these internal questionings, doubtings, and upbraidings, but the malignant sophistries of the Evil One accusing the just?

Lady Vernon had made two or three of her domiciliary visits, and was emerging from between the poplars that stood one at each side of old Mr. Martin's door, when her eye lighted upon the figure of Doctor Malkin, in his black frock-coat, newly arrived from his journey, looking a little fagged, but smiling politely, and raising his hat.

The doctor had just made his toilet, and was on his way to Roydon Hall to pay his respects to his patroness.

Lady Vernon smiled, but looked suddenly a little paler, as she saw her family physician thus unexpectedly near her.

"How d'ye do, Doctor Malkin? I did not think you could have been home so early," said Lady Vernon. "You intend calling at Roydon Hall to-day ?"

66

"I was actually on my way," said Doctor Malkin, smiling engagingly, with his hat still in his hand, and the sun glancing dazzlingly on his bald head. At any hour that will best suit you, Lady Vernon, shall be most happy to wait upon you." "I shall be going home now; I have made my little round of visits."

"And left a great many afflicted hearts comforted," interpolated the appreciative doctor.

"And I mean to return by the path," she continued, not choosing to hear the doctor's little compliment. "Open that door, please," she said to the footman, who contrived with a struggle, without dropping the volumes he was charged with, to disengage a key from his pocket, and open a wicket in the park wall, which at this point runs only a few yards in the rear of the houses. And, as you say, you were on your way to Roydon Hall, you may as well, if you don't mind, come by the path with

me."

66

The doctor was only too happy.

The footman stood by the open door, which was only about a dozen steps away; and Lady Vernon stopped for a moment, and said to him:

"You will be glad to hear, Lady Vernon, that everything was satisfactory, and every particular is now arranged. I was de tained a little longer than I expected, but I saw Mr. Damian. He read the copies of the papers, and said they are more than sufficient."

A silence followed. Lady Vernon was looking straight before her with an inflexible countenance. They walked on about twenty steps before either spoke.

"We had a visit from Mercy Creswell to-day," said Lady Vernon.

"Oh! Had you? But I don't think I quite recollect who Mercy Creswell is." "She was once a servant here, and now she is in the employment of Mr. Damian." "Oh! I understand; actually in his ser vice at present?"

"Yes."

"You must see old Grimwick, and tell him to send up to Mrs. Mordaunt at six o'clock this evening for the blankets that I said he should have."

"I have no doubt that anything resolved on by Lady Vernon will be most judicious and successful."

"It is five years since I saw Mr. Damian; how is he looking ?" asked Lady Vernon.

"Very well. His hair has been white a long time. I think he stoops a little now; but in all other respects he is unchanged. His sight, his hearing, his mind are quite unimpaired. He is very active, too; everything, in short, you could wish. He is going for a few days, at the end of the week, to his place near Brighton. But it is a mere flying visit.”

"I suppose you have had a conversation with Mr. Damian ?"

"A very detailed and full one; a very satisfactory conversation, indeed. I explained every point of difficulty on which he required light, and he is quite clear as to his duty."

"And I as to mine," she said, abstractedly, looking with gloomy eyes on the grass; "I as to mine." She was walking, unconsciously, more slowly.

"You have had a great deal of anxiety and trouble, Doctor Malkin," she said, suddenly raising her eyes. "I think you have acted with great kindness, and tact, and energy, and secrecy."

"Certainly," he interposed; "religious

secrecy. I should consider myself dishonoured, had I not."

"I'm sure of that; I'm quite sure of that, Doctor Malkin; and I am very much obliged to you. You have done me a great kindness, and I hope yet to make you understand how very much I feel it. I have still, I'm afraid, a great deal of trouble to give you."

"I should be a very ungrateful man, Lady Vernon, if, in a case of this painful kind, I were to grudge any trouble that could contribute to make your mind more happy. I should perhaps say less anxious."

"I know very well how I can rely upon you, Doctor Malkin," said Lady Vernon, abstractedly. "It will be quite necessary that you should go on Sunday. We can't avoid it. I don't like travelling on Sundays, when it can be helped. But in this particular case it is unavoidable."

"Quite; of course you can command me. I am entirely at your disposal."

"And no one knows where you go?" "That of course. I-I manage that very easily. I do all I can by rail, and take the train at an unlikely station."

"You know best," she said with a heavy sigh. "I wish it were all over. Doctor Malkin, it comforts me that I am so well supported by advice. I know I am right; yet I do not think I could endure the responsibility alone.'

A little pink flush showed itself suddenly in Doctor Malkin's pale cheeks; he looked down.

"I have relied a good deal on Mr. Tintern," he said. "He has had a great deal of experience, and you know he is perfectly conversant with the mode of proceeding, and all responsibility rests ultimately, neither upon you nor upon any of those whom you have honoured with your more immediate confidence, but entirely with other people," said Doctor Malkin.

"If you don't mind, I should thank you to call on Sunday afternoon. I don't care to part with the papers until then. Will six o'clock suit you ?"

"Perfectly."

“Well, I'm sure I ought to thank you very much, you have relieved my anxiety. Perhaps it is as well that we should part here. Good-bye, Doctor Malkin."

Entirely," acquiesced Doctor Malkin. "I will call on Sunday, at the hour you name. Charming weather we have got, and what a delightful serenity pervades this place always," he added, raising one

hand gently, with a faint smile round, as if to imply that he need have no scruple in withdrawing his escort under conditions 'so assuring and delightful. "One thing only, I hope, perhaps, without being very impertinent, I may suggest."

Doctor Malkin hesitated here, and Lady Vernon answered easily :

"I should be happy to hear anything you may think it well to say."

"I was thinking, perhaps, that it might be desirable, Lady Vernon, not indeed to quiet any doubts; for I don't see that any can anywhere exist; but merely by way of technical authority-I was going to say, that some communication, either with Mr. Coke, or some other London lawyer of eminence, would be perhaps desirable."

"I don't mind telling you, Doctor Malkin, that I have already taken that step," said the lady. "You shall have the papers on Sunday, when you call, and for the present, I think I will say good-bye." And so they parted.

CHAPTER LIV. MR. HOWARD'S GRAVESTONE. LADY VERNON'S correspondence with Mr. Dawe was at this time carried on daily. One of the old gentleman's letters intensified her alarms. It said:

"I thought for a time I had discovered a different object of the young gentleman's devotions-Miss Tintern, of the Grange. I did not open my conjectures to him, nor did he speak on the subject to me. I think I was mistaken, and I can't now tell how it is. There is some powerful attraction, unquestionably, in the neighbourhood of Roydon."

Lady Vernon's panic continued, therefore, unabated.

On Saturday by the late post a letter reached Roydon, addressed to Miss Vernon, which took Maud a good deal by surprise. It was from Lady Mardykes, and was to this effect.

The Forest, Warhampton, Friday. MY DEAR MISS VERNON, -You will be surprised when you see that I write from the Forest. I was suddenly called here yesterday by a message from dear рара. I found him so much better, and so entirely out of danger, that I sent by telegraph to my aunt, at Carsbrook, to prevent my friends going away; and to beg of her to stay till Tuesday, where I am quite sure you will find her very happy to take charge of you when you arrive, as you promised, on Monday. Pray do not postpone your

coming, or make any change in our plans, unless Lady Vernon should think differently. Your cousin Maximilla Medwyn will arrive early on Monday, and you will find her quite an old inhabitant by the time you reach Carsbrook in the evening. I will write to Maximilla to-day and tell her not to put off coming, and that I have written to you to rely upon her being at Carsbrook early on Monday. Pray write to me here by return, when you have ascertained what Lady Vernon decides.

So the note ended.

Maud was dismayed. Was this one of those slips between the cup and the lip, by which the nectar of life is spilled and lost? With an augury of ill, she repaired with the note to Lady Vernon.

"What is this, Maud ?" inquired Lady Vernon, as Maud held Lady Mardykes's letter towards her.

Maud told her, and asked her to read it, and waited in trepidation till she had done so.

"I see no reason why you should not go on Monday, just as if nothing had happened. That will do."

She nodded, and Maud, immensely relieved, went to her room, and wrote her note to Lady Mardykes accordingly.

"So now," thought she, "we have reached Saturday evening; and if nothing happens between this and Monday, I shall be at Carsbrook on Monday night.'

So that day passed in hope, Sunday dawned, and the sweet bell in Roydon tower sent its tremulous notes in spreading ripples far over fields, and chimneys, and lordly trees.

In church, Maud observed that Ethel Tintern was looking far from well. She reproached herself for not having driven over to the Grange to see her.

This Sunday the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered in Roydon Church, and among those who knelt round the cushioned steps of the communion-table, was Lady Vernon. Miss Tintern and Mrs. Tintern also were there, and Maud Vernon, who, once a month, from the time of her confirmation, had, according to the rule of Roydon Hall, been a regular attendant.

Lady Vernon has risen pale and stately, and is again in the great Vernon pew, kneeling in solitary supplication, while the murmured words of the great commemoration are heard faintly along the aisle, and reverent footfalls pass slowly up and down.

And now it is ended; the church seems darkened as she rises. It is overcast by a thunder-cloud. By the side-door they step out. Lady Vernon's handsome face does not look as if the light of peace was upon it. In the livid shadow of the sky, the grass upon the graves is changed to the sable tint of the yew. The grey churchtower and hoary tombstones are darkened to the hue of lead.

Mr. Foljambe joins them; Mrs. and Miss Tintern are standing by Lady Vernon and Maud. Mrs. Tintern is talking rather eagerly to Lady Vernon, who seems just then to have troubled thoughts of her own to employ her. She is talking about a particular tombstone; Lady Vernon does not want to look at it, but does not care to decline, as Mrs. Tintern is bent on it; and Mr. Foljambe only too anxious to act as guide.

They walk round the buttress at the corner of the old church, and they find themselves before the tombstone of the late vicar, Mr. Howard. It stands perpendicularly; the inscription is cut deep in the stone; and there is no decoration about it but the clustering roses, which straggle wide and high, and are now shedding their honours on the green mound.

As they walked toward this point, very slowly, over the churchyard grass, Ethel Tintern seized the opportunity to say a word or two to Maud.

"You go to Carsbrook to-morrow,

you ?"

don't

"Yes," said Maud, "and I have been blaming myself for not having been to the Grange to see you; but I really could not help it-twice the carriage was at the door, and twice mamma put it off."

"A great many things have happened since I saw you-I dare not try to tell you now," she said, scarcely above a whisper. "It would not do; if we were alone, of course"

"Can you tell me, Ethel, whether the carriage is here ?" said Mrs. Tintern, looking over her shoulder at her daughter.

"Oh, yes-I saw it-it is waiting at the church-porch."

And she continued to Maud, when her mother had resumed her talk with Lady Vernon and Mr. Foljambe :

"I have made up my mind, nearly, to take a decisive step. I daren't tell you; I daren't now, you understand why," she glanced at the group close before them;

but I think I will write to you at Carsbrook, if I do what I am thinking of, that

is, what I am urged to, under a pressure that is almost cruel; a terrible pressure. Hush!"

The last word and a look were evoked by her observing, for her eye was upon them although she spoke to Maud, that the three elder people of the party had suddenly slackened their pace, and came to a standstill by the vicar's grave.

They had gone to the other side. Mr. Foljambe was leading the discussion; he was advising, I believe, some change in the arrangements of the vicar's grave, which he had persuaded Mrs. Tintern to admire; and which I'm afraid he would not have troubled his head about, had he not fancied they would have been received with special favour by Lady Vernon,

Maud and Miss Tintern were standing at this side of the gentle mound that covered the good man's bones, and neither thinking of the conversation that was proceeding at the other side.

On a sudden, with a malignant look, Lady Vernon's cold, sweet voice recalled Maud, with the words,

"Don't tread upon that grave, dear." Maud withdrew her foot quickly. "No foot looks pretty on a grave," she continued with the same look, and a momentary shudder.

66

"I don't think my foot was actually upon the grave, though it looked so to you," Maud pleaded, a little disconcerted. Many people have a feeling about treading on a grave. I think it so horrible an indignity to mortality-I was going to say. I hope, Mr. Foljambe, that you, who are obliged, pretty often, to walk among them, feel that peculiar recoil; but I need hardly ask-you are so humane."

Uttered in cold, gentle tones, this was irritating to spirited Maud Vernon.

"But I do assure you, mamma," she said, with a heightened colour, "my foot was not upon it. I am quite certain.'

"There, there, there, there, dear," said Lady Vernon, "I shan't mention it any more. Pray don't allow yourself to be excited, Maud; that kind of thing can't be good for any one."

Maud's fine eyes and beautiful colour were brighter. But Lady Vernon went on talking fluently, in very low tones, to old Mr. Foljambe, and she turned as they walked away, and said to Mrs. Tintern, gently, "I scarcely like to ask poor dear Maud to do or to omit anything. She becomes so miserably excited."

Maud, I dare say, had a word of com

A YEAR is supposed to have elapsed, as they say in the play-bills of melodramas, since my last visit to "this favoured locality," as it is called in its own journal. Duty once more brought me to the Dolphin, where I found that the Mendelssohn Jacksons had long since cast the dust off their shoes, and fled the place. But the Rooms flourished and looked as bright and spick and span as ever.

As I passed they seemed to be "up" again; all the boards were out, reclining against the pillars in very dégagé fashion, with a sort of lazy, hand-in-pocket style. They were covered over with small bills, headed "Grand Amateur Theatricals," and the performance was for that very night. I at once secured a ticket.

The landlord of the Dolphin was quite excited, and scarcely able to attend upon

me.

"He had two of the gentlemen up-stairs, Mr. Killick and Captain Tooley. The town was full of the others who had come in; more were arriving that night. It was for a fine charity," continued the host of the Dolphin; "the rearin' of an Alexandra wing, I'm told."

I repeated the words after him in wonder. What odd objects they had in Mopetown! On referring to the bill I saw that the acting was for the erection of "an Alexandra wing" to a consumptive hospital in the neighbourhood, though what description of "wing" that was I was at a loss to discover. At all events it did not much matter, as I had reasonable suspicion that anything connected with Mopetown Rooms was not likely to bring in much funds, no matter how benevolent the pur

pose. But it seems that there was a dramatic detachment of a foot regiment quartered a few miles off, which counted in its ranks the Killick and Tooley before mentioned, with "Little Dodd," as he was called, and, above all, the Honourable Mrs. Badminton, the colonel's wife. She, indeed, was with the head-quarters of the regiment at Manchester, but she had been engaged, or had engaged herself, "special.”

It came about, I understood, in this way: Little Dodd, passing the Rooms one morning, had "voted "-a favourite and polite fiction for carrying any plan of his own into prompt execution-for going in. His exclamation was, "By Jove! we might get up a play here, and astonish the rustics!" The scheme at that moment sprang armed" and complete from his little head. "We'd get down Timmons, with a portable stage and dresses, and 'beat up some of the acting girls in the neighbourhood." As for audience, they'd make the rustics come, and "stick them for seven-and-six apiece for stalls." A brother in arms objected that Mopetown was such a hungry place, that the rustics would find it hard to club the amount for a single stall; but Little Dodd put this aside contemptuously, saying, "they'd make 'em come, and deuced glad they ought to be to be allowed to pay."

In a few days Little Dodd had fixed the plays-Miriam's Crime, I believe, which he would carry through by playing his great part," and Poor Pillicoddy, in which he would do the same, by playing his other great part; and he would make this carrying through doubly sure by singing Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, between both. But these arrangements, it seeras, were rudely set aside by an untoward fatality. Some "stupid ass" wrote to the Honourable Mrs. Badminton, the colonel's lady, that they were getting up plays, such fun, &c., and she had written back most graciously that "she would help them, and come specially.' This was a ukase, as it were, against which there was no appealing.

The Honourable Mrs. Badminton, in her youth, had been a perfect stroller, acting here, there, and everywhere. There was scarcely an officer in Her Majesty's army who had not acted with Lord Mountfogie's daughter. There were few small provincial theatres in which she had not appeared. It was in this way that she had won the heart of the gallant Badminton, then a simple lieutenant of foot. Her Betsy Baker was familiar; some, indeed,

now

said they knew it by heart, and certain of the irreverent were in the habit of calling her "Bet." Her daughters were nearly grown up, but in the kindest and most good-natured way she was always glad to give her talents for charity.

Little Dodd's face was amusing for its blankness and disgust.

Better

"Did you ever hear such a thing? Here's Bet coming down on us. give it all up. She'll take the whole fat, and we'll have her eternal Betsy Baker."

The little man seemed to forget that he had proposed securing all the "fat" for himself; but as for giving up the plan, he well knew that that was not to be thought of. For she commanded the regiment, would stop his leave, order him guards, of course "inspiring" her colonel, and annoy him in other ways.

In a few days she arrived, billeted herself on a visit to a good-natured acquaintance, Mrs. Towler, and took the whole arrangements on herself. Every one knew Pillicoddy by heart. Miriam's Crime was much too heavy. No, far better have a "powder and puff" piece, where they would be all at home, and have little to do. She had brought one down, "And as I hear," added the lady, modestly, "they are all dying to see me in Betsy; and as I have it at my fingers' ends, I think it would be the safest thing, you know. Better settle at once, and lose no time."

This was equivalent to a command. Tooley and Killick were toadies, and concurred heartily, as Little Dodd had to do, with a rueful face.

"You can sing one of those queer buffoonery songs if you like,” she said, half contemptuously, "though I always think they are out of place."

"I knew it," said Little Dodd, later. "Didn't I tell you she'd force her Betsy on us, and her powder and puff' piece? You'll see she has all the fat in that too— some pert waiting-maid in a hoop, who lets fellows in wigs in at the garden-gate. I know the style of thing well."

Here Little Dodd showed surprising instinct and sagacity, unless, indeed, we explain it on the vulgar principle of "setting a thief," &c. Friends might have made the same remark about him, and have guessed, beforehand, that in any pieces he chose would have been found, to a certainty, pert cockneys in pink trousers and blue coats, or free-and-easy servants.

Precisely as he had anticipated, the