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There was a pause again, which was inter- with a woman like Letitia Nevil in his house. rupted by his asking Tom's name.

"I left England under a cloud, Mr. Morland," he resumed; "it don't much signify, now that I can make restitution. Every farthing I have ever owed shall be paid; Wortleby's debt first of all. Wortleby is living, I suppose? Those sort of men never die. Wortleby might have laid the finger of the law upon me, but he didn't, and why? Because I was the grandson of a peer, and his aristocratic tendencies made him merciful. Poor Wortleby! he wouldn't touch my bank-notes now, if he knew all the trades I have driven to earn them."

Tom sat listening with a sinking heart. To this man, who spoke as if he were making a hard bargain with a harder man than himself, Letitia Nevil had given up the best years of her life. How soon was he going to her? The delay was irritating.

"Is Reuben Bates in the village, now?" he asked presently. "He was going to the bad when I left, I am afraid."

Tom gave some account of the poacher's circumstances, to which Nugent listened attentively.

"I shall send him out to Sidney," he said at length, "his wife and his children with him. A poor man's family there are worth their weight in gold; here they are like lead hanging round his neck."

Her voice would be like a church bell, saying come and be at peace and rest, and all that sort of thing; and my soul would be fretted to death by it. One can't stand a reproachful face always by one; besides, she must be turned thirty."

Oh, Tom Morland, be thankful for the selfcommand that long training has given you, and that you answer this man's speech with outward composure.

"Miss Nevil's is a very beautiful face; it is not in her nature to speak or look reproaches. She is loved and looked up to in Beauchamp above every other creature. If, as I believe, she still considers her promise to you as binding, surely you will not draw back, if there exists no impediment to your marriage.”

"There is this impediment," replied Nugent," that I don't wish to marry, and if I did, I should not marry her. I don't believe in broken hearts. Men, and women too, live through more trouble than is ever heaped up in novels, and are not worse company afterwards.”

"For fourteen years," said Tom; " you do not deny that Miss Nevil has waited for your return in the expectation that you would marry her. For thirteen years she has, devoted herself to acts of mercy and charity, chiefly that the errors of your youth might be in some measure atoned for. I look back at this moment, and I see that all she has done has had more or less reference to you and your family. I ask you if this is the

"I do not know," said Tom, speaking with an effort, "what Reuben would have done for many years past, if it had not been for Miss Letitia Nevil." "What!" said Nugent, " isn't she mar-reward due to her fidelity.' ried yet?"

Tom's eyes were riveted on his face.

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“Women find their own reward in patience and suffering," said Nugent, his eyes fixed on the wall opposite. "The truesthearted woman I ever knew died with a smile on her face, though she had greater cause for tears. I had had sickness all the winter at my station. She kept about as long as her strength would last. It was a low aguish kind of fever, and the quinine was all gone. There was but one chance for her life. The next station was one hundred and seventy miles off. 1 left her and went to seek for

Nugent looked surprised for a moment, and then said, "I suppose you have heard some idle gossip about Letitia Nevil and myself. When she was a young girl and I was a boy, I used to think it would be a pleasant thing to have Letitia for my wife. She was a pretty-looking girl, affectionate and credulous. She used to believe every word I said to her. I wonder she was not married long ago.' "I don't think she will ever marry," said Tom, gravely. She may still consider her-assistance. When I came back she was dead, self bound to you."

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"She wrote to me several times after I left England," said Nugent. "Long, tiresome letters, full of good advice; but a man who has roughed it as I have done, can't sit down

with her face turned towards the door, as if she was watching for me still."

"If George Nugent is alive I will bring him back to you." Tom was haunted by his own words, as he felt the chances of fulfilling his

promise growing less and less. Nugent was as this, and Tom had stood on the Hartz

to a certain extent brutalized; but what of
that? The faithful affection that had held
out for so many years would overlook his
faults. He was surely guilty of disloyalty;
but women pardon such sins every day. All
Tom could do was to ask him to see her.
"I don't see the use of it," he replied;
"I am in no mood for sentiment. I don't
fancy the sight of her face would waken up
any of the old feeling, and there is no occa-
sion for me to brave a meeting."

“You are no judge of your own feelings," persisted Tom," till you have met her face to face, and have satisfied yourself that old associations are past and gone forever. She will be here to-morrow amongst many other people. It is a village holiday. Supposing you have altered in appearance since you went away, no one here would discover your identity. You would be able to see her without recognition, if it does not suit you to announce your return at present."

"I will come," said Nugent, "provided you give me your word that you will not let any human being know I am here."

66

I give you my honor I will not," replied Tom.

"It will be mistaken kindness to take any notice of me to-morrow," said Nugent. “Leave me to myself. If I should change my mind and settle down in England, I'll write a line and send it up from Chanleigh in the evening. I shall not leave till the last train. If you don't hear from me you may conclude that you are not likely to be troubled with my presence again."

He rose to go. He could not eat in the house, he said, when Tom pressed him to stay; food would choke him; neither could he sleep there; all night long he should see his poor old father's face by his bedside. He would walk back to Chanleigh, and get a bed at the Rose and Crown. He put his stick with his bag slung on it over his shoulder, and went away.

Walpurgis Nacht: the words came into Tom's head as he let Nugent out, and remained leaning on the gate; the moon rising in a flood of mellow light; the first song of the nightingale coming softly from a little wood in the rear of the house, and a dreamy breeze rustling in the young leaves. Walpurgis Nacht: the old German heathens offered sacrifices to the deities on such a night

mountains and pictured to himself their rites. What made him think of them now? Oh, false idol! Oh, unhappy worship! Such were the words that had sounded in his ears throughout his interview with Nugent. He had asked himself, had he fulfilled the trust he had undertaken, little foreseeing the part he was to play in it-the urgent recommendation of the woman he loved and reverenced to the good opinion of a man who did not care for her. It never crossed Tom's mind that perhaps no one had ever been in such a position before; it never once occurred to him that, if Nugent gave her up, he who had been her truest friend had a better chance of her love. If Nugent decided on marrying her, he believed that her devotion to him would bring her happiness, no matter how unworthy he might be of it: if he went away altogether after seeing her, why then he would pray that the trial might come upon her softly and tenderly. And so, throughout the night in the dewy garden, for indoors he felt almost stifled, Tom tried to look his cares calmly in the face. In the first dawn of morning it occurred to him that his household would be astir early, and he crept guiltily to bed.

CHAPTER IV.

MAY-DAY. Numberless pairs of little eyes had peeped out of the windows under the sloping cottage roofs that morning, to see what the sunrise prognosticated for the day. Had the weather been wet, Mr. Stokes's barn must have been borrowed and decorated for the occasion, and the clearing-out of the cobwebs alone was an important undertaking; but there was no need for it. Overhead was a cloudless sky, with the larks fluttering upwards, and filling the air with their song. There was something left to hope for, and to look forward to, throughout nature: a sense of incompleteness suggestive of a higher beauty yet to come. Tom sat at his breakfast, and found, as we all have done at some time of our lives, that it is not the outward world only that is lighted up by sunshine. He was almost inclined to wonder how it was that he had "given in,” as he expressed it to himself, over night. A letter from the late Inspector of Police lay on the table, informing him that Mr. George Nugent, after landing at 8 A.M. on the previous day, had

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transacted business at an agent's and an out- | preoccupied, he would have seen with satisfitter's, and had proceeded to Chanleigh, from faction that an old school-fellow named whence intelligence of his proceedings would Thorpe, who had a good living in the neighbe forwarded to Tom in due course. As it borhood, and wanted a wife, and whom he was unnecessary to have Nugent's visit to had introduced to Mrs. Wortleby and her himself chronicled, he wrote to his active in- daughters, was talking eagerly to kind-hearted formant to put a stop to further proceedings. Jane Wortleby: she rarely found a cavalier By noon the guests, bidden and unbidden, on such occasions-the prospect of so numerbegan to make their appearance. It was im- ous a body of sisters-in-law serving, as a scarepossible for Tom, naturally sanguine as he crow to all matrimonial intentions, to say was, not to feel his spirits rise at the sight of nothing of the ordinary civilities of life. the troops of children pouring in, all pre- A golden age of childhood! Modern writers pared for enjoyment of his contriving, and may say what they will of the acuteness of half crazy in the anticipation of it. The sorrow and even remorse in early years: we little pony-carriages, laden with the clergy- shall never know the delight of the little ones, men of the surrounding parishes, their wives-five-and-twenty, at least,-who were danand their children in fabulous numbers, came cing round the green to the old song of " Here slowly along the road. Mrs. Wortleby and we go round the Mulberry Bush." Oh, happy, her seven daughters arrived from Chanleigh, as happy in their rare holiday as the smallest child in the village. Doctors brought the female members of their family, and looked on good-naturedly themselves for half-an-hour .or so. The distinguished-looking daughters of the squire considered it as a good opportunity of doing what was necessary in the way of civility to the clergymen's wives in the neighborhood, patronizing some and snub, bing others; while more than one individual | who had been honored by the squire's notice, could say with Macaulay,

"He asked after my wife who is dead,

vigorous age of youth! with all its shyness and grievous self-consciousness, we shall never feel again the elasticity of muscle and spirit with which the cricketers fought for fame,— and an electro-plated drinking cup. Many of us, like Tom's older parishioners, must content ourselves with a tranquil pipe, and a seat on the distant bench, willing to witness the exertions of others, and to rejoice in their success. The mirth was at its height. Six plow-boys in sacks had started for a very distant goal amidst loud peals of laughter, in which the gravest of the bystanders joined. With immense difficulty they were advancing towards the side of the field nearest the entrance, where the little children were keeping up their dance round the green. Suddenly Tom's eye fell on George Nugent, dressed as he had been over-night, with a broad-brimmed white hat, with a piece of crape round it, pulled down over his eyes; his knotty stick still in his hand. He seemed to be watching the proceedings with some interest. Close by was Miss Letitia, busily engaged in the intricacies of the "Mulberry Bush," and help

And my children who never were born. " Always in the midst of a group of children, kind and happy and helpful, was Miss Letitia. Tom had glanced anxiously at her on her arrival. If he had had a mother or sister to warn her to look her best, he thought he should have been more at ease. He had a vague idea that she was not dressed like the girls who used to assist at the school fêtes of his curate life, when they all seemed to him in a flutter of muslin and blue ribbons; but for all that she wore a dull gray gown,-ing the children to keep clear of the green, surely George Nugent would relent when he which was fast becoming obstreperous. She saw her, and read her whole history in her was so near him, that her garments touched face. It was no wonder that he started at him, and recognition on her part seemed inthe sight of every now comer, and hastened evitable. As George Nugent's eyes turned restlessly from one group to another. Vari-moodily upon her, Tom's heart beat fast. ous rewards and prizes had been given away. The school children had eaten roast-beef and plum-pudding till they had placed their digestions in jeopardy for life. The cricketers were preparing for their share in the programme of the day. If Tom had not been so

His first impulse was to rush away into the house, anywhere that he might not witness their meeting; but he checked himself, wondering whether he ought not to go up and help them through the awkwardness of it. Ina miserable state of indecision, his eyes wonder

light, and thanks them for their good will, and asks them all to come again and the day is done.

ing from the cricket-match to the sack-race, and the members of the band retreat to the and from the sack-race to Miss Letitia and last cask. While the shadows are lengththe little children, several minutes passed on, ening on the grass, it is wonderful to hear which seemed almost hours to him. Suddenly "God save the Queen "sung slowly, majesti he heard George Nugent cry out in a loud cally, and greatly out of tune. The Beauvoice, "Out of the way, you little idiot!" champ people give three cheers for their recand saw him put his hand roughly on Jemmy tor. He stands bareheaded in the purple Bates's shoulder to enforce his order. Down rattled the little crutches as they had done on the day when Tom had first entered Beauchamp. The competitors in the race were No letter. The suspense of another night close upon him, when Miss Letitia, with more would have been intolerable. Tom walked indignation in her face than Tom had ever over to Chanleigh, where he arrived just as seen there before, once more ran to the boy's the Rose and Crown was closing, and found rescue, and carried him away to a more se- that a person answering George Nugent's descure spot. The public attention was concen-cription had left for London early in the eventrated on the race, and very few had observed ing. The clock of Beauchamp church struck the occurrence. A few minutes afterwards, twelve as he crossed the common on his way George Nugent left the field.

home. Then came the hour again, like an The die was cast, and there was nothing echo from the church tower at Chanleigh: left now but to wait with patience till night- more faintly still, little chimes broke into the fall. Tom having decided on the merits of clear air from the next village. Tom was the sack-race, proceeded to the dining-room, somewhat weary both in body and mind; but where his guests were actively employed. He a vague sense of relief came over him as he did not observe Mr. Thorpe helping Jane looked back on the events of the day. He Wortleby to pigeon-pie, nor her mother's eyes was thankful for it, and in natures such as glistening at the sight of the girl's face, all his, thankfulness is one form of happiness. animation as they talked, and ate, and talked Two days afterwards, Mr. Wortleby drove again. Mrs Wortleby, in her simple-hearted over from Chanleigh with a sense of imporway, had already got so far in her specula-tance hid under a more distant manner than tions as to decide on a fitting wedding-dress usual, calling at the Squire's, the rectory, for her daughter in the event of a match be- the medical man's, and even at the Golden ing the result, and Tom little knew how she Lion, telling everywhere the same story in had blessed him for the golden opportunity precisely the same words. He stated that he was unconsciously throwing in Jane's way. Mr. George Nugent had returned from AusHe exerted himself to the utmost in his char-tralia, and in the handsomest and most honacter of host. He fetched in the elderly and orable manner had intimated his intention the ordinary among his female visitors, and of paying his father's debts in addition to they somehow felt younger and more attrac- his own. For himself, he must be allowed tive in his society; it seemed as if with him to say that he had received a magnificent there need be no apology for their age or their silver tea-service in acknowledgment of some ugliness his kind-heartedness overlooked it slight assistance he had once had the satisfacall. Out into the sunshine again, where the tion of rendering Mr. Nugent. He did not village band has begun to play a country add that in the silver tea-pot he had found a dance in which young and old, rich and poor, hundred pound note in an envelope, on which are to join; when Mrs. Wortleby dances was written, "Debt, £37, and interest," or with the best bowler, and Miss Letitia with that George Nugent, in taking that sum from the conquering plough-boy, and Mr. Thorpe, his cash-box for his passage to Australia, had contrary to all etiquette on such occasions, committed a felony. The whole village was with Jane. It lasts an hour; for every awk-full of the wonderful event, and of Reuben ward partner has to be put right; the shy Bates's good fortune, Mr. Wortleby having ones have to be encouraged; the noisy ones to be kept in order; every big brown hand has to be seized; every tiny hot one to be raised aloft; but it comes to an end at last,

been charged with the arrangements for his emigration. Tom longed to know how Miss Letitia had received the tidings. Had he been treacherous to her cause, he could not

provision for his old servants; he intends to send out to the colonies any one who cannot honestly get on here; but is it because the place is so full of unhappy associations to him, that he does not come himself? Is it because-" she waited for a moment, and then broke out in sobs" Is it because he has forgotten me?"

What could Tom say? He sat looking at a flower-pot on the window-sill, growing more and more wretched every moment.

"I

"I must try and tell you what I want you to do," she said, checking her tears. hear that Mr. Wortleby stated yesterday in Chanleigh that Mr. Nugent was going back to Australia. I have tried to write to him, but I cannot do it. I want you to ascertain if the report is true from Mr. Nugent himself. Think, Mr. Morland, I have no father, no brother, no one to ask to help me in the wide world."

have been more careful to avoid her since the school-feast. Sunday came, and he went down to the church for the morning service, for the first time, with a divided heart. He knew that Miss Letitia sat where he could see her face, and he felt as if he must stop short in the psalm which he was reading, if he did not satisfy himself as to the effect the news had had upon her. Tom looked at her but once; and he carried away with him an impression that her eyes were glittering, that her cheeks were carnation colored, and that she wore a red bonnet. Poor Miss Letitia! It was a pardonable piece of female vanity to wear a pink ribbon on this day above all others, when the whole of the inhabitants of the parish were expecting George Nugent amongst them again. Sunday passed, and the week wore on, and still he did not come. By dint of bounding over hedges and otherwise ignominiously making his escape when Miss Letitia came in sight, Tom had avoided meeting her in his daily walks; but he grew at last so much to dread an interview, that he could scarcely bring himself to leave the house. He had a foreboding that sooner or later he must meet her face to face, and own that he had utterly failed in what he had undertaken to do; and he tried to be prepared to answer her questions without touching on the subject of George Nugent's visit: but the meeting should be of her own seeking; he resolved to evade it while he could. The crisis came at last. Tom had a note from Miss Letitia, asking to speak to him, and he went at the appointed hour with a heavy heart. She was sitting at the open window, with restless eyes, which looked as if they had watched and watched again till they had grown weary in the task. How long had "You believe that I would tell you the she been without sleep, Tom wondered, as he truth," he said, "no matter how painful it glanced at her face, and noted how many might be to me? On my honor, then,-I painful feelings, shame, disappointment, and say it to you as I would have said it to her, yet some lingering thread of hope, had been-he is not worthy of you." striving for the mastery since he had seen her last.

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"I would do what you wish willingly," said Tom, in a troubled voice, "if it would be of any earthly use."

"Perhaps he never had my letters; perhaps he thinks that after leaving so suddenly, without saying one word of farewell, I should cease to look upon him as I had done," she pleaded." "You told me you once had a sister; you would have stretched out your hand to help her in such a strait; have pity on me!"

There was more of the spirit of chivalry in Tom's nature than anybody ever suspected. He felt he would rather cut off his right hand than tell her that Nugent had looked at her face, and no longer cared for it. His only alternative was to venture on scarcely less delicate ground.

"Don't say so! Don't say so!" she cried. "Think of all that he has done. Think what his life must have been all these years, to bear such fruit in the end. Restitution, kindness, charity, he has failed in none of these. What can you know of him that you should be his

accuser?"

Tom was silent.

"He has been misrepresented to you," she said, "and you have held back, because some story of his former life has prejudiced you.

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