so, than in all the glories of French windows, and plate-glass, and stately portico. The shield of the Denhams was taken down, and a new pediment erected, whereon, doubtless, was to flourish some symbol of the Gower family. Just as Cyril turned aside into a thick, yet unpruned laurel-walk, the fumes of a cigar, floating on the mild evening breeze, warned him of some person's close vicinity. He stepped into the shade of a great spreading cedar with boughs that sweep the ground; and in another minute Vivian Gower passed by, now taking a puff at his cigar, now humming snatches of a tune from "La Traviata." His proud, handsome face, and haughty, careless steps, were almost more than Cyril could endure. Dark thoughts passed through his mind as he watched his rival, his enemy, for so he deemed him, saunter up the evergreen alley to the broad terrace in front of the mansion, and there seat himself on the broken balustrade, and contemplate the "restorations" with an air of ineffable complacency. Doubtless he had strolled out to inspect the progress of the day, and he had a perfect right to be there, on ground that he had bought and honourably paid for: but Cyril hated him-hated him so bitterly, that in his heart he cursed him, though no words of passion passed his lips. Nevertheless, as he turned away and plunged into the wood, he knew that he left his curse on that man, and on the Monkswood which he owned! Well might Lady Ashburner say that Cyril Denham, with all his moral goodness and greatness, and sweetness of character, was no Christian. And well had it been, that Cyril's curse were the only one that lighted on the head of the new master of Monkswood. The curses of outraged husbands, infuriated brothers, and maddened fathers had been launched at Vivian Gower, and worse than all, the curse of an evil life, of innocence betrayed, of talents perverted, of wealth squandered in iniquity, of God's great wrath, was on him,-on him, and he knew it not; or, knowing it, heeded not.

As Cyril neared the station, it occurred to him to run down to Fairchurch and so on to Forest Range, and finish up the silent farewells of the day; a train was just due, and he took his ticket, and was soon at the well-known little station, whose platform he had trodden so happily, often so elately.

It was a beautiful May evening, and the moon at the full; still when he reached Forest Range the shades of night had fallen, and he could wander about securely and unobserved. Seeing a light in the library, the windows of which opened on a shadowed lawn, he went forward to have one last look at the room where he had spent so many pleasant hours. Sheltered by a large arbutus, he could approach the window very closely, and looking in, he saw Elizabeth selecting some books from a pile that lay upon the table. Agnes Craven stood near her, absorbed in a small volume she held in her hand. Yes! there was his fair, false mistress, so radiantly beautiful, so bright, so happy-seeming! There was his friend and sister, so serenely grave, so calm! and all the while his heart was breaking. The one so glowing, in her proud, girlish loveliness, the other so peacefully content in her sweet poetic dreams and classic lore. He could be nothing now to either-and yet, he had thought Agnes Craven true, when she called him friend and brother.

Feeling himself now indeed alone in the world, he sadly turned away, and went back to Southchester. If he could only have known that one true heart was beating still with purest love for him; if he could but have guessed that Agnes was reading lines he had first commended to her notice, and that she was thinking far more of her living and unfortunate friend than of the dead and high-souled bard, whose verses met her eye! But Cyril did not know, did not guess; and he went on his way solitary and uncheered; and the Tempter said to his soul, which had wandered far from God, and heavenly blessing: "Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die."

223

CHAPTER XXIII.

WAITING FOR A CROSSING.

A BROILING Midsummer succeeded to that fair flowery May. The month of June, though brilliant enough. at the gay West End, in the Parks, and in the more aristocratic suburbs, was, in the crowded city, dusty, stifling, and unsavoury. Westminster, of course, was a trifle better than St. Paul's Churchyard, Fleet Street, or the Strand, and Parliament Street was perhaps as cool and shady a resort as Westminster could rejoice in, though now and then breezes came up from the river which were trying to persons of delicate olfactory perceptions, to say the least of it. The Thames embankment, of course, though thought of, was not even about to be commenced, and the Thames mud at low tide, and it was always low tide, some people in their disgust averred,-steamed up in the cloudless sunshine odours that were neither healthy nor agreeable. Mr. Rattenbury had been away from his post for some days; he had been extremely unwell, and change and rest were prescribed for him; consequently the whole establishment of the Rattenburys had migrated to the neighbourhood of Ramsgate, and Cyril missed him and his bonnie little Minnie, to say nothing of Toodlums and Jack, more than he imagined could possibly be the case.

In those days Cyril was trying to convince himself that he cared very little about his fair and fickle mistress. He felt secretly displeased with Sir John and Lady Ashburner, because they had not managed matters better. He had a sore feeling when he thought of Agnes; she had not, he told himself, fulfilled her

compact of sisterhood, for she had not written him one word of sympathy or counsel since Elizabeth's faithlessness had been disclosed. He forgot that he had not written to her, and that delicacy on her part might leave it to him to take the initiative in such a correspondence; and he felt a kind of morbid satisfaction in believing himself to be one of those unlucky wretches against whom Fortune perpetually arrays herself. In those days, too, he neglected his toilet, to the indignation of Miss Crumple, who felt herself outraged in sitting down to table with a gentleman who allowed his whiskers to go unpruned, wore any sort of neck-tie, and was not as particular as he ought to have been in the article of wristbands and stick-ups. Also, as Adeline plaintively whispered to her friend, "he shunned the festive circle," that is to say, as a rule, he abjured post-prandial seed-biscuits, boiled oranges, and mild ginger-wine-not the famous "Stivens's Green Ginger," which is really wholesome and agreeable, but a horrible decoction prepared by the indefatigable Angey herself, from a recipe of her greatgrandmother's, and expressly designed by her for the after-dinner delectation of her mother's boarders. Also, he fled from the musical perpetrations of the two young ladies; for "Ever of thee" he had first heard under far different circumstances, and he had the bad taste not to appreciate the Norma duets. If he vouchsafed to remain while his glass was filled, and an orange quartered on his behalf, he always escaped as the first strains of " Mirar, O Nor-or-mer!" fell upon his ears, for Angey and Adeline had lately taken to the Italian, to his inexpressible dismay.

In those days Cyril certainly cultivated a forlorn aspect; he put his Longfellow and his Tennyson out of sight, and lived upon Byron and L. E. L. And while Norma and Adalgisa were screaming at each other in the drawing-room, Cyril, in the retirement of his chamber, was pacing its narrow bounds, now and then stumbling against the washing-stand, or running full tilt against the iron bed-post, and reciting—

E'en as a broken mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies; and makes
A thousand images of one that was

The same, and still the same, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do, which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise, and still and cold,
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,

Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold."

Or else,

"We know not how such tears
Are half forgot in future years;
How life effaces as it goes

The keenest pang of earlier woes,
How careless and how cold we grow,
Dry as the dust we tread below:
As if the grave its chillness threw,

The grave-which I am hastening to."

The very worst pabulum Cyril Denham could have selected.

And so it went on till Midsummer-day was past, and the July sun was burning fiercely over the land, and everybody who could get out of town was making preparations to join in the general exodus. Hotter and hotter grew the atmosphere of the ancient city of Westminster, more and more unsavoury were the odours steaming up from the royal Thames, more and more drowsy-or so people thought-were the deep sweet chimes that Big Ben rang out from his lofty campanile, and Cyril began to hate the very stones and mortar that formed his prison-house. His mind was quite made up now. Two months of the three of pledged inaction were expired; in four weeks more he would be free to prosecute the schemes which had suggested themselves to him, and he would not let the grass grow under his feet. He had decided upon Australia, and to Australia he would go ; he would put the past away from him, he would begin a new life in a new world, spurning the old Northern hemisphere which had treated him so cruelly. Yet these stern resolves scarcely accorded with the Byronic frame of mind in which evening by evening he indulged.