And a little while afterwards, just as the cathedral bell began to toll for early prayers, the gentle spirit passed away, and Cyril left the chamber of death, and thought that he, too, would join the worshippers; for his world-worn, weary spirit yearned for rest, and haply he might find it there, beneath the solemn roof of his own glorious beloved cathedral! But it was a dull calm that fell upon him, the lassitude of exhaustion, rather than the repose of peace. All in vain is Christ in the sanctuary, if He be not in the worshipper's own heart. Christ is really no nearer in the house dedicated to His praise than He is in the wilderness, or in the great world's rush and throng. As Sally had once told Cyril, there are those

"With whom the melodies abide,

Of the everlasting chime."

There are those who always hear church-bells calling them to prayer and praise, for which they need not turn aside from the common duties of the day; there are those who join perpetually in litany and anthems, in whose ears the voices of the great choir are ever sounding, as they go up and down in their daily paths, doing and bearing that which God has given them to do or bear; those who carry with them everywhere an altar, whereon they offer ceaselessly the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart, mingled with sweet incense of faith and thanksgiving! And there are those who, day by day, bend the knee in hallowed fane, and join with white-robed choristers and priests in sounds of sacred harmony, yet with whom the great High Priest abides not! Such, worship not in spirit and in truth, and the blessing is not theirs, though they kneel among the faithful amid the mouldering shrines hallowed by the memories of the past, though arch and aisle and solemn chancel have echoed for a thousand years to the celestial strain, "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ!"

Cyril stayed at Southchester till after the funeral, till Sally was laid, according to her wish, under the spreading chestnut-trees that clustered round the

lonely chancel of St. Croix. Cyril's legacy was a very small one; when all just debts were paid, and funeral and other expenses liquidated, only a few pounds remained. He went back to Arundel Street, feeling sadder and lonelier than ever. He never visited Monkswood, nor did he venture to go down to Forest Range. "No," he said to himself, on the day he left St. Mildred's Close; "let the dead past bury its dead! I will not revive it by going where every tree, and every stone, and every inch of ground will speak to me of other and happier days. Let the past go! But oh! the present is inexpressibly dreary, and the time to come is cloudy and uninviting. Friends I have none; some are lost, some are estranged, and those who call themselves my friends now are not worthy of the name; already some of them are looking coldly on me. I am not successful enough, not fortunate enough for such ephemera as they are!"

So Cyril wrapped himself in his own sad thoughts, and worked away fitfully, indeed, in his dreary chamber in London, and few came near him, and every day and every week he felt his isolation more completely. At last, one day came back the MS. from the editor of Blackwood, and next morning several other articles he had written for the papers were declined. Sally's legacy, though a trifle, kept the wolf from the door. When the money in his purse was gone, he had no notion where to turn for more, and then that bill-the £300, that had now swelled to nearly £500-how was that to be met?

How, indeed ? It was as much in his power to pay off the National Debt as to produce the necessary cash at the time required; he supposed he must go to prison for a debt he had never incurred. It did not seem so terrible a fate now that no one remained, as he believed, to bewail his fallen fortunes.

The Rattenburys had left England during his stay at Southchester; faithful Angey would have wept, had she known the wretched circumstances of his lot,

but she never imagined that Cyril had to cook his chop himself, that he had turned teetotaller for the sake of hard economy; that he began to look with anxious eye at his hat and boots, and that he dreaded illness, lest Mrs. Stalker should have him carried to the hospital. Angey was engaged now to the young Esculapius of Gallipot-house, and she remembered Cyril with that sort of regret we feel in middle life for some sweet, long-vanished dream of youth. “He never could have been mine," she said to her new lover, candidly, "and so it is best that we were parted; he was far above me as the heavenly spheres, and he never thought of me, though I used to hope he would some day. But I never can forget him, and I care for you, Horatio, quite differently. I suppose this is the real thing, and the other was only romance. And yet, sometimes I think if that wretched hussy, Laura Somerset, had not come like a cunning spider, and made webs for him, he might have seen how I worshipped him, and have loved me a little in return!"

To which rhapsody Horatio answered, "I dare say he wouldn't, and if he would, my love is worth a dozen of his any day! I'm in treaty for a nice little practice down in the country, Angey, and we'll settle there, and keep a pony and gig, and I shall have lots of patients; it's a fine sickly neighbourhood, I'm told, and I shall make a fortune, and you shall have everything you want, and I shall never think anything too good for you; and we will be as happy as two lovebirds, or as a prince and princess, and Cyril Denham may go to the well, say to Jericho !"

Little knew the kind-hearted girl of the actual privations of her hero; little she dreamed of the troubles and difficulties that were thickening round him. And when one sunny day in April she became a bride, and sat all blushing before the ponderous cake, with Adeline and another friend beside her as bridesmaids, and tried to think of Cyril as if he were dead, or as if he were the ideal of some romance, the true state of things never suggested itself to her fertile

imagination. While Angey kept her marriage feast, Cyril drank weak tea without milk or sugar, and dispensed with dinner altogether, because the wolf was so very near the door that he could hear him growl. Oh, if Agnes, in her luxurious villa home at Mentoni, had known how it fared with her friend in Arundel Street!

320

CHAPTER XXXII.

VILLA SANTA LUCIA.

BUT Agnes knew nothing of Cyril's privations and temptations; no news of him ever reached any member of Sir John Ashburner's family. Sally Hawkes' death seemed to dissolve the last ties that bound the last of the Denhams to the friends of ancient time, and the grave might have swallowed Cyril up also, for all we heard of him during that dreary winter of sadness and exile. And gradually Lady Ashburner faded, till in the early spring we were told—what, alas! we knew too well, only we could not, would not confess it, even to our own hearts-that she was dying, that she would never more see her beloved Forest Range, never again set foot upon the shores of her own dear English land!

Elizabeth had in truth been forgiven long ago; the marriage having taken place, it was of no use, Sir John said, to persist in any open demonstration of displeasure. He blamed himself very severely; he had never, he told Agnes and myself, been sufficiently firm with his daughter; he had never insisted upon her facing duty for duty's sake; he had yielded in every case, save in this fatal one of Vivian Gower's addresses, to the entreaties or blandishments of his darling; he had denied her nothing, she had been his idol!—his only child, whom he could not bear to thwart or grieve even in merest trifles; and only those who knew him best could imagine what it cost him to cross her inclinations before she fled from her home, and how deeply he suffered when, after her inexcusable flight, he felt it incumbent on him to manifest