-a

cheap watering-places and centres of gen- | gradually a chill certainty that he was to teel emigration on the Continent, were be ignored and pushed aside out of her settled in the greatness of their new posi- life, came upon the poor girl. How it tion, as if they had never known any less was that further dangers dawned upon elevated circumstances. There was a her, it would be hard to tell; but it is great deal of excitement in the change; certain that she had divined a something and though it was sad at first, no doubt -a tightening coil about her helpless feet, there was a pleasure in hearing Robin a design upon her freedom and happiness addressed by the name of Rintoul, and - before the family had been long at accustoming themselves to their ladyships. Lindores. One of the consequences of But yet, when all was over, it was not per- their great honor and increased stateliness haps to the girls so great an improvement of living was, that the two sisters were as it appeared on the old life. They were partially separated, as they felt, from each not dulloh no - but still there was a other. They no longer occupied the same great deal less to do and to see than there room as they had done all their lives. used to be; and though they felt, as their They had now what with their foreign mother said, that girls with so many re- habits they called an appartement sources ought to be occupied and happy suite of rooms set apart for them; and as wherever they went, still the calm of the Edith was full of curiosity and excitement Castle was very different from the stir and about the new life, and Carry was dismovement to which they had been used. couraged and depressed, and felt it odious Up to this time, however, nothing had to her, they fell a little apart without any happened to them except that which was mutual intention or consciousness. It determined by another will than theirs, was in the beginning of their first winter, the inevitable result of other events. But when the dark days were closing in, that they had not been long settled in their this semi-estrangement first became ap new and elevated life when it became apparent to the younger sister. She awoke parent that other changes had happened all at once to the consciousness that Carry which were not evoked by any external was pale; that she shut herself up very fate, and which were yet more profoundly to affect their life. That Swiss holiday had been more important to Carry than any one out of the family knew. It had ended in a kind of vague engagement, only half sanctioned, yet only half opposed by her family, and which it was possible, had Mr. Beaufort been rich enough to marry, would not have been opposed at all. Had he possessed income enough or courage enough to make the venture, the result in all likelihood would, years before, have been out of the reach of evil fate; but while it remained only an engagement, Mr. Lindores had refused his official sanction to it. And it had seemed to Carry, in whose mind the first conscious thought after the news of this extraordinary change was to communicate it to Edward, that from that very day her father's aspect had changed towards her. He had met her running out to the post with her letter in the afternoon, and had given a suspicious glance at it, and stopped her, telling her it was not fit she should go out on a day so serious. Not a word had been said for weeks and even months after, but she knew very well that things were not as before. All reference to Beaufort was somehow stopped; even her mother managed to arrest upon her lips all mention of her lover. She was herself too timid to open the subject, and

But her

much, and more than ever devoted herself
to her writing; that she composed a great
many little poems (for she was the genius
of the family), and often had a suspicion
of redness about her eyes. This discov
ery was instantaneous. Edith had never
been awakened to any but the most sim-
ple troubles of life, and it had not oc-
curred to her to imagine that there was
anything beneath the headache which her
sister so often took refuge in.
mind, when it began to act, was rapid and
keen. It became apparent to her that
she had been losing sight of Carry, and
that Carry was not happy. The progress
from one step to another of her solicitude
for her sister was rapid as lightning. She
remembered everything in a moment,
though these causes of sorrow had been
altogether out of her thoughts before.
She remembered that not a word had
been said of Mr. Beaufort for months;
that Carry had ceased altogether to spec-
ulate as to anything that might happen in
the future; that all this was as a closed
book between them nowadays. As soon
as she arrived at this conviction, Edith
found herself ready to interfere for good
or evil. She went into the room where
Carry was writing her little poetries, with
something of the effect of a fresh, light
wind, carrying refreshment, but also a
little disturbance, with her. She stooped

had arisen between them, she was glad of | family, and little Edith only the youngest,

a pretext to leave her sister. She could the household pet, whom nobody regarded scarcely believe this to be possible, and as in a position to make decisions or form yet so it was. Nor did she wish to run opinions for herself. Why was it to her to her mother with her discovery, to ap- eyes that this sudden insight had been peal to her against Carry's misconception, given? It is not usually a happy gift. against the monstrous character of the Blessed are they, we may rather say, who suggestion altogether, as would have been can deceive themselves - whose eyes are her first impulse in any other case. No; made bind, and not more fatally clear, by she was convinced of the reality of it, love. Edith hastened out of doors, out little as she desired to be convinced. A of sight or speech of any one, to try if gleam of painful light seemed to fall she could escape from this revelation across the new tenor of their life. She which had opened upon her, so much thought for a moment that she saw the against her will. It was a misty, dull very earth, solid and unyielding, break day, with a great deal of moisture in the into dangerous pits and chasms before air-moisture which seemed to commuher feet. The pain of this discovery was nicate itself to Edith's eyes, and get into twofold - both poignant, yet one worse her throat. She hastened down the path than the other. To think that her father, which wound through the birches, the whom she had hitherto loved and trusted, poetical "birks of Lindores," to the river not with any excess of devotion, but yet lying far below, and already sending a with an honest confidence that he would soft sound of running water to soothe ask nothing wrong, nothing unreasonable her. About half-way down was a great from his children, should thus threaten to beech-tree, round which a seat had been become a domestic tyrant, an enemy of placed. Here there was a view, not of truth, was terrible; but still more terrible the wide champaign, like that at Dalrulwas the conviction which overwhelmed zian, but of a portion of the highroad, the girl that Carry, with all her imagina. just where it began to mount the hill to tion and feeling-Carry, the poet of the wards the Castle. On the other side lay family, the first one to have a romance the river, visible at the foot of the bank, and a lover would not have strength to and running somewhat strong and wild resist any attempted coercion. Oh, if it under the cliffs on the opposite side, had only been me! Edith said to herself, which threw it into deep shadow. But it clenching her hands tight. But then she was not the river, though so much the had no Edward, no romance - she was more beautiful of the two, it was the highfancy free even were it possible to force road which attracted Edith's attention. her into any connection she disliked As she stood looking out upon it, some (which Edith did not think it would be), one passed, riding slowly along, but turnat all events she could not be made false ing his head to catch the first glimpse of to another. But Carry- Carry, who was the Castle. His appearance seemed to all heart- -to force her to deny that heart throw a sudden light upon her thoughts. would be doubly cruel. Little Edith woke He was a heavy, large man, upon a pow out of her careless youth to see this won-erful black horse, -an apparition big derful and great danger at her very side, with all that bewilderment of feeling which attends the first disclosure of the evils in life. She could not believe it, and yet she knew it was true. She remembered tones in her father's voice, lights in his eyes, which she never seemed to have understood before. Was this what they meant? that when his time and opportunity came, he would be a tyrant, a remorseless and unfaltering ruler, suffering no rebellion? Edith trembled a little. Perhaps she, too, might fall under that despotism one day. But she did not feel afraid of herself. Oh, if it had only been me! she said, ungrammatical, as excitement generally is. It would be hard to say what ground she had for her self-confidence. Carry was the genius of the

enough to be identified, even at that distance. The ladies had all been very free in their remarks upon this representative of their county neighbors. They had not given him a very encouraging recep tion, yet he had repeated his visits, too stolid, they had thought, to perceive that he was not wanted. As Edith stood and gazed at him, with the blood curdling about her heart, it flashed upon her that her father had given no countenance to their criticisms. He had told them that Mr. Torrance was one of the richest coinmoners in Scotland, and Tinto such a house as any one might be proud to possess. She had paid little attention to these words at the time, but they seemed to repeat themselves in the very air now. It was a day of revelation to Edith. She

saw all that it meant, and foresaw all it
was coming to, with a gleam of terrible
insight. Oh no, no! she moaned to herself
in a kind of helpless protest against fate.

CHAPTER V.

hard, even now, as may be seen. He came back more horsey, more doggy than he had been before, if possible, a man without an intellectual taste or higher instinct, bored to death, as he himself avowed, with the grand house, full of pic

MR. TORRANCE of Tinto was the rep-tures, and statues, and marble, and porce resentative of an old county family, but lain, which the taste of his mother had he would not have been the richest com- accumulated. Never was such a magnifmoner in Scotland if he had been no more icent place in the quietude of such a than this. A variety of other circum homely country. The daughter of the stances, however, had combined to bring railway man was as extreme in her taste about this effect, and elevate a man who for art as the daughter of one of her fawas no better, at the best that could be ther's navvies might have been in dress. said for him, than a rude yeoman-sports- There was not a wall, not a passage or man at soul, into a person of the greatest staircase, that was not laden with decoralocal importance and almost national no- tion. Great artists had designed the tability. The previous Torrance of Tinto, chimney-pieces and cornices. The vela man of some rough practical power, had vet, the satin, the embroidery, were all the allied himself to some degree in business, most costly, and, according to the lights and to a much greater degree in life, with of that period, the most correct that a great railway contractor-one of the money could buy. The old man, whose men who, coming from nothing, have money had bought all this, went about made colossal fortunes, and found admit- the gorgeous rooms rubbing his hands tance for their children, if not for them with a continual chuckle of satisfaction so selves, into the foremost ranks of society. long as he lived; and the poor woman Mr. Torrance married this man's daugh- who had created the luxurious house ter, and all the money which the original swept through in dresses to correspond,. navvy had quarried out of the bowels of with satisfaction not less than if she had the earth, or gathered from its surface, been a daughter of the Medici - who, to went to increase the lands and the power be sure, made their money in business of Tinto, where this daughter, his only too. But when that fine Renaissance child, a woman with the magnificent ideas lady died, and all her friends were scatof expenditure which enormous wealth so tered, and the place fell back into the posnaturally brings along with it, disposed session of the commonplace country laird herself to reign like a princess, making and his boy, coming in ruddy from the her husband's old house the centre of a fields or damp from the hill, afraid to new palace, fit for a duke at least. The tread in their shooting-boots on the luxold man, her father, always thrifty and urious carpets or throw themselves down sparing in his own person, would have in the satin chairs, the incongruity of the her stinted in nothing; and perhaps, had establishment was manifest to every eye. she lived long, her husband would have Mr. Torrance, the father, had been deeply had little enough left him of the huge for- impressed by the cost of everything his tune which she had brought into the fam- wife had bought and planned. He had ily. But fortunately (for the family), after been horrified and indignant in the first she had alarmed him beyond measure by instance; but when it had been proved unbounded expenditure for a few years, that he had no power to resist, and that and had completed the new house and the money must be expended for all these filled it with costly furniture, in all of luxuries, he had taken what satisfaction which her father encouraged her, the he could from the price. "Do you know death of both within a year of each other what she gave for that?" he would say; relieved the owner of Tinto of his fears, "it's all dash'd extravagance. I cannot and left him free to complete the training away with it; but it was her doing, and as of his son as he pleased. He made him she had plenty, she had to please herself." much such a man as he had himself been, It was in this way that he spoke of his but without the brains, which are not wife. And when she died, the splendid transmitted so easily as money. Patrick house she had built was shut up, Torrance had indeed been sent to Oxford from sentiment, but because the set of to have the regulation mark stamped rooms still remaining, which belonged to upon him as an educated man; but those the old house of Tinto, was much more in were days in which so much as this meant harmony with the habits of the master of was easier than now; and it is not very | the house.

not