CHAPTER XLII.-FEARS.

IT was a strange experience to Hester Darrell to find herself sitting at the head of the table in the vast dining-room of the Castle, with the old Baronet for her guest, and after the meal was over and he was having his cigar, as his custom was, in the conservatory, she laughingly alluded to it. "My dear young lady," replied Sir Reginald gallantly, "it may have seemed strange to you, but there was certainly no incongruity in the matter. I know no one, not even Lady Barton herself, who is better fitted to do the honours of Medbury than yourself."

"It is very gracious of you to say so, Sir Reginald, but I fear I should be a little like the lady in the ballad under similar circumstances, rather oppressed with the burden of the honour unto which I was not born.'"

"That is because you have an old fogey like myself to entertain alone; if the young Lord of Burleigh was sitting opposite to you, you would feel no such embarrassment."

The remark, though natural enough, was one of those "no thoroughfare" observations which do not easily admit of reply; it seemed suggestive, nevertheless, to the speaker himself, for he sat silent as if in thought for some moments and then observed, apropos de bottes, "I wish our dear Maria took a little more interest in the Castle, if she will so soon be the mistress; it is surprising how little she seems to appreciate it, or indeed her position generally."

"I am sure she very much appreciates her position as your son's fiancée, Sir Reginald," said Hester earnestly, "and will make him a most devoted wife."

"I suppose so, yes," continued the other, stroking his grey moustache with a meditative air, "but if Francis was nobody in particular, had not only not distinguished himself as he has done, but had not had his prestige in the way of birth and so on-upon my life I almost think Maria would have liked him just as well."

"That is surely to her credit," said Hester smiling, "for it proves that she loves him for himself alone and not for any extraneous reason."

"Good girl, good girl," smiled the old Baronet, laying his thin fingers upon Hester's hand approvingly, "you will not have one word said against your friend, but turn even what seems like dispraise of her into eulogy." "It is because I know no one so gentle and good and pure," said Hester simply. "I grant all that."

"And what an 'all' it is, Sir Reginald !" "No doubt, no doubt," he answered with a sigh. His words were confident enough, but his tone had dissatisfaction in it; in his heart of hearts, he would have preferred a daughter-in-law not so much rapt in the eternities as to be oblivious to the claims of ancient lineage, or so fixed on goodness as to be indifferent to the greatness that is conferred by social position. Then after a long pause, "How the wind is rising; I fear our friends will have a rough passage home."

"They will be delayed, no doubt. I have taken upon myself to put the dinner back for an hour. I hope that will not inconvenience you, Sir Reginald.”

The Baronet either did not hear her, or deemed such a matter unworthy of attention. "I hope," he continued, "if the gale is serious, that they will have the prudence to post by road from Saltby. Frank has done it many times with me when he was a boy." "Then he will be sure to suggest it to them in case of need."

"I am afraid not," said Sir Reginald elliptically; "the thought of danger never enters his head."

"But he will think of it for others."

"To be sure, I was forgetting the others," said the old gentleman naïvely.

The weather had grown really threatening, and even in the comparative shelter which the Castle afforded the wind made itself distinctly heard.

"They should be at Saltby now," said the old man, consulting his watch, "and about starting for home. It is some way round by the road, but with good cattle they should be home in four hours.'

Hester was alarmed by the old man's evident anxiety but forbore to increase it by questioning him. It was possible indeed that his devotion to his son, and the nervousness which comes with advancing years, might have made him unnecessarily apprehensive, but he was not naturally, she knew, a man to give way to fears of any kind. Hester found herself becoming infected with her companion's misgivings, and eagerly desirous to have the opinion of some competent person respecting the weather and its probable effects upon the arrival of the Javelin. Her impatience, indeed, after a while became uncontrollable. "I am afraid, Sir Reginald, I must leave you now," she ventured presently, "as I have business at Shingleton.

It was very unusual with Sir Reginald to remain at the Castle, except on express invitation, and Hester guessed at once that his

determination to do so arose from his wish to abbreviate suspense and "see the first of them" as it were on the arrival of the absentees. It seemed rather hard-hearted under such circumstances to leave the old gentleman alone, but she could not break her appointment with Mr. Langton, whom there was no knowing when she might have the opportunity of seeing again.

She took the same way to the town that she had taken that morning, but her progress was much more slow by reason of the wind, which was against her. At the top of the hill, indeed, she found it difficult to cope with it; the whole aspect of the scene, both land and sea, was altered by the fury of the elements: the trees were bent one way as though they had been but long grasses; the air was full of sand which stung the face, and with flakes of foam flying inland; the sky, the early blue of whic had soon changed to grey, was now a mass of ragged clouds that flew before the whip of the wind like a shattered army-the blast was such that it seemed as though King Winter had come back again and deposed the young Spring-time. The sea was white with foam as far as eye could reach, and, though at a distance, made its sullen roar heard with terrible distinctness. Hester had learnt enough of its ways by this time to know, by the quarter from which the wind blew, that there was mischief as well as menace in it. In the whole expanse of the bay, and beyond it, far out to sea, not a sail was to be seen; every boat had sought a safe anchorage, or put in for shelter.

It was very unlikely, she thought, that Sir Abraham, if another route were suggested to him, would risk the discomforts of such a voyage; she felt with Sir Reginald that the little party were very likely to return by road; but on the other hand they might not do it, and even if they did she trembled, -though she strove to feel that it was only Ignorance, the mother of false fear, that made her do so for those who should remain perforce on board the Javelin.

Philip Langton was staying at the Marine Hotel, which he had elected to do in preference to accepting the hospitality of the Vicar, and on the little sheltered green in front of it Hester found him pacing to and fro, somewhat impatiently. He had grudged the hour she had been compelled to give to the entertainment of Sir Reginald, and which must needs be deducted from their time together, and was perhaps inclined to pooh-pooh her apprehensions about the voyagers, from a

little feeling of jealousy. Hester seemed to him wrapped up in what were, to him, her new acquaintances at the Castle, rather to the exclusion of her older friends, of whom he would have conversed with her; she appeared to listen to him with only half attention. On the other hand he was very pleased to find her so happily located at Medbury.

"It is an inexpressible pleasure to me, Hester," he said, "though not an unselfish one, since the circumstance frees me from some personal embarrassment upon your account, that you have found your home at the Castle. Your aunt, of course, looks upon you now as one of the family."

"It would be very ungrateful of me to deny it," she answered earnestly, "but yet, at the risk of being thought ungrateful and also unreasonable, I must tell you that I do not contemplate any long stay at the Castle."

"Not a long stay?" exclaimed her companion in amazement, "and why not, my dear Hester? I thought I understood that you were delighted with Medbury and all contained in it."

"That is true," she answered in trembling tones; "it is a matter which I can scarcely make intelligible to you, I fear, but in a few weeks there will be certain changes there and-and-in short, I have written to dear Mrs. West, who does not despair of finding a home for me which, in some respects, at all events, will be more agreeable to me.

"A home; but what kind of home?"

Well, not such a palace as my present one no doubt, but one where I shall feel more my own mistress. I did not write to you about it, dear Mr. Langton, because you have already been troubled enough by my caprices."

"Pray do not speak of trouble," he interrupted hastily, "nothing is trouble to me that is undertaken for your benefit, but I must confess that what you tell me gives me great distress of mind. 'More your own mistress,' you say, and 'changes' at Medbury; you mean, I suppose, that when these young people are married they will live at the Castle, and though it is pleasant enough to be the guest of its present mistress, it might not be agreeable to live there under another régime."

"Yes, that is it," murmured Hester faintly. It was impossible to be more explicit. She had been a long time reflecting upon the consequences of the impending change at Medbury. As regarded herself, her position indeed would remain in all probability unaltered, but although she had not as yet

spoken of her intention to any of its inmates she had resolved to leave the Castle.

In beholding Francis Drake under the same roof as her cousin's accepted lover, she had already borne as much as her heart could bear without breaking; to remain there after the marriage she felt, for the present at least, would be intolerable to her, while the reason of her departure would be one too intelligible to her aunt to arouse any unpleasant dis

cussion.

"The ways of young women are certainly past all finding out," murmured Philip Langton; but he had too much good sense as well as good feeling to argue the matter, only he secretly reserved to himself the right of consulting with Mrs. West upon the subject, and taking care that Hester's new home, as she called it, should at least not be one of those in a gentleman's family, "highly genteel," as he had heard John Parry sing of, where she would have to impart the rudiments of a polite education to half-a-dozen young ladies and two little boys in return for its hospitality. He had a horror derived from conventional prejudice, and only excusable on the ground of his personal devotion to her, of his dead friend's daughter going out as a governess.

They fell to talking of other matters, which, however, did not arise with the same naturalness as on the previous occasion; the fact was, the minds of both of them were now preoccupied, that of Langton with the unexpected and unwelcome intelligence he had just received from his ward, and that of Hester with the threatening appearance of the weather, which made her more and more uneasy. At last her nervousness became so great that she could keep her apprehensions to herself no longer, but communicated them to her companion, who made light of them.

"I have been at sea in far worse weather than this, my dear Hester," he said consolingly, "and in a much smaller craft than that which carried your friends; they have that which needs no aid of sail or oar, and heeds no spite of wind or tide,' remember, on their side. A steam vessel has nothing to fear from a breeze like this. Nevertheless, let us go down to the jetty and take counsel's opinion upon the matter.

Upon the jetty there was already a little crowd of people on the look out for the return of their friends, and among them the same sailor to whom Langton had spoken upon the subject that morning.

"The wind seems to have freshened a good deal," said Langton cheerfully; "I suppose,

since it's dead against her, the boat will be delayed some time?"

The sailor, who was looking through his glass, did not trouble himself to remove his eye from the instrument, or, perhaps, seeing the pale anxious face beside that of his questioner, he might have shaped his answer differently.

Delayed!" was the contemptuous rejoinder. "I should think she would be delayed; Master Paul will be lucky if he ever sees Shingleton lights again."

Langton would have led Hester away, but she slipped her hand from his arm, and put it on the sailor's shoulder.

"Lor' bless 'ee, is it you, miss ?" he exclaimed, his bluff brown face puckering into a smile as he recognised her. "Well, I'm glad to see you safe on dry land at all events.

"But, John, tell me the truth; there is danger I know," she faltered.

Tut, tut, why there's always danger, missie, to them as tempts the sea," he interrupted gently; "a smiling, smooth-faced wench she is as sets her back up uncommon quick without a word of warning, but if one knows how to humour her, as my old messmate Paul does, she will do nobody no mischief. As to what you heard me a-saying about him, it was only my way of speaking like; he'll come home again, never fear, and empty many a keg of whisky yet."

"You are not deceiving me, John Arnott," said Hester pitifully, "you are not deluding me with false hopes?"

"As I am a Christian man, missie," returned the sailor solemnly, "there is nothing in my opinion in either wind or wave today to make a man who knows his trade uneasy."

"Thank you, thank you, John," answered Hester fervently, and perceiving a poor woman near her straining her eyes to southward, and evidently come on the same errand as herself, she went to comfort her with John Arnott's dictum.

"There is danger, is there not?" said Philip Langton under his breath.

"Yes, sir, yes," was the serious rejoinder; "it's not that the weather is anything much to be frightened of, as I told the young lady, if one had only a good ship under one, but what I did not tell her is that the old Javelin is not fit to face a headwind, much less such a gale as this is like to be. She'll never come to yonder landing-place-not whole-and if you'll take my advice you'll get Miss Darrell to go home. That's the best place-though bad's the best-to meet bad news such as

will come to Shingleton, I fear, before this time to-morrow."

For the present, however, it was impossible to persuade Hester to leave the shore; though partially reassured by the smooth prophecy of the old sailor, she was still in a state of great anxiety, which was increased by seeing it reflected on the face of the increasing crowd. They were most of them more or less connected with the sea themselves, or, at all events, had passed their lives in its neighbourhood, and if they had not the experience of John Arnott, they knew, a breeze from a gale, and the dangers of the coast.

When the evening began to close in, and the Javelin had been overdue more than an hour, Philip Langton made another effort to persuade his charge to return to the Castle, and this time he succeeded with an ease that astonished himself. The fact was, she remembered for the first time (for at the moment she had paid but little attention to it) what Sir Reginald had said about the party coming home by the road, and this vague chance (a proof how low her hopes had fallen with respect to the coming of the Javelin) began to loom largely in her mind. Even at this instant might they not all have arrived safely at Medbury? So Langton remained on the watch at Shingleton, and Hester stepped into a fly and was driven home. It was not so wild a night as that on which she had accompanied the Vicar to visit Mrs. Bertram, but in the state of tension in which her mind was placed, just as a harp tightly strung will answer to the lightest touch, every wail of the wind sent a shiver through her veins.

CHAPTER XLIII.-WATCHING.

WHO of us has arrived at maturity and is so fortunate as not to know what suspense and terror are, in respect to those we love? Even in waiting for the doctor there are moments which, if there is any truth in the doctrine of compensation, should have years of enjoyment by way of offset. Who would be born, if he had the choice to endure those weary hours of watching and waiting that are the lot of most of us, by the bedside of those we love and are about to lose?

The sins of humanity are indeed dark and terrible, but they do not escape comment; whilst its fears and sorrows-equally sad in their way, though not as shocking seem to me to have a scant recognition. We are all miserable sinners; but since we are not happy sinners it is surely permissible to feel a little pity for ourselves. The necessity of a future

life is insisted upon freely enough for the punishment of the wicked, but surely is it not also necessary as a counterpain to the weight of wretchedness which our frail nature has to bear? Had Hester Darrell been a mere selfish, heartless woman, she would not only have suffered no torture from the contemplation of the possible catastrophe, from which she was unable for one moment to distract her mind, but might have found much food for satisfaction in it; whereas, as matters were, it presented itself before her as unmixed misfortune and blankest misery. It is surely worthy of consideration how much good people lose, as regards the misfortunes of others, which to them a most poignant regret, are to the base a matter of indifference, or where personal benefit arises from them, even a subject of congratulation. It was not twenty minutes' drive from Shingleton to Medbury, but to Hester it seemed a lifetime. Her heart, as she entered the great gates, sank within her, and she felt so sick with evil presage that the question she had framed to ask the lodgekeeper as to whether the party had arrived by road never found expression. The silence of the man himself rendered it unnecessary; he would have been sure to tell her had his master and the rest arrived already. One incident took place as they reached the Castle which would have helped to shatter her nerves had it not impressed her with the paramount necessity for self-control. No sooner had the carriage drawn up at the foot of the stone steps than the door opened, and the Baronet himself came hurrying down them. In his anxiety and confusion he had not noticed that the vehicle was a fly and not Sir Abraham's carriage, and his look of disappointment and dismay when he beheld Hester sitting alone in it was terrible to witness.

They are not come, then," he said, with a half groan.

"Not yet, Sir Reginald," returned Hester gently; "the wind and tide are against them, and it is not expected at Shingleton that the steamer will be in for some time."

He led her into the dining-room, which happened to be the nearest room with a fire in it, for, indeed, she looked in need of warmth, and placing her in an arm-chair, sat down beside her. The table was brilliantly set out with glass and silver, but somehow it looked as cheerless as if it had only worn a bare white cloth. It merely suggested to both of them preparation in vain.

"My dear, you must take something to

He was going to say that if, on their arrival, they found that they had been waited for so long, it would distress them; but his own simple words, "when they come home," had utterly overwhelmed him. He sat with voiceless lips and shaking head, like one with the palsy.

"A little wine," said Hester, "would do us both good."

She was not in want of wine herself, and as for food, she felt as though even a morsel of bread would have choked her, but she thought that her companion would be the better for it, and, indeed, so it turned out. Becoming a little refreshed and strengthened, Sir Reginald began to interrogate her about her experiences at Shingleton, and the opinions expressed of the chances of the safe return of the steamer. Conversation, even upon the most anxious topic, when we are in suspense, is less intolerable than silence, and the old Baronet presently recovered his selfcommand, and even went so far as to apologise for his unreasonable despondency.

"Time was, my dear young lady, when I should have been little inclined to meet misfortunes half-way, and when they came I should have known how to bear them; but now I am like a blind man who is threatened with the loss of his staff. Without that I shall be able to grope my way to the grave, and that is all."

The allusion to his son was unmistakable, and it touched Hester nearly. "Forgive an old man's weakness," he continued apologetically; "how selfish it is of me thus to melt a heart so tender; but you loved him, too; I know you loved him."

The observation under other circumstances would have been embarrassing enough, though it was doubtful in what sense Sir Reginald made it; but as matters were, it was the fact of his already speaking of his son in the past tense that distressed Hester.

"The issues of life and death lie in stronger hands than ours," she murmured.

"True, true; it may be we shall see his face again. The father of such a lad should not know fear. Surely, since he has been so kind to others, the shield of the despised and oppressed, Heaven will defend him from the pitiless waves. So gentle and brave! and such a good son, my dear! such a good son!" The old man's words would have touched a less tender heart than Hester Darrell's, even had his son been a stranger to her.

To

What inexpressibly increased their pathos was their unexpectedness. For up to this moment, though Sir Reginald had never appeared to her a hard man, she had always associated him with a certain stiffness and dignity. Though by no means in an arrogant sense, he had shown himself fully conscious of his own importance. The loss of home and land had, as is usual in such cases, in no way affected him in that respect, but on the contrary, had made him resentful of the least lack of deference from those about him. see him now, with all the pride of birth forgotten, and nothing but the father in his piteous face and trembling voice, was a pathetic sight. What moved Hester more than all, however, though it gave her as much pain as pity, was his taking it for granted that his son was almost as dear to her as he was to himself; for as time went on, and the flame of hope seemed to burn lower and lower, he appeared to throw away all reserve, and spoke to her as a fellow-mourner. Had he guessed what was the real state of the case with her all along, and put it from him until this terrible moment, when it seemed to matter not whether Maria or she had had the offer of his son's hand? or was it merely that in the misery that monopolised him, all about him seemed to have part?

"It is hot and stifling here. Let us go out on the terrace," he presently said. It was not stifling, nor, indeed, at all too warm, in the great dining-room, but Hester consented to his proposal at once; she well understood that his desire was, as before, to get the very first news, in roll of wheel or beat of hoof (if any such was now to come), of the absent ones. But as she opened the diningroom door a great wind seemed to fill the house, and a shrill wail broke upon the ear, inexpressibly weird and sad.

"Hark! hark!" cried the old man, staggering back into a chair, while the door, breaking from Hester's hand, closed with a heavy bang; "that is the warning!"

"What do you mean, Sir Reginald?"

"Hush! listen!" Again and again the shrill, weird wail arose and fell, and then all was comparatively silent, save for the shaking of the shutters and the fretful gale without. "They are drowned! they are all drowned!" he murmured with a gasp of horror.

"How can you tell? Why distrust the mercy of Heaven, Sir Reginald, though, indeed, if we knew all, what seems its deafness to our prayer may be the truest mercy?"

The spirit of her cousin Maria, if indeed it