk about Richard and Mary, Maggie and baby. There was something for Mr. Newnham to hear, which as yet had only been breathed in curtain confidence-a proposed trip to Stoneholme.

Mr. Finch's chief disappointment in his marriage was the want of an heir to succeed to the lands he valued even more than the money which had purchased them. To tell him that his property was not hereditary, was not in any way to console him for the non-appearance of the boy he so ardently desired. If he were to die sonless, his park, with its acres of pasturage and adjacent farms, with his house property, would have to be divided between his children. If otherwise, he had determined long ago that the whole should pass intact to a

juvenile Richard Finch. In common with many other irreligious men, Mr. Finch was exceedingly superstitious. Now there was once more a chance of his greatest desire being fulfilled, he made up his mind that the child should not be born in a house where he had already experienced so many disappointments. Where, then, should the important event take place? At this period of the year, London was, so to speak, a desert. Mary would be moped to death there. So, as Stoneholme was the nearest town to Morington Hall, and as, moreover, all fashionable people go there once in a twelvemonth, Mr. Finch hired a handsome house in one of the noblest squares, as a fitting place for the reception of the little stranger.

Stoneholme was crowded to excess just then. The parade and promenade never looked gayer than in the year of grace 18-. Elaborate work had taken the place of the frills once thought so charmingly natty and pretty. and pretty. Wherever you looked, wherever you went, it stared you in the face. You saw it in hand both in the drawingroom and kitchen. It was worn alike by ladies and ladies' maids. Infants of a few weeks were robed in this curiously holey composition. The Stoneholme belles were not thought complete without their under dress bore some of their handiwork. The more fashionable it became, the more preposterously large the incisions were made, until little networks were invented to partly conceal the circular and oblong gaps.