of past sins and a promise of amendment. Not that he understood why she was so much more effusive than of old, but if it augured a happier life together he was glad.

As they drove up to the door of the old home, crowded with memories and associations, a shudder passed over the girl; she grasped her father's hand in her own almost convulsively, and he heard her say below her breath, "Poor papa!"

He wondered why she pitied him. The place must surely be full of memories of her mother for her; why did she say "poor papa" to him? He did not see what she saw-that peaceful September evening, and the bottle of cherry-water on the table, with the little phial of thirty deaths in her hand; and now the contents emptied into the harmless draught; and now Madame pale and dead. The whole scene transacted itself vividly before her, and she shuddered at her memories and her past self— as always with a kind of vague wonder how she could have been so wicked, and where did she get the force, the courage for such a cruel crime?

For all these four years at school the shadow of that dreadful deed had been ever in the background of her life; and as time went on, and she came to a better understanding of morality, it grew clear to her as a crime. Its consciousness of guilt had broken down her pride, and thus had made her more malleable, more humble. She could no longer harden herself in her belief that she was superior to everyone else. Those girls, her companions-they had not had an Andalusian mother, truly; they did not pray to the Saints, and the Holy Virgin took no care of them; they were Protestants and English, frogs and pigs;-but they had not committed murder. If she should stand up in the middle of the room and tell them what she had done, which of them would touch her hand again? which of them speak to her? English and Protestants as they were, how far superior in their innocence to her, an Andalusian Catholic, in her guilt! But no one lives with remorse. It comes and goes gustily, fitfully; but the things of the present are stronger than the things of the past; else the man with a shameful secret in his life would go mad.

One of these gusty storms broke over Leam as she passed through the gates of the old home, and for the moment she felt as if she must confess the truth to her father, and tell him what evil thing she had done. Yet it passed, as other such storms had passed; the things of the present took their natural place of prominence, and those of the past sank again into the background, shadows that never faded quite away, but that were not actualities pressing against her.

The news of Leam's home-coming created quite a pleasurable excitement in the neighbourhood, and the Families flocked to Ford House to welcome her among them as one of themselves, all anxious to see if the Ethiopian of North Aston had shed her skin, if the leopardess had changed her spots. They were divided among themselves as to whether

she had or had not. Some said she was charming, and like anyone else; but others shook their heads, and, like experts in brain disease, professed to see traces of the old lunacy, and to be doubtful as to her cure. At the worst, however, here she was; one of themselves whom they must receive; and common sense dictated that they should make the best of her, and hope all things till they proved some.

There was one among them whom Leam longed yet dreaded to meet. This was Alick Corfield. She wondered what he knew, or rather what he suspected, and she was anxious to have her ordeal over. But though Mrs. Corfield came, and was just the same as ever, bustling, inquisitive, dogmatic, before ten minutes were over having put the girl through her scholastic facings and got from her the whole of her curriculum, yet Alick did not appear. He waited until after Sunday, when he should see her first in church, and so nerve himself as it were behind the barrier of his sacred office; but after Sunday had passed and he had seen her in her old place, he called; and found her alone.

When they met, and she looked into his face and laid her hand in his, she knew all. He shared her secret, and knew what she had done. It was not that he was either distant or familiar, cold or disrespectful, or anything but glad and reverent; nevertheless, he knew. He was no longer the boy adorer, her slave, her dog; he was her friend, and he wished to make her feel that she was safe with him-known, in his power, but safe.

"You are changed," he said awkwardly.

He thought of her as Leam, heard her always called Leam, but he dared not use the familiar name; and yet she was not "Miss Dundas" to him.

"It is four years since you saw me," she said with a grave smile. "It was time to change."

"But you are your old self too," he returned eagerly. He would have no disloyalty done to the queen of his boyish dreams; what worm soever was at its root, his royal pomegranate flower should be always set fair in the sun where he might be.

"You seem much changed too," she said after a short pause. "Graver and older. Is that because you are a clergyman?"

Alick turned his eyes away from the girl's face, and looked mournfully out on to the autumn woods.

"Partly," he said.

"And the other part?" asked Leam, pressing to know the worst.

"And the other part?" He looked at her, and his wan face grew paler. "Well, never mind the other part. There are things which sometimes come into a man's life and wither it for ever, as a fire passing over a green tree; but we do not speak of them."

"To no one?"

"To no one."

Leam sighed. No proclamation could have made the thing clearer

between them. Henceforth she was in Alick's power; let him be faithful, chivalrous, loyal, devoted, what you will, she was no longer her own unshared property. He knew what she was, and in so far was her master.

Poor Alick! This was not the light in which he held his fatal secret. True, he knew what she had done, and that his young queen, his ideal, was a murderess who, if the truth were made public, would be degraded below the level of the poorest wretch that had kept an honest name; but he felt himself more accursed than she, in that he had been the means whereby she had gotten both her knowledge and the power to use it. He was the doomed if innocent, as of old tragic times; the sinless Cain guilty of murder, but guiltless in intent. It was for this, as much as for the love and poetry of the boyish days, that he felt he owed himself to Leam, that his life was hers, and all his energies were to be devoted for her good. It was for this that he had prayed with such intensity of earnestness it seemed to him sometimes as if his soul had left his body, and had gone up to the Most High, to pluck by force of passionate entreaty the pardon he besought. "Pardon her, O Lord! Turn her heart, enlighten her understanding, convince her of her sin, but pardon her, pardon her, dear Lord! And with her, pardon me!"

The man's whole life was spent in this one wild fervid prayer. All that he did was tinged with the sentiment of winning grace for her and pardon for both. In his own mind they stood hand in hand together; and if he was the intercessor, they were both to benefit, and neither would be saved without the other. And he believed in the value of his prayers, and in the objective reality of their influence.

For the final changes in the ordering of home and society at North Aston, the week after Leam returned Edgar Harrowby came from India, ⚫and took up his position as the owner of the Hill estate; and the child Fina was brought to Ford House, and formally invested with her new name and condition as Miss Fina Dundas, Sebastian's younger daughter. Mindful of the past, Mr. Dundas expected to have a stormy scene with Leam when he told her his intentions respecting poor Madame's child; but Leam answered quietly, "Very well, papa," and greeted Fina when she arrived benevolently, if not effusively. She was not one of those born mothers who love babies from their early nursery days, but she was kind to the child in her grave way, and seemed anxious to do well by her.

The ladies all bestowed on her their nursery recipes and systems in rich abundance; especially Mrs. Birkett, who, though glad to be relieved from the hourly task of watching and contending, was still immensely interested in the little creature, and gave daily counsel and superintendSo that on the whole Leam was not left unaided with her charge. On the contrary, she ran great risk of being bewildered by her multiplicity of councillors, and of entering in consequence on that zigzag course which covers much ground and makes but little progress,

ence.

CHAPTER II.

EDGAR HARROWBY.

THIRTY-TWO years of age; tall, handsome, well set-up, and every inch a soldier; manly in bearing, but also with that grace of gesture and softness of speech which goes by the name of polished manner; a bold sportsman, ignorant of physical fear, to whom England was the culmination of the universe and such men as he gentlemen, officers, squires the culmination of humanity; a man who loved women as creatures but despised them as intelligences; who respected socially the ladies of his own class and demanded that they should be without stain as befits the wives and mothers and sisters of gentlemen, but who thought women of a meaner grade fair game for the roving fowler; a conservative holding to elemental differences whence arise the value of races, the dignity of family, and the righteousness of caste; an hereditary landowner regarding landed property as a sacred possession meant only for the few and not to be suffered to lapse into low-born hands; a gentleman incapable of falsehood, treachery, meanness, social dishonour, but not incapable of injustice, tyranny, selfishness, even cruelty, if such came in his way as the privileges of his rank-this was Edgar Harrowby as the world saw and his friends knew him, and as North Aston had henceforth to know him.

His return caused immense local excitement and great rejoicing. It seemed to set the social barometer at "fair," and to promise a spell of animation such as North Aston had been long wanting. And indeed personally for himself it was time that Major Harrowby was at home and at the head of his own affairs. Things had been going rather badly on the estate without him, and the need of a strong hand to keep agents straight and tenants up to the mark had been making itself somewhat disastrously felt during the last three or four years. Wherefore he had sold out; broken all his ties in India handsomely as he had broken them in London handsomely once before, when, mad with jealousy, he had fled like a thief in the night, burned his boats behind him, and, as he thought, obliterated every trace by which that loved and graceless woman could discover his real name or family holding; and now had come home prepared to do his duty to society and himself. That is, prepared to marry a nice girl of his own kind, keep the estate well in hand, and set an example of respectability and orthodoxy, family prayers and bold riding, according to the ideal of the English country gentleman.

But, above all, he must marry. And the wife provided for him by the eternal fitness of things was Adelaide Birkett.

Who else could be found to suit the part so perfectly? She was well-born, well-mannered, though not coarsely robust yet healthy in the sense of purity of blood; and she was decidedly pretty. So far VOL. XXXIII.-NO, 193,

6,

to the good of the Harrowby stock in the future. Neither was she too young; though by reason of her quiet country life her twenty-four years did not count more to her in wear and tear of feeling, and the doubtful moulding of experience, than if she had lived through one London season. She was a girl of acknowledged good sense; calm, equable; holding herself in the strictest leash of ladylike reserve, and governing all her emotions without trouble, patent or unconfessed. Hers was a character which would never floreate into irregular beauties to give her friends anxiety and crowd her life with embarrassing consequences. She despised sentiment and ridiculed enthusiasm; thought scepticism both wicked and disreputable-but at the same time fanaticism was silly, and not nearly so respectable as that quiet, easy-going religion which does nothing of which society would disapprove, but does not break its heart in trying to found the kingdom of God on earth.

All her relations with life and society would be blameless, orthodox, ladylike, and thoroughly English. As a wife she would preach submission in public and practise domination and the moral repression belonging to the superior being in private. As a mother she would take care to have experienced nurses and well-bred governesses who would look after the children properly, when she would wash her hands of further trouble and responsibility, save to teach them good manners at luncheon and self-control in their evening visit to the drawingroom for the "children's half-hour" before dinner. As the mistress of an establishment she would be strict; demanding perfect purity in the morals of her servants; not suffering waste, nor followers, nor kitchen amusements that she knew of, nor kitchen individuality anyhow. Her servants would be her serfs and she would assume to have bought them by food and wages in soul as well as body, in mind as well as muscle. She would give broken meat in moderation to the deserving poor, but she would let those who were not deserving do the best they could with want at home and inclemency abroad; and she would have called it fostering vice had she fed the wifeless mother when hungry or clothed the drunkard's children when naked. She would never be talked about for extremes or eccentricities of any kind; and the world would be forced to mention her with respect when it mentioned her at all-having indeed no desire to do otherwise. For she was of the kind dear to the heart of England; one of those who are called the salt of the earth, and who are assumed to keep society safe and pure. She was incredulous of science; contemptuous of superstition; impatient of new ideas; appreciating art but holding artists as inferior creatures like actors, acrobats, and newspaper-writers. She was loyal to the Queen and royal family, the nobility and Established Church, bracketing republicans with atheists and both with unpunished felons; as also classing immorality, the facts of physiology, and the details of disease in a group together, as things horrible and not to be spoken of before ladies. She was not slow to believe evil of her neighbours,