T H E D A Y S O F M Y L I F E. (continued 3)

“And are you with him when he is ill, Alice?” said I anxiously.

“He rings his bell when he feels it coming,” said Alice, “though I know he has many a hard hour all by himself; and anxiety on his mind is very bad for him, dear,” she continued, looking at me wistfully, “and he is troubled in his spirit about leaving you. If you can give in to him, Miss Hester, dear, if it’s not against your heart—if you’re fancy-free, and think no more of one than of another—oh! darling, yield to him anything you can. He’s a suffering man, and is your father, and pride is the sin of the house; every one has it, less or more; and there are only two of you in the world, and you are his only child!”

Alice ran breathlessly through this string of arguments, while I listened with a disturbed and a rebellious heart. No, if this was true,—if my father was slowly dying—if he would soon be beyond the reach of all obedience and duty, I would not deny him anything—not even this. It was hard, unspeakably hard, to think of it. I could not see why he should ask such a bitter sacrifice from me. I knew of no self-sacrifice in his history—why should he think it was easy in mine?

Alice left me like a skilful general, when she had made this urgent appeal, and went away down stairs, saying she would call me when my father awoke. I remained at my window, where I had been dreaming before, but what a harsh interruption had come to my dreams—the sunshine without streamed down as full and bright as ever over the trees and flowers, and fresh enclosing greensward of our pretty garden; half an hour of time had come and gone, but it might have been half a year for the change it made in me. Alice had come to my Bower of Bliss, like Sir Guyon, and driven me forth from among the flowers and odors of the enchanted land. My heart became very heavy, I could not tell why. I resolved upon making my submission to my father, if I had an opportunity, and telling him to do what he would with me. This was not a willing or tender submission, but a forced and reluctant one; and I did not try to conceal from myself that I felt it very hard, though when I thought again of his recent suffering, and of the fantastic paradise of dreams in which I was wandering, while he wrestled with his mortal enemy, I felt suddenly humiliated and subdued. My father! my father! I had belonged to him all my life, I had no right to any love but his; I had lived at ease in his care, and trusted to him with the perfect confidence of a child. But now, when it was at last of importance that I should trust him, was this the time to follow my own fancies and leave him to suffer alone?

At that moment Alice called me, and I immediately went down stairs. I went with a tremulous and uncertain step, and an oppressed heart—to make any sacrifice he wished or asked—to do anything he desired of me. When I entered the library, my father looked up from his book with a momentary glance of surprise and inquiry; and with a heart beating so loud and so uneasily as mine it was hard to look unembarrassed and natural. I said breathlessly: “May I sit beside you, papa? I want to read a little,” but I did not dare to look at him as I spoke—the calm everyday tone of his voice struck very strangely upon my excited ear as he answered me: “Surely, Hester,” he said, with a slight quiet astonishment at the unnecessary question. He was perfectly unexcited—I could see neither care, nor anxiety, nor suffering in his calm and equable looks; and he did not perceive nor suspect the tumult and fever in my mind. Prepared as I was to yield to him with reluctance, and a feeling of hardship, I felt a shock of almost disappointment when I found that nothing was to be asked of me—I sank into the nearest chair and took up the first book I could find to cover my trembling and confusion. The stillness of the room overpowered me—I could hear my heart beating in the silence, and as my eye wandered over all these orderly and ordinary arrangements, and to the calm bright sunshine out of doors, and the shadow of the trees softly waving across the window, I was calmed into quieter expectancy and clearer vision. My father sat in his usual place at his usual studies, with the summer daylight full upon his face, and everything about him arranged with scrupulous propriety and care; if any of his habitual accessories had been disturbed—if he had occupied another seat, or sat in a different attitude, or if I could have detected the slightest sign of faltering or weakness in his manner, I would not have felt so strongly my sudden descent from the heights of terror, anxiety, and expectation, to the everyday level of repose and comfort; but there was no change in his stately person or dress, no perceptible difference in his appearance. He was not old—at this present moment he looked like a man in his prime, handsome, haughty, reserved, and fastidious. As I observed him under the shadow of my book, I felt like a spy watching to detect incipient weakness—was I disappointed that he did not look ill? Was this the man who half an hour ago was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion after a deadly struggle with his malady? I could not believe myself, or Alice—she was mistaken—for it was impossible to reconcile what she told me with what I saw.

But the stillness of the room and his steady occupation influenced me like a spell—I did not go away—and when a slight movement he made startled me into a momentary fear that he might perceive I was watching him, I began to read in earnest the book which, all this time, I had been holding in my hands. It had been lying on the top of a pile of others, and was quite a new book, not entirely cut up, a very unusual thing here. My eye had already travelled vacantly two or three times to the end of the page without knowing a syllable of the lines which I went over mechanically—but now I caught the name of the book, and it strangely awed and startled me. I could almost have cast it from me like a horrible suggestion when I saw that title. It was a medical treatise, and its subject was “Sudden Death”—the words were like a revelation to me—this was why he sat so composed and stately, ready to meet the last enemy like a brave man; this was why he suffered no trace of agitation or of languor to come into this solemn room which at any moment, as my excited fancy whispered, might become the chamber of death. I could almost fancy I saw the shadowy sword suspended over my father’s head, and in another instant it might fall.

My terror now, for himself and for him only, was as insane and wild as it seemed visionary and baseless; for I had seen nothing as yet to point to him as one of the probable victims of this sudden conclusion. But the very manner of the book convinced me of what he thought himself. I went on reading it, scarcely sensible now how my hands trembled, nor how easily he would find me out, if he happened to glance at me. Yes! here was abundant confirmation of my fears. I read with a breathless and overwhelming interest cases and symptoms—to my alarmed fancy, every one seemed to bear some likeness to what I knew of his; I never read a drama or a tale with such profound excitement as I read this scientific treatise—there seemed to be life and death in its pages—the authoritative mandate which should forbid hope, or silence fear.

“Hester!” said my father. I started violently and looked up at him, I felt the heat and flush of my intense occupation upon my cheek, and I almost expected to see him faint or fall as I sprang towards him. He held up his hand half impatient, half alarmed, at my vehemence. “What are you reading? what has excited you, Hester?” he said.

I retired very rapidly and quietly to my chair, and put my book away with nervous haste. “Nothing, papa,” I said, bending my head to escape his eye.

“Nothing! that is a child’s answer,” said my father, and I felt that he smiled; “I have been watching you these five minutes, Hester, and I know that ‘nothing’ could not make you so earnest. What is it you have been reading—tell me.”

“It is only a book—a new book,” I said slowly.

“I thought so—almost the only new book in my library, is it not?” said my father, in a singular tone, “what do you think of it, Hester?”

I lifted my hands in entreaty—I could not bear to hear him speaking thus.

“It is true,” he said quietly, “and you perceive it does not disturb me—this is what you must make up your mind to, Hester. It will be a trial for you—but not a long and tedious one—and you must hold yourself prepared for it as I do.”

“But father—father! you are not ill. You are not so ill—I cannot believe it,” I cried, scarcely knowing what I said.

“It will prove itself by and by,” he answered calmly, and returned to his book as if we had been speaking of some indifferent matter. I could not think of it so coolly—I cried: “Papa, listen to me, I will do anything, everything you want—do you hear me, papa?”

He looked up at me for a moment—was it suspicion? he certainly seemed to have forgotten that he had ever asked anything of me which I had refused.

“I require nothing, Hester,” he said, “nothing, my love, and I perfectly believe in your willingness to serve me. Lay down the book, it is not for you, and go out and refresh yourself. I am pleased that you know what may come, but I shall not be pleased if you brood upon it. Now leave me, Hester, but come again when you will, and I will never exclude you. Pshaw, child! it is the common lot. What do you tremble for? what is it you want to do?”

“Is there nothing you wish, papa—nothing I could do to please you?” I said, under my breath. I could not allude more plainly to the former question between us.

“It is time enough to ask such questions,” he said, with a momentary jealousy of my intention, “I am not dying yet.”

He did not understand me—he had forgotten! I hurried out grieved, overwhelmed, yet in spite of myself relieved on this one point. I thought myself the meanest wretch in the world, to be able to derive satisfaction from it at such a moment. Yet I was so! I felt a thrill of delight that I was free, in the midst of my terrors and dismay at the doom which hung over our house. I tried to conceal it from myself, but I could not. I was free to mourn for my dear father for ever, and admit no human consolation. I was not bound under a promise to commit myself to somebody’s hands to be taken care of. I was afflicted, but at liberty.

Alice waited eagerly to speak to me when I came from the library, but I only could speak two or three words to her, and then hastened out, to relieve the oppression on my spirit if I could. It was a dreadful thought to carry with me and ponder upon, and when I was walking fast along a lonely wood, half a mile out of Cambridge, it suddenly occurred to me what danger there was in leaving home, even for an hour. Before I returned, the blow might fall—it might be falling even now. I turned at once and went hastily homewards, my heart sick with anxiety and terror. When I nearly reached the house, I met Mr. Osborne; though I knew he would detain me, I was yet very anxious to speak to him, for perhaps he would give me some hope. He was speaking to some one, but he saw that I waited for him, and immediately left his former companion and came to me. “No other young lady in the world would do me so much honor,” said Mr. Osborne, in the gay good-humored tone which was usual to him, but which jarred so much upon my feelings. “Oh! Hester, what’s this? why do you look so much excited? Have you something important to tell me? I have almost expected it, do you know.”

I was very sorry, but I could not help the burning heat which came to my face; and I could not lift my eyes for the moment to meet his saucy eyes which seemed to read my thoughts. What had I to do with such thoughts! I cast them from me with bitter self-indignation, and looked up at him at last with a face so grave that he smiled on me no more.

“I want to speak to you about papa, Mr. Osborne,” I said. “Will you tell me?—you must know. He thinks he is very ill. He thinks—oh! tell me if you think he is so bad as that.”

For an instant his face grew very serious. “I am not qualified to give an opinion,” he said, first; and then, regaining his usual look, with an effort, he continued, “He is not well, Hester; but quite well and very ill are a long way from each other. I do not think he is very bad—I do not, indeed. I see no need for your alarming yourself.”

“But he speaks of danger and of sudden—” I could not say the fatal word. “Has he any foundation for it; do you think he is right, Mr. Osborne?” I continued with a shudder.

“I do not think he is right, Hester. I think that you ought not to be frightened with such a ghastly doubt as this,” said Mr. Osborne, seriously, “your father has fancies, as every man in weak health has; but I know enough of his illness, I think—I am almost sure—to give you confidence on this point. If anything sudden should occur, it will not be without long and abundant warning—a sudden or immediate blow is not to be feared. I assure you I am right, Hester, you may trust to me.”

I did trust to him with gratitude, and a feeling of relief. He walked home with me, moderating my pace, and leading my mind to ordinary subjects. He was very kind to me. He said nothing to embarrass or distress; but calmed my excitement, and made me feel a real confidence in him. When we got home, nothing had happened. The quiet house was as quiet and undisturbed as ever it had been. Mr. Osborne went to the library; and I went up-stairs to the window-seat in the drawing-room. And I do not venture to say that I did not go back to my dreams.

THE EIGHTH DAY.

ALICE had sent me out to walk at sunset—she said I was breaking her heart with my white thin face, and woful looks. I had spent all that afternoon in the garden watching my father at his window. I could do little else but watch him, and listen, and wait near the library; the constant strain of anxiety almost wore me out; yet I had a fond persuasion at the bottom of my heart, that my fears were groundless, and I think I almost kept up my anxiety on purpose as a sort of veil for this hope. Since I had been so much afraid for him, he seemed to have grown better every day—he had begun to take his walks again, and had never had another attack since the time Alice warned me how ill he was.

I obeyed her now tacitly and went out; though it was a beautiful night, few people were walking when I went to walk by the river side, where the last rays of the sun were shining gloriously through the half transparent leaves of the lime-trees. The tender slanting golden light was very sweet to see, as it touched upon the green surface of the lawn at some single ripple or eddy, and left all beside in the deep shadow of the coming twilight. In those great trees overhead, the wind was sighing with a gentle rustle, shaking the leaves against each other, swaying the sunny branches into the shade, and thrusting now and then a dark parcel of leaves into the sunshine, when they suddenly became illuminated and showed you all the life in their delicate veins, quivering against the light. On the one bank of the river was a trim slope of grass descending to the water, and on the other, withdrawn over broad lawns of greensward, with shadows of trees lying on the grass, and the light falling on it aslant and tardily, stood the stately College buildings, noble and calm in the sweet leisure of the evening rest. I came here because I saw it solitary; no one interrupted me as I wandered along the broad sandy footpath; no one disturbed my thoughts as I pursued my dream. Sometimes a bird fluttered through the leaves from one branch to another, going home; and there was a low sweet twittering of welcome from the tiny household deep in the heart of the green lime, a forest all bedewed and shining with the last smiles of the sun; but I heard no other sound except my own footsteps, at which I sometimes could almost have blushed and stepped aside, afraid of some spectator of my maiden meditations, or some passer-by who might guess at the secret of my dream.

When I first saw him coming on the same solitary road, no one here but he and I, my first impulse was to turn back and escape. I trembled and blushed, and shrank with conscious conviction, believing he could read all my thoughts whenever he met my eyes. Then I paused and stumbled, and felt how ashamed and hesitating my face had become, and wondered what he would think was the occasion of this nervous foolishness. But I do not think he took time to observe, for he was hastening towards me, with an eager haste which only made me shrink the more. I could not turn back, I could not go steadily onward; I almost thought all nature which had made this seem so beautiful, and all Cambridge who had left it to us, were in a conspiracy against me. On came his light active figure, pushing through the trees, and I with my faltering steps advanced slowly, going towards him, because I could not help myself. When we met at last, he turned and went on with me; I was not able to object to this, and even he did not say anything about it, but merely turned by my side, subdued his hasty pace to my slow one, and accompanied me as though it had been quite a matter of course. I do not think we said much to each other. I do not recollect anything that passed between us—I remember only the twittering of the birds, the rustle of the leaves, the light stealing off the dewy greensward and the darkening river, all those soft sweet distant sounds that belong to a summer’s night were ringing with a subdued and musical echo in the air around us; our own steps upon the path—the beating of our own hearts—these, and not words from each other, were what we listened to.

Then he suddenly seemed to rouse himself, and began to speak—suddenly, in a moment, when I was quite unprepared for it. I cannot tell how I felt while I listened. We went on mechanically, I am sure, not knowing or caring whither we went. He was speaking to me, pleading with me, entreating me; and I listened with a vague, secret delight, half pain, half pleasure, when his voice stopped at last. I became aware how I was hanging upon it—what a great shock and disappointment it was that it should cease. But still, in my trance of embarrassment, in my agitation and perplexity, it never occurred to me that it was I who must speak now—that it was I who had to decide and conclude upon this strange eventful question, and that with still greater excitement than that with which I had listened to him, he was waiting to hear me.

I did not speak—I went slowly on with the echo of his words ringing into my heart—then came his voice again, agitated and breathless. “Hester, have you nothing to say to me?”

I cannot tell why, at this moment, our first conversation together, when he came to our house with Mr. Osborne, returned to my memory. I did not turn towards him nor lift my eyes, but I asked in a tone as low and hurried as his own, “Almost the first time you ever spoke to me, you were going to call me Hester—why was that?”

He did not answer me immediately. “Because your name became the sweetest sound in the world to me, the first time I heard it,” he said, after a moment’s pause. I believed him—I was not vain of it, it seemed to be a merit in him to think so of me, but no merit in me.

“Not a word—not a word—must I go away then—will you answer me nothing?” he said, at last, after another interval, with other wild words of tenderness, such as had never been said to me before, and such as no woman can tell again. I was roused by his outcry, I turned for an instant to look at him, and then I suddenly felt my face burn and my brow throb, and then—it seemed he was satisfied, and wanted no more words from me.

And we wandered on together, out from the shadows of the trees, where the sun came gleaming and glistening upon us like a friend who had found us out. I think there never was such a night of content, and satisfaction, and peace; there was the calm of night, and the flush of hope for another day upon the heavens; and the sweet light blessed the earth, and the earth lay still under it in a great joy, too deep to be expressed. I was leaning with my hand upon his arm—I was leaning my heart upon him, so that I could have wept for the delight of this sweet ease and rest. Yes! it was the love of the Poets that had overtaken us, and put our hands together. As he clasped both his hands over one of mine, he said it was for ever and for ever—for ever and for ever, and lingered on the words. I said nothing—but the clasp of his hands holding me, stirred the very depths in my heart. I was alone no longer, I wanted to tell him everything—my secret thoughts, my fears—all that had ever happened to me. I could not tell him my fancies about himself, though I listened so eagerly to all he said of me, but all my life came brightening up before me, I was eager to show it all to him—I was jealous of having anything in which he had no share.

We went up and down—up and down—the same bit of enchanted ground, and it was only when I felt a chill breath of air, and slightly shivered at it, and when he put up my shawl upon my shoulders, and drew it round me so anxiously and tenderly, that I glanced up at the sky to escape his eyes which were gazing full upon me, and saw that it was getting quite dark, and must be late. “Is it late?” I said, starting suddenly at the thought of my father; “they will wonder where I am—oh! I must go home.”

“Time has not been to-night,” he said, with the smile upon his lip quivering as if the tears were in his eyes as well as in mine. “Once more, Hester, let me look at this glorious bit of road that has brought me fortune. Here—it was just here—winter should never come to this spot; and there is a faint timid footstep in the sand. My sovereign lady was afraid of me! If you had but known what a poor coward I was, how I trembled for those words which would not come, and how you held my fate in your hand, and played with it. Love is quite bad enough—but Love and Fear! how is a single man to stand against them!”

“I do not think you looked very much afraid,” said I.

“You cannot tell—you never vouchsafed me a glance,” said Harry, “and Fear is the very soul of daring; when a man will rather hear the worst than hear nothing, Hester, his courage is not very cool, I can tell you. And how unmindful you were!”

“Hush! hush! I am sure it is very late,” said I, “I must go home.”

“But not without me, Hester,” said my companion.

I did not want him to leave me, certainly; but I was a little startled. My father! what would he say? how would he receive this unexpected accomplishment of his desires? The idea agitated and excited me. I suddenly felt as if this meeting of ours had been clandestine and underhand. I did not know what I could say to my father, and Alice would be anxious about myself already.

“You would not prolong my suspense, Hester,” said Harry, as we slowly took the way home; “you know I cannot rest till I have spoken to your father—have I a rival, then—do you see difficulties? or is it that you would rather tell him with your own sweet lips what you have never yet told me?”

“No—no—I do not want to speak to him first,” said I, hurriedly, “but he is not well—he is not strong—agitation hurts him; yet perhaps this would not agitate him,” I continued with involuntary sadness—“perhaps, indeed, it is better he should know.”

“I think it will not agitate him. I think, perhaps, he will not be much surprised, except indeed that I should have won what I have long aimed at,” said Harry. “I met his eye the last time I saw him, Hester!”

“And what then?” I asked eagerly.

“Nothing much, except that I think that he knew the sad condition I was in,” said Harry, with a smile, “and remembered somebody who was the light of his eyes in his own youth—for I think he did not look unkindly on me.”

“But he never could suspect anything,” said I.

“Did you never suspect anything, you hard heart?” he said; “you would not shake hands with me. You would not look at me. You never would come frankly out into the garden where a poor fellow could see you. Do you mean to tell me now that you were not afraid of me, and did not feel that I was your fate?”

“Hush! hush!” I repeated again. “And Mr. Osborne and Alice—you do not mean that everybody knew?”

“You must not be angry with me, if I confess that Mr. Osborne was in my confidence,” said Harry, looking into my face, with some alarm, as I thought. “I was shy of whispering my name of names to any other man; but I betrayed myself once by saying Hester to your old friend. Hester—Hester! Homer never knew the sweet sounds of these two syllables, yet they used to glide in upon his page, and no more intelligence was left in it. Ah! you do not know what you have to answer for. And Alice!—Alice loves you too well not to suspect anybody who approaches you, Hester. She has been very curious about me for a long time. I think she approves of me now at last.”

“It is very strange,” I said, with a little pique and offended dignity, “everybody seems to have been aware except—”

I paused, being so sincere that I could not imply what was not true. Had not I been aware? or what were all my dreams about for many a day?

“Except the person most concerned? I suppose it is always so,” said Harry. “But do not blame me for that. If my queen was not aware of her devoted servant’s homage—it was no fault of mine. Ah! Hester! so many jealous glances I have given to this closed door.”

For we had reached home; and with a beating heart I opened the door and entered before him. It was so dark here in the close, that I could only hear, and could not see the ivy rustling on the wall; and the air was chill, though it was August; and I trembled with a nervous shiver. He held me back for a moment as I was about to hasten in. “Hester, give me your hand, give me your promise,” he said, in a low, passionate tone. “Your father may not be content with me; but you—you will not cast me off? You will give me time to win him to my side? Say something to me, Hester—say a kind word to me!”

I could see, even in the darkness, how he changed color; and I felt his hands tremble. I gave him both mine very quietly; and I said: “He will consent.” Then we parted. I hurried in, and called Alice to show Henry to the drawing-room where my father was; and, without pausing to meet her surprised and inquiring look, I ran up-stairs, and shut myself into my own room. I wanted to be alone. It was not real till I could look at it by myself, and see what it was.

Yes! there was the dim garden underneath, with the trees rising up solemnly in the pale summer night, and all the color and the light gone out of this flowery little world. There were the lights in the little gleaming windows of Corpus like so many old friends smiling at me. I had come home to my own familiar room; but I was not the same Hester Southcote, who had lived all her life in this environment. In my heart, I brought another with me into my girlish bower. The idea of him possessed all my thoughts—his words came rushing back, I think almost every one of them, into my ears. I dropped upon my seat with the shawl he had placed there still upon me, without removing my bonnet or doing anything. I sat down and began to live it over again, all this magical night. It stood in my memory like a picture, so strange, so beautiful, so true! could it be true? Did he think me the first, above all others? and all these words which sent the blood tingling to the very fingers he had clasped, had he really spoken them, and I listened? and all this wonderful time had been since I left the little dark room, where I had even now again to look at my altered fate. All the years before were nothing to this single night.

And then I remembered where he was, and how occupied now. He was telling my father—asking my father to give up his only child.

My father was ill—in danger of his life—and was I willing to leave him alone? but then the proud thought returned to me—not to leave him alone—to add to him a better companion than I, a friend, a son, a man of nature as lofty as himself; but I was not willing to enter into details, and as I thought upon the interview going on so near me, I grew nervous once more. Then I heard a step softly approaching my door. Then a light gleamed through it, and I went to open it with a great tremor. It was Alice, with a light, and she said my father had sent for me to come to him now.

Alice did not ask me why I sat in the dark with my bonnet on; instead of that she helped to take off my walking dress, and kept her eyes from my face, in her kindness—for she must have seen how the color went and came, how I trembled, and how much agitated I was. She brushed back my hair with her own kind hands, and took a rose out of a vase on the table, and fastened it in my dress.

I had been so full of my own thoughts, that I had not observed these roses, but I knew at once when she did this. They were from my own tree at Cottiswoode. I did not ask Alice how she got them, yet I had pleasure in the flower. It reminded me of my mother—my mother—if I had a mother now!

“They are waiting for you, Miss Hester,” said Alice—they? how strange the combination was—yet I lingered still. I could not meet them both together. I could have borne to hear my father discuss it afterwards; but to look at each of them in the other’s presence, was more than I thought I could endure. I went away slowly, Alice lingering over me, holding the light to show me the way I knew so well, and following me with her loving ways. My Alice, who had nobody but me! I turned round to her suddenly, for a moment, and leaned upon her breast, and sought her kiss upon my cheek—then I went away comforted. It was all the mother-comfort I had ever known.

When my hand touched the drawing-room door, it was suddenly thrown open to me, and there he stood to receive me with such joy and eagerness, that I shrunk back in terror for my father. My father was not there.

“We are alone,” said Henry, “your father would not embarrass you, Hester, and he gives his consent under the most delightful of all conditions. Do you think me crazy? indeed, I will not answer for myself, for you belong to me, Hester, you are lawfully made over—my wife!”

I was almost frightened by his vehemence; and though I had feared it so much, I was sorry now that my father did not stay. “Did it trouble him? Was he disturbed? What did he say?” I asked eagerly.

“I am not to tell you what he said—he will tell you himself,” said Henry, “but the condition—have you no curiosity to hear what this condition is?”

“No,” I said, “it seems to please you. I am glad my father cared to make conditions; and you are sure he was not angry? What did he say?”

“I will tell you what I said,” was all the answer I got; “but all the rest you are to hear from himself. Now, Hester,” he continued, pleadingly, holding my hands and looking into my face, “don’t be vexed at the condition. I don’t expect you are to like it as well as I do; but you will consent, will you not? You can trust yourself to me as well as if you knew me another year? Hester! don’t turn away from me. There is your father coming; and I promised to leave you when I heard him. It is very hard leaving you; but I suppose I must not break my word to him. I am to come to-morrow. You will say good-night to me, surely—good-night to your poor slave. Princess—good-night!”

My father was just at the door, when at last he left me. There was a brief leave-taking between them; and then I heard his rapid step descending the stair, and my father entered the room. I had gone to my usual seat at the table, and scarcely ventured to look up as he entered. I thought he hesitated for a moment as he stood at the door looking in upon me. Perhaps he thought of giving me a kinder greeting; but, if he did, he conquered the impulse, and came quietly to his chair opposite me, and, without saying a word, took his place there, and closed the book which had been lying open upon the table. Then he spoke. My heart beat so loud and wild that it almost took away my breath. He was my father—my father! and I wanted to throw myself at his feet, and pour out all my heart to him. I wanted to say that I never desired to leave him—never! and that I would rather even give up my own happiness than forsake him now.

He gave me no opportunity; he spoke in his grave, calm tone of self-possessed and self-commanded quietness, which chilled me to the heart. “Hester!” he said, “I have been listening to a young man’s love-tale. He is very fervid, and as sincere as most youths are, I have no doubt. He says he has thought of nothing but how to win you, since we first admitted him here; and he says that you have promised him your hand if he can gain my consent. I have no doubt you recollect, Hester, the last conversation we had on this subject. You have chosen for yourself, what you would not permit me to choose for you, and I hope your choice will be a happy one. I have given my consent to it. What he says of his means seems satisfactory; and I waive the question of family, in which his pretensions, I presume, are much inferior to your own. But I earnestly desire that you should have a proper protector, Hester! and I give my consent to your marriage, on condition—” he paused, and I glanced up at him, I know not with what dismayed and apprehensive glance; for his solemn tone struck me with terror: “on condition,” he continued, with a smile. “Do not fear—it is nothing very terrible—on condition that your marriage takes place within three weeks from this time.”

“Papa!”

I started to my feet, no longer shrinking and embarrassed. Oh! it was cruel—cruel! To seize the first and swiftest opportunity to thrust me from him, while he was ill, perhaps dying, and when he knew how great my anxiety was. I could not speak to him; I burst into a passionate fit of tears. I was wounded to the heart.

“I suppose it is natural that you should dislike this haste, Hester,” said my father, in a slightly softened tone; “I can understand that it is something of a shock to you; but I cannot help it, my love. The circumstances are hard, and so is the necessity. I yield to you in the more important particulars; you must yield to me in this.”

“Papa! I cannot leave you. Do not bid me,” I cried, eagerly, encouraged by his tone; “to go away now would kill me. Father, father! have you no pity upon me? you cannot have the heart to send me away!”

“I have the heart to do all I think right, Hester!” said my father, sternly. “I am the last man in the world to speak to of pity. Pity has ruined me; and I will do what is right, and not a false kindness to my only child. This lover of yours is your own choice—remember at all times he is your own choice. I might have made a wiser selection. I might not have made so good a one. The probability is in your favor; but, however it happens, recollect it is your own election, and that I wash my hands of the matter. But I insist on the condition I have told you of. What we have to do, we must do quickly. There is time enough for all necessary preparations, Hester.”

I had taken my seat again in the dull and mortified sullenness of rejected affection and unappreciated feelings. Preparations! was it that I cared for? I had no spirit to speak again. I rather was pleased to give up with a visible bad grace all choice and wish in the matter.

“You do not answer me,” said my father; “is my substantial reason too little to satisfy your punctilio, Hester? are you afraid of what the world will say?”

“No! I know no world to be afraid of,” said I, almost rudely, but with bitter tears coming to my eyes; “if you care so little for me, I do not mind for myself if it was to-morrow.”

“I do not choose it to be to-morrow, however,” said my father, with only a smile at my pique, “there are some things necessary beforehand besides white satin and orange flowers. Alice has arranged your dress before, you had better consult with her, and to-morrow I will give you a sum sufficient for your equipment; that is enough, I think, Hester. Neither of us seems to have any peculiar delight in the subject. I consider the matter settled so far as personal discussion between us goes—matters of arrangement we can manage at our leisure.”

He drew his book to him, and opened it as he spoke. When he began to read, he seemed to withdraw from me into his retirement, abstracted and composed, leaving me in the tumult of my thoughts to subside into quietness as I best could. I sat still for some time, leaning back in my chair, gnawing at my heart; but I could not bear it—and then I rose up to walk up and down from window to window, my father taking no note of me—what I did. As I wandered about in this restless and wretched way, I saw the lights in the college windows, shining through the half-closed curtain. He was there, brave, generous, simple heart! I woke out of my great mortification and grief, to a delight of rest and relaxation. Yes, he was there; that was his light shining in his window, and he was sitting close by it looking out upon this place which enclosed me and mine. I knew his thoughts now, and what he was doing, and I knew he was thinking of me.

When my heart began to return to its former gladness, I went away softly to my own room, thinking that no one would hear me, and that I might have a little time to myself; but when I had just gone, and was standing by the window, leaning my head upon it, looking out at his window, and shedding some quiet tears, Alice once more appeared upon me, with her candle in her hand. She did not speak at first, but went about the room on several little pretences, waiting for me to address her; then she said, “Will I leave the light, Miss Hester?” and stood gazing at me wistfully from beside the dressing-table. I only said, “Stay, Alice,” under my breath, but her anxious ear heard it. She put down the light at once, and went away to a distant corner of the room, where she pretended to be doing something, for she would not hasten me, though she was very anxious—it was pure love and nothing else, the love of Alice.

“Alice!”

She came to me in a moment. I had just drawn down the blind, and I crept close to her, as I used to do when I was a child. “Do you know what has happened, Alice?” I said.

“Dear, I have had my thoughts,” said Alice, “is it so then? and does your papa give his consent?”

“Oh! papa is very cruel—very cruel!” cried I bitterly, “he does not care for me, Alice. He cares nothing for me! he says it must be in three weeks, and speaks to me as if punctilio and preparations were all I cared for. It is very hard to bear—he will force me to go away and leave him, when perhaps he is dying. Oh! Alice, it is very hard.”

“Yes, my darling—yes, my darling!” said Alice vaguely; “and will I live to dress another bride? oh! God bless them—God bless them! evil has been in the house, and distress, and sorrow—oh! that it may be purged and cleansed for them.”

“What do you mean? what house, Alice?” I cried in great astonishment.

Alice drew her hand slowly over her brow and said, “I was dreaming, do not mind me, Miss Hester. I dressed your mamma, darling, and you’ll let me dress my own dear child.”

“No one else shall come near me, Alice; but think of it,” cried I in despair, “in three weeks—and it must be. I think it will kill me. My father used to care for me, Alice, but now he is only anxious to send me away.”

“Miss Hester, it is your father’s way; and he has his reasons,” said my kind comforter; “think of your own lot, how bright it is, and your young bridegroom that loves you dearly; think of him.”

“Yes, Alice,” I said very humbly, but I could not help starting at the name she gave him, it was so very sudden: every time I thought of it, it brought a pang to my heart.

But then she began to talk of what things we must get immediately—and I was not very old nor very wise—I was interested about these things very soon, and regarded this business of preparation with a good deal of pleasure; the white silk dress, and the veil, and the orange blossoms—it may be a very poor thing to tell of myself, but I had a flutter of pleasure thinking of them; and there we sat, full of business, Alice and I, and Alice went over my wardrobe in her imagination, and began to number so many things which I would require—and it was so great a pleasure to her, and I was so much softened and cheered myself, that when I rose, after she had left me, to wave my hand in the darkness, at the light in his window, I had almost returned to the deep satisfaction of my first joy.

But when I returned to the drawing-room—returned out of my own young blossoming life, with all its tumult of hopes, to my father, sitting alone at his book, all by himself, abstracted and solitary, like one whom life had parted from and passed by—I could not resist the sudden revulsion which threw me down once more. But now I was very quiet. I bent down my head into my hands where he could not see me weeping. I forgot he had wounded or injured me—I said, “My father! my dear father!” softly to myself; and then I began to dream how Harry would steal into his affections—how we would woo him out of his solitude; how his forsaken desolate life would grow bright in our young house; and I began to be very glad in my heart, though I did not dry my tears.

When we were parting for the night, my father came slowly up to me, and with a gesture of fondness put his hands on my head. “Hester,” he said, in a low steady voice, “you are my only child”—that was all—but the words implied everything to me. I leaned upon his arm to hide my full eyes, and he passed his hand softly over my hair—“My only child! my only child!” he repeated once or twice, and then he kissed my cheek, and “God bless you, my love!” and sent me away.

I was very sad, yet I was very happy when I lay down to rest. The blind was drawn up, and I could see the light still shining in Harry’s window; and I was not afraid now to put his name beside my father’s when I said my prayers. It was very little more than saying my prayers with me. I had known no instruction, and in many things I was still a child. Just when I was going to sleep, some strong associations brought into my mind what Alice had told me of my father; how rejoiced he looked on the day of his betrothal, and how she never saw him look happy again—it was a painful thought, and it came to me as a ghost might have come at my bedside; I could not get far from it. I had no fear for myself, yet this haunted me. Ah, my dear father, how unhappy he had been!

THE NINTH DAY.

IT was the first of September, a brilliant sunshiny autumn day. The light streamed fall into my chamber window, and upon the figure of Alice standing before it, with her white apron and her white cap, so intensely white under the sunshine. She was drawing out rolls of white ribbon, and holding them suspended in the light for me to see them. They were dazzling in their silken snowy lustre. It was difficult to make a choice while this bright day glorified them all.

The room was not in disorder, yet it was littered everywhere with articles of dress. On my dining-table was a little open jewel-case with the bit of gold chain and the little diamond pendant which I had worn the first time I saw Harry—and the jewels were sparkling quietly, to themselves, in the shade. There were other ornaments, presents from him, lying beside this; and they made a subdued glow in the comparative dimness of that corner of the room. On my bed, catching a glance of sunshine, lay my bridal dress, its rich full folds and white brocaded flowers glistening in the light. On the little couch near the window were all the pretty things of lace which graced my trousseau—the veil arranged by Alice’s own hand over a heap of rich purple silk which lay there for my approval, and which brought out to perfection the delicate pattern of the lace. And this was not all, for every chair held something—boxes of artificial flowers, so beautifully made, that it was impossible not to like them, exquisite counterfeits of nature—boxes of gloves, in delicate pale colors, fit for a bride—and last of all, this box of snowy-white ribbons, from which we found it so difficult to choose.

People speak of the vanity of all these bridal preparations. I have heard often how foolish was all this display and bustle about a marriage. I do not think it. It is the one day in a woman’s life when everything and every one should do her honor. As I stood with Alice in my bright room, half blinded with the intense light upon the white ribbons, I was pleased with all the things about me. I had license to like everything, and to be interested with all the additions to my wardrobe. Only once in one’s life can one be a bride. And all these white, fine, shining dresses—all these flowers and draperies of lace and pretty ornaments—they are not minutes of vanity always, but expressions of a natural sentiment—and they were very pleasant to me.

“I’ll come out of the light, Miss Hester—here, dear, you can see them better now: though I like to see them shining in the sunshine. There is a beauty! will this one do?”

“Do you think that is the best?” said I, “then I will take it, Alice; and some for your cap now; here is a satin one, and here is gauze, but I must choose them myself; and you are to have your silk gown made and wear it—you are not to put it away in your drawer.”

Alice looked down at her dark green stuff gown, hanging quite dead and unbrightened even in that fervid sunshine, and shook her head with a smile of odd distress. “It is much too fine for me, I was never meant to be a lady,” said Alice, “but I’d wear white like a girl, sooner than cross you, my darling; and that is for me—bless your dear heart! that is a ribbon fit for a queen!”

“But the queen is not to be here,” said I, “so you must wear it, Alice; and I do not want you to be without your apron. I like that great white apron. I wonder if I will like to lay down my head upon it, Alice, when I am old?”

“When you are old, Alice will not be here, Miss Hester,” she said, with a smile; “you are like other young things, you think you will not be a young lady when you are married; but my darling, married or not married, the years take their full time to come.”

“Ah, I will never be a girl again,” said I, sighing with one of the half mock, half real sentimentalities of youth. “Alice, do you think, after all, my father is pleased?”

“I think,” she began, but she stopped and paused, and evidently took a second thought; “yes, Miss Hester, I think he is pleased,” she said, “he has every reason—yes, dear, don’t fear for your papa; it is all good—all better than anybody could have planned it—I know it is.”

“Do you know that you speak very oddly sometimes, Alice,” said I; “you speak as if you were a prophet, and knew something about us, that we did not ourselves know.”

“Don’t you think such things, Miss Hester,” said Alice, hurriedly, and her face reddened, “as I am no gipsy nor fortune-teller either, not a bit.”

“Are you angry?” said I, “angry at me, Alice?” I was a little surprised, and it was quite true that two or three times I had been at a loss to know what she meant.

“Angry at you—no, darling, nor never was all your life,” said Alice, “for all you have your own proud temper, Miss Hester—for I never was one to flatter. Will I send the box away? look, dear, if you have got all.”

I had got all that we wanted, and when she went away, I drew my chair to the window, and began a labor of love. Alice never changed the fashion of her garments, and while she labored night and day for me, I was making a cap for her, and braiding a great muslin apron, which she was to wear on the day. I was very busy with the apron, doing it after a fashion of my own, and in a pattern which Alice would think all the more of because it was my own design, though I am not very sure that it gained much in effect by that circumstance. I drew my seat near to the open window, into the sunshine, and began to work, singing to myself very quietly but very gladly, as the pattern grew under my fingers. My heart rejoiced in the beautiful day, and in its own gladness; and I do not know that this joy was less pleasant for the tremor of expectation, and the flutter of fear, which my strange new circumstances brought me. I glanced from the window, hearing a step in the garden, and there was Harry, wandering about looking up at me.

When he caught my eye, he began to beckon with all his might, and try to get me to come down to him. I had seen him already this morning, so I knew it was not because he had anything to say to me, and I shook my head, and returned to my work. Then he began to telegraph to me his despair, his impatience, his particular wish to talk to me—and kept me so occupied smiling at him, and answering his signals, that the apron did not make much more progress than if I had gone down. At last, however, Alice came back, and I looked from the window no more, but went on soberly with my occupation. I had no young friends to come to see my pretty things, so Alice began to put them away.

A fortnight was gone, since that day when we were engaged, as Alice called it; and in a week, only a week now, the other day was to come.

“You have never told me yet, Miss Hester,” said Alice, as she passed behind me, “where you are going, after—”

I interrupted her hurriedly. I was frightened for a mention of this dreadful ceremony, in so many words; and the idea of going away was enough to overset my composure at any time—I who had never left home before, and such a going away as this!

“We are to go abroad,” I answered hurriedly; “but only for a few weeks, and then to have a house in Cambridgeshire, if we can find one very near at hand, Alice.”

“Yes,” answered Alice.

There was so much implied in this “yes,” it seemed so full of information and consciousness, as if she could tell me more than I told her, that I was annoyed and almost irritated. In the displeasure of the moment I could not continue the conversation; it was very strange what Alice could mean by these inferences, and then to look so much offended when I spoke to her about them. I saw that Harry was still in the garden, looking up, and beckoning to me again, when he saw me look out—so I put away my work, and went down to hear what he had to say.

He had not anything very particular to say; but it was not disagreeable, though there was little originality in it, and I had heard most of it before; and he helped me with some flowers in the green-house which had been sadly neglected, and we cut some of the finest of them in the garden, for the vase upon my little table upstairs; and he told me I ought to wear flowers in my hair, and he said he would bring me a wreath of briony. “I should like to bind the beautiful clustered berries over those brown locks of yours, Hester,” he said. “I will tell you some day how I came to know the briony first, and fell in love with it—it was one of the first incidents in my life.”

“Tell me now then,” said I.

But he shook his head and smiled. “Not now—wait till I can get a wreath of it fresh from a Cambridgeshire hedgerow, and then I will tell you my tale.”

“I shall think it is a tale about a lady, if you speak of it so mysteriously,” said I, and when I turned to him I saw he blushed. “It was so then,” I said, with the slightest pique possible. I was not quite pleased.

“There never was but one in the world to me, Hester,” he said, and I very soon cast down my eyes, “so it could not be about a lady, unless it happened in a dream, and the lady was you.”

I looked at him with a strange perplexity, he was almost as hard to understand as Alice was—but he suddenly changed the conversation, and made me quite helpless for any further controversy by talking about what we were to do next week, after—I was always silenced in a moment by a reference to that.

Then my father looked out from the library window and called to us. My father had been a good deal occupied with Harry, and I pleased myself with thinking that he began to like him already. They seemed very good friends, and Harry showed him so much deference and was so anxious to follow his wishes in everything, that I was very grateful to him; and all the more because I thought it was from his own natural goodness he did this, fully more than from a wish to please me.

We went in together to the library. My father was reading papers, some of those long straggling papers tied together at the top, which always look so ominous, and are so long-winded. His book was put away, and instead he had pen and ink and his great blotting-book before him. My father had been writing much and reading little, during these two weeks; the occupation of his life was rudely broken in upon by these arrangements, and though I could not understand how it was that he had so much business thrown upon him, the fact seemed to be certain. There was more life even in the room, it was less orderly, and there was a litter of papers upon the table. My father looked well, pale, and self-possessed, but not so deadly calm, and he called Harry to him with a kind and familiar gesture. I had not yet overcome the embarrassment which I always felt when I was with them both; and when I saw that my father was pointing out sundry things in the papers to Harry, that they were consulting about them, and that I was not a necessary spectator, I turned over some books for a few minutes, and then I turned to go away. When he saw me moving towards the door, my father looked up. “Wait a little, Hester, I may want you by and by,” he said. I was obedient and came back, but I did not like being here with Harry. I did not feel that our young life and our bright prospects were fit to intrude into this hermit’s room, and I wondered if it would look drearier or more solitary—if my father would feel any want of me in my familiar place, when I went away.

But I had very little reason to flatter myself that he would miss me. He conducted all these matters with a certain satisfaction, I thought. He was glad to have me “settled;” and though I think he had been kinder than usual ever since that night, he had never said that it would grieve him to part with me, or that the house would be sad when I was gone.

There was a pause in their consultation. I heard, for I did not see, because I had turned to the window, and they were behind me, and then my father said—“Come here, Hester, we have now talked together of these arrangements—sit down by me, here, and see if it will not distress you too much to hear the programme of the drama in which you are to be a principal actor—here is a chair, sit down.”

I turned, and went slowly to the seat he pointed out to me. I was very reluctant, but I could not disobey him, not even though I saw Harry’s face bending forward eagerly to know if this was disagreeable to me.

“In the first place,” said my father with a smile, “it is perhaps well that Hester is no heiress, as she once was supposed to be. Had my daughter inherited the family estate, her husband must have taken her name, and that is a harder condition than the one I stipulated for.”

As there was no answer for a moment, I glanced shyly under the hand which supported my head at Harry. To my great surprise, he seemed strangely and painfully agitated. There was a deep color on his face. He did not lift his eyes, but shifted uneasily, and almost with an air of guilt, upon his chair; and he began to speak abruptly with an emotion which the subject surely did not deserve.

“Hester is worth a greater sacrifice than that of a name like mine,” he said; “it would give me pleasure to show my sense of the honor you do me by admitting me into your family. I have no connexions whom I can gain by abandoning my own name, and I have no love for it, even though Hester has made it pleasanter to my ear. Let me be called Southcote. I would have proposed it myself had I thought it would be agreeable to you. You have no son. When you give Hester to me, make me altogether your representative. I will feel you do me a favor. Pray let us settle it so.”

My father looked at him with more scrutinizing eyes—“When I was your age, young man, not for all the bounties of life, would I have relinquished my name.”

Once more Harry blushed painfully. I too, for the moment, would rather that he had not made this proposal, yet how very kind it was of him! and I could not but appreciate the sacrifice which he made for me.

“Your name was the name of a venerable family, distinguished and dear to you,” he said, after a little pause. “I am an orphan, with no recollections that endear it to me. Nay, Mr. Southcote, do not fear, I have no antecedents which make me ashamed of it; but for Hester’s sake and yours, I will gladly relinquish this name of mine. If you do not wish it, that is another question.”

There was a suppressed eagerness in his tone which impressed me very strangely. I could understand how, in an impulse of generosity, he could make the proposal; but I could not tell why he should be so anxious about it. It was very strange.

“I have not sufficient self-denial to say that,” said my father. “I do wish it. It will gratify me more than anything else can, and I do not see indeed why, being satisfied on every other point, I should quarrel with you for proposing to do what I most desire; but regard for his own name is so universal in every man, I confess in other circumstances I should have been disposed to despise the man who accepted my heiress and her name with her. You, of course, are in an entirely different position. I can only accept your offer with gratitude. It is true, as you say, I have no son—you shall be my representative—yes, and I will be glad to think,” said my father, with a momentary softening, and in a slow and lingering tone, “that she is Hester Southcote still.”

Ah, those lingering touches of tenderness, how they overpowered me! I did not wish to let my father see me cry, like a weak girl; but I put my hands on my eyes to conceal my tears. He did care for me, though he expressed it so little; and when he said that, I was glad too, that I was still to bear my father’s name—glad of this one proof of Harry’s regard, and proud of the self-relinquishment—the devotion he showed to me.

There was a considerable pause after that—we did not seem at our ease, any one of us, and when I glanced up again, Harry, though he looked relieved, was still heated and embarrassed, and watched my father eagerly. He cleared his voice a great many times, as if to speak—changed his position, glanced at me; but did not seem able to say anything after all. My father had a faint smile upon his face—though it was a smile, I did not think it a pleasant one—and I was quite silent, with a vague fear of what was to follow.

But nothing followed to confirm my alarm. When my father spoke again it was quite in his usual tone.

“Then, with this one change—which, by the bye, requires our instant attention as to the papers and everything necessary—our arrangements stand as before; and you leave Cambridge on Tuesday, and return in a month, either here or to some house which Mr. Osborne may find for you. Osborne is your agent, I understand? You leave these matters in his hands? Now, I must know the hour you will leave me—how you are to travel, and where you will go first; and if I may depend certainly on the time of your return?”

“We will fix it for any time you choose,” said Harry, quickly and with an air of relief. “I will be only too proud to bring Hester home, and to see her in her own settled house; but you must give us our moon; we have a right to that—I have a right to that. You will not grudge us our charmed holiday. I shall be content to have no other all my life.”

My father looked at him with a smile, almost of scorn, but it soon settled into a fixed and stern gravity. “I will not grudge your pleasure—no,” he said, in the tone of a monitor who means to imply “it is all vanity,” “but I wish to have your assurance that I may trust your word. And you, Hester, are you nearly ready to go away from me?”

“Oh! papa, papa!” I cried wildly. Was he disposed to regret me at last?

“Nay, nay, child, we must have no lamentations,” said my father, “no weeping for the house you leave behind. On the verge of your life be sparing of your tears, Hester—if you have not occasion for them all one day or another you will be strangely favored. Are you ready? tell me? I have been hard upon you sometimes; I am not a man of genial temper, and what kindness was in me was soured. There—I apologize to you, Hester, for wounding your sensibilities—they distress me; and now answer my question.”

“I will be ready,” I said. This dreadful coldness of his always drove me into a sullen gloom.

“Very well, you have chosen each other,” said my father gravely; “and now you are about to begin your life. I am no dealer in good advice or moral maxims. I only bid you remember that it is of your own free will you bind yourselves in this eternal contract. This union, on which you are entering, has a beginning, but no end. Its effects are everlasting; you can never deliver yourself from its influences, its results. On the very heart and soul of each of you will be the bonds of your marriage; and neither separation, nor change, nor death, can obliterate the mark they will make. I do not speak to discourage you. I only bid you think of the life before you, and remember that you pursue it together of your own free choice.”

“We do not need that you should use such solemn words; they are not for us, father,” said Harry, advancing to my side, and drawing my hand within his arm. He was afraid that I could not bear this, when he saw me drooping and leaning on the chair from which I had just risen. He did not know what a spirit of defiance these words roused in me. “Hester trusts me and does not fear that I will make her life wretched; and, as for me, my happiness is secure when I claim the right thus to stand by her, and call her mine. There are no dark prognostics in our lot—think not so. We will fear God and love each other; and I desire to feel the bonds of my marriage in my very soul and heart. I do not care to have a thought that is not hers—not a wish that my wife will not share with me. Say gentler words to us, father! Bless us as you bless her in your heart. She is a young, tender, delicate woman. She trembles already; but you will not speak only those words which make her tremble more?”

My father stood by himself, stooping slightly, leaning his hands upon the table before him, and looking at us. Harry’s firm voice shook a little as he ended; his eyes were glistening, and there was a noble tender humility about his whole look and attitude, which was a very great and strange contrast to the cold, self-possessed man before him. I saw that my father was struck by it. I saw that the absence of any thought for himself—that his care and regard for me moved with a strange wonder my father’s unaccustomed heart. The young man’s generous life and love, the very strength of all the youthful modest power of which he would make no boast—his entire absence of offence, yet firm and quiet assertion of what was due to our young expectations and hopes, and perhaps the way in which we stood together, my arm in his, leaning upon him, impressed my father. He looked at us long, with a steady, full look; and then he spoke.

“You are right—it does not become me to bode evil to my own child, nor to her bridegroom. God bless you! I say the words heartily; and now leave me, I am weary, and will call you if I need you, Hester! I am not ill, do not fear for me.”

He took our hands, Harry’s and mine, and held them tightly within his own; then he said again, “Children, God bless you!” and sent us away.

We went up to the drawing-room together; Harry had spent almost all of the day with us for at least a week past, and even now he did not seem disposed to go away. When I told him that I had something to do, he bade me bring it and work beside him—he would like to see me working, so I did what he said—and while I was busy with Alice’s apron, he talked to me, for I did not speak a great deal myself. My mind was somewhat troubled by what my father had said. I had an uneasy sense of something doubtful and uncertain in our circumstances, of some event or mystery, though I could not tell what it was. I do not think I was pleased that Harry should be so willing to resign his name. It was one of those concessions that a woman does not like to have made to her. A true woman is far happier to receive rank than to confer it. When she is placed in these latter circumstances, she is thrown upon the false expedient of undervaluing herself, and what she has to bestow. I would much rather have felt that Harry was quite superior to me in the external matters—then we could have stood on our natural ground to each other, and I should have been proud of his name; but it was not a pleasant thought to me that he himself thought it unworthy, and that he was to adopt mine.

“You are very grave, Hester; are you thinking of what your father said?” he asked me at last.

“I do not quite know what I am thinking of,” I said, with a faint sigh.

“No, it is a summer cloud,” said Harry, “something floating over this beautiful sky of our happiness; but it will not last, Hester. I know you may trust yourself; your sweet young life and all its hopes. I think you need not fear to trust them with me.”

“I have no fear—it is not that,” said I; “do not heed me. I cannot tell what it is that troubles me.”

He bent down upon his knee to see my face, which was stooping over Alice’s apron, and he put his hand upon mine, and arrested my fingers, which were playing nervously with the braid. “Do you remember the compact you made with me, Hester? ‘Cannot tell’ is for other people; but what troubles you should trouble me also.”

“Nay, I would not have that,” said I, hurriedly, “that would be selfish, but indeed I don’t know what it is—I rather feel as if there was something which I did not know—as if there was a secret somewhere which somebody ought to tell me; I cannot guess what or where it is, but I think there is surely something. Do you know of anything, Harry?”

He continued to kneel at my knee, holding my hand, and looking up in my face, and I gazed at him wistfully, wondering to see the color rise to his very hair. He did not remove his eyes from me, but what could it be that brought that burning crimson to his face?

But I did not wait for his answer. In my womanish foolishness, afraid that I was grieving him, I took away the opportunity, that opportunity—what misery it might have saved me: and spoke myself, wearing the time away till he had quite recovered himself. “I do not think you would hide anything from me, Harry, which I ought to know; my father scarcely knows that I am a woman now; it is hard for him to get over the habit of thinking me a child, but you are no older than I am; we are equal then—and you would not use me as if I was unfit to know all that concerns us both.”

“We are equal then,” he said, repeating my words hurriedly, but without any answer to the meaning of them; “but I do not think we are nearly equals in anything else, Hester. Your sincere heart—oh, if I begin to speak of that, I will soon make myself out a poor fellow, and I would rather you did not think me so just yet; equal! why I am justly entitled to call myself your superior in that particular at least, for do you know I am two or three years older than you are?”

“I was not speaking of that,” said I gravely.

“I know you were not speaking of that,” said Harry, “you were speaking of the summer cloud. See, Hester, there is another on the sky; look how it floats away with the sunshine and the wind. There shall be neither secret nor mystery between us, trust me. I want your help and sympathy too much for that.”

“There shall be!” I said to myself in an under tone. I was quite satisfied; this promise was fortunate, and Henry did not say: “there is not.”

But at this moment we heard the door open below, and Mr. Osborne’s voice asking for my father.

I rose in great haste and ran up stairs. I forgot everything of more importance, and only remembered how embarrassed and uncomfortable I should be, if Mr. Osborne came in and found us together. I went back again to my room with my heart beating quick. The vague and uncertain doubtfulness which had taken possession of me did not prompt any distrust of Harry. It was not that I found that he was deceiving me, or that I dreamed of such a possibility. The utmost length to which my suspicions went, was to a little jealousy of something which I did not know, and was not told of, and when I reflected over it in my own room, I found no particular foundation for these doubts of mine; but still I should have much preferred that Harry had not offered to take our name. It was generous like himself. I was no heiress that he should have done it for the land, or for the rank I brought him. Instead of that, he did it for pure love; but I was perverse still, and I was not pleased.

When I went down stairs, I found that Mr. Osborne was to dine with us, and that Harry had not gone away; and after a little time, I found that I was very glad of Mr. Osborne’s presence at table. My father spoke very little, and seemed more abstracted than usual. Harry was almost talkative, on the contrary, but he was less easy than I had seen him; and as for me, I said nothing, but watched them with a strange fascination, as if I was the spectator of some drama of which I must find out the secret. It was a relief to see Mr. Osborne’s uninterrupted spirits, his usual manner and bearing. I wonder if they are happier than other people, those men who have nobody to disturb their equanimity, no one to put them out of temper, or break their hearts—but at any rate, it was a comfort to look at Mr. Osborne, and to see, whatever change might be in us, that there was none in him.

After dinner, Harry left us, though only for a time, and when I had been by myself in the drawing-room for nearly an hour, Mr. Osborne came in, and approached me with something in his hand. When he opened it, it turned out to be another little gold chain with something hanging from it, very much like my little diamond ornament; but this was a very small miniature of a very young sweet face, so smiling, and loving, and gentle, that it was pleasant to look at it. “I think this is the fittest present I can make you,” said Mr. Osborne. “You know who it is, Hester?”

“No,” I said; though from the look he gave me, I guessed at once.

“It is very like her,” he said in a low voice; “like what she was when I had a young man’s fancy for that pretty sweet young face. No, Hester, you need not glance at me so wistfully, she did not break my heart; but I love you the better, my child, that she was your mother.”

“And this is my mother!” I said. It was younger than me, this innocent simple girlish face—my heart was touched by its gentleness, its happiness, the love and kindness in its sweet eyes—my tears began to fall fast upon the jewelled rim—this was my mother! and it was not a face to make any one unhappy. I did not think of thanking Mr. Osborne, I only thought of her.

“She must have been very happy,” I said, softly; we sank our voices speaking of her.

“She was very happy then,” said Mr. Osborne; “the sunshine was her very life, Hester; and when it faded away from her, she died.”

These words recalled me to myself. I could not permit him to go on, perhaps to blame my father—so I interrupted him to thank him very gratefully for his present.

“She used to wear an ornament like this; and the miniature is from a sketch I myself made of her in her first youth,” said Mr. Osborne. “I know your father has no portrait, but there is one in the possession of her friends.”

“Her friends! has she friends living?” I asked eagerly; “I do not know what it is to have relations. I wonder if they know anything of us.”

“You have one relation at least, Hester,” said Mr. Osborne; “is it possible, after all his attempts to become acquainted with you, that you have never given a kind thought to your cousin?”

“I do not know my cousin, sir,” I answered rather haughtily, “I do not wish to know him; we have nothing in common with each other, he and I.”

“How do you know that?” said my companion. “Hester, when you do know him, do him justice. I have seen Edgar Southcote; I know few like him, and he ill deserves unkindness, or distrust, or resentment at your hands. Now hear me, Hester. I have given you this portrait of your mother, because I loved her in my youth; and because you are as dear to me as if you were my own child; but I give it you also as a charm against the cruel injustice, the suspicion, and the pride of your race. A false conception of her motives, obstinately held and dwelt upon, killed your poor mother. Yes! I do not want to mince words. It made her wretched first, and then it killed her. Hester, beware! your husband’s happiness depends as much on you as yours does on him. He is himself a noble young man, worthy the regard of any woman; and I have had a higher opinion of yourself ever since I saw that you valued him. When you leave your father’s house, take this sweet counsellor with you. Remember the cause that broke her young heart, and left you without a mother in the world. Let the glance of the sweet frank eyes teach you a woman’s wisdom, my dear child. Forgive what is wrong—foster what is right. Hester! I am making a long speech to you. It is the first and last preachment you will hear from an old friend.”

I had risen while he was speaking, and stood before him a little proud, a little indignant, waiting till he should come to an end. Then I said: “Mr. Osborne, I cannot hear you blame my father.”

“I am not blaming your father, Hester. I am warning you,” he answered; “and I do it because you are as a child to me.”

I thanked him again, kissed the little miniature, and put it round my neck. But Mr. Osborne would not suffer this. “Time enough,” he said, “when you go away. Do not awake too strongly your father’s recollections. He is not in a fit state for that.”

“He is not worse!” I exclaimed eagerly.

“No, Hester, he is not worse—but he is not strong, you know. Now go and put this away, and remember my words like a good child.”

When I took it upstairs Alice was in the room; and when she saw it, Alice wept on it, and exclaimed how like it was. Then she clasped it on my neck, and kissed me, and cried, and said how glad she was that I should have such a token of my mother; and then Alice, too, began to admonish me. “Oh! think of her sometimes, Miss Hester! Think how her young life and all her hopes were lost. It was no blame of her’s, my sweet young lady! Oh! think of your mother, dear child.” I was strangely shaken by all these admonitions. I did not know whether to reject this indignantly, or to sit down on the floor, and cry with mortification and annoyance. What occasion had they all to be afraid of my spirit or temper? I put away this beautiful little portrait, at last, with a vexed and sullen pain. Why did everybody preach to me on this text? I had never harmed my mother, and how could my circumstances possibly resemble those she was placed in? If this sweet, gentle smile of hers was to be a perpetual reproach to me, how could I have any pleasure in it? I was annoyed and vexed with everybody, and though in the rebound my heart clung to my father, I could not go to him to seek for sympathy. I wandered out into the garden, into the twilight, thinking with a deeper pity of his disappointed heart. I forgave him all his hard words and coldness, thinking mysteriously of the darkness which had fallen over all his life; and I could not be patient with my advisers who had been warning me by his example. How could they tell what he had suffered? What was it to them that he had looked for love, and had not found it? In imagination, I stood by my father’s side, vindicating and defending, and said to myself with indignant earnestness: “Nobody shall blame him to me.”

I was not even satisfied with Harry. He had not answered me plainly, and he had gone away. I paced up and down the springy, fragrant grass with short, impatient steps. I forgot that the night-wind was chill, and that I had nothing to protect me from it. I was not at all in a sweet or satisfactory mood of mind; and when I thought of the continual happy smile of the miniature, it rather chafed and annoyed than calmed me. While I was thus unhappily wandering in the garden, at issue with myself and every one around, I suddenly heard a step behind, and as suddenly felt a great, soft shawl thrown over me. I resisted my first impatient impulse to throw it off, and submitted to have myself wrapped in it, and a fold of it thrown over my head like a hood—the warmth and shelter it seemed to give, had something strangely pleasant in them. I was soothed against my will—and Harry drew my arm through his, and we continued our walk in silence. It was pleasant to be taken possession of so quietly—it was pleasant to feel that some one had a right to take care of me, whether I would or no.

And then Harry had all the talk to himself for a long time, though it was not the less agreeable on that account; and then my troubled mood went away, and I told him of Mr. Osborne’s present, and how they had been cautioning me on his behalf—and, indeed, with a confession of the temper I was in when he came to me—things were very different now. I perceived it was a beautiful dewy Autumn night, with a young moon in the sky, and pale silvery stars half lost in the mist of the Milky Way, and there was a breath of faint fragrance in the air, and one by one the lights were beginning to shine in the college windows—these friendly lights which I had watched so long—then my father’s lamp was lighted in the library. In the stillness and darkness we wandered through the garden, speaking little, finding no great necessity to speak. Out of all the agitation of the day, it happened to me now to become very quiet, and very happy; my heart beat quick, yet softly; I no longer felt the chill evening breath, or chafed at what had been said to me—what mattered all that had been said to me? When Harry and I were together, I knew nothing could ever step in between us. Nobody else understood me as he did. Nobody else, like me, trusted in him.

THE TENTH DAY.

IT was my marriage day.

I awoke when the morning was breaking with its chill harmony of tints in the east. I went to my window, to watch the song-thrushes rising upon the grey of the dawn; to look upon those long wide lines of clouds which seemed to stretch out their vain ineffectual barriers to keep down the rising day. I lingered till the early sunshine came down aslant upon the top-most boughs, and woke the birds to twitter their good-morrow—till the darkness in the garden paths underneath yielded and fled before this sweet invasion, and took a momentary refuge in the depths of dreary shadow, under the three elm trees at the boundary wall. No one was astir but I—there was not a sound but the chirp of little housewives in their leafy nests, up betimes to seek the day’s provisions. I saw nothing but the sky, the clouds, the early light, the dew glistening on the trees, and the sunshine touching the little deep-set windows of Corpus, and the morning mist just clearing from the brown outline of its wall.

It was my wedding-day—the first grand crisis of my life—and I had no lack of material for my thoughts; but I was not thinking as I knelt by the window in my white dressing-gown, vacantly looking out upon the rising day. My mind was full of a vague tumult of imagination. I myself was passive and made no exertion, but looked at the floating pictures before me, as I might have looked in a dream. My fancy was like the enchanted mirror in the story; out of the mist, scenes and figures developed themselves for a moment, and faded into vapor once more. The scenes were those of my girlish life; so many recollections of it came back upon me; so many glimpses I had of that careless sunshine, those unencumbered days! when I was a child at Cottiswoode, where I was the young lady of the Manor, and knew all these lands over which I looked in my frank girlish pride to be our own. Then the time when the new heir came—and then all those years and days which had gone over me here. I saw myself in the garden on which I was looking now with dreamy eyes—I saw myself in the corner of the window-seat looking out upon the twinkling lights of Corpus, and thinking to myself in my silence and solitude of the owners of these lights; and then Harry glided in upon my dreams, and I woke with a startling flush of consciousness to remember what day this was, and to know that I myself was a bride!

Yes, a bride! to go away from my father’s house in a few hours, never to come back to it again as to my home. To take farewell of all my girlish loneliness, and retirements, and wild fancies—to give up all the involuntary romancings and possibilities, the uncommunicated and self-contained life of my youth. I almost fancied, with a sudden shrinking and tremor, that this was the last hour of all my life in which I should be alone. I buried my face in my hands at the thought, though there was no one there to see me; I felt my face burn with a hot heavy glow. I had in me a restless sense of excitement, a reluctant heart, and yet a passive consciousness of certainty, of necessity, of something fixed and absolute, from which there was neither way nor means to recede. A thing which must be, always roused a little defiance, a little resistance; and the morning of a bridal is seldom a time of perfect happiness to anybody concerned. I lay with my head upon the cushion of my chair, kneeling before it. I tried to say my prayers, but my thoughts wandered off from the familiar words. My thoughts seemed wandering everywhere, and would not be composed into steady attention for a moment; and after I had said the words, I knew with a certain shock and distress that I had meant nothing by them, and that those childish sentences that claimed sincerity more than the most elaborate compositions could have done, were only a cover for a tumult of agitating thoughts. After this, in real distress at my involuntary mocking of prayer, I spoke aloud, and trembling, with my face still hidden, what plain words I could think of, asking for a blessing. “Oh, Lord, bless us, bless us.” I almost think that was all that I could keep my mind to; and after I had made this child’s outcry, I lay still, kneeling, hiding my face, in this little pause of vacant time, on the threshold of my fate.

When I heard some one stirring below, and after an interval, when Alice’s step approached my door, I rose up hurriedly, that she might not see me thus. Alice could not tell whether to smile or to cry as she came towards me. It was a true April face, beaming and showery, that stooped towards me as she kissed my cheek. “Bless you, my darling!” said Alice, and with the words the tears fell, but she recovered immediately and set me down in the old-fashioned easy chair, and drew a little table before me, and brought me some tea; and henceforward I delivered myself up into the hands of Alice, and was served and waited upon as if I had been a child.