Lauderdale and Colin exchanged looks almost without being aware of it. "But you would like-somebody to be sent for or something done?" said Lauderdale. He was a great deal more confused in having to suggest this than Alice was, who kept looking at him, her eyes dilated with weariness and tears, yet soft and clear as the eyes of a child. He could not say to her, in so many words, "It is impossible for you to remain with us." All he could do was to falter and hesitate, and grow confused, under the limpid, sorrowful look which she bent upon him from the distant heaven of her resignation and innocence. "You would like your friends -somebody to be written to," said Lauderdale; and then, afraid to have given her pain by the suggestion, went on hurriedly: "I'm old enough to be your father, and no a thought in my mind but to do you service," he said. "Tell me what you would like best. Colin, thank God! is strong, and has little need of me. I'll take you home, or do whatever you please; for I'm old enough to be your father, my poor bairn!" said the tender-hearted philosopher, and drew near to her, and put out his hand with an impulse of pitiful and protecting kindness which touched the heart of Alice, and yet filled her with momentary surprise. She, on her own side, was roused a little, not to think of herself, but to remember what appeared to her a duty unfulfilled.

"Oh, Mr. Lauderdale! Arthur said I might tell you," said Alice. "Papa! "Papa! you heard what he said about papa? I ought to write and tell him what has happened. Perhaps I ought to tell you from the beginning," she continued, after composing herself a little. "We left home without his consent-indeed, he did not know. For dear Arthur," said the poor girl, turning her appealing eyes from one to the other, "could not approve of his ways. He did something that Arthur thought was wrong. I cannot tell you about it," said Alice through her tears;" it did not make so much difference to me. I think I ought to write and tell him, and that Arthur

forgave him at the last. Oh, tell me, please, what do you think I should do?"

"If you would like to go home, I'll take you home," said Lauderdale. "He did not mean ony harm, poor callant, but he's left an awfu' burden on you.":

"Go home!" said Alice, with a slight shudder. "Do you think I ought-do you think I must? I do not care for myself, but Mrs. Meredith, you know" she added with a momentary blush; and then the friends began to perceive another unforeseen lion in the way.

"Out of my own head," said Lauderdale, who took the whole charge of this business on himself, and would not permit Colin to interfere, "I wrote your father a kind of a letter. If you are able to hear the-the event-which has left us a' mourning-named in common words, I'll read you what I have written. Poor bairn, you're awfu' young and awfu' tender to have such affairs in hand! Are you sure you are able to bear it, and can listen to what I have said?"

"Ah, I have borne it," said poor Alice. "I cannot deceive myself, nor think Arthur is still here. What does it matter then about saying it? Oh, yes, I can bear anything-it is only me to bear now, and it doesn't matter. It was very kind of you to write. I should like to know what you have said."

Colin, who could do nothing else for her, put forward the armchair with the cushions towards the table, and Sora Antonia put down the "Garden of the Soul" and drew a little nearer with her heavy, firm foot, which shook the house. She comprehended that something was going on which would tax the Signorina's strength, and brought her solid, steady succour to be in readiness. The pale little girl turned and smiled upon them both, as she took the chair Colin had brought her. She was herself quite steady in her weakness and grief and loneliness. Sora Antonia was not wanted there; and Colin drew her aside to the window, where she told him all about the fireworks that were to be in the evening, and her hopes that after a while the Signorina would be able to "distract

herself" a little and recover her spirits; to which Colin assented dutifully, watching from where he stood the pale looks of the friendless young woman-friendless beyond disguise or possible selfdeception, with a stepmother whom she blushed to mention reigning in her father's house. Colin's thoughts were many and tumultuous as he stood behind in the window, watching Alice and listening to Sora Antonia's description of the fireworks. Was it possible that perhaps his duty to his neighbour required from him the most costly of all offerings, the rashest of all possible actions? He stood behind, growing more and more excited in the utter quiet. The thought that had dawned upon him under the ilex trees came nearer and grew more familiar, and as he contemplated it he seemed to recognise all that visible machinery of Providence bringing about the great event which youth decides upon so easily. While this vision grew before his mind, Alice was wiping off the tears which obliterated Lauderdale's letter even to her patient eyes; for, docile and dutiful as she was, it was yet terrible to read in calm distinct words, which put the matter beyond all doubt, the announcement of "what had happened." This is what Lauderdale said :—

"SIR,-It is a great grief to me to inform you of an event for which I have no way of knowing whether you are prepared or not. Your son, Arthur Meredith, has been living here for the last three months in declining health, and on Thursday last died in great comfort and constancy of mind. It is not for me, a stranger, to offer vain words of consolation, but his end was such as any man might be well content to have, and he entered upon his new life joyfully, without any shadow on his mind. far as love and friendship could soothe the sufferings that were inevitable, he had both; for his sister never left his bedside, and myself and my friend Colin Campbell were with him constantly, to his satisfaction. His sister remains under our care. I who write am no longer a young man, and know what is

As

Alice lingered over this letter, reading it, and crying, and whispering to Lauderdale a long time, as Colin thought. She found it easier, somehow, to tell her story fully to the elder man. She told him that Mrs. Meredith had "come home suddenly," which was her gentle version of a sad domestic history,-that nobody had known of her father's second marriage until the stepmother arrived, without any warning, with a train of children. Alice's mild words did not give Lauderdale any very lively picture of the dismay of the household at this unlooked-for apparition, but he understood enough to condemn Arthur less severely than he had been disposed to do. This sudden catastrophe had happened just after the other misery of the bank failure, which had ruined so many; and poor Meredith had no alternative between leaving his sister to the tender mercies of an underbred and possibly disreputable stepmother, or bringing her with him when he retired to die; and Alice, though she still cried for " poor papa," recoiled a little from the conclusion of Lauderdale's letter. "I have enough to live upon," she said, softly, with an appealing glance at her companion. "If you were to say that I was quite safe, would not that be enough?" and it was very hard for Lauderdale to convince her that her father's judgment must be appealed to in such a matter. When she saw he was not to be moved on this point, she sighed and submitted; but it was clearly apparent that as yet, occupied as she was by her grief, the idea that her situation here was embarrassing to her companions or unsuitable for herself had not occurred to Alice. When she retired, under the escort of Sora Antonia,

the two friends had a consultation over this perplexing matter; and Lauderdale's sketch-filled in, perhaps, a little from his imagination-of the home she had left, plunged Colin into deeper and deeper thought. "No doubt he'll send some answer," the philosopher said. "He may not be worthy to have the charge of her, but he's aye her father. It's hard to ken whether it's better or worse that she should be unconscious like this of onything embarrassing in her position, which is a' the more wonderful, as she's a real honest woman, and no way intellectual nor exalted. You and me, Colin," said Lauderdale, looking up in his young companion's face, "must take good care that she does not find it out from us.

"Of course," said Colin, with involuntary testiness; "but I do not see what her father has to do with it," continued the young man. "She cannot possibly

return to such a home."

"Her father is the best judge of that," said Lauderdale; "she canna remain with you and me."

And there the conversation dropped -but not the subject. Colin was not in love with Alice; he had, indeed, vague but bright in the clouds before him, an altogether different ideal woman; and his heart was in the career which he again saw opening before him-the life in which he meant to serve God and his country, and which at the present moment would admit of no rashly formed ties. Was it in consequence of these hindrances that this new thing loomed so large before Colin's inexperienced eyes? If he had longed for it with youthful passion, he would have put force on himself and restrained his longing; but the temptation took another shape. It was as if a maiden knight at the outset of his career had been tempted

to

pass by a helpless creature and leave her wrongs unredressed. The young Bayard could do anything but this.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

In the meantime at least a fortnight must pass before they could expect an

answer to Lauderdale's letter. During that time they returned to all their old habits, with the strange and melancholy difference, that Arthur, once the centre of all, was no longer there. Every day of this time increased the development of Colin's new thoughts, until the unknown father of Alice had grown, in his eyes, into a cruel and profligate tyrant, ready to drag his daughter home and plunge her into depraved society, without any regard for either her happiness or her honour. Colin had, indeed, in his own mind, in strictest privacy and seclusion of thought, indited an imaginary letter, eloquent with youthful indignation, to inform this unworthy parent that his deserted daughter had found a better protector; but he was very silent about these cogitations of his, and did not share them even with Lauderdale. And there were moments when Colin felt the seriousness of the position, and found it very hard that such a necessity should meet him in the face at the beginning of his career. Sometimes in the sudden darkening, out of the rosy clouds which hung over the Campagna, the face of the impossible woman, the ideal creature, her who could have divined the thoughts in his mind and the movements in his heart before they came into being, would glance suddenly out upon him for an instant, and then disappear, waving a shadowy farewell, and leaving in his mind a strange blank, which the sight of Alice rather increased than removed. That ineffable mate and companion was never to be his, the young man thought. True, he had never met her, nor come upon any trace of her footsteps, for Matty Frankland at her best never could have been she. But yet, as long as he was unbound by other tie or affection, this vision was the "not impossible She" to Colin as to all men ; and this he had to give up-for Alice, most gentle, patient Alice, whom it was not in the heart of man to be otherwise than tender of-she who had need of him, and whom his very nature bound him to protect and cherish-was not that woman. At other moments he thought of his own life, for which still so much

training was necessary, and which he should have entered in the full freedom of his youth, and was profoundly aware of the incumbered and helpless trim in which he must go into the battle, obliged to take thought not of his work only, and the best means of doing it, but of those cares of living which lie so lightly on a young man alone. There may be some of Colin's friends who will think the less of him for this struggle in his mind; and there may be many who will think with justice that, unless he could have offered love to Alice, he had no right to offer her himself and his life-an opinion in which his historian fully agrees. But then this gift, though less than the best, was a long way superior to anything else which, at the present moment, was likely to be offered to the friendless girl. If he could have laid at her feet the heart, which is the only true exchange under such circumstances, the chances are that Alice, in her simplicity and gentleness, would have been sadly puzzled what to do with that passionate and ungovernable thing. What he really could offer her -affection, tenderness, protection-was clearly comprehensible to her. She had no other idea of love than was included in those attributes and phases of it. These considerations justified Colin in the step which he contemplated-or rather in the step which he did not contemplate, but felt to be necessary and incumbent upon him. It sometimes occurred to him how, if he had been prudent and taken Lauderdale's advice, and eschewed at the beginning the close connexion with Meredith and his sister, which he had entered into with his eyes open, and with a consciousness even that it might affect his life, this embarrassing situation might never have come into being; and then he smiled to himself, with youthful superiority, contemplating what seemed so plainly the meaning of Providence, and asking himself how he, by a momentary exercise of his own will, could have overthrown that distinct celestial intention. On the whole, it was com forting to think that everything had

been arranged beforehand by agencies so very clear and traceable; and with this conclusion of the argument he left off, as near contented as possible, and not indisposed to enjoy the advantages which were palpably before him; for, though they were not the eyes he had dreamed of, there was a sweetness very well worthy of close study in Alice Meredith's eyes.

The days passed very quietly in this time of suspense. The society of the two strangers, who were more to her in her sorrow than all her kindred, supported the lonely girl more than she was aware of-more than any one could have believed. They were absent during the greater part of the day, and left her unmolested to the tears that would come, notwithstanding all her patience; and they returned to her in the evening with attentions and cares to which she had never been accustomed, devoting two original and powerful minds, of an order at once higher and more homely than any which she had ever encountered, to her amusement and consolation. Alice had never known before what it was to have ordinary life and daily occurrences brightened by the thickcoming fancies, the tender play of word and thought, which now surrounded her. She had heard clever talk afar off, "in society," and been awestricken by the sound of it, and she had heard Arthur and his friends uttering much fine-sounding language upon subjects not generally in her way, but she was utterly unused to that action of uncommon minds upon common things which gives so much charm to the ordinary intercourse of life. All they could think of to lighten the atmosphere of the house in which she sat in her deep mourning, absorbed for hours together in those thoughts of the dead to which her needlework afforded little relief, they did with devotion, suspending their own talk and occupations to occupy themselves with her. Colin read In Memoriam to her till her heart melted and relieved itself in sweet abundant tears; and Lauderdale talked and told her many a homely history of

of sorrows sorer than her own, which fills young minds with awe. Between them they roused Alice to a higher platform, a different atmosphere, than she had known before; and she raised herself up after them with a half-bewildered sense of elevation, not understanding how it was; and so the long days which were so hard, and which nothing in the world could save from being hard, brightened towards the end, not certainly into anything that could be called pleasure, but into a sad expansion and elevation of heart, in which faintly appeared those beginnings of profound and deep happiness which are not incompatible with grief, and yet are stronger and more inspiring than joy. While this was going on, unconsciously to any one concerned, Sora Antonia, in her white kerchief and apron, sometimes knitting, sometimes with her distaff like a buxom Fate, sat and twisted her thread and turned her spindle a little behind yet not out of reach, keeping a wary eye upon her charge. She too interposed, sometimes her own experiences, sometimes her own comments upon life and things in general, into the conversation; and, whether it was that Sora Antonia's mind was really of a superior order, or that the stately Roman speech threw a refining colour upon her narratives, it is certain that the interpellations of the Italian peasant fell without any sensible derogation into the strain of lofty yet familiar talk which was meant to wean Alice from her special grief. Sora Antonia told them of the other Forestieri who had lived like themselves in the Savvelli palace; who had come for health and yet had died, leaving the saddest mournershelpless widows, and little children, heartbroken fathers and mothers, perhaps the least consolable of all. Life was such, she said solemnly, bowing her stately head. She herself, of a hardy race, and strong, as the Signori saw, had not she buried her children, for whom she would have gladly died? But the good God had not permitted her to die. Alice cried silently as she heard all this; she

had outlived her tears, and with a natural impulse turned to Colin, who was young, and in whose heart, as in her own, there must live a natural protest against this awful necessity of separation and misery; and thus it came to be Colin's turn to interpose, and he came on the field once more with In Memoriam, and with other poems which were sweet to hear, and soothed her even when she only partly entered into their meaning. A woman has an advantage under such circumstances. By means of her sympathy and gratitude, and the still deeper feeling which grew unconsciously in her heart towards him who read, she came to believe that she too understood and appreciated what was to him so clear and so touching. A kind of spiritual magnetism worked upon Alice, and, to all visible appearance, expanded and enlarged her mind. It was not that her intellect itself grew, or that she understood all the beautiful imaginations, all the tender philosophies thus unfolded to her; but she was united in a singular union of affectionate companionship with those who did understand, and even to herself she appeared able to see, if not with her own eyes at least with theirs, the new beauties and solemnities of which she had not dreamt before. This strange process went on day by day without any one being aware of it; and even Lauderdale had almost forgotten that their guardianship of Alice was only for the moment, and that the state of affairs altogether was provisionary and could not possibly continue, when an answer reached him to his letter. He was alone when he received it, and all that evening said nothing on the subject until Alice had retired with her watchful attendant; then, without a word of comment, he put it into Colin's hand. It was written in a stilted hand, like that of one unaccustomed to writing, and was not quite irreproachable even in its spelling. This was what Lauderdale's correspondent said: