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CHAPTER XII.

THE DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION.

BUT Forest Range, though restored once more to its ordinary quiet routine by the departure of all its visitors, did not by any means regain its former peace and placid cheerfulness. Elizabeth became seriously unwell: she suffered from severe headaches, and had hysterical attacks, which kept her up-stairs. Then she took a violent cold, and was ordered to stay in bed, and when the influenza and bronchial symptoms succumbed to prompt treatment and good nursing, it was supposed that she would rapidly recover. But instead of gaining strength, she drooped daily she refused to get up and lie on the sofa in her mother's dressing-room: her appetite entirely failed, and not all the dainty little tit-bits that the housekeeper sent up could tempt her to a meal. She would not converse, she would not listen to reading: she wanted to be alone, she said, and her only comfort seemed to be in lying undisturbed in a darkened chamber, her face buried in the pillows, and the door shut upon any one who wished to make her speak. Cyril's name was never mentioned now: whether this was a wise procedure, I am sure I cannot tell; for we all thought the more, that we kept such rigid silence. Even the servants seemed intuitively to understand the merits of the case, for they never referred to Mr. Denham, or to Mr. Denham's room, according to long-established usage.

Lady Ashburner was in deep distress, for Elizabeth repulsed her visibly. She would always be sleepy, or just dropping asleep, when her mother came to sit in

her room; she took all her caresses gently, but very coldly, and seemed so perfectly indifferent to everything in the world, that it was impossible to interest her for a moment. Sir John himself determined to rouse her, if it were possible: so one day, after dinner, he walked up to his daughter's room, and announced his intention of sitting with her for an hour. “And I want a little talk with you, my dear," was his concluding remark, as he settled himself comfortably near the bed-side.

"I cannot talk, Papa!" "Why not, my dear?"

"I am too unwell, and I have no spirits."

Sir John arose, and drew Elizabeth's face towards him his kind but penetrative gaze was fixed upon "Elizabeth! does it hurt you to talk?"

her.

Now Elizabeth was always strictly truthful, so very reluctantly she was compelled to answer, "No, Papa; only I feel weary, and I do not wish it."

"Wishes, my dear, cannot always be consulted; and as to your feeling weary, I do not wonder at it. You will never get strength by lying here, eschewing the daylight, and making us all miserable. You will never regain your appetite till you breathe another air, and to-morrow, if you still feel too weak to walk, I shall have you partially dressed, and carry you myself into mamma's dressing-room. It is many a year, Lizzie, since I had you in my arms, but it will be quite a treat to feel you are a little girl again. I could almost wish you had never grown into a woman."

Miss Ashburner was silent: she only flung her hands wearily about on the counterpane, while a few tears rolled down her pale cheeks, which just then were not flushed with fever. Sir John tenderly imprisoned one of the little hands, that were already growing thin, and of ivory whiteness, and said gravely but very lovingly, "My darling, what is it? Why are you grieving your heart out thus? tell me, dear, all all about it!"

With one of her passionate bursts of grief Elizabeth

sobbed out, "You know, Papa, you know: it is cruel to ask me."

If any

“Am I cruel to my child? I think not. sacrifice on her father's part could ensure her happiness it should be made: if any suffering of his would bring her real peace and consolation, it should be cheerfully endured. Is it because we cannot give you to Cyril Denham that you are grieving so terribly?" "You have blighted all my life, Papa, and Cyril's too."

I hope not, Elizabeth. Lives are not easily blighted at seventeen, my love: it is astonishing how, through God's mercy, we live down the sorrows of our youth,―ay, and of riper years! Come, my dear, let me settle your pillows. I want you to sit up, and talk the matter over with me for a little while. Now then, my dear, to begin very prosaically, but very practically, supposing I permit you and Cyril to marry, what do you intend to live upon ?"

"I never thought about it, Papa: I have always lived somehow, and I suppose I always shall. Cyril has some money, has he not ?"

"Very little, Elizabeth; and that little is not secure. Mrs. Denham, contrary to my advice, in spite of my entreaties, has invested the remnant of her fortunes in what seems to me the wildest, maddest speculations. She has been receiving very handsome interest, and she tells me how glad she is she trusted to her own unassisted judgment, ignoring mine: moreover, what she draws now, is nothing to the golden harvest she expects to reap henceforth."

"Who told her of these companies, Papa?"

"I am sorry to say, her son-in-law, John Erskine. He told her, and advised her in perfect good faith, for the great part of his own money is in these miningshares. Whenever the blow reaches Mrs. Denham, John Erskine will go down also."

"Will the blow reach Mrs. Denham ?—is it certain ?"

"Most certain, I am afraid. I know upon very good authority that the whole affair is upon the eve

of collapse. I have warned Mrs. Denham and John Erskine they will not see the danger; indeed, it is now too late, I fear, for extrication."

"There is Monkswood!"

"That must go: the entail was cut off long since before Edward Denham's second marriage—I almost think in his father's life-time, but I am not sure. I only know that when my poor sister became his wife, in opposition to her own family, we none of us ever imagined that she wedded the heir of Monkswood."

"But Edward relinquished his birthright, and so also did Augustine and Gregory: Cyril is the heir of Monkswood."

"An heirship so little worth having, that but for the desertion of his mother, I should long ago have urged him to follow the example of his brothers, and act as if there were no Monkswood in the world. As it is, I have implored him several times to mark out his own path in life. He will no more succeed to Monkswood, than you to Queen Victoria's crown." "Only I am not a princess, and Cyril is his father's son."

"There is so much distinction, I grant you, dear: my illustration was a faulty one, for whereas the wildest dream of castle-building could never picture you upon the British throne, from simple lack of right, Cyril may some day, if he pleases, be master of Monkswood again. Elizabeth! if that grand old house were mine, and those old lands, that were the Denhams when the Domesday Book was written, I would toil day and night, I would give myself no rest, till I redeemed to the full, and restored to something of its ancient grandeur, the inheritance of my fathers! But Cyril Denham, unless he alter speedily, will never do this. Can you wonder that I refuse my daughter to a man whose fortunes are just sinking into emptiness-to a man who neither inherits anything, nor possesses the requisite qualifications for building up that which might in time replace the fallen edifice of his ancestral fortunes?"

"Papa, you are rich; and I am your only child."

"I am not startlingly rich, Elizabeth, for my station in society; and you know that Forest Range and the baronetcy go, after my death, to our kinsman, Percival Ashburner. You will have, my dear, a very comfortable fortune-much more than your mother had when I married her but you will not be a bait for mere money-hunters."

"But Cyril and I do not care for riches. What is money?"

A great deal, my dear, in spite of all that cynics say to the contrary. You have never known the sorrows of 'little coin, much care :' your life, my pet, has been like a fairy-tale; you have only had hitherto to wish and have."

"Then, dear Papa, let me wish and have now! Let Cyril and me have enough to live in some little cottage. We should not want much; a hundred a year, or so, would do very well. We shall not care about society. We will have a good piano, and plenty of books, and a pretty garden, and the least little bit of a greenhouse, just for flowers in winter-time, and a dear skye-terrier; and I suppose we might have a little basket carriage, and some quiet dumpling of a pony, to take us through the lanes."

"And how many servants should you think of keeping?"

"Oh, scarcely any, of course: just a cook to get our meals, and a housemaid to clean the rooms, and a boy who could work in the garden, and take care of the pony, and wait at table, as a sort of page."

"You seem, my dear, to have been studying 'love in a cottage' pretty closely but I assure you that two hundred a year would be insufficient for the very ménage you propose. How much do you spend in gloves alone, Elizabeth ?"

"Oh! I would give up gloves."

"That would be injudicious, and scarcely civilised." 'I mean I would give up wearing so many : I would only buy dark gloves, and have them cleaned."