denly and lose it all; but still even the disappointment only awakened him to the fact that he was to see her to-morrow; he was to see her to-morrow! nay, to-day, though this yellow glimmer did not look much like daylight. He got up the moment he was called, and dressed with much pains and care - too much care. When his toilette was careless Roger looked, as he was, a gentleman; but when he took extra pains, a Sunday look crept about him, a certain stiffness, as of a man Occupying clothes to which he was unaccustomed. His frock-coat-it was his first was uglier and squarer than even frock-coats generally are, his hat looked higher, his gloves a terrible bondage. Poor boy! but for Cara he never would have had that frock-coat; thus to look our best we look our worst, and evil becomes our good. But his aunt was much pleased with his appearance when he went to church with her, and thought his dress just what every gentleman ought to wear on Sunday. "But your gloves are too tight, my dear," she said. ་་ upon everybody not to have the expectations, the hopes, that made his own heart beat. How it beat and thumped against his breast! He was almost sorry, though he was glad, when the walk was over and the tall roofs of the houses in the square overhadowed him. His heart jumped higher still, though he thought it had been incapable of more when he got to the house. "Doors where my heart was used to beat." He did not know any poetry to speak of, and these words did not come to him. He felt that she must be glad to see him, this dull damp Sunday afternoon, the very time when heaven and earth stood still, when there was nothing to amuse or occupy the languid mind. No doubt she and her father would be sitting together suppressing two mutual yawns, reading two dull books; or, oh, blessed chance! perhaps her father would have retired to his library, and Cara would be alone. He pictured this to himself a silent room, a Sunday solitude, a little drooping figure by the chimney-corner, brightening up at sight of a well-known face- when the drawing-room door opened before him, and his dream exploded like a bubble, and with a shock of self-derision and disap Roger thought everything was tight, and was in twenty minds to abandon his fine clothes and put on the rough morning-pointment more bitter than honest Roger suit he had come in; but the frock-coat carried the day. He could not eat at Mrs. Brandon's early dinner. She was quite unhappy about him, and begged him not to stand on ceremony, but to tell her frankly if it was not to his mind. For if you are going to spend your Sundays with me it is just as easy to buy one thing as another," Aunt Mary said, good, kind, deceived woman. She was very glad he should take a walk afterwards, hoping it would do him good. 66 "And I think perhaps I had better call at the square and see Miss Beresford. Her aunt is sure to ask me when I see her," he said. had ever felt in all his simple life before. There were several people in the room, but naturally Roger's glance sought out the only one he was interested in, the only one he knew in the little company. She was standing in front of one of the windows, the pale wintry light behind making a silhouette of her pretty figure, and the fine lines of her profile; but curiously enough, it was not she, after the first glance, who attracted Roger's gaze, but the other figure which stood beside her, close to her, young, and friendly, in all the confidence of intimacy. It was Oswald Meredith who was holding a book in which he was showing Cara something - she, "Do, my dear," said the unsuspecting holding the corner of it with one hand, woman. And he set off across the park. drew it down to her level, and with a It was damp enough and foggy enough to raised finger of the other seemed to check quench any man's courage. The Sunday what he was saying. They made the pretpeople, who were out in spite of all disad- tiest group; another young man, sitting at vantages, were blue, half with the cold the table, gazing at the pair, thought so and half with the color of the pitiless day. too, with an envious sentiment not so A few old ladies in close broughams took strong or so bitter as Roger's, but enough their constitutional drive slowly round and to swear by. Oswald had all the luck, round. What pleasure could they find in this young fellow was saying to himself: it? still, as it is the ordinance of heaven little Cara, too! Behind was Mrs. Merethat there should be old ladies as well as dith, sitting by the fire, and Mr. Beresford, young men of twenty, it was a good thing gloomy and sombre, standing by her. It they had comfortable broughams to drive was the first time he had been in this about in; and they had been young in room, and the visit had been made expresstheir time, Roger supposed, feeling it hard | ly for the purpose of dragging him into it. pause which poor little Cara, not used to keeping such hostile elements in harmony, did not know how to manage. She asked timidly if he had been at the Hill - if he had seen He stood near his friend, looking down, | are at the square. We have all been chilsometimes looking at her, but otherwise dren together;" and then there was a never raising his eyes. This, however, was a side scene altogether uninteresting to Roger. What was it to him what these two elder people might be feeling or thinking? All that he could see was Cara and "that fellow," who presumed to be there, standing by her side, occupying her attention. And how interested she looked! more than in all the years they had known each other she had ever looked for him. Cara started at the sound of his name. "Mr. Burchell? oh, something must be wrong at home!" she cried; then, turning round suddenly, stopped with a nervous laugh of relief. "Oh, it is only Roger! what a fright you gave me! I thought it must be your father, and that Aunt Charity was ill. Papa, this is Roger Burchell, from the rectory. You remember, he said he would come and see me. But, Roger, I thought you were coming directly, and it is quite a long time now since I left home." "I could not come sooner," he said, comforted by this. "I came as soon as ever I could. My aunt was ill and could not have me; and then there was some trouble at the college," he added hurriedly, feeling himself to be getting too explanatory. Cara had given him her hand; she had pointed to a chair near where she was standing; she had given up the book which Oswald now held, and over which he was looking, half-amused, at the newcomer. Roger was as much occupied by him, with hot instinct of rivalry, as he was with Cara herself, who was the goddess of his thoughts; and how the plain young engineer, in his stiff frock-coat, despised the handsome young man about town, so easy and so much at home! with a virulence of contempt which no one could have thought to be in Roger. "Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?" he was tempted to say, making up to him straight before the other had time to open his lips. But of course, being in civilized society, Roger did not dare to obey his impulse, though it stirred him to the heart. 66 'You don't introduce us to your friend, Cara," said Oswald, smiling, in an under "I came direct from the college last night," he said; and poor Roger could not keep a little flavor of bitterness out of his tone, as who should say, "A pretty fool I was to come at all!" "The college?" said Oswald, in his half-laughing tone. "I am "I mean only the scientific college, not anything to do with a university," said Roger, defiant in spite of himself. an engineer -a working-man" and though he said this as a piece of bravado, poor fellow! it is inconceivable how Sundayish, how endimanché, how much like a real working-man in unused best raiment, he felt in his frock-coat. "Oh, tell me about that!" said Mrs. Meredith, coming forward; "it is just what I want to know. Mr. Roger Burchell, did you say, Cara? I think I used to know your mother. I have seen her with Miss Cherry Beresford? Yes; I thought it must be the same. Do you know I have a particular reason for wishing to hear about your college? One of my friends wants to send his son there if he can get in. Will you tell me about it? I know you want to talk to Cara "Oh, no; not if she is engaged," said Roger, and blushed hot with excessive youthful shame when he had made this foolish speech. "She will not be engaged long, for we are going presently," said the smiling, gracious woman, who began to exercise her usual charm upon the angry lad in spite of himself. She drew a chair near to the spot where he still stood defiant. "I shall not keep you long," she said; and what could Roger do but sit down, though so much against his will, and allow himself to be questioned? "Your friend from the country is impatient of your other friends,” said Oswald, closing the book which he held out to Cara, and marking the place as he gave it to her. "Do you want to get rid of us as much as he does?" "He does not want to get rid of any one, but he does not understand -society," said Cara, in the same undertone. Roger could not hear what it was, but he felt sure they were talking of him, though he did his best to listen to Mrs. Meredith's questions. Then the other one rose, who was not so handsome as Oswald, and went | friend. He cannot be such an old friend to her other side, completely shutting her as I am; and I have only a few hours-" out from the eyes of the poor fellow who had come so far, and taken so much trouble to see her. The college- what did he care for the college! about which the softvoiced stranger was questioning him. He made her vague, broken answers, and turned round undisguisedly, poor fellow! to where Cara stood; yet all he could see of her was the skirt of her blue dress from the other side of Edward Meredith, whose head, leaning forward, came between Roger and the girl on whom his heart was set. "Mr. Burchell, Cara and her father are dining with my boys and me. Edward is only with me for a few hours; he is going away by the last train. Will not you come, too, and join us? Then Cara can see a little more of you. Do you stay in town to-night?" Two impulses struggled in Roger's mind - to refuse disdainfully, or to accept gratefully. In the first case he would have said he had dined already, making a little brag of his aunt's early hours, in the second a calculation passed very quickly through his mind, so quick that it was concluded almost before Mrs. Meredith's invitation. "I could," he said, faltering; "or, perhaps, if your son is going I might go, too, which would be best "Very well, then, it is a bargain," she said, putting out her hand with a delightful smile. He felt how warm and sweet it was, even though he was trying at the moment to see Cara. This was the kind of mother these fellows had, and Cara living next door! Surely all the luck seems to be centred on some people; others have no chance against them. He stood by while Mrs. Meredith got up, drawing her sons with her. "Come, boys, you can carry on your talk later," she said. "Goodbye for the moment, Cara mia." Then she turned to Mr. Beresford who stood gloomily, with his eyes bent on the fire. "You are not sorry you have broken the spell?" she said, with a voice which she kept for him alone, or so at least he thought. He gave his shoulders a hasty shrug. "We can talk of that later. I am going to see you to the door," he said, giving her his arm. The boys lingered. Oswald was patting his book affectionately with one hand. It was Edward who was "making the running" now. "You are still coming to dine, Cara?" he said. "Don't turn me off for this "So has he," said Cara; "and he told me he was coming. What am I to do?" "There are three courses that you can pursue," said Oswald. "Leave him, as Ned recommends; stay with him, as I certainly don't recommend; or bring him with you. And which of these, Cara, you may choose will be a lesson as to your opinion of us. But you can't stay with him; that would be a slight to my mother, and your father would not allow it. The compromise would be to bring him." "Oh, how can I do that, unless Mrs. Meredith told me to do it? No; perhaps he will go away of himself — perhaps "Poor wretch! he looks unhappy enough," said Edward, with the sympathy of fellow-feeling. Oswald laughed. The misery and offence in the new-comer's face was only amusing to him. "Cara," he said, "if you are going to begin offensive warfare, and to flaunt young men from the country in our faces, I for one will rebel. It is not fair to us; we were not prepared for anything of the sort." "My mother is calling us," said Edward, impatiently. Two or three times before his brother had irritated him to-day. Either he was in a very irritable mood, or Oswald was more provoking than usual. "I have only a few hours," he continued, aggrieved, in a low tone, "and I have scarcely spoken to you, Cara; and it was you and I who used to be the closest friends. Don't you remember? Oswald can see you when he pleases; I have only one day. You won't disappoint us, will you? I wish you'd go' this was to his brother" I'll follow. There are some things I want to speak to Cara about, and you have taken her up all the afternoon with your poetry. Yes, yes; I see, there is him behind; but, Cara, look here, you won't be persuaded to stay away tonight?" "Not if I can help it," said the girl, who was too much embarrassed by this first social difficulty to feel the flattery involved. She turned to Roger, when the others went down-stairs, with a somewhat disturbed and tremulous smile. "They are our next-door neighbors, and they are very kind," she said. "Mrs. Meredith is so good to me; as kind as if she were a relation" (this was all Cara knew of relationships). "I don't know what I should do without her; and I have known the boys all my life. Roger, won't you sit down? I am so sorry to have been taken up like this the very moment you came." "But if they live next door, and you know them so well, I daresay you are very often taken up like this," said Roger," and that will be hard upon your country friends. And I think," he added, taking courage as he found that the door remained closed, and that not even her father (estimable man!) came back, "that we have a better claim than they have; for you were only a child when you came to the Hill, and you have grown up there." "I like all my old friends," said Cara, evasively. "Some are - I mean they differ one likes them for different things." The poor boy leaped to the worse interpretation of this, which, indeed, was not very far from the true one. "Some are poorer and not so fine as others," he said; "but perhaps, Cara, the rough ones, the homely ones, those you despise, are the most true." "I don't despise any one," she said, turning away, and taking up Oswald Meredith's book. By Jove! even when he was gone was "that fellow" to have the best of it with his confounded book? Roger's heart swelled; and then he felt that expediency was very much to be thought of, and that when a man could not have all he wanted it was wise to put up with what he could get. "Cara, don't be angry with me," he said. "I shall like your friends, too, if if you wish me. The lady is very nice and kind, as you say. She has asked me to go there to dinner, too." "You!" Cara said, with (he thought) a gleam of annoyance. Roger jumped up, wild with rage and jealousy, but then he sat down again, which was certainly the best thing for him to do. lieves that it was under the parsonage roof that the author of "Jane Eyre" gathered up the precious experiences which were afterwards turned to such good account. Mrs. Gaskell, who was carried away by her honest, womanly horror of hardened vice, gives us to understand that the tragic turning-point in the history of the sisters was connected with the disgrace and ruin of their brother. We are even asked to believe that but for the folly of a single woman, whom it is probable that Charlotte never saw, “Currer Bell" would never have taken up her pen, and no halo of glory would have settled on the scarred and rugged brows of prosaic Haworth. It is not so. There may be disappointment among those who have been nurtured on the traditions of the Brontë romance, when they find that the reality is different from what they supposed it to be; some shallow judges may even assume that Charlotte herself loses in moral stature when it is shown that it was not her horror at her brother's fall which drove her to find relief in literary speech. But the truth must be told; and for my part I see nothing in that truth which affects, even in an infinitesimal degree, the fame and the honor of the woman of whom I write. It was Charlotte's visit to Brussels then, first as pupil and afterwards as teacher in the school of Madame Héger, which was the turning-point in her life, which changed its currents, and gave to it a new purpose and a new meaning. Up to the moment of that visit she had been the simple, kindly, truthful Yorkshire girl, endowed with strange faculties, carried away at times by burning impulses, moved often by emotions the nature of which she could not fathom, but always hemmed in by her narrow experiences, her limited knowledge of life and the world. Until she went to Belgium her sorest troubles had been associated with her dislike to the society of strangers, her heaviest burden had been the necessity under which she lay of tasting that "cup of life as it is mixed for governesses" which she detested so heartily. Under the belief that they could qualify themselves to keep a school of their own if they had once mastered the delicacies of the French and German languages, she and Emily set off for this sojourn in Brus'sels. One may be forgiven for speculating as to her future lot had she accepted the offer of marriage she received in her early governess-days, and settled down as the When do you think I shall see you? [she cries to her friend within a few days of her final return to Haworth:] I have of course much to tell you, and I dare say you have much also to tell me things which we should neither of us wish to commit to paper. ... I do not know whether you feel as I do, but there are times now when it appears to me as friendships and affections, are changed from if all my ideas and feelings, except a few what they used to be. Something in me which used to be enthusiasm is tamed down and broken. I have fewer illusions. What I wish for now is active exertion-a stake in life. Haworth seems such a lonely, quiet spot, buried away from the world. I no longer regard myself as young; indeed I shall soon be twenty-eight, and it seems as if I ought to be working and braving the rough realities of the world as other people do. It is, however, my duty to restrain this feeling at present, and I will endeavor to do so. faithful wife of a sober English gentleman. | and open natures only reveal under comIn that case "Shirley" perhaps might have pulsion. One of the hardest features of been written, but "Jane Eyre" and "Vil- the last year she spent at Brussels was the lette" never. She learnt much during her necessity that she was under of locking two years' sojourn in the Belgian capital; all the deepest emotions of her life within but the greatest of all the lessons she mas- her own breast, of preserving the calm tered whilst there was that self-knowledge and even cold exterior, which should tell the taste of which is so bitter to the nothing to the common gaze, above the mouth, though so wholesome to the life. troubled, fevered heart that beat within. Mrs. Gaskell has made such ample use of the letters she penned during the long months which she spent as an exile from England, that there is comparatively little left to cull from them. Everybody knows the outward circumstances of her story at this time. For a brief period she had the company of Emily; and the two sisters, working together with the unremitting zeal of those who have learned that time is money, were happy and hopeful, enjoy ing the novel sights of the gay foreign capital, gathering fresh experiences every day, and looking forward to the moment when they would return to familiar Haworth, and realize the dream of their lives by opening a school of their own within the walls of the parsonage. But then Emily left, and Charlotte, after a brief holiday at home, returned alone. Years after, writing to her friend, she speaks of her return in these words: "I returned to Brussels after aunt's death against my conscience, prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind." Why did she thus go back against her conscience"? Her friends declared that her future husband dwelt somewhere within sound of the chimes of St. Gudule, and that she insisted upon returning to Brussels because she was about to be married there. We know now how different was the reality. The husband who awaited her was even then about to begin his long apprenticeship of love at Haworth. Yet none the less had her spirit, if not her heart, been captured and held captive in the Belgian city. It is not in her letters that we find the truth regarding her life at this time. The truth indeed is there, but not all the truth. "In catalepsy and dread trance," says Lucy Snowe, "I studiously held the quick of my nature. . . . It is on the surface only the common gaze will fall." The secrets of her inner life could not be trusted to paper, even though the lines were intended for no eyes but those of her friend and confidante. There are some things, as we know well, the heart hides as by instinct, and which even frank Yes; she was "disillusioned" now, and she had brought back from Brussels a heart which could never be quite so light, a spirit which could never again soar so buoyantly, as in those earlier years when the tree of knowledge was still untasted, and the mystery of life still unrevealed. This stay in Belgium was, as I have said, the turning-point in Charlotte Brontë's career, and its true history and meaning is to be found, not in her "Life" and letters, but in "Villette," the master-work of her mind, and the revelation of the most vivid passages in her own heart's history. “I said I disliked Lucy Snowe," is a remark which Mrs. Gaskell innocently repeats in her memoir of Charlotte Brontë. One need not be surprised at it. Lucy Snowe was never meant to be liked by every body; but none the less is Lucy Snowe the truest picture we possess of the real Charlotte Brontë; whilst not a few of the fortunes which befell this strange heroine are literal transcripts from the life of her creator. One little incident in "Villette " -- Lucy's impulsive visit to a Roman Catholic confessor is taken direct from Charlotte's own experience. During one of the long, lonely holidays in the foreign school, when her mind was restless and disturbed, her heart heavy, her nerves jarred and jangled, she fled from the great |