call up her image. "In her letter this morning she bids me give you such a pretty message. It won't bear translating into English; you must read it for yourself," continued he, pointing out a line or two in a letter he drew out of his pocket.

Roger suspected that one or two of the words were wrongly spelt; but their purport was so gentle and loving, and had such a touch of simple, respectful gratitude in them, that he could not help being drawn afresh to the little unseen sister-in-law, whose acquaintance Osborne had made by helping her to look for some missing article of the children's, whom she was taking for their daily walk in Hyde Park. For Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been nothing more than a French bonne, very pretty, very graceful, and very much tyrannized over by the rough little boys and girls she had in charge. She was a little orphan-girl, who had charmed the heads of a travelling English family, as she had brought madame some articles of lingerie at an hotel; and she had been hastily engaged by them as bonne to their children, partly as a pet and plaything herself, partly because it would be so good for the children to learn French from a native (of Alsace !) By and by her mistress ceased to take any particular notice of Aimée in the bustle of London and London gaiety; but though feeling more and more forlorn in a strange land every day, the French girl strove hard to do her duty. One touch of kindness, however, was enough to set the fountain gushing; and she and Osborne naturally fell into an ideal state of love, to be rudely disturbed by the indignation of the mother, when accident discovered to her the attachment existing between her children's bonne and a young man of an entirely different class. Aimée answered truly to all her mistress's questions; but no worldly wisdom, nor any lesson to be learnt from another's experience, could in the least disturb her entire faith in her lover. Perhaps Mrs. Townshend did no more than her duty in immediately sending Aimée back to Metz, where she had first met with her, and where such relations as remained to the girl might be supposed to be residing. But, altogether, she knew so little of the kind of people or life to which she was consigning her deposed protégée that Osborne, after listening with impatient indignation to the lecture which Mrs. Townshend gave him when he insisted on seeing her in order to learn what had become of his love, that the young man set off straight for Metz in hot haste, and did not let the grass grow under his feet until he had made Aimée his wife. All this had occurred the previous autumn, and Roger did not know of the step his brother had taken until it was irrevocable. Then came the mother's death, which, besides the simplicity of its own overwhelming sorrow, brought with it the loss of the kind, tender mediatrix, who could always soften and turn his father's heart. It is doubtful, however, if even she could have succeeded in this, for the squire looked high, and over high, for the wife of his heir; he detested all foreigners, and over-more held all Roman Catholics in dread and abomination something akin to our ancestors' hatred of witchcraft. All these prejudices were strengthened by his grief. Argument would always

have glanced harmless away off his shield of utter unreason; but a loving impulse, in a happy moment, might have softened his heart to what he most detested in the former days. But the happy moments came not now, and the loving impulses were trodden down by the bitterness of his frequent remorse, not less than by his growing irritability; so Aimée lived solitary in the little cottage near Winchester in which Osborne had installed her when she first came to England as his wife, and in the dainty furnishing of which he had run himself so deeply into debt. For Osborne consulted his own fastidious taste in his purchases rather than her simple childlike wishes and wants, and looked upon the little Frenchwoman rather as the future mistress of Hamley Hall than as the wife of a man who was wholly dependent on others at present. He had chosen a southern county as being far removed from those midland shires where the name of Hamley of Hamley was well and widely known; for he did not wish his wife to assume only for a time a name which was not justly and legally her own. In all these arrangements he had willingly striven to do his full duty by her; and she repaid him with passionate devotion and admiring reverence. If his vanity had met with a check, or his worthy desires for college honours had been disappointed, he knew where to go for a comforter; one who poured out praise till her words were choked in her throat by the rapidity of her thoughts, and who poured out the small vials of her indignation on every one who did not acknowledge and bow down to her husband's merits. If she ever wished to go to the châteauthat was his home-and to be introduced to his family, Aimée never hinted a word of it to him. Only she did yearn, and she did plead, for a little more of her husband's company; and the good reasons which had convinced her of the necessity of his being so much away when he was present to urge them, failed in their efficacy when she tried to reproduce them to herself in his absence.

The afternoon of the day on which Lord Hollingford had called, Roger was going upstairs, three steps at a time, when, at a turn on the landing, he encountered his father. It was the first time he had seen him since their conversation about the Towers' invitation to dinner. The squire stopped his son by standing right in the middle of the passage.

"Thou'rt going to meet the mounseer, my lad?" said he, half as affirmative, half as question.

"No, sir; I sent off James almost immediately with a note declining it. I don't care about it-that's to say, not to signify."

"Why did you take me up so sharp, Roger?" said his father pettishly. "You all take me up so hastily now-a-days. I think it's hard when a man mustn't be allowed a bit of crossness when he's tired and heavy at heart— that I do."

"But, father, I should never like to go to a house where they had slighted you."

"Nay, nay, lad," said the squire, brightening up a little; "I think I slighted them. They asked me to dinner after my lord was made

lieutenant time after time, but I never would go near 'em. I call that my slighting them."

And no more was said at the time; but the next day the squire again stopped Roger.

"I've been making Jem try on his livery-coat that he hasn't worn this three or four years, he's got too stout for it now."

"Well, he needn't wear it, need he? and Dawson's lad will be glad enough of it, he's sadly in want of clothes."

"Ay, ay; but who's to go with you when you call at the Towers? It's but polite to call after Lord What's-his-name has taken the trouble to come here; and I shouldn't like you to go without a groom."

"My dear father! I shouldn't know what to do with a man riding at my back. I can find my way to the stable-yard for myself, or there'll be some man about to take my horse. Don't trouble yourself about that."

"Well, you're not Osborne, to be sure. Perhaps it won't strike 'em as strange for you. But you must look up, and hold your own, and remember you're one of the Hamleys, who've been on the same land for hundreds of years, while they're but trumpery Whig folk who only came into the county in Queen Anne's time."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

RIVALRY.

FOR some days after the ball Cynthia seemed languid, and was very silent. Molly, who had promised herself fully as much enjoyment in talking over the past gaiety with Cynthia as in the evening itself, was disappointed when she found that all conversation on the subject was rather evaded than encouraged. Mrs. Gibson, it is true, was ready to go over the ground as many times as any one liked; but her words were always like ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts. Anybody might have used them, and, with a change of proper names, they might have served to describe any ball. She repeatedly used the same language in speaking about it, till Molly knew the sentences and their sequence even to irritation.

"Ah! Mr. Osborne, you should have been there! I said to myself many a time how you really should have been there-you and your brother of course."

Do

"I thought of you very often during the evening!"

"Did you? Now that I call very kind of you. Cynthia, darling! you hear what Mr. Osborne Hamley was saying?" as Cynthia came into the room just then. "He thought of us all on the evening of

the ball."

"He did better than merely remember us then," said Cynthia, with her soft slow smile. "We owe him thanks for those beautiful flowers,

mamma."

"Oh!" said Osborne, "you must not thank me exclusively. I believe it was my thought, but Roger took all the trouble of it."

"I consider the thought as everything," said Mrs. Gibson. "Thought is spiritual, while action is merely material."

This fine sentence took the speaker herself by surprise; and in such conversation as was then going on, it is not necessary to accurately define the meaning of everything that is said.

"I'm afraid the flowers were too late to be of much use though," continued Osborne. "I met Preston the next morning, and of course we talked about the ball. I was sorry to find he had been beforehand with us."

"He only sent one nosegay, and that was for Cynthia," said Molly, looking up from her work. "And it did not come till after we had received the flowers from Hamley." Molly caught a sight of Cynthia's face before she bent down again to her sewing. It was scarlet in colour, and there was a flash of anger in her eyes. Both she and her mother hastened to speak as soon as Molly had finished, but Cynthia's voice was choked with passion, and Mrs. Gibson had the word.

"Mr. Preston's bouquet was just one of those formal affairs any one can buy at a nursery-garden, which always strike me as having no sentiment in them. I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!

"Mr. Preston had no business to speak as if he had forestalled you," said Cynthia. "It came just as we were ready to go, and I put it into the fire directly."

"Cynthia, my dear love! said Mrs. Gibson (who had never heard of the fate of the flowers until now), "what an idea of yourself you will give to Mr. Osborne Hamley; but to be sure, I can quite understand it. You inherit my feeling-my prejudice-sentimental I grant, against bought flowers."

Cynthia was silent for a moment; then she said, "I used some of your flowers, Mr. Hamley, to dress Molly's hair. It was a great temptation, for the colour so exactly matched her coral ornaments; but I believe she thought it treacherous to disturb the arrangement, so I ought to take all the blame on myself."

"The arrangement was my brother's, as I told you; but I am sure he would have preferred seeing them in Miss Gibson's hair rather than in the blazing fire. Mr. Preston comes far the worst off." Osborne was rather amused at the whole affair, and would have liked to probe Cynthia's motives a little farther. He did not hear Molly saying in as soft a voice as if she were talking to herself, "I wore mine just as they were sent," for Mrs. Gibson came in with a total change of subject.

"Speaking of lilies of the valley, is it true that they grow wild in Hurst Wood? It is not the season for them to be in flower yet; but when it is, I think we must take a walk there-with our luncheon in a

basket a little picnic in fact. You'll join us, won't you?" turning to Osborne. "I think it's a charming plan! You could ride to Hollingford and put up your horse here, and we could have a long day in the woods and all come home to dinner-dinner with a basket of lilies in the middle of the table!"

"I should like it very much," said Osborne; "but I may not be at home. Roger is more likely to be here, I believe, at that time-a month hence." He was thinking of the visit to London to sell his poems, and the run down to Winchester which he anticipated afterwards-the end of May had been the period fixed for this pleasure for some time, not merely in his own mind, but in writing to his wife.

"Oh, but you must be with us! We must wait for Mr. Osborne Hamley, must not we, Cynthia?"

"I'm afraid the lilies won't wait," replied Cynthia.

"Well, then, we must put it off till dog-rose and honeysuckle time. You will be at home then, won't you? or does the London season present too many attractions?

"I don't exactly know when dog-roses are in flower!"

"Not know, and you a poet? Don't you remember the lines

It was the time of roses,

We plucked them as we passed?"

Yes; but that doesn't specify the time of year that is the time of roses; and I believe my movements are guided more by the lunar calendar than the floral. You had better take my brother for your companion; he is practical in his love of flowers, I am only theoretical."

"Does that fine word 'theoretical' imply that you are ignorant?" asked Cynthia.

"Of course we shall be happy to see your brother; but why can't we have you too? I confess to a little timidity in the presence of one so deep and learned as your brother is from all accounts. charming ignorance, if we must call it by that hard word."

Give me a little

Osborne bowed. It was very pleasant to him to be petted and flattered, even though he knew all the time that it was only flattery. It was an agreeable contrast to the home that was so dismal to him, to come to this house, where the society of two agreeable girls, and the soothing syrup of their mother's speeches, awaited him whenever he liked to come. To say nothing of the difference that struck upon his senses, poetical though he might esteem himself, of a sitting-room full of flowers and tokens of women's presence, where all the chairs were easy, and all the tables well covered with pretty things, to the great drawing-room at home, where the draperies were threadbare, and the seats uncomfortable, and no sign of feminine presence ever now lent a grace to the stiff arrangement of the furniture. Then the meals, light and well cooked, suited his taste and delicate appetite so much better than the rich and heavy viands prepared by the servants at the Hall. Osborne was becoming a little