try to sound depths you know not of?'

'O, why indeed! Here comes Owen, and we promised to be ready to start to the play directly he came. Dear good fellow, surely there was never yet such a good brother! Is he not noble?'

I

'He is a good true man; you are right to be proud of him. wish I had such a brother.'

Gertrude sighed, for since her stay in town she could not but compare the two men she most cared for, and find the one she loved less by far than the one she called friend.

That night at the play both Owen and Phil were present, the latter flushed with wine, and with a reckless fire in his fine eyes. Gertrude was left to Owen, while Phil feasted his eyes upon the full flowering loveliness of Mrs. Daintree, who, dressed in a robe of sombre lace, with dashes of vivid colour at her bare breast and amid the coils of her dark hair, flashed her fairness at him till his brain reeled, and he felt safety slipping beneath his feet. O, to hold her perfect beauty to his heart for one maddening moment-to make her own she cared for him-he felt would be a sweet revenge for the dishonour she had driven him into doing for love of her!

Her great dark eyes held his from seeing the pure fairness of his own girl-love, who, with a strange startled heartache, felt herself at liberty to listen to the sweet calm charm of Owen's tender words.

There came a lull, and the house was darkened before a telling scene. Owen and Trudie leant out of their box to peep about, to give a pretext for not noticing their companions, who seemed lost to all sense but that of each other's presence.

'You love me, my queen-I

VOL. XXXI.

feel you do,' whispered Phil, his hot hand resting on Lucy's shoulder.

She shivered beneath his touch. O, how she loved his power over her-how she longed to give him the right to woo her! Yet before her sat the girl who held his promise, and beside her the brother who would die gladly to win that girl's happiness.

A strange fire stirred her to speech, and she whispered,

'I do love you-I love you so that all the world were lost without you!'

And he lowered his lips till they clung to hers.

Then they started apart, for Owen turned his eyes into the box, and said lightly,

'Are you two talking secrets?'

That night brother and sister faced each other alone, both moved and white; one stern and condemning, the other wild and proud, like one who feels her world totter beneath her feet.

'I tell you, Lucy, it is madness to hope for happiness. Could you be happy, think you, if that happiness caused a true woman the bitterest woe-that of knowing the man she loves untrue? If he persist in this, I will hunt him into such a dire dishonour as he little dreams of. Even when he forged my name to pay his betting debts, I spared him because I knew his love for you had maddened him; but if he brings but one pain to my darling's heart, I'll crush him as I would a reptile that I saw sliding up to her to do her injury. You understand that if you persist in caring for this man, I'll crush him.'

'I understand that you love this puny girl so well that you would wreck three lives upon her fancy. I understand that your sister is nothing to you. You forget the misery of my first marriage-a

G

money match that had made me old at thirty. O Owen, even as you love this girl I love Phil-love him so that to be with him I could throw aside every tie in life. Owen, you do not know all the power of loving, or you would not be so cruel for that girl's sake. Yet think for one moment. You brought her here to win him back to his old faith; it has failed. He cannot he dare not-be what he used to be to her. I should kill him if he were. Why not forget all the old ties-leave us to love, and try afresh your own chance with Gertrude? I believe-nay, I am sure she cares for you, and you love her still.'

'With me, Lucy, love goes on for ever; but before I try my chance again I must be sure she has ceased to hold another dearest. Hush, here she comes!'

'Gertrude, I have come to tell you there is no longer any obstacle to our union. Ours has been a long engagement, dear. Are you ready to fulfil it ?'

Phil spoke gently, kindly, and with something of the old fond smile, but Gertrude seemed changed; there was no gladness in the face she turned to him, saying,

'So you have found the will, and

are independent of the world again, Phil? O, I am so glad!'

She clasped her hands as she spoke, and looked like one relieved from a great pain. Phil felt perplexed and impatient.

Now

'You have not said when you will be my wife, Gertrude,' he said. 'Ono: never that; always your true dear friend and sister, but never your wife! While you were poor, struggling, and even ruined, I and all I had were yours. you can do without me, for the love of God, set me free! You do not love me as you can love. You do not answer me; yet, surely, you must see 'tis right that we should part. While you needed me and my promise, you know I held it your sacred right to possess both; but now there is no need, and it would make us both so very unhappy!'

'Gertrude, you know best; you always did. But forgive me, dear; indeed I have tried to be true.' 'Hush! I know. So we may shake hands, and thank God we are out of a "Wilderness" of doubt, and perhaps dishonour.'

A year later a girl lay dead, and a sad-eyed man laid a flower with a Christ-like face upon her heart, and wept for the doubly dead, because she died so young.'

CHAPTER XXV.

DAWN.

No living poet, nor long since dead genius of Grub-street, but some time or the other wrote about the sleep of innocence. The sleep The sleep of innocence, indeed! Innocence often enough has a very uneasy time of it. Thoroughly good, unselfish folk have a knack of taking other people's troubles on their shoulders, and worrying themselves proportionately in consequence. Mrs. Jones is the best of wives and mothers. She is as worthy a woman as the wife of a respectable stockbroker possibly can be. She is a really good Christian; she is a really good Samaritan; she is ready to give to the poor, and without talking about it; she does not in the least mind having the poorest relation in to luncheon. Her conscience is as clear as her wine-glasses; but for all that, this, and there, she lies awake of nights, and worries herself into positive illness. Poor Mrs. Jones, a childless lady, has a scapegrace nephew, who is the bane of her existence. She looked after the lad from childhood; she was a great deal more than fifty average mothers to him. Eh bien! and now he has become a roysterer and a night-scourer, and every tongue waggeth ill of him. And Mrs. Jones, of the clear conscience and the pure heart, lieth awake. Now if Mrs. Jones had had a harder heart and a better digestion, she would have slept as sweetly as a babe. Bah! the sleep

of innocence is all humbug. The rascal who is going to mount the gallows, in nine cases out of ten sleeps calmly enough.

And that night of the 15th of June, in the year of grace and gracelessness 1815, Miss Hetty Dawson by no means had a quiet time of it. She tossed restlessly to and fro, and her pretty little head was full of all the most troublesome fancies imaginable. And she had been awakened rudely out of her slumber. She had run to her father's room, and found it quite empty.

'I wonder what it is?' she said to herself, with a faint feeling at the heart. Then she went back to her own room, and, woman-like, dressed herself neatly and trimly.

Poor dear creatures! that business of dressing is with them both a pleasure and a sacrifice. Doubtless Marie Antoinette, when she went forth to the guillotine, gave a turn to her whitened locks with the royal fingers.

When this toilette was finished, Miss Hetty tripped down-stairs rather laggingly, and found, in the small hall, one of the maids busily engaged in cleaning the floor by whishing it to and fro with a large piece of flannel.

'Had she seen the Colonel ?' Hetty asked, in her not too excellent French.

'No, ma'mselle; the old gentleman had been out some time to see those bons garçons the Ecossais pass through the Place Royale. And what a pity it is, ma'mselle-a grand pity-that they should go

to be massacred by the heroes of the Emperor !'

'The Highlanders?' asked Hetty, trying to steady herself by resting her hand against the wall. 'Are they are they the only regiment gone?'

'No, ma'mselle, there are those with the red coats and big shakoes, and trousers of gray. You know, doubtless, those who were in the lower town-two of whom were quartered on the belle maman. The sous-officiers who came here, they also belong to that regiment. I pity them; for how can they withstand what the Emperor wishes ?'

Then Hetty stood silent. What the girl said to her seemed like a sentence of death. And in her mind's eye was the picture of the hero of Corsica: calm, cold, passionless, and irresistible Fate, not to be withstood. And where might Jack be now? She dared not think of it.

She sat down on the stairs with her hand on her side.

'Ah, ma'mselle!' cried the girl, 'I am well sorry thus to have grieved you. Doubtless it will be nothing, there will be nothing come of it. The Emperor will make friends with the English, and let them return to their homes without molesting them.'

'I will go out,' said Hetty to herself; and she went up to her room and fetched her bonnet and scarf.

On the Montagne de la Cour there were little knots of people gathered together. The scouts were going up and down as usual, and there was the same clacking sound of sabots. Yet there was something different. Some influence seemed to pervade everything. There was a general artlessness, a want of purpose about the movements of all of them. Even the girls looking in at the shop windows would now and again turn, as if listening or wait

ing for something or some one to come. Now and again a workman passing, with his long basket of tools on his back, would halt to greet a comrade, and they would stand talking in the middle of the rough pavement, regardless of all who hustled against them.

Miss Hetty walked up the hill to the park. The ground had been broken by the bivouac of the previous night, and now little boys were gathering the ends of broken cigars, and looking for any small treasures which might have been left behind by the red-coats.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, she crossed the road, and walked in the direction of St. Gudule. Some people were crowding up the steps, and she passed in with them. Some women were kneeling on the stones with bent heads, and praying silently with moving lips.

Some one, too, has left them,' thought Hetty; and as she moved down the aisle, she saw a disconsolate figure standing near the famous pulpit.

It was her father. She took his arm, and they passed slowly out into the small Place.

'My dear,' he said, looking into her face, and reading what was written there with a sad heart, 'I can see that you have heard the news."

'It is dreadful,' she said, half holding her breath. It is so sudden. O father, what shall I do?'

'Do!-that is a good word, my little girl. Do anything. It will help you to forget, and there is no use in keeping it in mind.'

So arm in arm they went back home, or to what they called home for the time being.

'You must have some breakfast,' said the Colonel; 'and you need not worry yourself more than there is occasion for. You had better call on Minnie Heneage, she will help to keep you up. She is a

sensible girl, and not troubled with too much sentiment, which you do not want at present.'

But she could not eat, and only sat playing with her knife and fork. Her father stood with his back to the window and looked at her. It would have been called a pretty picture then, we should call it a quaint one now that times have changed and fashions altered. She had on a plain white shortwaisted dress, and a ribbon on her hair, which some young ladies wore then, and preferred to the hideous combs and cannon-curls that came in with the good Queen Adelaide. Her face was very pale ; it was pale at all times, but now there was a heaviness in the eyes, and the pretty mouth trembled.

She raised her eyes, and, seeing her father watching her with such a tender glance, burst into tears.

He took her in his arms.

'Do not be like this, little Het; all will be well, I am sure it will. Go to your room and lie down. I will fetch Minnie to you, and we will lunch together and have some music afterwards.'

But when he was left alone his confidence in all good fortune was not the same. He opened the window and looked out over the flowers, then he shook his head.

'It is well,' he thought, 'to hope for the best, but what are many of our regiments but mere green stuff? and those Hanoverians and Belgians, they are like so many hares. Yet, ah me, I wish, I wish that I could be there. What a strange thing it is that I should be sitting here at my ease!'

At noon they were seated in the room and had grown tolerably cheerful. Miss Hetty on one occasion had actually laughed; but the laugh was soon enough followed by a sigh. Yet for her guest she had dressed the room with flowers, and on the table

cloth were some vases full of heavy pink roses.

It is quite Arcadian,' said Miss Minnie Heneage; 'the feast you have given me ought to be for the shepherds and shepherdesses.'

I do not like this Belgian feasting,' said the Colonel, and shall be glad to get back Hanoversquare way and see my old chums. But, faith, we poor nabobs all have our livers totally ruined, and cannot fairly enjoy anything.'

'Be content that you have your spirits left you, Colonel. What a good thing it is to be as cheerful as you always are !' replied Miss Minnie.

'My dear, I am worth nothing but to laugh and grow fat. I like the laughing, but I don't care for the obesity, and that's why I am so fond of trotting up and down this hill. But come, let us have some music!'

The little salon, with its lighttinted panelled walls, and ticking clocks, and great display of curtains, looked gay enough to raise any one's spirits.

I play papa to sleep sometimes,' said Miss Hetty Dawson as she sat down to the piano. 'I expect he will be getting out his handkerchief directly. He will place it over his head and will doze off into dreamland. Now, papa, sit down and take out your handkerchief, and I shall know that you are as happy as you can be. Let me open the windows, for the room is close.'

The Colonel did as he was bid. 'I shall play nothing but those pieces of Bach's,' continued she; it is not a day to make holiday, is it, Minnie?'

'Do you know, Hetty, that I rather like this curious excitement ?' answered that young lady. 'Some people don't like suspense. But isn't it a sort of gambling? I like it, I really do;' and she smiled in rather a sinister fashion.