CHAPTER VIII.

Curls are on her brow, not clouds,Smiles are in her eye,Simple, brave, ’mong worldly crowdsLooks she to the sky.Joy dwells with her every day,Sorrows touch her as they pass,Fearless goes she on her wayO’er the springing grass,Daunting evil passengersWith those clear brave eyes of hers.—Ballad.

Mr George Oswaldof Fendie was very proud of his daughter Hope; and Hope, as we have already seen, was very fond of ponies. Young, large animals of all kinds, indeed, were favourites with the favourite of the banker. A great tawny fellow of a dog, with large, disjointed, youthful limbs, whose uncouth gambols had as much fun and as little grace in them as could be desired, was Hope’s especial playmate, counsellor, and friend. She called him Merry—(gentle playfellow of mine, over whom I could yet weep tears, so named I thee!) it was not a very musical name; but there was nothing in the least æsthetic about the happy, clumsy, kindly animal who bore it. This poor fellow fell under Mrs Oswald’s displeasure sometimes, when it was discovered that Hope’s new gloves had been in the great innocent mouth, or that the big paw had left its print upon Hope’s garments too legibly; but the banker amply tolerated Merry.

On the morning of Hope’s intended visit to Mount Fendie, her father led her proudly away to the vicinity of the stable where his own horses were kept, and where, at its door, stood the red-headed Oswald Thomson, son of a retainer of the family, holding by the bridle a handsome pony, apparelled as became the steed of a lady, and arching its fine brown neck in conscious pride, under the eye of its future mistress.

“Oh, father, is it for me?” exclaimed the delighted Hope; “is it to be mine; is it to be all mine?”

And it was; and at that moment in Hope’s little chamber at home, her mother, with some secret smiles over herhusband’s unmeasured indulgence, and some misgivings as to the youthful limbs which this new mode of conveyance might expose to danger, was carefully spreading out a new riding-habit, companion gift to the beautiful pony. Mr Oswald had intended to bring his daughter quietly home with him, to assume the appropriate garb before she began to be an equestrian; but that did by no means suit Hope. So at dire risk to the bright muslin frock donned in unspotted purity this morning, she sprang upon the new saddle and arrived at the door radiant with laughter and exultation while her father still panted in the rear, half running in spite of his years and dignity.

Hope could not take her dog with her to Mount Fendie—it was her sole regret as she cantered away happily alone, on the quiet familiar road. One of Merry’s mighty paws would have extinguished Mrs Fendie’s lap-dog for ever; the gambols of a young elephant could not have been more detrimental to the trim gardens at the Mount. She was compelled to leave her favourite behind.

But never did Hope salute passing acquaintances so joyously; and Hope’s list of friends was as large as it was miscellaneous, extending from Mrs Maxwell of Firthside, in her carriage, down to Robbie Carlyle, the fisherman, with the creel on his shoulders full of flounders which he had captured this morning, knee-deep in the waters of the Firth. Just before the gate of Mount Fendie was a toll—a toll which Hope paid triumphantly in presence of an admiring congregation of John Tasker’s children. It was the crowning glory of her ride.

“Oh, Hope, when did you get your pony?” cried Victoria Fendie. “What a pretty one!—but it’s not so pretty as Fred’s either—is it, Adelaide?”

“I don’t know what you call Fred’s,” said Adelaide, “for Fred is too little to have a pony, but I am sure yours is very pretty, Hope. Were you not afraid?”

Fred, a little spoiled, pale, ill-conditioned boy of eight stood on a bench in the garden, plucking the blossoms off an apple-tree. He paused to pull Adelaide’s hair—it was invitingly near him—and then resumed his profitable occupation.

“I thought you would be afraid; but yours is a very pretty one, Hope,” repeated the steady Adelaide, “and Fred is too little yet to have a pony.”

Hope was so engrossed with the pony, its beauties andgood qualities, that she had almost forgotten the object of her visit. She recollected herself at last.

“Adelaide, you have not told me, has the young lady come?”

“The young lady!—she means the governess,” said Victoria.

“Oh, yes—we’re all to go in now, to begin school, and you may come with us, Hope. She came yesterday.”

“And do you like her?” said Hope, out of breath.

“I don’t know; we’re all to begin school to-day, and you’re to come with us. But you’re always so quick, Hope Oswald!—how can people know in a day?”

“I know,” said Victoria loudly, “I don’t like her at all. She is so pale, and she speaks so low, and—I don’t like her.”

“Young ladies,” said a clear voice behind them, “your mother desires that you will come in.”

Hope turned quickly round. A tall, pale girl stood behind, evidently endeavouring to assume a firmness and authority which she did not possess. Her deep mourning dress, and shadowy stooping figure, and singular paleness touched the girlish romance which lay dormant in the blythe spirit of Hope. Adelaide Fendie looked at the new governess hazily out of her dull blue eyes, and did not speak. The dyspeptic little tyrant Fred said “I won’t,” and the shrewish Victoria laughed.

Hope had learned the stranger’s name, and knew her own power over Adelaide when she chose to exert it.

“If you please, Miss Maxwell,” said the prompt young lady, “I’m Hope Oswald; and Adelaide was just coming in; and we’ll all go together.”

Whereupon Hope seized the arm of Adelaide, and brought her, docile and obedient, into the rear of the new governess.

A very little matter was enough to overset the composure of the orphan who held that unenviable place. Her eyes filled and her lip quivered; she had fancied it impossible that children could be anything but loveable, and in the early power and bitterness of her grief to have these petty indignities put upon her, overwhelmed her inexperienced spirit. So she went in with the elder girls, painfully repressing bitter tears, and with the gasp of young woe convulsively swelling in her breast, “to flee away, and be at rest.”

Mrs Fendie sat in her morning room, before a table covered with embroideries and patterns for the same. She was a tall, thin, chill woman of thegenusclever, who had persevered so long in calling herself an excellent manager,and a person of very intellectual tastes, that public opinion had at length succumbed under the constant iteration, and with only the emphatic protest of John Brown, who in his own circle declared her “an evendown gowk wi’ a tongue like the happer of a mill,” Mrs Fendie was pronounced a very clever woman. The natural-born Fendies were all dull. The last head of the house had been fretted and chafed out of his easy life by the fatal cleverness of his yoke-fellow; and even she, their mother, had been quite unable to strike any sort of fire from the leaden natures of his children.

Beside Mrs Fendie, stretched in an easy chair, with a worked footstool supporting the worked slipper, with which her mother’s industry had endowed her, reclined the Reverend Mrs Heavieliegh, Mrs Fendie’s eldest daughter. She was like Adelaide in her soft, large, not uncomely features, and in the passive good humour of their expression; but Mrs Heavieliegh’s development of the family character was indolence, comfortable, lazy, luxurious repose; and in her gay-coloured ample draperies, and lounging attitude, and slumbrous face, she formed a good foil to the keen, sharp, steel-like mother, who worked indefatigably by her side. Mrs Heavieliegh had no admiration of work; she played with the long ears of the lap-dog on her knee, and was perfectly comfortable.

“How do you do, Hope Oswald?” said Mrs Fendie; “how’s your mamma? Sit down, children, I have something to say to you. Fred, don’t pull my frame; Victoria, be quiet. Sit down, Miss Maxwell, I wish particularly to address myself to you.”

Mrs Fendie arranged her work; she was copying a French lithograph like Maggie Irving, but she was copying it with the needle and not with the pencil, and cleared her voice oratorically. Lilias Maxwell with some apparent timidity took the chair pointed to her, and sat down to listen, the great tears gathering under her eyelids. Hope placed herself very near the new governess, in instinctive sympathy. She was not so “pretty-looking” as Adelaide had predicted. She was singularly pale, and had very dark hair, and large deep-blue eyes—blue eyes so dark that Hope, to whom blue eyes always suggested the slumbrous orbs of Adelaide Fendie, gave Miss Maxwell’s credit for being black. The dark mass of hair and the mourning dress made the young orphan look still more ethereal and shadowy. She was not like Hope’s model, Helen Buchanan; she was not nearly so life-like, and seemed to want altogether the nervous impulsive strength of Helen. Sudden flushes indeed did sometimes pass over her colourless cheek for a moment—flushes painfully deep and vivid; but there was nothing on this face like the constantly varying colour, which wavered on Helen’s cheek like the coming and going of breath. Nevertheless, there was a similarity in the age, and perhaps in the circumstances, which made Hope associate the stranger with her friend.

“You will understand, Miss Maxwell,” said Mrs Fendie, “that I consider it a very important charge which I, as a mother, give into your hands, when I delegate to you the care of these children. Such wonderful interests at stake! such extraordinary effects your humble teachings may help to produce! When I look at that boy,” and Mrs Fendie cast a sentimental glance at the dyspeptic Fred, “it quite overwhelms me. Oh, Fred! you wicked child, what have you been doing!”

Mrs Fendie had chosen an unfavourable moment for her sentimental glance, the young gentleman being busily employed opening the eyes of a scriptural personage in one of the aforesaid patterns for embroidery, by thrusting a pencil through them. On being thus pathetically appealed to Master Fred threw down the paper, and exclaimed,—“It’s not me, it’s Vic.”

Mrs Fendie restrained Victoria’s self-defence, by a majestic wave of her hand, and resumed,—“In the first place, concerning Miss Fendie—hold up your head, Adelaide.” Adelaide fixed her eyes upon the wall, awkwardly conscious of being looked at, and blushed, a dull, gradual blush,—“you will need rather to direct the young lady’s studies than to enter on the drudgery of teaching—and I am sure to a well-regulated mind nothing could be more delightful. I shall expect you to read with Miss Fendie, to direct her to those subjects which most call for a lady’s attention; to attend to her deportment and carriage, to superintend her work, to see that her wardrobe is kept in proper order, and that she does not get slovenly in her dress; besides—”

“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Victoria, “yonder’s old Mr Graeme of Mossgray riding along the avenue;—what will he want, I wonder? oh goodness, mamma, isn’t it strange? let me go to see.”

“Old Mr Graeme of Mossgray!” exclaimed Mrs Fendie,rising; “be quiet, Victoria, how dare you interrupt me? A very strange visitor certainly:—you have not seen him since your marriage, Charlotte:—perhaps he has heard you are here, and intends to be like other people for once in his life.”

Mrs Heavieliegh lifted her eyelids with some apparent difficulty and looked a little ashamed; to tell the truth, she had been dozing during her mother’spreche, and did not at all know what this commotion was about. Mrs Fendie’s address was broken short, but Hope perceived Lilias Maxwell still trembling in her chair.

There was a deep bow-window in the end of the room; the new governess, unnoticed in the little bustle of interest with which the Fendie family awaited their unusual visitor, stole by degrees into its recess. Hope Oswald followed her; it was scarcely quite delicate perhaps; but Hope was anxious to express something of her sympathy.

Lilias leaned upon the window—she shook so much that she needed it—and the sympathetic girl beside her saw how thin and transparent the long white fingers were, which tremblingly supported her brow. “If you please, Miss Maxwell,” said Hope compassionately, “I am afraid you are not well; and I wish my mother were only here, for she would know—and, Miss Maxwell, if you please, do not look so sad.”

The stranger could not bear this; she turned her head away, and shrank further into the shadow of the curtains, and pressed her thin fingers upon her eyes, but the tears would be restrained no longer, and Hope hastily placed herself in front of the window, that no eyes but her own might perceive the agony of silent weeping, which the unfriended, solitary girl could not control. She had borne as she best could the foolish levity and inconsiderate rudeness of the children, and half bewildered with the long stretch of endurance, had silently suffered the chill unpitying lectures of Mrs Fendie, but the first touch of kindness made the full cup overflow. All the simple philosophies with which Lilias had tried to subdue the natural strength of her feelings, could not make her grief less green and recent; and Hope stood reverently by, in silence, while the tears poured down like rain, and the shadowy figure before her shook with suppressed sobs. The child Hope had become the benefactor of the orphan, for there was healing in those tears.

Amang the fremd I had wandered lang,Heavy was my heart, and sad my sang;Ae green sod covered a’ my kin,There were storms without, and nae hope within,When through the mist a sun-glint came,And I heard a voice, and it aye said hame—Hame, oh hame! is there rest for meBut an’ aneath the green willow tree?—Ballad.

TheLaird of Mossgray greeted Mrs Fendie and her daughter with his usual old-fashioned, graceful politeness—there was something courtly in the gentle bearing of the recluse old man—and said some kindly words of recognition to all the younger personages present, except Hope, who, to the great amazement of the little Fendies, continued steadily before the bow-window, and did not turn round to receive the salutations of Mossgray. Only a very few ordinary observations had been exchanged, when the old man explained his errand.

“I have been seeking a young friend of mine in Cumberland,” said Mossgray, in a voice whose tone of serene kindness thrilled on the ear of Lilias Maxwell, like some familiar music, stilling her tears; “and I have some idea, Mrs Fendie, that your kindness could assist me in my search. I have just returned—”

Hope Oswald left her place by the window, and as Mossgray’s eye wandered there, he suddenly stopped and started from his seat. Drawing back, shivering and half afraid, Lilias looked at him, with tears trembling on her long eyelash, and her white, transparent hand shading her eyes. She was conscious of the presence of no other but himself for the moment, and the strange contradiction of her look, which seemed half to appeal to him for protection, and half to shrink from his scrutiny, confirmed the old man in the sudden idea that this was his ward. Any resemblance that she had to her mother was merely the indefinite and shadowy one, which throws its strange link of kindred over faces which in form and expression are not alike; but he could recognise the daughterof Lilias Johnstone better in the pale, solitary orphan girl before him, than if she had borne her mother’s blooming face, or seemed as full of elastic youth and life as she did, when he saw her last. They stood looking at each other for a moment, and then Mossgray advanced extending his hands.

“Lilias—Lilias Maxwell—that is your name?—and was it the dead, or was it me, whom you distrusted, when you fled from the guardian your mother committed you to?—This was ill-done, Lilias; but you have had weeping and sorrow enough, my poor child, and now you must come home.”

Come home!—was there still such a word for the orphan?

She could not realize it; she sat down passively on the chair Hope Oswald brought her, and spite of the large tears which fell silently now and then, continued to fix her sorrowful eyes upon her mother’s friend. The strange stupor she was in alarmed them all at last.

“Lilias—Lilias,”—repeated Mossgray, as he gently held her hand; but Lilias did not speak. She had been denied the natural due and right of grief; she had been hurried away from her mother’s grave, almost before her desolate heart had been able to shed tears; and now the outraged nature asserted itself:—the strained strength gave way.

At last the weeping came again in a flood, and Lilias awoke; awoke to hear gentle tongues of women who had only cold words to say to her before; and, gentlest of all, the old man’s voice, like some kind sound which she had heard in dreams, and waking, yearned to hear again. And the burden of its speech was ever home; it came upon her ear again and again indistinct in every accent but that—what preceded and what followed was lost to her bewildered sense, but the one word rang clearly through the mist that enveloped her—she was to come home.

And so she did: Hope Oswald wrapped her humble shawl about her, and Mrs Fendie, with her strangely changed voice, accompanied her to the door, and there supported by Mossgray, she entered the carriage which had been sent for, and was driven from the door, the old man sitting by her side. Lilias could scarcely convince herself, until she had entered the room at Mossgray called her own, that it was not all a dream.

The room had been prepared and ready for many days waiting for its stranger guest. A little fire burned in the grate, and gave the look of welcome, which the familiarliving, kindly light does give at all times; and through the small, clear panes of the window, the April sun shone in, in the gentle joy of spring. The panelled walls were painted a sombre quiet colour, but here and there were hung small pictures in deep, rich, old-fashioned frames—pictures of such pure faces, saints and angels, as seem now and then to have looked in upon the dreaming sense of olden artists—not all gentle or serene, or at rest, but speaking the common language of humanity; the constantly varying tongue, in whose very weakness, of change and tremulous expression, lies its might and charm.

Some books were arranged upon an old cabinet; books which are everywhere familiar, the friends of all who are able for such fellowship; and some, too, less universally appreciated, which were yet worthy of their place. But Lilias did not then perceive these particulars of her guardian’s delicate care for her. She sat down beside the window, and looked about in a dream.

Before her lay the water, and its peaceful banks, with the charm of youth upon them; beyond were scattered houses with the homelike wealth of cultivated land around, the dwellings of those who, working with honest hands, brought seed and bread out of the soil, as God did prosper them. At her right hand the gray mass of the old warlike tower rose up against the quiet sky, with the moss of peace upon its embattled walls. Lilias had known all her life the fortunes of the poor—had wandered hither and thither with her mother, following the devious track of the weak father, who pursued without ceasing the fortune he had not firmness to wait, or strength to work for; so that in many fair places where they had been, the solitary woman and grave girl had longed to find a home and abiding place, but had been able never. The hunted fortune fled always further away, and the querulous, feeble nature, complaining with fretful selfishness of his own ill-fate, seemed always constrained to follow. Strangers and vagabonds they had been continually, and after the brief repose of the widow and her child in the lonely Cumberland glen, Lilias had felt, when she was hurried away in her earliest agony, that thus it was to be for ever.

But now the atmosphere of home descended about her. Only the natural successions of time, one generation going and another coming, had changed the inmates of these walls. Steadily here upon its native ground, the old house stood likea stately oak, which had shed its acorns there, autumn after autumn, before human eye was near to see, and should remain until the end. We do not think distinct thoughts at times which form the crises of our life, and Lilias did not deliberately reflect on this; but it struck strongly upon her through the mist of sorrow and wonder she was in. This house, whose wealth was of the soil below and the firmament above, whose inheritance was not of silver or of gold, unproductive and barren, but of the fertile land, and the sunshine and the rain of God; this was her home.

But sorrow had broken in her case the elastic nature of youth. Had she remained among strangers, her stay must soon have had a not unusual end; she would have endured for a while, and then have somewhere withdrawn herself to die as her mother died, but bitterer to die alone. As it was, Mossgray gained his ward only in time to save her; and all the summer through Lilias had to be tended like a delicate flower. Vainly she exerted herself and tried to be strong; vainly endeavoured to lessen the anxious cares of her guardian; but it would not do. The springs of youthful strength were stemmed in her worn-out heart. For a few days she had been able convulsively to bind and keep her natural sorrow down; but the reäction was vehement and long.

The lilies daily placed upon her table, the books of all pleasant kinds which he constantly brought to her, the visitors whom, after a month or two had elapsed, he tolerated, and indeed encouraged, for her sake—all the gentle things the old man did, day by day, and hour by hour, conspired to invigorate the broken mind of Lilias, and restore its tone and power. She knew that he too grieved for the dead, and she felt that it became her to render him some other return for his tenderness to herself than those pale looks and tears; so conscientiously and painfully she struggled to regain the cheerfulness becoming her years. It was a hard task, for Lilias had not the elastic vitality which springs up in renewed vigour from the prostration of grief—her nature had much of pensive calm in it; but she struggled against her overwhelming sorrow, and the very effort helped her to overcome.

Mrs Oswald visited her in kindly friendship, and Mrs Fendie came to patronize, and suggest, and arrange. Mrs Fendie did not see how Miss Maxwell could remain, unless Mr Graeme got some “experienced person,” some presidingmatron to make his house a proper residence for his ward. Adam Graeme of Mossgray was sixty; he thought the countryside had known him long enough and well enough to trust the daughter of Lilias Johnstone in his hands, as confidently as though he had been her father; and Mrs Oswald agreed with him.

And Lilias had at once secured the very warm friendship of Hope, who already meditated making use of her in her grand scheme for the elevation of Helen Buchanan, and the conversion of her father. To make Miss Maxwell intimate with Helen, Hope decided in her very grave and elaborate deliberations over the whole difficult question of her father’s resolution and the means to overcome it, would be a great step in advance, but it was decidedly impracticable at present; so Hope, like a wise general, prepared the way with each by praising the other, and suspended more practical operations.

Slowly the faint colour which was natural to her began to dawn upon the white cheeks of Mossgray’s Lilias. The old man’s study in the tower was almost deserted; the small projecting turret with its windowed roof and wondrous telescope began to look forlorn and melancholy; the large low room within lay whole days in gloomy silence; the famous chemic tools of which the children of Fendie had heard thrilling whispers, were gathering a gentle coat of dust. Their owner had experiments to make of a kind more curious than those in which he used them. He was discovering one by one the qualities of the human heart so strangely given in charge to him—was discerning star after star rise upon her firmament—patience, faith, hope—kindly human hope, which has somewhat in this very world beside its riches in the world to come.

One autumn evening (for the summer was over before Lilias recovered her strength) they went out together to the river-side. He was telling her how it had been his fellow and companion all his days.

“There is something human in this running water,” said the old man. “So we go on, Lilias, through our different stages, blind to what is to come next, often unconscious of the pleasant places we travel through; but though we chafe sometimes, and seem to pause and delay, how constantly the stream runs on! I like it for its humanity—for all the light, and all the darkness, and the winds that touch, and the rains that flood it—for its beginning and for its end. It pleasesme to give it life and utterance, and think it human like myself.”

“You knew it when you were young, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “and it is beside you still.”

She still felt this as something strangely gladdening; to dwell in one place a lifetime; to appropriate it all; to have friendships with its hills and its rivers; to feel that it was home.

“Yes,” said Mossgray, looking back at his old house as it lay in the shade, from which the slanting light of the western sun had nearly passed away, “yes, it is a happiness—it is a pleasant thread, this river, on which to hang the memories of one’s life; there was no water, Lilias, in your Cumberland glen?”

“Only a brook,” was the answer, “and we used to sit and watch it, for its way was too steep to follow—and sometimes—”

Ah, that climbing sorrow! how it returned and returned again!

“But you have travelled,” said Mossgray, gently leading her from this painful recollection; “you have scarcely gone so far as I have, but you have seen many places:—let me hear of your wanderings, Lilias.”

“Have you been far away, Mossgray?”

“Very far,” said Mossgray, with a mournful smile, “and my furthest journey was a very sad one; I went to seek a dear friend, and I found him not—that was in India.”

“In India!” A flush of sudden light came over the face which turned to him so earnestly.

“Yes. Are you interested in that great world, Lilias?”

“It must be a very great country indeed,” said Lilias, slowly, “where the principal places are so far apart. Will you tell me where you were, Mossgray?”

The old man smiled.

“I could have told you long since, had I known you cared for such a subject. I was in Bombay, Lilias, and far into the interior beyond Bombay.”

“In Bombay!” There was another flush of interest—the tall slight figure had never looked so life-like, nor the form so animated.

“Yes, in Bombay—do you know anything of Bombay, Lilias?”

“No, no,” said Lilias, with a sudden blush, “I do notknow—but I have heard—we had a friend once who went there.”

She cast a sidelong, tremulous look upward to his face. He did not smile as she feared he would. It pleased him to hear of the friend, and the tone in which the friend was mentioned pleased him. He was glad there was some one in the world, the name of whose habitation had power to move the slumbering fountain of young life within her; he was glad that in this present world she had some other tie than the new relationship which bound her to himself, and in his delicate kindness he looked and spoke gravely, to encourage her to confide in him.

“And you would like me to tell you about it. Would not reading do as well?”

“No, no,” repeated Lilias; “the book does not live—you do not see the eyes which saw those things you want to hear of, as I see yours, Mossgray, and—the place is fine, is it not?”

“I think so,” was the answer; “yes, I remember that; but, Lilias, when I was there, I was sick at heart—sick with anxiety at first—and sick when I came away, with hope deferred—I should say with hope extinguished. The calamity that maketh the heart sick, clouds a fair landscape sadly, Lilias, and when I think of that beautiful eastern country, I think of it as the grave of my friend.”

“Did he die?” asked Lilias, in the tremulous low voice, which for the few preceding moments had been changed.

Mossgray paused. Thirty years had elapsed since colder men decided Hew Murray’s fate, thirty years without a sign or token, the faintest that hope could build on; and yet the old man hesitated to say he died.

“Lilias, I cannot tell. He was my dear friend; we were close brethren in our youth; do you think he can have lived these thirty years, and given no sign?”

“No, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “oh, no, no! I do not think it can be hard to die; but to live while your dearest friends think you are dead—no, no—it could not be!”

The old man sighed.

“Then he is dead,” he said.

There was a pause.

“And this friend of yours,” resumed Mossgray, at last, “he likes Bombay, Lilias?”

The light came again more timidly.

“I think so—I mean, he does notlikeit—it is not home—but—”

“But he thinks he will prosper there, and he is young, and has good cause for his toil?”

Lilias looked at her guardian shyly again; but there was no ghost of raillery on the kind face of Mossgray; he would have her think cheerily of the young hopes of the labourer over the sea.

And Lilias looked away far into the distant air, and answered with a voice so full and rich in its low music, that Mossgray scarcely knew it for hers,—

“And for his mother’s sake.”

“She is like that harp the winds do play upon; mark her well. She shall tell you what she dreams unwittingly, for her face is no mask—nothing but a veil, and under it you shall see her heart beat.”—Old Play.

Helen Buchananstood alone at the gate of her mother’s garden; there was a nervous tremor about her as she leaned upon the hawthorn-hedge, with her face towards the setting sun. These October nights were becoming chill, and the shawl she drew round her was not a warm one; but her trembling sprung from quite another cause. She was young and proud and poor; and William Oswald, walking as if for a wager, and looking almost as nervously firm as she did, had newly left the gate.

He had been telling her something which to him seemed perfectly reasonable, something which certainly in the abstract did not look unreasonable in any view: that he, a man, able to exercise judgment for himself, and able honourably to earn his own bread, did not feel himself bound by the decision of his father, did not feel by any means that his father’s iron will should or could restrain him in those early, strong, energetic years of his manhood; that honouring his father as a father should be honoured, he yet felt some individual rights, which no man could exercise for him. So far was wellenough; the daughter of Walter Buchanan drew up her elastic figure, and strengthening herself in nervous stillness waited for what she knew would follow.

It came in a flood—bold, and grave, and decided as William Oswald always was, when his reserve was broken through. The world was all before them where to choose, and Helen felt that when he spoke of independent labour for which he was strong and able, and of success to be won by that, he spoke the truth, and for a moment the hereditary pride ebbed, and her heart rose to the congenial struggle; but it could not be. Before half the words of her answer were spoken, he had learned it all from the unmistakeable language of her face. “Never, unless received in honour and goodwill, with the respect and tenderness which became a daughter. Never!”

They had parted—not in anger, but with some degree of excitement and pain—each with a stronger resolution to overcome the other, each only the more determined to persevere and win. The matter had become a single-handed combat, the combatants were well matched, the issue doubtful; time and the hour could alone decide.

And still, that nervous thrill passing over her like wind, Helen stood at the gate looking towards the west. With one of those sudden changes to which her temperament is liable, a flood of bitter thoughts had suddenly stolen into her mind. It was not envious repining, it was scarcely discontent; but she began to remember that there in her youth she stood alone—that the very strength which she had to earn bread for herself and her mother, by her own honourable labour, had cast her down in the small society about them, to a lower and to a solitary place—that those bright youthful days, to others so instinct with joyous life, were to her days of gloomy labour, evenings of solitude. And thronging in the rear of these, were hosts of indefinite, rapid, inexpressible feelings; remembrances of petty slights and proud swellings of the wounded heart, which in spite of its years of independent working, was still but a girl’s. The deep melancholy and depression peculiar to her nature—peculiar only in transient fits, soon swept away by the inherent strength of life and hope within—lowered over her like a cloud. There came to her eyes involuntary causeless tears: her heart grew blank and dark within her, and wistfully she looked upward to the sky—the wonderful western sky with its flushed clouds ofsunset—thinking in her sad, proud loneliness that only this was left to her of the natural gladnesses of youth.

Just then an eager hand was thrust into hers, and the joyous voice of Hope Oswald broke in upon her reverie.

“Helen, Helen, what makes you always stand here and look at the sun?”

The momentary distemper tinged even her speech.

“Because I like to see him sink, Hope. I like to watch him gliding away yonder behind the hill, and see how blank and cold it all looks after he is gone.”

“Ay! but, Helen, look how beautiful the clouds are,” said Hope, “you would think the sun was hiding yonder. See, see! how grand it is!—and him away all the time beyond the hill. You will not look, Helen: butIthink the clouds are as beautiful as the sun.”

“And in half an hour they will all have melted away,” said the young moralizer, “and so does everything in the world that is beautiful, Hope. The fair colours fade into that pale, blank grey, and the air grows chill and mournful, and then comes the night.”

“But do you not like the night, Helen?” asked the wondering Hope.

“I was not thinking of the night, I was thinking of what comes upon us in the world,” said Helen dreamily in her self-communion, “and how the dull colourless sky droops over us, and the light passes away, and the inexorable darkness comes.”

She paused—she was fairly afloat on this dark stream of thought, becoming sadder and more downcast with every word she spoke. The causeless tears hung upon her eyelashes, her lips quivered and faltered; the deep cloud of characteristic melancholy had fallen like a veil upon her heart.

“But Helen,” said Hope, in a low alarmed voice, as she pressed close to her friend’s side. “Helen, is that true? People say it in books, and ministers say it. It is in the Bible I heard one say, butInever saw it in the Bible, Helen.”

“Saw what?”

“What the minister said—what you were saying, Helen—that the world is very miserable, that everybody must be unhappy. Helen, you are old, you know better than me; but I think it is not true.”

The electric touch was given; there needed no more; bravely upon the rising tide the distempered thoughts went out, not to return again until their time. The tears went back to their fountain—the face brightened with its varying, fluttering colour—the dark mood was gone.

“Did I say so, Hope? did you think I said so? No, no, it is not true!” said Helen, the words coming quick and low, in her rapid revulsion of feeling; “there is sorrow and there is joy, as there are darkness and light; but the night is good as well as the day, and it is blessed to live—blessed to have all the changes God sends to us—good and evil—the sweet and the bitter—blessed and not miserable, Hope.”

The clouds were hovering over the blank hill far away in golden masses, rounded with the soft advancing gloom of night, and overhead was the peaceful sky, pure and pale in the stillness of its rest.

“Sometimes we have storms, Hope,” said the repentant Helen, “and sometimes it is dark—dark—you do not know how dark it grows sometimes; but the sun rises every morning, and every night—look up yonder, how quiet the sky is—do you think the world could be miserable, Hope, so long as there is the sky and the sun?”

Hope looked up wistfully but did not speak, for she could not quite understand yet, either the melancholy itself or the sudden change; but she hung upon Helen’s arm in her affectionate girlish way, and they stood together in silence watching how the colours faded one by one, till the hill in the west grew only a great dark shadow, and parting into long pale misty streaks, the clouds lay motionless upon the calm, cold heaven. There is a long stretch of wet sand yonder where the broad Firth ought to be, and something chill and disconsolate, speaking of early winter, is in that gusty inconsistent breeze, which already carries past them a yellow leaf or two, dead so soon; but Helen Buchanan, wayward and inconsistent too, has bright life in her eyes, and sees nothing sad in all she looks upon. Within herself has risen this wilful, strong, capricious light proper to her nature—a nature strangely formed, as God builds not as man does—with every delicate line and shadowy curve, belonging separately to the gentle weak, conspiring to perfect it as strong.

Mrs Buchanan was a cheerful, sanguine woman; she liked to have her little parlour look bright after its homely fashion, though not with tawdry embellishments, or thosepoor ornamental shifts of poverty with which women dwelling at home are apt to solace their vacant hours, and imitate the costly follies of their richer sisters. A little bright fire burned in the grate, not without a certain aroma which whispered of the fragrantpeat, that helped to compose it; and the parlour with only its one candle was full of cheerful light. The gentle, kindly mother was jealous of the varying moods of her sole child, and was fain to use all simple arts to throw the spell of quiet cheerfulness over the room in which they spent these long evenings almost constantly alone.

“Mrs Buchanan,” said Hope, “Helen is sad—I want you to tell me why everybody in Fendie is sad; they never used to be before—it is only this year.”

Mrs Buchanan had already read her daughter’s face; but she saw that the cloud, if there had been a cloud, was gone, and that it was not expedient to speak of it.

“If you will tell me, Hope, my dear,” said Helen’s good mother, “who everybody is, I shall answer your question; but I am very sure I saw a great number of people in Fendie to-day, who had no sadness about them.”

“Oh, but who were they, Mrs Buchanan?” asked Hope.

Mrs Buchanan smiled.

“There was Robert Johnston, the grocer—he got another daughter last night; and there was Maxwell Dickson at the library—his son Robbie got a prize yesterday at the academy; and there was—”

Hope was disdainful; and even the face of her friend Helen glowed into genial laughter, as she threw back her unruly hair and interrupted Mrs Buchanan in great impatience.

“But I did not mean them! I was not thinking ofthem. Maxwell Dickson! as if he knew what it was to be sad—and that great lout Robbie; but I don’t care about them—it’s our own folk—it’s—”

“When do you go back to Edinburgh?” interrupted Helen.

“Oh, next month,” was the answer, “my mother says I may stay till Hallowe’en; but, Helen, my mother is going to ask Miss Swinton to come with me to Fendie next summer, at the vacation.”

“You seem to be very fond of Miss Swinton, Hope?” said Mrs Buchanan.

“Oh, yes, everybody is—you would like her too, Mrs Buchanan.”

“Should I? and why do you think that, Hope?”

“Oh, I know,” said Hope, in wise certainty, “because she likes Helen.”

The argument was irresistible, and Mrs Buchanan confessed it, by pulling Hope’s exuberant hair.

“Likes me!” the varying colour heightened on Helen’s face. “She does not know me, Hope.”

“Yes, but she does, Helen,” answered the sagacious Hope, “for I used to tell her; and she knows you quite well, and she says you are brave. Helen, if you only saw Miss Swinton! but you will when she comes.”

“She says I am brave;” Helen repeated the consolatory words under her breath, and asked herself “why?”

“But I do not know, my dear,” said Mrs Buchanan, “how Helen is to see this friend of yours, unless she calls on us—and we are strangers to her, you know.”

Mrs Buchanan was a little proud—she had no idea of being condescended to.

“Only wait till she comes,” said Hope, triumphantly, “I know she will want to see Helen sooner than anybody else, because she says Helen is—”

Helen interposed. She fancied that Hope intended to repeat the same word of commendation, and the quick spirit did not choose to hear it again. She was mistaken—Hope intended to bestow upon her friend the highest title in her vocabulary—that of gentlewoman—in name of Miss Swinton.

“When Miss Swinton speaks of me so kindly,” said Helen in haste, “let me hear what she calls you, Hope.”

Hope hesitated—she liked very well to repeat the commendation to herself, but had a little tremor in saying it aloud—if Helen laughed at her!

“I don’t know—perhaps she did not mean it,” said Hope, slowly, “but Miss Swinton says I am sensible, Helen.”

Mrs Buchanan shed the rebellious hair off Hope’s open candid forehead, and Helen laughed in such kindly wise as could by no possibility mean ridicule, as her mother said,—

“And so you are, Hope—and a good bairn besides. Miss Swinton is quite right.”

Whereupon Hope launched forth into another panegyric upon Miss Swinton. Helen did not very distinctly hear her. There was a good deal of the suggestive in Hope’s conversation, and her friend had snatched from it in her hasty fashion the germ of an important idea.

“Mother,” said Helen, breaking in abruptly upon Hope, “should you like to live in Edinburgh?”

Mrs Buchanan’s mind was not so rapid as her daughter’s. She looked up with a quiet unmoved smile.

“I do not doubt I should, Helen; most people like Edinburgh; but why do you ask me?”

Mrs Buchanan laid down her work as she spoke, and waited for the proposal which she knew was to follow. She had yet no glimmering of what it was, but she had studied those kindling eyes too long not to know that the sudden flush of some new purpose possessed them.

“Suppose we could go,” said Helen, rapidly; “suppose I could get a situation, mother, with some one like Miss Swinton, with Miss Swinton herself perhaps; should you like it? would you go to Edinburgh?”

Mrs Buchanan paused to think; the glowing moving face before her was not of the kind which takes time to deliberate. Helen clasped her small nervous fingers and looked into the vacant air, with her fixed unconscious eyes, and saw no obstacle in the way; no lingering tenderness to subdue; no sickness of heart to overcome; when they came hereafter she would do battle against them bravely—now, she saw them not.

“Oh, Helen!” exclaimed Hope, breathless with her first surprise and delight; but Hope recollected herself; this would be a death-blow to all her schemes, so she added,—“Helen, the teachers all live with Miss Swinton. Mrs Buchanan, you would not like to be alone?”

Mrs Buchanan still said nothing. It was very true she would not like to be alone, and very true it was also that she shrank from the unknown evils of change, and was better pleased to remain with the quiet cares she knew, than encounter those she did not know; but, unlike Hope, she said nothing. She did not choose to throw down, by any sudden decision, the dreams with which her daughter was already filling the air.

“Do you think I would not do for Miss Swinton, Hope?” asked Helen.

“Helen!” exclaimed Hope, indignantly.

“Well then, why do you say that?”

“Because,” and Hope tried to put wise meanings into her own girlish open face, and to make it as eloquent as Helen’s; “because, Helen, I should not like you to go awayfrom Fendie. Oh! no, no, you must stay always at home.”

And as Helen lifted her flushed face, the elaborate look of Hope and her mother’s anxious glance fell upon her together. They only made the blood rush more warmly about her heart. She started with a rapid nervous impulse: “Mother, if you do not disapprove, let me write to Miss Swinton to-morrow.”

Poor Hope Oswald! she had beentoosensible—she had defeated her own well-digested, painfully-constructed plan. Miss Swinton instead of a powerful auxiliary threatened to become the most hopeless barrier in her way, and Hope was almost in despair. She began immediately to belie Edinburgh; to manufacture grievances; and to represent how very hard, especially for the teachers, was the laborious life at school; but Helen’s fixed dreamy, unconscious face warned her it was all lost, and very disconsolately she said good-night.

“My father would be pleased enough if it was Miss Maxwell,” thought Hope with some disdain, as she went home, “all because Mr Graeme will leave her Mossgray. I wish somebody would give Helen a place like Mossgray—but I don’t either—because Helen is better than we are, though she is poor. Who’s that?”

Hope’s reverie concluded very abruptly—who was it?

Alas, it was the interesting, sentimental, young minister newly placed in the church of Fendie, whom all the town delighted to honour. He did not see her as he went steadily down the dim road, and the dismayed Hope stood still to watch him, with prophetic terror. Yes, indeed, it is Mrs Buchanan’s gate he stops at; and now the door is opened, and a flash of warm light shines for a moment into the garden, and the Reverend Robert Insches is admitted. Burning with suppressed anger, the jealous Hope hurried home, eager to defy and defeat her father, and utterly to destroy any presumptuous hopes which the Reverend Robert Insches might entertain in regard to Helen Buchanan.

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