MATTIE:—A STRAY.

BY F. W. ROBINSON

THE AUTHOR OF "HIGH CHURCH," "NO CHURCH," "OWEN:-A WAIF," &c., &c.

"By bestowing blessings upon others, we entail them on ourselves." Horace Smith.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
18, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1864.

The right of Translation is reserved.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE,
BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.

CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

[BOOK VI. SIDNEY'S FRIENDS.]
[CHAPTER I. Mattie's Choice]
[CHAPTER II. Mattie's Adviser]
[CHAPTER III. The Old Lovers]
[CHAPTER IV. A New Decision]
[CHAPTER V. Ann Packet expresses an opinion]
[CHAPTER VI. Mr. Gray's Scheme]
[BOOK VII. SIDNEY'S GRATITUDE.]
[CHAPTER I. Maurice Hinchford in search of his Cousin]
[CHAPTER II. Maurice receives plenty of Advice]
[CHAPTER III. A Declaration]
[CHAPTER IV. More talk of Marriage and Giving in Marriage]
[CHAPTER V. Mattie's Answer]
[BOOK VIII. MORE LIGHT.]
[CHAPTER I. A New Hope]
[CHAPTER II. Mattie is taken into Confidence]
[CHAPTER III. Half the Truth]
[CHAPTER IV. All the Truth]
[CHAPTER V. Struggling]
[CHAPTER VI. Signs of Change]
[CHAPTER VII. Returned]
[CHAPTER VIII. Declined with Thanks]
[CHAPTER IX. Mattie, Mediatrix]
[CHAPTER X. Conclusion]
[MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S LIST OF NEW WORKS]
[THE NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS, PUBLISHED BY HURST & BLACKETT.]

BOOK VI.

SIDNEY'S FRIENDS.

CHAPTER I.

MATTIE'S CHOICE.

There are epochs in some lives when the heart cracks or hardens. When humanity, wrung to its utmost, gives way, or ossifies. Both are dangerous crises, and require more than ordinary care; the physician must be skilful and understand human nature, or his efforts at cure will only kill the patient who submits to his remedies.

Man—we speak literally of the masculine gender at this point—though born unto trouble, finds it hard to support in a philosophical way. A great trouble that in nine cases out of ten shows woman at her best, transforms man to his worst; if he be a man of the world, worldly, he is dumbfounded by the calamity which has fallen upon him. It is incomprehensible why he should suffer—he of all men—and he wraps himself in his egotism—his wounded self-love—and thinks of the injustice and hardness that have shut him out from his labours.

Such men, heavily oppressed, do not give in to the axiom, that it is well for them to be afflicted; they will not bow to God's will, or resign themselves to it—their outward calmness is assumed, and they chafe at the Great Hand which has arrested them midway. Such men will turn misanthropes and atheists, at times.

Sidney Hinchford after all was a man of the world. In the world he had lived and fought upwards. There had been a charm in making his way in it, and the obstacles ahead had but nerved his arm to resist, and his heart to endure. He had talents for success in the commercial world—even a genius for making money. With time before him, possibly Sidney Hinchford would have risen to greatness.

To make money—and to keep it when made—requires as much genius as to make poetry, rather more, perhaps. A genius of a different order, but a very fine one notwithstanding, and one which we can admire at a distance—on the kerb stones with our manuscripts under our arms, waiting for the genius's carriage to pass, before we cross to our publishers'. Is not that man a genius who in these latter days rises to wealth by his own exertions, in lieu of having wealth thrust upon him? A genius, with wondrous powers of discrimination, not to be led into a bad thing, but seeing before other people the advantages to accrue from a good one, and making his investments accordingly. A man who peers into the future and beholds his own advancement, not the step before him, but the apex in the clouds, lost to less keen-sighted folk fighting away at the base—therefore, a wonderful man.

We believe that Sidney Hinchford, like his uncle before him, would have risen in the world; he believed it also, and throughout his past career—though we have seen him anxious—he never lost his hope of ultimate success. When he knew that there must come a period of tribulation and darkness for him, he had trusted to have time left him for position; and not till time was denied him, and the darkness set in suddenly, did he give up the battle. And then he did not give way; he hardened.

Sidney had never been a religious man, therefore he sought no consolation in his affliction, and believed not in the power of religion to console. He had been pure-minded, honourable, earnest, everything that makes the good worldly man, but he had never been grateful to God for his endowments, and he bore God's affliction badly in consequence. He felt balked in his endeavour to prosper, therefore, aggrieved, and the darkness that had stolen over his senses seemed to find its way to his heart and transform him.

The clergyman, who had attended his father, attempted consolation with him, but he would have "none of it." He did not complain, he said; he had faced the worst—it was with him, and there was an end of it. Do not weary him with trite bible-texts, but leave him to himself.

And by himself he sat down to brood over the inevitable wrong that had been done him; he, in the vigour of life and thought, shut apart from action! Once he had looked forward to a consolation even in distress, but that was to have been a long day hence. Now his day had been shortened, and the consolation was denied him. He knew that that was lost, and he had thought of a fight with the world to benumb the thoughts of the future; and then the world was shut away from him also, and he was broken down, inactive and lost.

He and his uncle were the only attendants at the funeral; he was informed afterwards that Mattie had stood at the grave's edge, and seen the last of her old friend and first patron; then his uncle had left him, failing in all efforts to console him. Geoffry Hinchford offered his nephew money, all the influence at his disposal in any way or shape, but Sidney declined all coldly. He did not require help yet awhile, he had saved money; he preferred being left to himself in that desolate home; presently, when he had grown reconciled to these changes, he should find courage to think what was best; meanwhile, those who loved him—he even told Mattie that—would leave him to himself.

Mattie made no effort to intrude upon him in the early days following the double loss; she was perplexed as to her future course, her method of fulfilling that promise made to Sidney's father on his death-bed. Her common sense assured her that in the first moments of sorrow, intrusion would be not only unavailing, but irritating—and her belief in becoming of service to Sidney was but a small one at the best. In the good, far-away time she might be a humble agent in bringing Harriet Wesden and him together; Harriet who must love him out of very pity now, and forget that wounded pride which had followed the annulment of engagement.

Meanwhile, she remained quiet and watchful; busy at her dress-making, busy in her father's home, attentive to that new father whom she had found, and who was very kind to her, though he scarcely seemed to understand her. Still, they agreed well together, for Mattie was submissive, and Mr. Gray had more than a fair share of his own way; and he was a man who liked his own way, and with whom it agreed vastly. But we have seen that he was a jealous man, and that Mattie's interest in Mr. Wesden had discomfited him. He was a good man we know, but jealousy got the upper hand of him at times, when he was scarcely aware of it himself, for he attributed his excitement, perhaps his envy, to very different feelings. He was even jealous of a local preacher of his own denomination, a man who had made a convert of a most vicious article—an article that he had been seeking all his life, and had never found in full perfection.

Mr. Gray over his work said little concerning Ann Packet's occasional visits to his domicile, but he objected to them notwithstanding, for they drew his daughter's attention away from himself. He liked still less Mattie's visits to Chesterfield Terrace—flying visits, when she saw Ann Packet for an hour and Sidney Hinchford for a minute, looking in at the last moment, and heralded by Ann exclaiming,

"Here's Mattie come to see you, sir."

"Ah, Mattie!" Sid would answer, turning his face towards the door whence the voice issued, and attempting the feeblest of smiles.

"Is there anything that I can do, sir, for you?"

"No, girl, thank you."

He would quickly relapse into that thought again, from which her presence had aroused him—and it was a depth of thought upon which the fugitive efforts of Mattie had no effect. Standing in the shadowy doorway she would watch him for awhile, then draw the door to after her and go away grieving at the change in him.

The thought occurred to her that Harriet Wesden might even at that early stage work some amount of good until she heard from Ann Packet that Harriet and her father had called one day, and that Sidney had refused an interview. He was unwell; some other day when he was better; it was kind to call, but he could not be seen then, had been his excuses sent out by the servant maid. Mattie, who had always found time do good, and work many changes, left the result to time, until honest Ann one evening, when Mr. Gray was at work at his old post, asserted her fears that Sidney was getting worse instead of better.

"I think he'll go melancholic mad like, poor dear," she said; "and it's no good my trying to brighten him a bit—he's wus at that, which is nat'ral, not being in my line, and wanting brightening up myself. He does nothing but brood, brood, brood, sitting of a heap all day in that chair!"

"A month since his father died now," said Mattie, musing.

"To the very day, Mattie."

"He goes to church—you read the Bible to him?" asked Mr. Gray, suddenly.

"He can't go by hisself—he's not very handy with his blindness, like those who have been brought up to it with a dog and a tin mug," said Ann in reply; "but let's hope he'll get used to it, and find it a comfort to him, sir."

"I asked you also, young woman, if you ever read the Bible to him?"

"Lor bless you, sir! I can't read fit enough for him—I take a blessed lot of spelling with it, and it aggravates him. All the larning I've ever had, has come from this dear gal of ours, and he taught her first of all!"

"I think that I could do this young man good," said Mr. Gray, suddenly; "I might impress him with the force of the truth—convert him."

"I would not attempt to preach to him yet," suggested Mattie; "besides, his is a strange character—you will never understand it."

"You cannot tell what I may be able to understand," he replied, "and I see that my duty lies in that direction. I have been seeking amongst the poor and wretched for a convert, and perhaps it is nearer home—your friend!"

"I would not worry him in his distress," suggested Mattie anew.

"Worry him!—Mattie, you shock me! Where's my Bible?—I'll go at once!"

"We've got Bibles in the house, sir—we're not cannibals," snapped Ann. Cannibals and heathens were of the same species to Ann Packet.

"Come on, then!"

Mattie half rose, as if with the intention of accompanying her father, but he checked the movement.

"I hope you will remain at home to-night, Mattie," he said; "I never like the house entirely left. It's not business."

Mattie sat down again. She was fidgety at the result of this impromptu movement on her father's part, but saw no way to hinder it. Her father was a man who meant well, but well-meaning men would not do for Sidney Hinchford. Sidney had been well educated; his father was self-taught, and brusque, and Sidney had grown very irritable. In her own little conceited heart she believed that no one could manage Sidney Hinchford save herself. Late in the evening, Mr. Gray returned in excellent spirits, rubbing one hand over the other complacently. He had found a new specimen worthy of his powers of conversion.

"Have you seen him?" asked Mattie.

"To be sure—I went to see him, and he could not keep me out of the room, if I chose to enter. An obstinate young man—as obstinate a young man as I ever remember to have met with in all my life!"

"Did he speak to you?"

"Only twice, once to ask how you were. The second time to tell me that he did not require any preaching to. After that, I read the Bible to him for an hour, locking the door first, to make sure that he did not run for it, blind as he was. Then I gave him the best advice in my power, bade him good night, and came away. He is as hard as the nether millstone; it will be a glorious victory over the devil to touch his heart and soften it!"

"You are going the wrong way to work. You do not know him!"

"My dear, I know that he's a miserable sinner."

Mattie said no more on the question; she was not a good hand at argument. At argument, sword's point to sword's point, possibly Mr. Gray would have beaten most men; his ideas were always in order, and he could pounce upon the right word, reason, or text, in an instant; but Mattie was certain that her father's zeal very often outran his discretion. She shuddered as she pictured Sidney Hinchford a victim to her father's obtrusiveness—her father, oblivious to suffering, and full of belief in the conversion he was attempting. She knew that her father was wrong, and she felt vexed that Sidney had been intruded upon at a time wherein she had not found the courage to face him herself. Things must be altered, and her promise to Sid's father must not become a dead letter. In all the world her heart told her she loved Sidney Hinchford best, and that she could make any sacrifice for his sake; and yet Sidney was not getting better, but worse, and her own father would make her hateful to him. The next evening, Mr. Gray came home later than usual. He had been sent for by his employers, had received their commissions, and then, fraught with his new idea, had started for Chesterfield Terrace, to strike a second moral blow at his new specimen.

He came home late, as we have intimated, and began arranging his chimney ornaments, and putting things a little straight, in his usual nervous fashion.

"Mattie, I shall have a job with that young man. He has forbidden me the house; he actually—actually swore at me this evening, for praying for his better heart and moral regeneration."

Mattie compressed her lips, and looked thoughtfully before her for a while. Then the dark eyes turned suddenly and unflinchingly upon her father.

"I have been thinking lately that if I were with him in that house—I, who know him so well—I might do much good."

"You, Mattie!—you?"

"He is without a friend in the world. I knew his father, who was my first friend, and I feel that I am neglecting the son."

"You call there often enough, goodness knows!" Mr. Gray said, a little sharply.

"He is alone—he is blind. What are a few minutes in a long day to him?"

"All this is very ridiculous, Mattie—speaks well for your kind heart, and so on, but, of course, can't be——"

"Of course, must be!"

Mattie had a will of her own when it was needed. A little did not disturb her, but a great deal of opposition could never shake that will when once made up. She had resolved upon her next step, and would proceed with it; we do not say that she was in the right; we will not profess to constitute her a model heroine in the sight of our readers, who have had enough of model heroines for awhile, and may accept our stray for a change. We are even inclined to believe that Mattie was, in this instance, just a little in the wrong—but then her early training had been defective, and allowance must be made for it. All the evil seeds that neglect has sown in the soil are never entirely eradicated—ask the farmers of land, and the farmers of souls.

"Must be!" repeated Mr. Gray, looking in a dreamy manner at his daughter.

"I promised his father to think of him—to study him by all the means in my power. I see that no one understands him but me, and I hear that he is sinking away from all that made him good and noble. I will do my best for him, and there is no one who can stop me here."

"Your father!"

"—Is a new friend, who has been kind to me, and whom I love—but he hasn't the power to make me break my promise to the dead. That man is desolate, and heavily afflicted, and I will go to him!"

"Against MY wish?"

"Yes—against the wishes of all in the world—if they were uttered in opposition to me!" cried Mattie.

"Then," looking very firm and white, "you will choose between him and me. He will be a friend the more, and I a daughter the less."

"It cannot be helped."

"You never loved me, or you would never thus defy me. Girl, you are going into danger—the world will talk, and rob you of your good name."

"Let it," said Mattie, proudly. "It has spoken ill before of me, and I have lived it down. I shall not study it, when the interest and happiness of a dear friend are at stake. He is being killed by all you!" she cried, with a comprehensive gesture of her hand; "now let me try!"

"Mattie, you are mad—wrong—wicked!—I have no patience with you—I have done with you, if you defy me thus."

"I am doing right—you cannot stop me. I have done wrong to remain idle here so long; I will go at once."

"At once!—breaking up this home—you will, then?"

"If I remain here longer, you will set him against me—me, who would have him look upon me as his sister, his one friend left to pray for him, slave for him, and keep his enemies away!"

"I won't hear any more of this rhodomontade—this voice of the devil on the lips of my child," he said, snatching up his hat again. "Stay here till I return, or go away for ever."

Mr. Gray was in a passion, and, like most men in a passion, went the wrong way to work. He was jealous of this new rival to his daughter's love that had sprung up, and angered with Mattie's attempt to justify her new determination. He believed in Mattie's obedience, and his own power over her yet; and he was an obstinate man, whom it took a long while to subdue. He went out of the room wildly gesticulating, and Mattie sat panting for awhile, and trying to still the heaving of her bosom. She had gone beyond herself—perhaps betrayed herself—but she had expressed her intention, and nothing that had happened since had induced her to swerve. If it were a choice between her father and Sidney, why, it must be Sidney, if he would have her for his friend and companion in the future.

"I must go—I must go at once!" she whispered to herself; and then hurriedly put on her bonnet and shawl, and made for the staircase. She thought that she was doing right, and that good would come of it; and she did not hesitate. Before her, in the distance, sat the solitary figure of him she loved, friendless, alone, and benighted; and her woman's heart yearned to go to him, and forgot all else.

Thus forgetting, thus yearning to do good, Mattie made a false step, and turned her back upon her father's home.

CHAPTER II.

MATTIE'S ADVISER.

Mattie reached Chesterfield Terrace as the clock was striking nine. Ann Packet almost shouted with alarm at the sight of the new visitor, and then looked intently over Mattie's shoulder.

"He hasn't come back again, has he? Mr. Sidney's been in such a dreadful way about him, Mattie. Blind as he is, I think he'll try to murder him."

"I have come instead. He will see me, I hope."

She did not wait to be announced, but turned the handle of the parlour-door and entered. Sidney Hinchford, in a harsh voice, cried out,

"Who's there?"

"Only Mattie. May I come in?"

"Mattie here at this hour! Come in, if you will. What is it?"

He was seated in the great leathern arm-chair, that had been his father's favourite seat, in the old attitude that Mattie knew so well now. She shuddered at the change in him—the wreck of manhood that one affliction had reduced him to, and the impulse that had brought her there was strengthened.

"Mr. Sidney," she said, approaching, "I have come to ask a favour of you."

"I am past dispensing favours, Mattie. Unless—unless it's to listen patiently to that horrible father of yours. Then I say No—for he drives me mad with his monotony."

"I have come to defend you from him, if he call again—to live here, and take care of you as a dear brother who requires care, and must not be left entirely to strangers."

"I am better by myself, Mattie—fit company only for myself."

"No, the worst of company for that."

"It must not be."

"I can earn my own living; I shall be no burden to you; I have a hope—such a grand hope, sir!—of making this home a different place to you. Why, I can always make the best of it, I think—he thought so, too, before he died."

"Who—my father?" asked Sidney, wondering.

"Yes—he wished that I should come here, and I promised him. Oh! Mr. Sidney, for a little while, before you have become resigned to this great trouble, let me stay!"

He might have read the truth—the whole truth—in that urgent pleading, but he was shut away from light, and sceptical of any love for him abiding anywhere throughout the world.

"If he wished it, Mattie—stay. If your father says not No to this, why, stay until you tire of me, and the utter wretchedness of such a life as mine."

"Why utterly wretched?"

"I don't know—don't ask again."

"Others have been afflicted like you before, sir, and borne their heavy burden well."

"Why do you 'sir' me? That's new."

"I called your father sir,—you take your father's place," said Mattie, hastily.

"A strange reason—I wonder if it's true."

Mattie coloured, but he could not see her blushes, and whether true or false, mattered little to him then. A new suspicion seized him after awhile, when he had thought more deeply of Mattie's presence there.

"If this is a new trick of your father's to preach to me through you, I warn you, Mattie."

"I have told you why I am here."

"No other reason but that promise to my father?"

"Yes, one promise more—to myself. Mr. Hinchford," she said, noticing his sudden start, "I promised my heart, when I was very young—when I was a stray!—that it should never swerve from those who had befriended me. It will not—it beats the faster with the hope of doing service to all who helped me in my wilful girlhood."

"I told a lie, and said you did not steal my brooch!"

"That was not all, but that taught me gratitude. Say a lie, but it was a lie that saved me from the prison—from the new life, worse, a thousand times worse than the first."

"You are a strange girl—you were always strange. I am curious to know how soon you will tire of me, or I shall tire of you and this new freak. When I confess you weary me—you will go?"

"Yes."

"Then stay—and God help you with your charge."

His lip curled again, but it was with an effort. He was no true stoic, and Mattie's earnestness had moved him more than he cared to evince. He was curious to note the effect of Mattie's efforts to make the dull world anything better than it was—he who knew how simple-minded and ingenuous Mattie was, and how little she could fathom his thoughts, or understand them. He had spent a month of horrible isolation, and it had seemed long years to him—years in which he had aged and grown grey perhaps, it was more likely than not. He felt like an old man, with whom the world was a weary resting-place; and he was despondent enough to wish to die, and end the tragedy that had befallen him. He had not believed in any sacrifice for his sake, and Mattie had surprised him by stealing in upon his solitude, and offering her help. He was more surprised to think that he had accepted her services in lieu of turning contemptuously away. It was something new to think of, and it did him good.

The next day life began anew under Mattie's supervision. She was the old Mattie of Great Suffolk Street days—a brisk step and a cheerful voice, an air of bustle and business about her, which it was pleasant to hear in the distance. When the house duties were arranged for the day, Mattie began her needlework in the parlour where Sidney sat; and though Sidney spoke but little, and replied only in monosyllables to her, yet she could see the change was telling upon him, and she felt that there would come a time when he would be his dear old self again. When the day was over, her own troubles began. In her own room, she thought of the father whom she had abandoned—of his loneliness, left behind at his work in that front top room, which had been home to her. She was not sorry that she had left him, for there was an old promise, an old love for Sidney, to buoy her up; but she was very, very sorry that they had parted in anger, and that her father had resented a step in which his Christian charity should have at once encouraged her. By and bye it would all come right; her father would understand her and her motives; by and bye, when Sidney had become reconciled to his lot in life, and there were no more duties to fulfil, she would return home, unasked even, and offer to be again the daughter whom her father had professed to love. For the present, life in Sidney's home, doing her duty by him whom she loved best in the world; she could not let him suffer, and not do her best to work a change in him.

Mattie worked a change—a great one. The instinct that assured her she possessed that power had not deceived her; and Sidney, though he became never again his former self, altered for the better. This change strengthened Mattie in her resolves, and made amends for her father's silence. She had written to Mr. Gray a long letter a few days after she had left his home, explaining her conduct more fully, entering more completely into the details of her former relations to the Hinchfords and the friends she had found in them; trusting that her father would believe that she loved him none the less for the step which she had taken—she who would have been more happy had he consented thereto—and hoping for the better days when she could return and take once more her place beside him. She had also asked in her letter that her box might be sent her, and he had considered that request as the one object of her writing, and responded to it by the transmission of the box and its contents, keeping back all evidence of his own trouble and anger. She had chosen her lot in life, he thought; she had preferred a stranger's home to her own flesh and blood; in the face of the world's opinion she had gone to nurse a man of three and twenty years of age. After all, she had never loved her father; he had come too late in life before her, and it was his fate never to gain affection from those on whose kind feelings he had a claim. He had been unlucky in his loves, and he must think no more of them. His troubles were earthly, and on earthly affections he must not dwell too much—he must teach himself to soar above them all.

He read the Bible more frequently than ever, attended less to his work, and more to his district society and local preaching; by all the means in his power he turned his thoughts away from Mattie. When the thought was too strong for him, he connected her with the wrong that she had done him, and so thought uncharitably of her, as good men have done before and since his time—good people being fallible and liable to err.

Mattie knew nothing of her father's trouble, and judged him as she had seen him last—angry and uncharitable and jealous! That is a bad habit of connecting friends whom we have given up with the stormy scene which cut the friendship adrift; of stereotyping the last impression—generally the false one—and connecting that with him and her for ever afterwards. Think of the virtues that first drew us towards them, and not of the angry frown and the bitter word that set us apart; in the long run we shall find it answered, and have less wherewith to accuse ourselves.

Sidney Hinchford, whom we are forgetting, altered then for the better slowly but surely—even imperceptibly to himself. Still, when Mattie had been a month with him, and he looked back upon the feelings which had beset him before she took her place in his home, the change struck him at last. He could appreciate the kindness and self-denial that had brought her there, gladdened his home, and made his heart lighter. He could take pleasure in speaking with her of the old times, of his father, of his early days in Suffolk Street—in hearing her read to him, in being led into an argument with her, which promoted a healthy excitation of the mind, in walking with her when the days were fine. He was grateful for her services, and touched by them—she was his sister, whom he loved very dearly, and whom to part with would be another trial in store for him some day—and he had thought his trials were at an end long since!

Sidney Hinchford, be it observed here, made but a clumsy blind man; he had little of that concentrativeness of the remaining senses, which make amends for the deprivation of one faculty. He neither heard better, nor was more sensitive to touch—and of this he complained a little peevishly, as though he had been unfairly dealt with.

"I haven't even been served like other blind folk," he said; "your voice startles me at times as though it were strange to me."

On one topic he would never dwell upon—the Wesdens. Mattie, true to the dying wish of the old man, attempted to bring the subject round to Harriet—Harriet, who was true to him yet, she believed—but the subject vexed him, and evinced at once all that new irritability which had been born with his affliction.

"Let the past die—it is a bitter memory, and I dislike it," he would say; "now let us talk of the business which you think of setting me up in, and seeing me off in, before all the money is spent on housekeeping."

Mattie turned to that subject at his request—it was one that pleased and diverted him. He was glad to speak of business; it sounded as if he were not quite dead yet. Mattie and he had spent many an hour in dilating upon the chances of opening a shop with the residue of the money which Sidney had saved before his illness—what shop it should be, and how it should be attended! He had only one reason for delaying the prosecution of the scheme—Mattie had implied more than once that when a shopkeeper was found, she should give up constant attendance upon him, and only call now and then to make sure that he was well, and not being imposed upon.

"To think of turning shopkeeper in my old age!" he said one day, with quite a cheerful laugh at his downfall; "I, Sidney Hinchford, bank clerk, who had hoped to make a great name in the city. Well, it is commerce still, and I shall have a fair claim to respectability, as the wholesalers say, if I don't give short weight, or false measure, Mattie."

"To be sure you will. But why do you not settle your mind to one business? Every day, Mr. Sidney, you think of a new one!"

"You must not blame me for that, Mattie," he replied; "I want to make sure of the most suitable, to find one in which I could take part myself."

"What do you think of the old business in which Mr. Wesden made money?—think of that whilst I am gone."

"Where are you going now?" he asked a little irritably.

"To scold the butcher for yesterday's tough joint," said Mattie.

"Butchers make money, but how the deuce could I chop up a sheep without personal damage?" he said, rambling off to a new idea.

Mattie hurried to the door. The butcher was certainly there; but, crossing the road in the direction of the house, Mattie had seen Harriet Wesden. The butcher was dismissed, and Harriet admitted silently into the passage.

"How long have you been here?" Harriet exclaimed.

"A month now. I promised his father that I would do my best for him left behind in trouble. You—you don't blame me?"

"Blame you!—no. Why should I?"

"My father thought that I was wrong to come here—exceeding my duty to my neighbour, and outraging my duty towards him. But I am not sorry."

"And Sid—how is he now? Why does he bear so much malice in his heart against me, as to refuse me admittance to his house?" she asked.

"He bears no malice, Harriet; but the past is painful to him. Presently he will come round, and judge all things truly. Every day he is less morbid—more resigned."

"I am glad of that."

"After all, everything has turned out for the best, Harriet," said Mattie.

"Prove that," was her quick answer.

Mattie was attempting the difficult task of deciphering the real thoughts of Harriet Wesden;—what she regretted, and what she rejoiced at, now the picture was finished, and all its deep shadowing elaborated.

"For the best that the engagement was ended, Harriet. Think of the affliction that has befallen him, and which would have parted him and you at last."

"Why parted us?—do you think, had it befallen me, that he would have turned away with horror—that he would not have loved me all the better, and striven all the harder to render my trouble less heavy to be borne? Mattie, I knew that this would come upon him years ago, and I did not shrink from my engagement."

"You could never have married him—he is a poor man, and may be poorer yet; it is impossible to say."

"It is all over now, and this is idle talk, Mattie. I have given up all thought of him, as he has given up all thought of me—and perhaps it is for the best," she added.

"We will hope so, Harriet."

"I was always a foolish and vain girl, prone to change my mind, and scarcely knowing what that mind was," she said bitterly. "It is easy enough to forget."

Mattie scarcely understood her. She shook her head in dissent, and would have turned the conversation by asking after her father's health—Harriet's own health, which was not very evident on her pale cheeks just then. Harriet darted away from the subject.

"Well—all well," she said; "and how is Sidney in health, you have not told me that?"

"Better in health. I have said that his mind is more at ease."

"Mattie, though I have given him up for ever, though I know that I am nothing to him now, and deserve to be nothing, let me see him again! I am going into the country with father for a week or two, and should like to see him once more before I go."

"Harriet, you love him still! You are not glad that it is all ended between you!"

"I should have been here in your place—I have a right to be here!" she said, evasively.

"Tell him so."

Mattie had turned pale, but she pointed to the parlour with an imperious hand. Harriet shrank from the boldness of the step, and turned pale also.

"I—I—"

"This is no time for false delicacy between you and him," said Mattie; "he loves you in his heart—he is only saddened by the past belief that you loved Maurice Darcy—if you do not shrink to unite your fate with his, and make his life new and bright again, ask him to be your husband. In his night of life he dare not ask you now."

"I cannot do that," murmured Harriet; "that is beyond my strength."

"You and your father with him in his affliction, taking care of him and rendering him happy! All in your hands, and you shrink back from him!"

"Not from him, but from the bitterness of his reply to me," said Harriet. "Would you dare so much in my place?"

"I—I think so. But then," she added, "I do not understand what true love is—you said so once, if you remember."

Harriet detected something strange and new in Mattie's reply; she looked at Mattie, who was flushed and agitated. For the first time in her life, a vague far-off suspicion seemed to be approaching her.

"I will go in and see him—I will be ruled by what he says to me. Leave me with him, Mattie."

With her own impulsiveness, which had led her right and wrong, she turned the handle of the parlour door, and entered the room, where the old lover, blind and helpless, sat.

CHAPTER III.

THE OLD LOVERS.

Yes, there he was, the old lover! The man whom she had once believed she should marry and make happy—whom she had valued at his just worth when he cast her off as unworthy of the love he had borne her. She had not seen him since that time; he had held himself aloof from her, although he had talked of remaining still her friend, and the change in him was pitiable to witness.

It was the same handsome face, for all its pallor, and deep intensity of thought; the same intellectuality expressed therein, for all the blindness which had come there, and given that strange unearthly look to eyes still clear and bright, and which turned towards her, and startled her with their expression yet. But he was thin and wasted, and his hand, which rested on the table by his side, was an old man's hand, seared by age, and trembling as with palsy.

"What a time you have been, Mattie! Ah! you are growing tired of me at last," he said, with the querulousness characteristic of illness, but before then ever so uncharacteristic of him.

"Miss—Miss Wesden called to ask how you were," said Harriet, in a low voice.

"Indeed!" he said, after a moment's deliberation of that piece of information; "and you answered her, and let her go away, sparing me the pain of replying for myself. That's well and kind of you, Mattie. We are better by ourselves now."

"Yes."

Harriet dropped into a chair by the door, and clasped her hands together; he spoke firmly; he spoke the truth as he thought, and she accepted it for truth, and said no more.

Sidney Hinchford, oblivious of the visitor facing him, and composed in his blindness, detected no difference in the voice. Mattie's voice, we have remarked at an earlier stage of this narrative, closely resembled Harriet's, and acuteness of ear had not been acquired yet by the old lover.

"Mattie, I have been thinking of a new business for us, since you have been gone."

"For us?" gasped Harriet.

"Ah! for us, if I can persuade you to remain my housekeeper, and induce your father to extend his consent. I have no other friend—I look to you, girl—you must not desert me yet!"

"No."

"I fancy the stationery business, with you to help me, Mattie, would be best, after all. You are used to it, and I could sit in the parlour and take stock, and help you with the figures in the accounts. I was always clever at mental arithmetic, and it don't strike me that I shall be quite a dummy. And then when I am used to the place—when I can find the drawers, and know what is in them, I shall be an able custodian of the new home, capable of minding shop while you go to your friends for awhile. Upon my honour, Mattie, I'm quite high-spirited about this—say it's a bargain, girl?"

Harriet answered in the affirmative for Mattie. She had assumed her character and could not escape. She had resolved to go away, and make no sign to him of her propinquity; he cared not for her now; he dismissed her with a passing nod; it was all Mattie—Mattie in whom he believed and trusted, and on whose support in the future he built upon from that day! She knew how the story would end for him and Mattie—a peaceful and happy ending, and what both had already thought of, perhaps—let it be so, she was powerless to act, and it was not her place to interfere. Mattie had deceived her; it was natural—but she saw no longer darkly through the glass; beyond there was the successful rival, whom Sidney Hinchford would marry out of gratitude!

Sidney continued to dilate upon the prospects in life before him. Harriet had risen, and was standing with her hand upon the door, watching her opportunity to escape.

"Who would have dreamed of a man becoming resigned to an utter darkness, Mattie? Who would have thought of me in particular, cut out for a man of action, with no great love for books, or for anything that fastened me down to the domesticities?"

"You are resigned, then?"

"Well—almost."

"I am very glad."

"Why are you standing by the door, Mattie? Why don't you sit down and talk a little of this business of ours?"

"Presently."

"Now—just for a little while. Leave Ann Packet to the lower regions—I'm as talkative to-day as an old woman of sixty. Why, you will not balk me, Mattie?"

"No."

"Read this for me—I have been trying if I can write in the dark—my first attempt at a benighted penmanship."

He held a paper towards her, and Harriet left her post by the door to receive it from his hands.

The writing was large and irregular, but distinct. She shivered as she read the words. The story she had seen so plainly, was more evident than ever.

"Sidney Hinchford," she read, "saved from shipwreck by Mattie Gray!"

"And Mattie Gray here at my side accounts for my resignation," said he, laying his hand upon Harriet's. "Mattie, the old friend—after all, the best and truest!"

Harriet did not reply; she shrank more and more, cowering from him as though he saw her there, the unwelcome guest who had forced herself upon him.

"You are going out," he said, noticing the glove upon the hand he had relinquished now.

"Yes, for a little while."

"Don't be long. Where are you going that I cannot accompany you?"

"On business—I shall be back in an instant."

"Very well," he said, with a half-sigh; "but remember that you have chosen yourself to be my protector, sister, friend, and that I cannot bear you too long away from me. I wish I were more worthy of your notice—that I could return it in some way or fashion not distasteful to you. Sometimes I wish——"

"Say no more!" cried Harriet, with a vehemence that startled him; "I am going away."

The door clanged to and left him alone. She had hurried from the room, shocked at the folly, the mockery of affection which had risen to his lips. Ah! he was a fool still, he thought; he had frightened Mattie by hovering on the verge of that proposal, which he had considered himself bound to make perhaps, out of gratitude for the life of servitude Mattie had chosen for herself. He had been wrong; he had taken a mean advantage, and rendered Mattie's presence there embarrassing; his desire to be grateful had scared her from him, as well it might—he, a blind man, prating of affection! He had been a fool and coward; he would seal his lips from that day forth, and be all that was wished of him—nothing more. Harriet had made her escape into the narrow passage, had contrived to open the street-door, and was preparing to hurry away, when Mattie came towards her.

"Going away without a good-bye, Harriet!"

"I had forgotten," she said coldly.

"What have you said to him?—have you—have you——"

"I have said nothing at which you have reason to feel alarmed," said Harriet; "I have not taken your advice. He thinks and speaks only of you, and I did not break upon his thoughts by any harsh reminiscences."

"You are excited, Harriet; don't go away yet, with that look. What does it mean?"

"Nothing."

"Has he offended you?"

"No."

"Have I?"

"No," was the cold reiteration. "I am not well. I ought not to have intruded here. I see my mistake, and will not come again."

"I hope you will, many, many times. I build upon you assisting me in the good work I have begun here. You and I together, in the future, striving for the old friend, Sidney Hinchford."

"I am going away to-morrow—it is doubtful when I shall return, or what use I shall be to either you or him. You understand him better than I."

"I do not understand you this afternoon," said Mattie, surveying her more intently; "what have I done? Don't you," she added, as a new thought of hers seemed to give a clue to Harriet's, "think it right that I should be here!"

"If you think so, Mattie, it cannot matter what my opinion is."

"Yes—to me."

"You came hither with the hope of befriending him, as a sister might come? On your honour, with no other motive?"

"On my honour, with none other."

"Why deceive him, then?" was the quick rejoinder; "why tell him that your father gave his consent for your stay here, when he was so opposed to it?"

"He thought so from the first, and I did not undeceive him, lest he should send me away. Have you seen my father?"

"He called last night at our house. He is anxious and distressed about you."

"I am sorry."

"He thinks that you have no right to be here—I think you have now."

"Oh! Harriet, you do not think——"

"Hush! say nothing. You are your own mistress, and I am not angry with you. You have been too good a friend of mine, for me to envy any act of kindness towards him I loved once. I don't love him now."

"You said you did."

"A romantic fancy—I have been romantic from a child. It is all passed away now—remember that when he——"

"When he—what?"

"Asks you to be his wife, to become his natural protector; you alone can save him now from desolation—never my task—never now my wish. Good-bye."

She swept away coldly and proudly, leaving the amazed Mattie watching her departure. What did she mean?—what had Sidney said to her that she should go away like that, distrusting her and the motives which had brought her there—she, of all women in the world!

Mattie went back to Sidney's room excited and trembling. Close to his side before she startled him by her voice.

"Mr. Sidney, long ago you were proud of being straightforward in your speech—of telling the plain truth, without prevarication."

"Time has not changed me, I hope, Mattie."

"What have you said to Harriet Wesden?"

"To whom!"

The horror on his face expressed the facts of the case at once, before the next words escaped him.

"It was—Harriet Wesden then!"

"Yes."

"And she came in to see me, and assumed your character, Mattie?" he said; "why did you let her in?"

"I don't know," murmured Mattie; "she was anxious about you, and she had come hither to make inquiries without intruding upon you, until I—I advised her to come."

"For what reason?" he asked in a low tone.

"I thought that you two might become better friends again, and——"

"Ah! no more of that," he interrupted; "that was like my good sister Mattie, striving for everybody's happiness, except her own, perhaps. Mattie, you talk as if I had my sight, and were strong enough to win my way in life yet. You so quick of perception, and with such a knowledge of the world—you!" he reiterated.

"Misfortune will never turn Harriet Wesden away from any one whom she has loved—it would not stand in the way of any true woman. And oh! sir, if I may speak of her once again—just this once—"

"You may not," was his fierce outcry; "Mattie, I ask you not, in mercy to me!"

"Why?" persisted Mattie.

"I don't know—let me be in peace."

It was his old sullenness—his old gloom. Back from the past, into which Mattie's efforts had driven it, stole forth that morbid despondency which had kept him weak and hopeless. The remainder of that day the old enemy was too strong for any effort of Sidney's strange companion, and Mattie felt disheartened by her ill success.

CHAPTER IV.

A NEW DECISION.

Sidney Hinchford rose the next morning in better spirits, and Mattie in worse. Half the night in his own room Sidney had reflected on his vexatious sullenness of the preceding day, and on the effect it most have had on Mattie; half the night, Mattie in her room had pondered on the strangeness of the incidents of the last four-and-twenty hours—on that new demeanour of Harriet Wesden, which implied so much, and yet explained so little.

After all, Mattie thought, was she right in staying there? Had she treated her father well in leaving him without a fair confession of that truth which she had breathed into the ears of a dying man, and scarcely owned till then unto herself? She had not come there with any sinister design of winning, by force as it were, a place in Sidney Hinchford's heart; she had never dreamed for an instant—she did not dream then!—of ever becoming his wife, with a right to take her place at his side and fight his battles for him.

She had been actuated by motives the purest and the best—but who believed her? Had not her father mistrusted her? Had not Harriet, who understood her so well she thought, regarded her as one scheming for herself?—she whose only scheme was to bring two lovers together once more, and see them happy at each other's side. For an instant she had not thought that she was "good enough" for Sidney Hinchford; she who had been an outcast from society, an object of suspicion to the police, a beggar, and a thief! No matter that she had been saved from destruction and was now living an exemplary life, or that misfortune had altered Sidney and rendered him dependent on another's help, he was still the being above her by birth, education, position, and she could but offer him disgrace.

With that conviction impressed upon her, conscious that Sidney had improved and would continue to improve, an object of distrust to her best friends—why not to the neighbours who watched them about the streets and talked about them?—only judged fairly and honourably by him she served, was it right to stop—was there any need for further stay there?

She was thinking of this over breakfast—afterwards in her little business round, during which period another visitor had forced himself into Sidney's presence, without exercising much courtesy in the effort. Ann Packet had opened the street-door, and looked inclined to shut it again, had not the visitor forestalled her—she was never very quick in her movements—by springing on to the mat, and thence with a bound to the parlour door.

"Oh, my goodness! you mustn't go in there. Master left word that you were never to be shown into him again on any pertence."

"Where's Mattie?"

"Gone out for orders," said Ann. "Just step in this room, sir, and wait a bit."

"Young woman, I shall do nothing of the kind. When my daughter comes in, tell her where I am. That's your business; mind it, if you please."

Mr. Gray turned the handle of the door, and walked into the room.

"Good morning, Mr. Hinchford."

Sidney recognized that voice at least—the voice of a man who had worried him to death with his religious opinions—and his face lengthened.

"You here?"

"Yes, I have come again," he answered, drawing a chair close to the table, and confronting Sidney. "I suppose you thought that I had given you up as irreclaimable."

"I had hoped so," was the dry answer.

"Given my daughter up, too."

"No; that wasn't likely."

"Indeed—why not?"

"We don't give up our best friends, those who have won upon our hearts most, in a hurry."

"Do you mean that for me, or is that another side to your confounded obstinacy? Won't you give her up to me, her father?"

"If you wish it. I cannot set myself in opposition to you. The remembrance of a dear father of my own would not lead me, did I possess the power, to stand in opposition to you."

"You—will side with me, then, in telling her that it is not right to stay here?"

"Not right! You thought so once?"

"Not for an instant."

"She is here with your consent?"

"Did she tell you that? Don't please say that my Mattie ever told you that?"

Sidney considered. No, she had not said so, he remembered.

"She came against my will, full of a foolish idea of doing you good, and no power of mine could stop her," said Gray.

"Against your will?"

"I said she did," said Mr. Gray, sharply; "don't you believe me?"

"Yes—I believe you. But this is very singular."

Sidney bit his nails, and reflected on this new discovery. After a few moments he said, "Mr. Gray, I have been forgiving you all the past torture for the sake of your kindness in allowing Mattie to constitute herself my guardian."

"Rubbish!"

"My guardian angel, I might say; for she has saved me from despair, and turned my thoughts away from many deep and bitter things. I was turning against myself, my life, my God, in the very despair of being of use in the world, and she saved me. Do you blame her coming now?"

Mr. Gray took time to consider that question. He bit his nails in his turn, and looked steadily at the young man, who had altered very much for the better.

"I don't find fault with the result—there!" and Mr. Gray looked as though he had made a great concession.

"You would not be a true minister if you did," said Sidney; "and you are not a true father if you don't value the sterling gold in Mattie's character. Pure gold, with no dross in the crucible—not an atom's worth, as I'm a living sinner!"

"We're all living sinners, young man," said he, getting up and beginning to pace the room, as he had paced it, preaching meanwhile, a month ago, and nearly driven Sidney Hinchford out of his mind.

"Do you object to sitting down?" asked Sidney, after bearing with these heavy perambulations for a time.

"Presently; I am going to speak to you in a minute."

"Not in the old fashion, please," said Sidney, quite plaintively; "although I can put up with more now; for Mattie's sake I'll even listen to a sermon, if you'll give me fair warning when you're going to begin, and how long it is likely to last."

"For your soul's sake, as well as Mattie's, you mean, I hope?"

"Anything—anything you like!"

"As careless of heavenly matters as ever, I believe. The task of reformation still unperformed—perhaps left for me, unworthy instrument that I am."

"Exactly."

"Eh?"

"We are all unworthy instruments as well as living sinners, you know," said Sidney, drily.

"And flippant, too—and on such a subject! But we shall change you in good time."

"And this morning, now, you will let me off with a small sermon?"

"I haven't come to sermonize to-day," replied Mr. Gray, severely, "therefore do not give way to any groundless fears of torturing on my part."

"Thank you—thank you!"

"I have come to test your sense of justice—fairness of what is due to me from you, and Mattie."

"Test it, friend."

"Give me back my daughter!"

"Why, that's what Brabantio says in the play; but I'll give you a more gracious answer than he got. If you wish her to return with you—why, she must. I would not stop her," he added, with a sigh, "if it were in my power."

"You will persuade her to return with me."

"Was she happy with you?"

"Until your father died—yes."

"I will tell her," said Sidney; "that there is right on your side—Mattie will see that. There was right on hers, too, for she had made a solemn promise to a dying man, and she knew well enough that I was desolate. I will persuade her even, if you wish it, but——"

"Go on."

"But what harm is she doing here?"

"What harm!" echoed Mr. Gray, with an elevated voice; "why, harm to that good name which she has kept for years. What do you fancy people think of her being in this house?—her a stranger to you by blood, and you so young! Sir, she has risked her character by staying here—and I very much doubt if the world is likely to believe her own version of this extraordinary freak."

"Do you believe it?" asked Sidney.

"Well—I do."

"And I also—that makes two out of a very few for whose good opinion Mattie Gray cares."

"Whilst we are in the world we should care for the world's opinion, Mr. Hinchford."

"I think not, when it's a false one. You, a minister, telling me to study the world!"

"I never said that—how aggravating you are, to be sure!"

"Pardon me," said Sidney, quickly; "a misinterpretation, Mr. Gray. And we must study the world after all—you're right enough. Poor Mattie, what would she think of this hiss of slander in her ears?"

"I warned her of it—and she braved me."

"Ah! a brave girl, whose reward will come in a brighter world than this. Well," he added, sadly, "go she must. I agree with you."

"I am very much obliged to you—I am going to shake hands with you."

Mr. Gray and Sidney Hinchford shook hands. Sidney held the minister's tightly in his grip whilst he uttered the next words.

"You will bring her with you now and then, to hinder me from wholly sinking back," he said; "remember that she is but the one old friend of the past whom I care to know is by my side, and in whom I can trust. Remember what she found me, what she leaves me, and if you are not wholly selfish, you will not always keep her away."

Mr. Gray was touched by this appeal—his old jealousy vanished completely—he was proud in his heart of this young man's interest in Mattie.

"I promise that—until we go away, that is, of course."

"Go away!—whither?"

"Oh! nothing is settled—there was a little talk of appointing me a missionary abroad some time ago—a preacher at a foreign station, where the benighted require stirring words, and the preacher is expected to be continually stirring—preaching, I mean. But it is only talk, perhaps—they may have found a better man," he added, a little tetchily.

"Should you care to leave England?"

"Care, sir!—it is my great ambition to do good—to make amends for the evil of my early life."

"Ah!—yes."

Sidney had become absent in his manner—Mr. Gray, who had become voluble, discoursed at great length on his peculiar principle of doing good, but Sidney heard but little of his argument, and was engrossed by thoughts of the change coming unto him again, and to which he could not offer opposition. Discoursing thus, and thinking thus, when Mattie returned, and stood in the doorway, looking from father to friend.

"Father," she ejaculated at last.

"Don't say that you are sorry to see me, after this long parting!" he exclaimed, as he rose in an excited manner, and went towards her with both hands outstretched.

"Not sorry—no—but very, very glad!"

She held his hands, and leaned forward to kiss him. He caught her to his heart then, and the tears welled into his eyes at this evidence of the past parting having been forgotten and forgiven.

"Mattie," he said, "I have been thinking of all this again—over and over again, patiently, and not in anger—and I still think that it is wrong to stay here."

"And he—what does he think?" looking towards Sidney.

Sidney answered for himself.

"That, perhaps, we are both too young—blind though I am, and pure as you are, Mattie—to keep house together after this fashion. For your sake, I will ask you to go back with your father. I have been wrong and selfish."

"I said that I would go when you wished it, Mr. Sidney."

"I wish it, then!"

"Very well."

"Go—to return again very frequently with your father, and see that I am well, and likely to do well. Mattie, for ever after this understand that I cannot do utterly without you. Wrong and selfish also in that wish, perhaps, but I am sure of you forgiving me!"

"Yes—yes," she said, hurriedly. "It is strange that we three should all have been thinking of going away to-day—and perhaps," with a blush, "it was scarcely right to come. But," evincing here her old rebellious spirit, with a suddenness that made her father and Sidney leap again, "if he were the same man I found here first, I would have stopped—mark that!"

"Yes, but he isn't, my dear!" said Mr. Gray, cowed into submission, and afraid of Mattie talking herself into a change of mind; "so it's all happened for the best, and we are all thankful, and—all friends!"

"I will be ready when you wish, then."

"I have ordered a cab to come round at twelve. You see I was sure that you would not turn against me ever again."

"I never turned against you—don't think that."

Mattie went out of the room—was a long while gone—returned with her eyes red and swollen, as though she had been weeping. The cab at the same time rattled up to the door, and Ann Packet—with red and swollen eyes also, if she could have been seen just then—was heard struggling down-stairs with Mattie's box, which she had not allowed Mattie to touch.

"Go and talk to Mr. Sidney again, gal. You mayn't have another chance," she had said, and Mattie had started and glared at her as at a phantom. Surely it was time for her to go, when this faithful but dull-witted woman saw through the veil which she believed had hidden her true heart from every one on earth. But that must be fancy, she thought, and she went back to the room to bid Sidney good-bye, and to check the thanks with which he would have overwhelmed her.

"No thanks, sir—only my duty to one whose last thoughts were of your happiness, and how it was best to promote it. He had faith in me, and I have endeavoured to deserve it, as though he had been watching every action of my own from heaven. Good-bye, Mr. Sidney."

"Good-bye—best of friends. You will not desert me wholly?—your father is on my side now."

"Yes. I shall look in upon you very often, I hope—and you must keep strong, and make up your mind about that business—and—and not think yourself into that low estate ever again. Now I am ready to go."

Mattie and her father left the house the former had brightened by her presence. In the cab she struggled for awhile with her forced composure, and then burst forth into irrepressible tears.

"Patience, Mattie. I see the end to this. All's well."

"You see the end to this? No, you cannot!"

"Oh! yes—I can."

Mr. Gray uttered not a syllable more during the remainder of the journey; and Mattie, ashamed of her tears, dried her eyes, and asked no further questions.

CHAPTER V.

ANN PACKET EXPRESSES AN OPINION.

Sidney Hinchford knew that he should miss Mattie, and accordingly made up his mind, as he thought, to the loss. But there is no making up one's mind entirely to the absence of those we love, and upon whom we have been dependent, and Sidney found himself no exception to the rule.

In great things he had expected to miss her, but in the thousand minor ones, wherein she had reigned dominant without his knowledge, he made no calculation for, and a hundred times a day they suggested the absence of the ruling genius. The house assumed an unnatural and depressing stillness; he felt wholly shut from the world again—no one to whom he could speak, or who, in reply, could assure him that his lot was not worse than other people's, and that there lay before him many methods for its amelioration.

He became more dull and thoughtful; but he did not sink back to his past estate—that was a promise which he had made Mattie, before she went away. When she came again—he prayed it might be soon—she should not find him the despondent, morbid being, from which her efforts had transformed him. He tried to think the time away by dwelling upon that business in which he intended to embark; but there came the grave perplexity of the general management—and whom to trust, now Mattie had returned to her father's home! Meanwhile, he was wasting money by inaction, and he had always known the value of money, and money's fugitive properties, if not carefully studied.

We say that he tried to think of his new business life, for other thoughts would force their way to the front, and take pre-eminence. He could not keep the past ever in the background; before him would flit, despite his efforts to escape it, the figure of his lost love, to whom he had looked forward once as his solace in his blindness. Blindness, with her at his side, had not appeared a life to be deplored, and it was ever pleasant to picture what might have been, had the ties between them never been sundered by his will. For he loved her still—the stern interdict upon her name was even a part of his affection; and there were times when he did not care to shut her from his mind—on the contrary, loved to think of her as he had known her once. In these latter days, he thought of both Harriet and Mattie—drew, as was natural to one in his condition, the comparison between them—saw which was the truer, firmer, better character, but loved the weaker for all that! That Harriet had not loved him truly and firmly, did not matter; he had given her up for his pride's sake, even for her own sake, but he loved her none the less. She would have been unhappy with him after a while—she could not have endured the place of nurse and comforter—she, who was made for the brightness of life, and to be comforted herself when that brightness was shut from her; she was not like Mattie, a woman of rare character and energy.

Mattie troubled him. She had awakened his gratitude; the last day her father had aroused in him his fears that she had rendered herself open to the suspicions of the world by her efforts in his service—he had not thought of that before! Mattie's character was worth studying—it was so far apart from the common run of womankind—she had treasured every past action that stood as evidence of kindness to her, and made return for it a thousandfold. Who would have dreamed of all this years ago, when he tracked her with the police to the Kent Street lodging-house, and was moved to pity by her earnest eyes? Hers had been a strange life; his had been exceptional—his had ended in blank monotony, that nothing could change—what was in store for her? He thought of the mistake that he had committed on the day that Harriet had personated her unwillingly, and blushed for the error of the act. He had been moved too much by gratitude, and had almost offered his blank life to Mattie, as he thought; Mattie who would have shrunk from him like the rest, had she believed that he had had such thoughts of her. His blindness had affected his mind; he had grown heedless, foolish, wilful. Then his thoughts revolved to Harriet Wesden again—to the girl who had not lost her interest in him with her love, but had stolen to his solitary house, to ask about him, and to note the change in him. She had been always a generous-hearted girl—moved at any trouble, and anxious to take her part in its alleviation—there was nothing remarkable in it. He was still the old friend and playfellow, after all, and in the future days, when their engagement lay further back from the present, he should be glad to hear her voice of sympathy again.

These thoughts, or thoughts akin to these, travelled in a circle round the blind man's brain, hour after hour, day after day. Thoughts of business, Mattie, Harriet Wesden—varied occasionally by the reminiscences of the dead father, and the relations who had sought him out, whom he had sought, and then turned away from.

Mattie and her father came to see him three days after their formal withdrawal from his home; that was a fair evening, which changed the aspect of things, and which he remembered kindly afterwards, notwithstanding a prayer of some duration, that Mr. Gray contrived to introduce. Something new to think of was always Sidney Hinchford's craving, and the day that followed any fresh incidents bore less heavily upon him, as he rehearsed those incidents in his mind.

Still they had said nothing of the business; they had been more anxious to know how he had spent his time since their departure, and whether Mattie's absence had made much difference to him. Sidney spoke the truth, and Mattie was pleased at the confession. It was an evidence of the good she had done by resisting her father's will, and she was woman enough not to be sorry for the result.

That evening, Ann Packet, bringing in the supper to her master, was startled by the question which he put to her.

"How is Mattie looking, Ann?"

"Looking, sir!"

"Has all this watching, studying my eccentricities, affected her?"

"She's a little pale mayhap—but she has allus been pale since her last illness."

"I never gave a thought as to the effect which the constant study of a monomaniac might produce upon her," he said half abruptly; "but she's quit of me now, and will improve."

"Oh! she was well enough here—like a bird chirping about the house—Mattie likes something to do for some one. An extrornary girl, Master Sidney, as was ever sent to be a blessing unto all she took to."

"Yes—an extraordinary girl. Sit down."

"No—it isn't for the likes of me to do that here, sir."

"Sit down, and tell me what you think of her. We don't study appearances in trouble—and a blind man loves the sound of a woman's voice."

"Then you have altered werry much, sir."

"Yes—thanks to Mattie again."

"And to think that she was a little ragged gal about the streets, sir. Many and many a time have I crept to the door after shop was shut, and given her the odd pieces I could find, and she was allus grateful for 'em."

"Always grateful—who can doubt that?"

"She was waiting for the pieces when you came home and lost that brooch—poor ignorant thing, then, sir!"

"Through you then, Ann, we first knew Mattie Gray. Strangely things come round!"

"Ah! you don't know half her goodness, sir—she's just as kind to anybody who wants kindness—just."

"Yes, it is like her!"

"It's a pity her father isn't less of a fidget—she ought to have had a better un than that, or have never lighted on him, I think."

"Is she not happy with him, then?"

"She may be, she mayn't—but he is a fidget, and Mattie ought to have some one to take care of her now, and make her happy—like."

"A husband, you mean?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Sit down, Ann. Perhaps you know of some one who is likely to take care of Mattie in the way you think?"

"I don't know."

"Some one who calls and sees her, and in whom she is interested?"

"Oh! no—no one calls to see her," said Ann, "her father's jealous of her liking anybody save himself. I saw that long ago."

"I should like to see—ah, ha! to see!" he cried—"Mattie happy. She deserves it."

"Those who think so little of theirselves seldom find happiness though—do they, sir?"

Sidney started at the axiom—it was deeper than Ann Packet's general run of observations.

"There are so few of those good folk in the world, Ann."

"Mattie's one."

"Yes—Mattie's one!" he repeated.

"I've often wondered and a-wondered what would make her happy; do you know, sir, sometimes I think that—that you might, if you'll excuse an ignorant woman saying so."

"That I might!—what has made you think that? Sit down—why don't you sit down!"

"Well, just to talk this over, and for my darling's sake, I will for once demean myself;" and Ann Packet, red in the face with excitement, seated herself on the verge of the horsehair chair.

Ann Packet had broken through the ice at last; it had been a trouble of long duration; she who knew Mattie's secret, guessed where Mattie's chance of happiness rested, she thought. But it is delicate work to strive for the happiness of other people, and leads to woful failures, as a rule.

Ann Packet was nervous; the plunge had been made, and the truth must escape—she dashed into the subject, for "her gal's sake."

"Lookee here, sir—it's no good my keeping back my 'pinion, that our Mattie is really fond of you! When she was a girl in Suffolk Street, and you a bit of a boy, she used to worry me about you, and yet I never guessed it! When she growed bigger and you growed bigger, she showed her liking less, but it peeped out at times unbeknown to herself, and yet I never guessed it! But when she was ill in Tenchester Street, and I left here to nus her, the truth came on me all of a heap, and mazed me drefful!"

"What made you think of this—this nonsense, then?" he asked.

"She spoke about you in her fever, when her head was gone," said Ann; "of how your happiness hadn't come, and yet she'd worked so hard for it. And somehow I guessed it then—and when she came here, and was, for the fust time, happy in her way—I knowed it!"

"Folly! folly!" murmured Sidney.

"And they who says that she had no right to come here, don't know the rights of things—she liked you best of all, sir, and she comes here, duty bound, to do her best. If they says a word aginst her in MY hearing for her coming here, let 'em look out, that's all!"

Sidney sat, with his fingers interlaced, thoughtful and grave.

"You may go now, Ann—I'm sorry that you have put this into my head. It can't be true."

"True or not, just ask her some day when you feel that you can't do without her help, and see who's wrong of us two. And you'll have to ask her, mind that!"

Ann rose and bustled towards the door. At the door a new form of argument suggested itself, and she came back again.

"You're blind enough not to care for good looks so much now—if you can get a good heart think yourself lucky, sir. You've just the chance of making one woman happy in your life, and in finding your life very different to what it is now, with a blundering gal like me to worry you. She won't think any the wus of you for being blind and helpless—she's much too good for you!"

"Well, that's true enough, Ann."

"I don't say that I'm saying this for your sake, young man," said Ann Packet in quite a maternal manner, "for you're no great catch to anybody, and will be a sight of trouble. But I do think that Mattie took a fancy to you ever so long ago, and that it didn't die away like other people's because you came to grief. And if my opinion has discumfrumpled you more than I expected, why, you asked for it, and I haven't many words to pick and choose from, when I've made up my mind to speak. And I'm not sorry now that I've spoke it any-ways."

"I fear Mattie would not thank you, Ann."

"Mattie never knowed what was good for herself so well as for t'other people—I looks after her good like her mother—I don't know that any one else would. And though I'm your servant, I'm her friend—and so I asks you, if you've any intentions, to speak out like a gentleman!"

Still suffering from nervous excitement, Ann Packet closed the door, and ran down-stairs to indulge in an hysterical kind of croaking, with her head in the dresser-drawer. It had been a great effort, but Ann had succeeded in it. Her young master knew the whole truth now, and there was no excuse for him. He must give up Mattie or marry her, she thought—either way her girl would not be "worrited" out of her life any longer!

Meanwhile the young master left his supper untouched, and dwelt upon the revelation. Something new to think of!—something to stir afresh the sluggish current of his life.

Was it true?—was it likely?—was it to be helped, if true or likely? Could it be possible that it lay in his power to promote the happiness of any living being still? Could he make happy, above all, the girl whom he had known so long, and who had served him so faithfully? He did not think of himself, or ask if it were possible to love her; possibly for the first time in his life, he was wholly unselfish, and thought only of a return for all the sacrifices she had made. He could remember now that hers had been a life of abnegation—that she had risked her good name once for Harriet Wesden—once, and in the latter days, for himself. All this simply Mattie's gratitude for the kindness extended in the old days—nothing more. It was not likely that that ignorant woman below could know all that had been unfathomable to brighter, keener intellects.

But if true, what better act on his part than to gladden her heart, and add to the content of his own? He began a new existence with his loss of sight—the old world vanished away completely, and left him but one friend from it—let him not lose that one by his perversity or pride. Still, let him do nothing hastily and shame both him and her. He would wait!

CHAPTER VI.

MR. GRAY'S SCHEME.

Mr. Gray and his daughter Mattie re-commenced housekeeping together on a different principle. Mattie's flitting had impressed Mr. Gray with the consciousness of his daughter possessing a will a trifle more inflexible than his own, and he respected her opinions in consequence. He treated her less like a child, and more like a woman whose remarks were worth listening to. In plain truth, he had become a little afraid of Mattie. He had learned to love her, and was afraid of losing her. Her stern determination to keep her promise—even part with him, rather than break it—had won his respect; for he was a firm man himself, and in his heart admired firmness in others.

Father and daughter settled down to home-matters, and worked together in many things; if the daughter had one secret from her father, it was the woman's natural aversion to confess to an attachment not likely to be returned, and was scarcely a secret, considering that Mr. Gray had more than an inkling of the truth.

The father did not care to solve the problem that was so easy of solution; he objected to showing any interest in such trivial mundane matters as love-making. He had a soul himself above love-making; which he considered vain, frivolous, and worldly, leading the thoughts astray from things divine. He saw Mattie's perplexity, and even hoped in the good time to alter it, if separation did not have its proper effect. "Presently—we shall see," was Mr. Gray's motto; and though he had spoken hopefully to Mattie, as Mattie had fancied, yet when they were at home again—two prosaic home figures—he kept the subject in the background.

Still he was watchful, and when Mattie began to alter, to become more grave and downcast, as though his home was not exactly the place where she experienced happiness—when she brightened up at any suggestion to visit Sidney Hinchford, he thought less of his own comfort, and more of his daughter's, like a good father as he was, after all.

One afternoon, without apprising that daughter of his intentions, he walked over to Camberwell, to see Sidney Hinchford. That young gentleman had ventured forth into the street, and therefore Mr. Gray had leisure to put things in order during his absence; arrange the mantel-piece, and wheel the table into the exact centre of the room. Anything out of order always put him in an ill temper, and he wanted to discuss business matters in an equable way, and with as little to disturb him as possible. If anything besides business leaked forth in the course of conversation, he should not be sorry; but he would take no mean advantage of Sidney Hinchford's position. He had a scheme to propose, which might be accepted or declined—what that scheme might end in, he would not say just then. It might end in his daughter marrying Sidney, or it might only tend to that singular young man's comfort and peace of mind—at all events, harm could not evolve from it, and possibly some personal advantage to himself, though he considered that that need not be taken into account.

Sidney Hinchford returned, and his face lit up at the brisk "Good afternoon" of Mr. Gray. He turned a little aside from him, as if expecting a smaller, softer hand in his, a voice more musical, asking if he were well, and then his face lost a great deal of its brightness with his disappointment.

"Alone?" he said.

"This time, Mattie is very busy—has a large dress-making order to fulfil."

"She'll kill herself with that needlework," he remarked; "it is a miserable profession, at the best."

"You're quite right, Mr. Sidney. And talking about professions, have you thought of yours lately?"

"Oh! I have thought of a hundred things. I must invest my capital—such as it is—in something."

"Will you listen patiently to a little plan of mine? I am of the world, worldly to-day, God forgive me!" he ejaculated, piously.

"What plan is that? Let us sit down and talk it over."

The local preacher, lithographer, &c., sat down facing Sidney, on whose face was visible an expression of keen interest. In matters of religion, Mr. Gray was long and prosy; in matters of business, quick and terse, a man after Sidney's own heart. Two "straightforward" men like them got through a deal of business in a little time.

"How much money have you at command?"

"A hundred pounds, perhaps."

"So have I."

"What's that to do with it?"

"A great deal, if you like my scheme—nothing, if you don't."

"Go on."

"A hundred pounds might start a business, but it's a risk—two hundred is better. How does Gray and Hinchford sound, now?"

"A partnership?"

"Why not? You're not fit to manage a business by yourself—I'm inclined to think the two of us might make a success of it—the three of us, if Mattie has to assist. I don't see why we should go on like this any longer—you can't stand at this rent—one house may as well hold all of us—why not?"

"You are very kind. I shall be a great trouble to you."

"I hope not. If you are—I like trouble. I shall make a bright light of you in good time!"

Sidney thought of the sermons in store for him, but hazarded no comment. Beyond them, and before all, was the preacher's daughter—the woman who understood him, and who had even rendered blindness endurable.

"You were speaking a short while since of going abroad. Have you changed your mind?"

"They changed theirs at the chapel. Bless you! they thought they could pitch upon a man so much more suitable! You hear that—so much more suitable!"

"Ah!—a good joke."

"I don't see where the joke lies," he said quickly.

"I beg pardon. No, not exactly a joke—was it?"

"I should say not."

"Well—and this business—what is it to be?"

"I fancy the old idea of a bookseller and stationer's. I can bring a little connection from our chapel together—and there's your friends at the bank."

"No—don't build on them—I have done with them."

"Ah! I had forgotten. But we must not bear enmity in our hearts against our fellow-men."

"True—and this business—where is it to be?"

"We'll look out, Mattie and I, at once."

"Nothing settled yet, then?" said Sidney, with a sigh, who was anxious to be stirring in life once more.

"Nothing yet, of course. I did not know whether you would approve of the scheme. Whether Mattie and I would be exactly fitting company for you."

"Is that satire?"

"My dear sir, I never said a satirical thing in my life."

"The best of company, then—for you and Mattie are the only friends left me, save that honest girl down-stairs."

"Ah! Ann Packet—we must not forget her, or we shall have Mattie scolding us."

"I asked if it were satire, because you are doing me a great service, and saving me from much anxiety. I have been thinking lately that it would be better for me to find my way into some asylum or other, and settle down there apart from the busy world without. You come forward to save me from the streets I have been fearing."

"As Mattie was saved," said Mr. Gray, solemnly; "remember that!"

Mr. Gray shortly afterwards took his leave. The same night he communicated the details of his scheme to his daughter; he could easily read in her face that it was a plan that had her full concurrence. Sidney at home again—Sidney to take care of, and screen from all those ills to which his position was liable!

In a short while a shop in the suburbs of London—not a great distance from Peckham Rye—was found to let. It stood in a new neighbourhood, with houses rising round it at every turn. A building mania had set in that direction, and a populous district was springing up there.

"I have always heard that to pitch one's camp in a new neighbourhood, if one has the patience to wait, will always succeed. We three have patience, and I think we'll try it."

This was said to Mattie, after she and her father had inspected the premises, and were walking by cross roads towards Camberwell, to gladden Sidney with the latest news.

"We'll try it—we'll begin home there, father."

"Home in earnest—eh?"

Mattie did not notice the meaning in his tones; she was full of other thoughts.

"It must be a home, that you and I will try to render happy for him—for his own sake—for his dead father's," she said.

"To be sure. And if he be not happy then, it will not be our fault."

"I hope not!"

"Hope not," said her father; "do you think we may fail in the attempt?"

"If we be not careful. We must remember that he is weak and requires support—that he is blind, and cannot escape us if we weary him too much."

"Oh! I see—I see," he said, a little aggrieved; "you are afraid that I shall tire him with the Word of God. Mattie, he's not exactly a Christian man yet, and I should certainly like to make him one. There will be plenty of time for preaching the truth unto him."

"And for leaving it alone."

"Bless my soul!" he ejaculated, as though Mattie had fired a pistol in his ear.

"You will believe that I understand him best, and I think that it will not do to attack him too often with our creed. His first disappointment is over—he is teaching himself resignation—he will come round to a great extent without our help—with our help, judiciously applied, he will come round altogether."

"You think a man may be told too often of the error of his ways?"

"Yes."

"Then we shall never agree upon that point."

And they never did. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Gray remembered Mattie's hint, and often curbed a rising attempt to preach to Sidney. When his rigour carried him to preaching point, Sidney listened patiently; when Sidney knew that Mr. Gray's energy was real, and that not one atom of hypocrisy actuated his motives, he respected the preacher, and paid attention to him.

He altered rapidly for the better; he became again almost the Sidney Hinchford of old times—the smile returned more frequently, the brightness of his face was something new; it was pleasant to think that he was not isolated from the world, and that there were friends in it yet to care for him.

He went to church every Sunday in lieu of chapel, somewhat to Mr. Gray's dissatisfaction. He had gone in old days twice every Sunday with his father, and he preferred adopting the old habits to frequenting the chapel whither Mr. Gray desired to conduct him. Sometimes Mattie accompanied him; more often, when he knew his ground, he went by himself, leaving Mattie to her father's escort.

Meanwhile business slowly but surely increased; the connection extended—all went well with these three watchers—each watching for a different purpose, with an equal degree of earnestness.

END OF THE SIXTH BOOK.

BOOK VII.

SIDNEY'S GRATITUDE.

CHAPTER I.

MAURICE HINCHFORD IN SEARCH OF HIS COUSIN.

Nearly a year had passed away since the firm of Hinchford and Gray started in business and astonished the suburbs. In search of that rising firm, a young man, fresh from foreign travel, was wandering in the outskirts of Peckham one February night. A man who had crossed deserts, climbed mountains, and threaded mountain passes with comparative ease, but who was quickly lost in the brick and mortar wilderness into which he had ventured.

This man, we may say at once, was Maurice Hinchford, a man who had seen life and spent a fortune in an attempt to enjoy it. A Sybarite, who had wandered from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom, until even novelty had palled upon him, and he had returned back to his father and his father's business. During this long holiday he had thought much of his cousin Sidney, the man to whom he had taken no passing fancy, and whose life he had helped to blight—whom, by way of atonement, he had once wished to advance in the world.

Sidney Hinchford had been constantly before him during his pilgrimage; before him that indignant figure which had repelled all excuse, on the night he reached his one and thirtieth year; he could see it hastening away in the night shadows from the house to which it had been unsuspiciously lured.

On his return, not before, for he had wandered from place to place, and many letters had miscarried—amongst them the missive which had told him of his uncle's death and cousin's blindness—he heard of the calamity which had befallen Sidney in his absence.

He had been ever a feeling man, and forgetting the past rebuff he had received—thinking, perhaps, that his cousin was in distress, he started at once in search of him. To do Maurice Hinchford justice, it was on the very day on which he had reached London, and before he had seen his mother and sisters. No assurance of his father that Sidney was in good hands contented him; he must judge for himself. He had the Hinchford impetus to proceed at once straightforwardly to work; he was a man who was sorry for the harm he had done in his life—one of those comfortable souls, who are always sorry afterwards!—a loose liver, with a conscience that would not keep quiet and let events flow on smoothly by him. He had sobered down during his travels, too; he had met with many acquaintances, but no friends—in all his life he had not found one true friend who would have stood by him in adversity, and shared his troubles, even his purse, with him.

Fortunately Maurice Hinchford had not known adversity, and had shared his purse with others instead. A rich man, an extravagant one, but a man of observation, who knew tinsel from pure gold, and sighed very often when he found himself compelled, perforce, to put up with the tinsel. Life such as his had wearied him of late; men of his own class had sworn eternal amity, and then laughed at him when his back was turned; men of a grade inferior had toadied him, cringed to him, sponged upon him; women had flattered him for his wealth's sake, not loved him for his own—all had acknowledged him one of those good fellows, of which society is always proud; but for himself nobody cared save his own flesh and blood—he could read that fact well enough, and its constant reiteration on the faces of "his set" annoyed him more than he could have believed.

This favourite of fortune, then, annoyed with society's behaviour, had started forth in search of Sidney an hour after the news was learned from his father's lips. He had a great deal to say to Sidney; he had not entered into any explanations in that letter which Sidney had coolly responded to—he could say more viva voce; and now the storm was more than a year old, his cousin would surely put up with more, and listen to him.

But firstly, Maurice Hinchford had to find his cousin; and having wandered from the right track, it became a matter of some difficulty. He had strayed into a "new neighbourhood"—a place always famous for its intricacies—and he floundered about new streets, and half-finished streets, asking manifold questions of the aborigines, and receiving manifold directions, which he followed implicitly, and got lost anew in consequence.

The stragglers were few and far between, and Maurice waited patiently for the next arrival—standing under a lamp-post at the corner of a street. He had given up all hope in his own resources, and had resolved to enlist the next nondescript in his service, be his terms whatever his rapacity dictated. But the next nondescript was a woman, and he was baffled again. A young woman in a great hurry, to whom he could not offer money, and whose progress he scarcely liked to arrest, until the horror of another vigil under that melancholy gas-lamp overcame his reluctance to intrude.

"I beg pardon," he said, hastily; "I am looking for Park Place. Will you oblige me, Miss, by indicating in which direction it may lie now?"

"As straight as you can go, sir."

"Ah! but, confound it, I can't go straight. Not that I'm intoxicated," he said quickly, seeing his auditor recoil, and make preparations for a hasty retreat, "but these streets are incomprehensibly tortuous."

The listener seemed to look very intently towards him for an instant. The voice appeared to strike her.

"Whom do you want in Park Place?" was the quick answer.

"A Mr. Hinchford, of the business of Gray and Hinchford."

"You are his cousin Maurice?"

"By George!—yes. How did you know that?"

"I guessed it—that's all."

"You are a shrewd guesser, Miss," he said. "Yes, I am his cousin Maurice, and you are——"

"Mattie Gray, his partner's daughter."

"Oh! indeed!"

"I have seen you once before—you brought your father, some years ago, to a stationer's shop in Great Suffolk Street."

"Right—a retentive memory."

"I seldom forget faces—it is not likely that I should have forgotten yours."

"Why not?"

"I have heard so much of you since then," was the answer, cold and cutting as the east wind that was swooping down the street that night.

"Oh! have you?"

Maurice walked on by her side; after a few moments Mattie said to him,

"What do you want with Sidney?"

"Many things. I am anxious to see him—very anxious."

"Your presence can but give him pain—why expose him to needless suffering by this intrusion?"

"I have a hope that it will not be considered an intrusion, Miss Gray," said Maurice, stiffly.

"I can see no reason why you should hope that."

"I am his relation—his——"

"Sir, I know what you are," said Mattie, sharply; "I know all your history, and all the harm you have done to him, and Harriet Wesden, and me."

"And you!—and you, Miss!" he repeated harshly.

"An evil action spreads evil in its turn, and there is no knowing where it may end, Mr. Hinchford," said Mattie; "yours affected my character."

"I don't see that—how was that possible?"

"Whilst you were playing your villain's trick on Harriet Wesden, I was searching the streets for her. I kept her secret after her return, and, therefore, could not give my employer a fitting reason for my absence from the business left in trust to me. I was discharged."

"I am very sorry," said Maurice, energetically; "upon my soul, I had no idea of all the harm my folly—my villainy, if you will—had caused till now! Miss Gray, you don't know how sorry I am!"

"I don't care."

"Is that merciful or womanly?"

"Perhaps not. But I will believe that you are sorry, if you will not accompany me further."

"Miss Gray, I must come. More than ever, I am resolved to see him to-night."

"Very well."

They went on together, both walking at a brisk pace, Maurice a little discomfited, and with his head bent down and his hands behind him.

"May I ask," he said after some moments' silence, "if he be well?"

"He is well."

"Blind still?"

"Yes."

"May I ask you, as his friend, let me say, if his means be adequate to his support?"

"Ah! you have come to ask him that—to see that for yourself?"

"Not exactly—it is one of many reasons."

"Keep that from him, then," cried Mattie; "spare him that humiliation."

"Why humiliation, Miss?"

"It is humiliation, it is an insult, to offer help to the man whose life you have embittered. You that have known Sidney, worked with him in your office, professed to be his friend, should have fathomed that part of his character, at least, which is based upon his pride. Sir, I doubt if he esteem you very much, but he will certainly hate you if you talk of money."

"Then I'll not talk of it."

"And you'll not go back?"

"I never go back," said Maurice; "I'm a Hinchford."

"All the Hinchfords whom I have known have been honest, earnest men, striving to do good, and detesting cunning and disguise. I hope that you are the first that has disgraced the name."

"I hope so. Phew! how hot it is!"

Maurice Hinchford felt exceedingly uncomfortable under these continued attacks; still there was a novelty in all this dispraise and plain-speaking. A brusque young woman this, whose character interested him, and whose warmth in his cousin's service he respected, despite the darts with which she transfixed him.

He did not flinch from the purpose he had formed, however. He was anxious to see his cousin, to receive the attack in full, and defend himself; to prove to Sidney, if it were possible, that he was not quite the unprincipled villain that was generally supposed. So he kept on his way, and this first little dash of the waters of opposition against him did not affect him much. Mattie's energetic advice puzzled him, certainly; she spoke warmly in Sidney's cause—as if she were interested in him, and had a right to take his part—was there any reason for that brisk attack upon him, save her own outraged dignity at the slander which, by his means, had indirectly fallen upon her? He kept pace with her, but did not speak again. She was not inclined to reply with any "graciousness" to his questions; he saw that he had annoyed her already by the object of his mission, and that it was the better policy, the truer act of courtesy, to maintain a rigid silence.

Mattie spoke first.

"This is the house," she said, stopping before a shop already closed for the night. "You are still of the same mind?"

"Yes."

"You cannot do good here—you may do harm."

"Your pardon, but I am of a different opinion."

"Very well then."

Mattie gave a little impetuous tug to the bell; Ann Packet opened the door, and Mattie and her unwilling escort passed into the shop, the latter the object of immense attraction from the round-eyed, open-mouthed serving-maid. Events flowed on so regularly and monotonously in that quarter of the world, that the advent of a tall, well-dressed stranger, was a thing to be remarked, and, Ann Packet hoped, to be explained.

Mattie ran at once into the parlour, where her father was sitting over his work. He looked up with a bright smile as she entered.

"Where's Sidney, father?"

"In his own room."

"Here is his cousin. Sidney must be prepared to see him, or to deny himself to him."

"What cousin is that?" Mr. Gray asked, a little irrelevantly, being taken aback by the news.

Mattie explained, and ran up-stairs. Mr. Gray pushed aside the stone upon which he had been writing, turned up his coat-cuffs, and buttoned his black coat to the chin. He knew the story in which that cousin had played his part perfectly well; had he forgotten it, his remembrance of old faces would not have betrayed him in this instance. Here was the man to whom he had administered a fugitive lecture in the dead of night at Ashford railway station, once more before him; here was a chance of touching the heart of a most incorrigible sinner—a sinner worthy of his powers of conversion. He would tackle him at once; he would warn him of the errors of his ways, and of the infallible results of them, if he did not listen to the warning voice. He was just in the mood for delivering a sermon, and there was no time like the present. Now for it!

Mr. Gray turned the handle of the parlour door and skipped into the shop.

CHAPTER II.

MAURICE RECEIVES PLENTY OF ADVICE.

Maurice Hinchford had been told by Mattie to wait in the shop until she returned; and, obedient to her mandate, he had taken his seat on a very tall, uncomfortable stool, on which he could have remained perched more at his ease had a balance-pole been provided. Here he had remained, looking round the shop, and taking stock of its manifold contents—glancing askance now and then at Ann Packet, whose curiosity was not entirely satiated until Mr. Gray intruded on the scene.

At the first click of the door-handle, Maurice looked round expecting to see his cousin, but was disappointed by the presence of a small and agile man in black, who leaped on to a second chair beside him, and commenced nodding his head vigorously.

"Good evening, sir," said Maurice. "Mr. Gray, I presume?"

"We have met before, sir—my name is Gray."

"Really!—I do not remember——"

"Possibly not, sir; there are many unpleasant reminiscences we are always glad to escape from," said Mr. Gray. "I am connected with one. You and I met on the platform of the Ashford railway station, one winter's night, when Miss Wesden claimed my protection from a snare that had been laid for her."

"Oh!"

Maurice had dropped into a hornet's nest. Whom next was he to confront before his cousin Sidney came upon the scene?—from whom else was he to hear a sharp criticism on those actions of the past, which no one regretted more than he. Luck was against him that night.

"You remember me?" said Mr. Gray. "Before the train departed I gave you a little counsel for your future course in life—a warning as to whither a persistence in your evil habits would lead you—you remember?"

"Oh! yes—I remember."

"Have you taken that warning to heart?—I fear not. Have you been any wiser, better, or more honest from that day?—I fear not. Have you not rather proceeded on your evil course, despising the preaching of good men, the warning of God's word, and gone on, on—down, down, without a thought of the day when all your actions in this life would have to be accounted for?"

Bang came Mr. Gray's hard hand on the counter, startling Maurice Hinchford's nerves somewhat, and causing innumerable articles in the glass cases thereon to jump spasmodically with the shock.

"I—" began Maurice.

"Don't interrupt me, sir—I will not be interrupted!—you have come hither of your own free will, seeking us out, and fearing not the evidence of our displeasure, and now, sir, you must hear what is wrong in your acts, and what will be good for your soul. Do you know, oh! sinner, that that soul is in deadly peril?"

"I know—"

"Sir, I will not be interrupted!" cried Mr. Gray again; "I am not accustomed to be interrupted when I am endeavouring to awaken a hardened conscience to a sense of its condition, and I will not be now. And I call upon you at this time—now is the accepted time, sir, now is the day of salvation—to amend, amend, amend! You have been a spendthrift, profligate, everything that is bad; you have studied yourself in every action of life, and neglected the common duties due to your neighbour as well as to your Maker. You have gone on smiling in your sinful course, heeding not the outcry of religious men against your hideous career, recking not of the abyss into which you must plunge, and on the brink of which, you—a man, with an immortal soul committed to your charge—are standing now! One step more, perhaps, one wilful step forward, and you are lost for ever. Lost!" he shouted, with the frenzy of a fanatic, as well as the vehemence of a good man carried away by his subject; and the shrill cry made the glasses round the gas lamps ring again, and vibrated unpleasantly through Maurice's system. This was becoming unendurable.

"If you will allow me—" began Maurice.

"Sir, I will not be interrupted!" shouted Mr. Gray, with more hammering upon the counter; "I know what is good for you, and I insist upon a patient hearing. You are a man in danger of destruction, and I cannot let you go blindfold into danger, without bidding you stop whilst time is mercifully before you. Let me divide the subject, in the first place, into three heads."

Maurice groaned inwardly, and stared at the preacher. There was no help for it; there was no escape. He might jump to the floor and fly for his life; or he might tip up Mr. Gray's chair, upset that gentleman, and then gag him; but neither method would bring him nearer to that purpose for which he had ventured thither; and until Sidney appeared there was nothing to do but sit patiently under the infliction and listen to the full particulars of his dangerous state. He put his hands on his knees, surveyed the speaker, and submitted; in all his life he had never heard such a bad opinion of himself, or listened to so sweeping a condemnation of all his little infirmities. Mr. Gray ran on with great volubility, pitching his voice unpleasantly high; Maurice's blood curdled, once he was sure his hair rose upon his head, and more than once cold water running down the curve of his back bone could not have more forcibly expressed the sensations of the moment. And then those horrid bangs upon the counter—always coming when least expected, and going off like cannon shots in his ears; and the gesticulatory flourishes, and the falsetto notes when more than usually excited, and, above all, the unceasing flow of invective and persuasion—an unintermittent shower-bath of the best advice, powerful enough to swamp a congregation.

Maurice's head ached; his eyes watered; the shop grew dizzy; the books and prints revolved slowly round him; the ceiling might be the floor, and the floor the ceiling, with the gas branch screwed upside down in it, for what he knew of the matter; he lost the thread of the discourse, and found the heads thereof inextricably confused; he understood that he was a miserable sinner—the worst of sinners—or he should not be sitting there with all those horrible noises in his ears; the figure in the chair before him, heaved up and down, moved its arms right and left, possibly threw double summersaults; it was all over with the listener—he was going silly, he scarcely knew now with what object he had come thither—oh! his head!—oh! this never-ending, awfully rapid Niagara of words!

He made one feeble effort at resistance.

"Look here, old fellow—if you'll let me off—I'll—I'll build a tabernacle," he burst forth; and again that terrible "Sir, I will not be interrupted!" stopped all further intrusion upon the subject of discourse.

Mr. Gray was delighted with that subject, with that listener—one of the finest specimens of iniquity he had encountered for many years!—and he did not think of stopping yet awhile. Where was the hurry?—time, although valuable, could not be better spent than on that occasion—his heart was in the task he had set himself, and he would do his very best!

Mattie came to the rescue at last; she had been watching the delivery of the sermon for some time over the parlour blind, informing Sidney, who had entered the parlour, of the energy of the father, and the patient endurance of his cousin.

Disturbed as he had been by his cousin's arrival, and undecided for some time as to the expediency of granting him an interview or not, Sid could not refrain from a smile at Maurice's unenviable position. He remembered Mr. Gray's first charge upon his sins, and the unsparing length to which he had extended his remarks upon them; he could imagine the position of Maurice Hinchford at that juncture, and realize the feelings with which that gentleman heard and suffered.

"I think I'll go to him now, Sidney," said Mattie.

It had been Sidney and Mattie—as between brother and sister—for a long time now.

"Will your father admire the intrusion?" asked Sid, drily.

"Perhaps he is doing good," said Mattie, who regarded matters akin to this more seriously than the blind man; "I'll wait a while."

And all this time Maurice was praying for help. It had not been a very pleasant idea, that of facing his cousin for the first time; but now the thought occurred to him that he would rather face the very worst—even that obnoxious being, of whom the preacher earnestly warned him—than hear this man inveigh against his sins any more.

Mattie quietly entered the shop. The spell was broken; Mr. Gray paused with his right arm above his head—he was just coming down with another bang on the counter—and Maurice leaped off his stool, to which he had been transfixed, and shook hands violently with Mattie in his bewilderment.

"He will see me, Miss Gray?"

"Yes. If you wish it."

"Thank you—thank you! Is he in the parlour?"

"Yes."

"And so be warned, young man—there is no excuse left you—not one, now. You have been warned of all the evils which a guilty life incurs upon those who go on their way defiantly!"

"Oh! yes—I have been warned, sir; there's not a doubt of it—I'm afraid I have put you to a great deal of trouble?" said Maurice, not yet recovered from his confusion.

"In a good cause, I don't mind trouble."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure. In the parlour, you said, Miss Gray?—then I'll go to him at once. It must be getting very late."

Mr. Gray was proceeding to follow Maurice, when Mattie touched him on the arm and arrested his progress.

"I think we had better leave them together. Their business is scarcely ours."

"What?—ah! exactly so, my dear. But I wish you had not interrupted me quite so unceremoniously—the impression I was making upon that young man was wonderful! Great heaven! if it is left for me to work his regeneration at the last, how proud I shall be! Mattie, I think I have moved him—he has already said something about building a tabernacle, a chapel, or something; but I scarcely caught the words at the moment—think of that man, so wicked, and perverse, and designing, proceeding after all, in the straight and narrow way! It's wonderful!"

In the meantime, Maurice Hinchford had entered the parlour, closed the door behind him, and advanced towards the figure at the table, sitting in the full light of the gas above his head. Maurice paused and looked at him.

Sidney had changed; he was looking older; there was a thread or two of silver in the dark waving hair; and the eyes, which blindness had not dimmed, had that melancholy vagueness of expression, by which such eyes are always characterized.

"Well, Sidney—I am here at last."

"I am sorry that you have taken the trouble to call."

"Indeed!—why?"

"I think you and I are best apart. We know each other far too well, by this time."

"Have patience with me, Sidney. I think not."

He drew a chair nearer his cousin, and sat down. He had not offered to shake hands with Sidney; he felt that his cousin would have resented that attempt; that he was regarded as a man who had done a grievous wrong, and from whom no professions of friendship or cousinly regard would be received. He had come with a faint hope of doing good—in some way or other, he scarcely knew himself; of extenuating in some way—almost as indefinite to him—the past conduct which had placed him in so sinister a light.

"Sidney," he said, "I wish that you had accepted that invitation to meet me which I made you. I could have explained much."

"No explanation, Maurice, would have been satisfactory to me at that time."

"Will it be now, then?" he asked, eagerly catching at the words which implied possibly more than his cousin had wished to convey.

"I would prefer dismissing the subject altogether," Sid replied. "If you will tell me candidly and honestly that you are sorry for the past, I will be glad to hear it—and believe it."

"You bear me no malice, then?"

"No—I have outlived it."

"Then you will——"

"I will do nothing, but remain with those good friends who have taken pity on my helplessness," he said, sternly.

"Sidney, pray understand me. I don't wish you to think me a wholly bad man—God knows I am not that—I have never been that. I have had bad friends, evil counsellors, if you will—mine was never a resolute nature, but one easily led away from the first. I was an only son, spoiled by an indulgent father, spoiled by the money which was lavished on me, spoiled by the crowd which the spending of that money brought about me—nothing more."

"That is bad enough," said Sid.

"I own that. I own that I was flattered to my moral ruin, Sidney—that they, who called themselves my friends, cheered on that downfall, and made it easy to me—scoffing at all worlds purer than their own. I was young, vain, impressionable, and far from high-principled when I first met Harriet Wesden at Brighton."

"I would rather not hear the story," said Sidney, uneasily.

Maurice paid no heed to the remark, but went on hastily; and Sidney, suppressing his intention to arrest the narrative, sat still and listened to its weaknesses, its mystery, and yet its truth.

"Harriet Wesden was a romantic school-girl—a young woman who knew little of life, or had read the fictions, highly-coloured, concerning it, till she might have belonged to dream-land for the realities about her. She was led away by a senior scholar, too, as romantic as herself, and more designing; and she and I met, talked, corresponded—fell in love with each other."

"I deny that."

"Patience, Sidney; on my soul we did! I was not a villain, but a man led away by my vanity and this girl's preference for me, and I loved her. I don't say that it was a very true or passionate love; but it was a love, which burned fiercely enough for a time—which would have been purer and better, but for the evil counsellor and false friend who was always with me, to treat life, and love, and honour as a jest."

"The man I met at your house?"

"No. A man who has died since then—thank God, I was almost adding, for he worked me much evil, and death only freed me from him."

"Go on."

"When Harriet Wesden and I parted, I believe we truly loved each other. I had assumed a false name at the outset, and had maintained it throughout our strange courtship—fearing the discovery of governesses, and not knowing the character of her to whom my folly had lured me. I was to go abroad at my father's wish, and I left, fully resolving to write to her, and own all, and ask her if she would wait for me. Then came long absence, fresh scenes, new friends, new dissipations, a belief that she would easily forget me, being but a child when I had seen her last; and so the old, old story, varied scarcely from the many that have gone before it. Sidney, she did forget me—did discover that, after all, it was but a fleeting fancy of her own."

"No."

"I think the next part of my story proves that. I met her again after an absence of a few years, in the streets, near her house in Suffolk Street, whither I had conducted my father to see yours. All my old passion for her revived—but it was a struggle with her to endure my presence at first. Still I was from the old days; I revived in her memory the one romance that had been hers—I had not played a false part therein, and could easily excuse my long silence. I found out the friends whom she visited in the neighbourhood of New Cross; I formed their acquaintance, and met Harriet Wesden more frequently. Her old assertion that she never wished to see me again—that she loved another, whose name she would never confess to me—wavered. I saw it, and, carried away by the impression created, I did my best to win her."

"Away from me?—well, you succeeded. She wrote to me at that time, confessing her inability to think of me longer as a lover."

"She wrote, not knowing her own mind, I believe. At that time she was disturbed in thought concerning us—she was often cold and repellent to me, and it was difficult to understand her. Well, Sid, throughout all this, I loved her."

"Why keep to your false name, then?"

"I was ready to confess the truth, at every interview; then I put off the avowal, after my old fashion. I knew by that time that your father and yourself were lodging at the stationer's shop, and I formed a shrewd guess as to the rival I had in her affections. Finally, Sid, there came that night at New Cross, when she was carried away to Ashford. As I hope to be saved, I had no design against her then; in good faith, I was her escort to the railway station; it was only as we approached that station, that the ruse suggested itself—that the devil whispered in my ear his temptation. I knew the time of the mail-train; I had been by it en route to Paris only a few weeks since; I led her along, unsuspecting of evil, to the other side of the railway station. She was with me in the carriage before I became conscious of the heinousness of the act I had committed. Even then I intended her no harm; I trusted all to circumstance; I was even prepared to marry her, rather than lose her; I was under a spell, Sidney!"

"Yes—the spell of the devil."

"When she discovered the truth, I found that I had secured her hate, rather than her love; at Ashford station she faced me like a tigress, and, full of the honest indignation that possessed her, held me up to the shame I deserved before a host of people—pointed me out as a coward and knave who had sought to cruelly deceive her. She claimed the protection of that—that terrible man in the shop there—he was at Ashford as you know—and I was glad to hide my head in the railway carriage, and be borne away from his withering contempt. That's the story. I will not tell you of the sorrow which I experienced for the harm that I had done her—of the shame that has remained with me since then—of the turn which she even gave to my character. Sidney, I would have made any reparation in my power—but I was baffled and degraded, and dared not look upon her any more."

"That man I met at your house—he knew the story?"

"He knew the beginning of it; and for Harriet Wesden's sake—and to redeem her character in the mind of a man who has not a high estimate of women—I told the end."

Sidney sat and thought for a while. Then he pronounced his verdict.

"All this assures me that you are easily led away—that it is only chance that has kept you from being wholly a bad man. You are weak, vacillating, and unprincipled—you are no Hinchford."

"I have tried to do my best all my life, but somehow failed," said Maurice, ruefully; "impulse has led me wrong when my heart has meant right—candidly, cousin, I have been a fool more than once. But you cannot believe that I would do harm to any human being in cold blood?"

"Possibly not. But what virtue is there in that?"

"Let me add, Sidney, that I honestly believe that I have been altering for the better for the last two years. I have seen the emptiness of all my friends' professions; their greed of gain and love of self; have turned heart-sick at their evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. I feel that I haven't a friend; that I have 'used up' all the pleasures in the world, and that there is nothing I care for in it."

"Yours is a bad state, that leads to worse, as a rule, Maurice."

"I know it—I feel it."

"And you are truly sorry for all the harm that you have done us in life—Harriet, I, and others?"

"With all my heart—truly sorry."

"I can forgive you, then. I have been taught by good friends to be more charitable in my heart towards men's motives. A year ago, I thought I should have hated you all my life."

He held forth his hand, which Maurice took and shook heartily in his.

"Understand me," said Sidney, still coldly, "I forgive you, but I do not need your help, and your presence, under any circumstances, will always give me pain. We shall never be true friends—we shall respect each other better apart."

"Is it fair to think that? You who have heard me declaim against my vain and objectless life."

"Yours is a life to rejoice at, and to do good with, not to mourn over. Seek a wife, man, and settle down in your sphere, honoured by good men, and honouring good things."

"Ah! fair advice; but the wife will come for my money's sake, for the good things which I possess, and which she and her relations will honour in their way, with all their heart, and soul, and strength!"

"Timon of Athens!" said Sidney, almost satirically.

"Sidney, I would give up all my chances for one or two true friends. You don't know what a miserable wretch I am!"

"You will be better presently. You have seen too much life lately, and the reaction has rendered you blasé. Patience and wait. As for the wife——"

"Well?"

"Seek out Harriet Wesden again, and do her justice."

"But you——"

"She never loved me, Maurice; you were her first love, and her last. She is leading a life that is unfit for her, and you can make amends for all the shadows you have cast upon it."

"I could never face her."

"Then you are a greater coward than I thought."

"It's odd advice," he muttered; "seek out Harriet Wesden again! Oh! I know how that will end, and what 'good' will result from that. But you wish it?"

"Yes," said Sidney, after a moment's further reflection.

"And her address?"

Sidney repeated it; he took it down in his pocket-book, and then rose to depart.

"I am going now. I may trouble you once again, Sidney, if you will allow me."

"As you will—if you think it necessary."

Maurice Hinchford shuffled with his feet uneasily, keeping his eyes fixed on his blind cousin.

"May I ask," he said at last, "if—if you are happy here?"

"Yes, as happy as it is possible for one in my condition to be."

"They are kind to you?"

"Very kind."

"They are a sharp couple—father and daughter—they——"

"Oh! don't speak ill of them, Maurice; you do not know them, and cannot estimate them at their just worth."

"I might endure the daughter, for hers is a pleasant sharpness that one doesn't object to; but, oh! that dreadful vigorous little parson, or whatever he is."

"Good night," said Sidney, meaningly.

"One moment—I'm off in a minute now, Sid. There's one thing I did wish just to allude to—nothing about money, mind," he added hastily, noticing Sidney's heightened colour and proud face, and remembering Mattie's previous caution.

"What is it?" asked Sidney.

"I did wish to say how sorry I was to hear of the calamity, that had befallen you—that the bad news, which was told me to-day for the first time, has shocked me very much. But you'll not believe me—you still think I'm hard, cruel, and indifferent."

"No, I don't think that. But I don't care to dwell upon a painful topic."

"And about advice—what medical advice have you had, may I ask?"

"Not any."

"No advice!—why not?"

"I was told long ago that when blindness seized me, it would be irretrievable. I was warned of its approach by an eminent man, who was not likely to make a mistake."

"We are all liable to mistakes in life," said Maurice, "and it might happen——"

"Pray dismiss the subject, Maurice."

"I met with a foreign oculist in Paris—he was an Italian, I think—who——"

"Good night—good night," said Sidney, hastily; "when a man has been trying hard to teach himself resignation, it is not fair to disturb him with ideas like these."

"Your pardon, Sid—I am going at once. Good night."

"Good night."

Sidney did not extend his hand again, and Maurice made no attempt to part in a more friendly manner than they had met; profuse civilities could do no good, and though Maurice had gained his cousin's forgiveness, he had not roused his respect, or won upon his sympathy.

He passed into the shop, and took up his hat that he had left there on the counter. Mr. Gray looked at him, as at a fine subject which adverse fate was to snatch away from his experiments.

"You are going, young man?"

"Yes, sir—I hope I have not put you or your daughter to any inconvenience."

"No, sir," was his reply, beginning to turn up the collar of his coat above his ears, "no inconvenience. You are a stranger to this neighbourhood, and I'll just see you in the straight way, if you'll allow me."

"Oh! dear no, thank you," said the alarmed Maurice; "I'm well up in the way now—I could not think of taking you away from home at this time of night—thank you, thank you!"

He seized his hat, dashed at the lock, wrenched open the door, and flew for his life down the dark streets—no matter whither, or how far out of his route, so that he escaped Mr. Gray's companionship.

Half an hour afterwards, he was at New Cross railway station—the scene of his old duplicity—arranging for a telegraphic message to a Dr. Bario, resident in Paris.

CHAPTER III.

A DECLARATION.

Harriet Wesden had settled down like the rest of the world, that is, this little world wherein live and breathe—at least we hope so—these characters of ours.

She had settled down! Life had taken its sombre side with her; the force of circumstances had set her apart from those for whom her heart yearned; she became bound more to this dull home; disappointment had wondrously sobered her; when her heart had been at its truest and best, it had seemed as though the whole world had turned against her, and misjudged her.

There was no romance in her after that; her romance had begun early and died early—for her share in it, she was heartily ashamed. To look back upon that past, note her weakness, and whither it had led her, was to make her cheeks flush, and her bosom heave; in those sober after-days that had come to her, she could scarcely comprehend the past.

Women change occasionally like this—more especially women whose hearts are sound, but whose judgments have not always been correct. She had met deceit face to face; her own presence of mind had only saved her perhaps from betrayal; she had passed through a vortex—and, escaping it, the shock had sobered her for life.

Harriet Wesden turned "serious"—a very good turn for her, and for all of us, if we could only think so. Still, serious people—more especially serious young people—are inclined to dash headlong at religion, and even neglect home duties, duties to friends, and neighbours, and themselves, for religious ones. They verge on the extremes even in sanctity, and extremes verge on the ridiculous.

Harriet Wesden gave up life's frivolities, and became a trifle austere in her manner; she had found a church to her taste, and a minister to her taste—a minister who verged on extremes, too, and yet was one of the best-meaning, purest-minded men in the world.

Harriet Wesden became his model member of the flock, as he became her model shepherd. She lived for him, and his services, and the bran span new church he had built for himself in the square at the back. She missed never a service, week-days or Sundays; early prayers, at uncomfortable hours, when the curates were sleeping, and the pew-opener audibly snored—daily sermons, evening services, special services for special out-of-the-way saints, and Sunday services innumerable.

Let it be written here, lest our meaning be misinterpreted, that Harriet Wesden had improved vastly with all this—was a better, more energetic, and devout woman. If she went too often to church—that is quite possible—if she were a trifle "high" and pinned her faith on decorations, if she thought the world all vanity and vexation of spirit, if she were a little proud of carrying outward and visible signs of her own inward and spiritual grace, if she even neglected her father, at times—poor old Wesden, who sadly needed cheerful society now—still the end was good, and she was at her best then. Serious people will appear a little disagreeable to people who are not serious—but then what do serious people think of their mundane critics, or care for them?

Harriet Wesden fancied that she had set herself apart from the world—that its vanities and belongings scarcely had power to arrest her steady upward progress. It did not strike her that whilst she remained in the world, the sorrows, joys, and histories of its denizens must have power to affect her.

Sidney Hinchford had mistrusted her—the man for whom she had been anxious to make sacrifices, had refused them, and discredited their genuineness; her only friend, in whom she thought there could not be a possibility of guile, had supplanted her. From that hour let her set herself apart from them; bear no ill-feeling towards them, but keep to her new world. Her life was not their lives, and they were best away from her. After that set in more strongly the seriousness to which we have alluded, and all former trace of Harriet Wesden's old self submerged for good—and all.

Mattie and Harriet met at times; Mattie would not give up the old friend, the girl she had loved so long and faithfully. Despite the new reserve—even austerity—that had suddenly sprung up, Mattie called at regular intervals, took her place between Harriet and Mr. Wesden, and spoke for a while of the old times. Harriet's manner puzzled her, but there seemed no chance of an explanation of it. Her quick observation detected Harriet's new ideas of life's duties, and she did not intrude upon them, or utter one word by way of argument, or in opposition. It happened, sometimes, that Harriet would be absent during Mattie's visits—"gone to church," old Wesden would say, ruefully—and Mattie would take her place by the deserted father's side, and play the part of daughter to him till Harriet's return.

Harriet seldom spoke of Sidney Hinchford to our heroine—he did not belong to her diminished world; she flattered herself that there was no thought of him, or of what might have been, to perplex her with new vanities. When the name of Sidney Hinchford intruded upon the subject of discourse, she heard it coldly enough. She was always glad to learn that Sidney was well, and doing well; it had even been a relief to her to know that the business, after a stand-still of some months, had taken a turn in the right direction; but, when all was well, what was there to agitate her? If Sidney were ill, and needed her help, she would have taken her place at his side, perhaps; if Mattie were ill even—though in her heart she felt that she did not love Mattie so well as formerly—she would have devoted herself to her service; but they were both well, living under the same roof with Mattie's father, and all things had changed so since Suffolk Street times.

Harriet was from home at her usual devotions, and her father was endeavouring to amuse himself, as he best might under the circumstances, when a stranger, who preferred not to give his name, requested an audience of Miss Wesden. Miss Wesden not being at home, Mr. Wesden would do for the nonce, and the stranger was, therefore, shown into the parlour.

The ci-devant stationer put on his spectacles, and looked suspiciously at the new comer. Mr. Wesden was a man of the world, and hard to be imposed upon. A man more nervous and irritable with every day, but having his wits about him, as the phrase runs.

"Good evening," said the stranger.

"Good evening," responded Mr. Wesden. "Ahem—if it's a subscription for anything, I don't think that I have anything to give away."

"My name is Hinchford—Maurice Hinchford—possibly better known to you by the unenviable alias of Maurice Darcy."

"Oh! you're that vagabond, are you?—well, what do you want? You haven't come to torment my daughter again?" he said, in an excited manner; "you've done enough mischief in your day."

"I am aware of it, sir—I come to offer every reparation in my power."

"We don't want any of that sort of stuff, Mr. Hinchford."

"It's late in the day to offer an apology—to attempt an explanation of my conduct in the past; but if you would favour me with a patient hearing, I should be obliged, sir."

"I've nothing better to do," said Mr. Wesden; "take a seat, sir."

Maurice Hinchford seated himself opposite Mr. Wesden, and commenced his narrative, disguising and extenuating nothing, but attempting to analyze the real motives which had actuated his past conduct—motives which had been a little incomprehensible, taken altogether, and were therefore difficult to make clear before an auditor, as we have seen in our preceding chapter.

Mr. Wesden rubbed the back of his ear, stared hard over Maurice's head at the opposite wall, till Maurice looked behind him to see what was nailed up there; wound up by an emphatic "Humph!" when Maurice had concluded.

"Therefore, you see I was not so very much to blame, sir—that is, that there were at least extenuating circumstances."

"Were they, though?"

"Why, surely I have proved that?"

"Can't say you have—can't say that I plainly see it at all. But, then, I haven't so clear a head as I used to have—oh! not by a long way!"

"I hope at least you understand that I am heartily ashamed of my past conduct?"

"I am glad to hear that, sir."

"I have become a different man."

"Been in a reformatory, perhaps?" suggested Mr. Wesden.

"I have found my reformatory in the world."

"Lucky for you."

"And the fact is, that as I have always loved your daughter—as only my own wicked impulse turned your daughter's heart away from me, I have come from abroad with the hope of making all the restitution in my power, by offering her my hand and fortune!"

"Have you, though?"

Mr. Wesden stared harder than ever at this piece of information. Maurice took another glance over his shoulder, and then commenced a second series of explanations, speaking of his position and means, two things to which Mr. Wesden had been never indifferent.

"I don't know that it would be a bad thing for her," said Mr. Wesden; "she never talked to me about her love affairs—girls never do to their fathers—and very likely I haven't understood her all this time."

"Very likely not."

"Perhaps it is about you, and not the other one that has altered her so much. Any nonsense alters a woman, if she dwells upon it."

"Ahem!—exactly so."

"You may as well wait till she comes in now," said Mr. Wesden; "that's business."

"Sir, I am obliged to you."

"If you don't mind a pipe, I'll think it over myself, and you need not talk any more just at present. We don't have much talk in this house, and you've rather gallied me, Mr. Hinchford."

"Any commands I will attend to with pleasure."

Maurice Hinchford crossed his arms and sat back in his chair to reflect upon all this; for a lover he was sad and gloomy—scarcely satisfied with the step which he had taken, and yet brought to it by his own conscience, that had been roused from its inaction by his cousin Sidney. Here a life had been shadowed by his means, and he thought that it was in his power to brighten it; here was good to be done, and he felt that it was his duty at least to attempt the performance of it. Mr. Wesden sat and smoked his pipe at a little distance from him, and revolved in his own mind the strange incident which had flashed athwart the monotony of daily life, and scared him with its suddenness. In Harriet he had probably been deceived, and it was this young man whom she had loved, and whose eccentric courses had rendered her so difficult to comprehend. All the past morbidity, the past variable moods, the fluctuations in her health, were to be laid to this man's charge, and it was well that he had come at last, perhaps. Harriet was a good daughter, an estimable girl, who loved her Bible, and did good to others, but she was not a happy girl. Sorrowful as well as serious, the holiness of her life had not brightened her thoughts or lightened her heart, and was not therefore true holiness, this old man felt assured. Behind the veil there had been something hidden, and it was rather Maurice Hinchford than his blind cousin who stood between her and the light.

"I think you have done right to come," said Mr. Wesden, after half an hour's deliberation.

"I think so, too," was the response.

At the same moment, a summons at the door announced Harriet Wesden's return.

"I'll open the door myself, and leave you to explain," he said; "don't move."

Maurice felt tight about the waistcoat now; the romance was coming back again to the latter days; the heroine of it was at the threshold waiting for him. This was a sensation romance, or the roots of his hair would not have tingled so!

Mr. Wesden opened the door for his daughter, and allowed her to proceed half-way down the narrow passage before he gave utterance to the news.

"There has been a visitor waiting for you these last two hours, Harriet."

"For me!" said Harriet, listlessly; and, dreaming not of so strange an intrusion on her home, she turned the handle of the door and entered the parlour. Then she stopped transfixed, scarcely believing her sight, scarcely realizing the idea that it was Maurice Darcy standing there before her in her father's house.

Maurice had risen.

"I fear that I have surprised you very much, Miss Wesden," said he, hoarsely; "that possibly this was not the best method of once again seeking a meeting with you. This time with your father's consent, at least."

"Sir, I do not comprehend; I cannot see that any valid reason has brought you to this house."

"I think it has—I hope it has."

"Impossible!"

"Miss Wesden, I have been relating a long story to your father—may I beg you to listen to me in your turn?"

"If it relate to the past, I must ask you to excuse me," was the cold reply.

"My guilty past it certainly relates to—I pray you for an honest hearing. Ah! Miss Wesden, you are afraid of me, still."

"Afraid!—no, sir."

Harriet Wesden looked at him scornfully, with a quick, almost an impatient hand removed her bonnet and shawl, and then passed to her father's seat by the table, standing thereat still, by way of hint as to the length of the interview. She was more beautiful than ever; more grave and statuesque, perhaps, but very beautiful. It was the face that he had loved in the days of his wild youth, and it shone before him once again, a guiding star for the future stretching away beyond that little room.

He would have spoken, but she interrupted him.

"Understand me, Mr. Darcy—Mr. Hinchford, I may say now, I presume—I wish to hear no excuses for the past, no explanations of your wilful conduct therein—I have done with that and you. If you be here to apologize, I accept that apology, and request you to withdraw. If matters foreign to the past have brought you hither, pray be speedy, and spare me the pain of any longer interview than necessary."

"Miss Wesden, I must, in the first place, speak of the past."

"I will not have it!" cried Harriet, imperiously; "have I not said so?"

The minister round the corner would have rubbed his eyes with amazement at the fire in those of his neophyte. He would have thought the change savoured too strongly of the earth from which he and her, and other high-pressure members of his flock, had soared just a little above—say a foot and a half, or thereabouts.

"It is the past that brings me back to you, Harriet—the past which I would atone for by giving you my name and calling you my wife. I have been a miserable and guilty wretch—I ask you to raise me from my self-abasement by your mercy and your love?"

He moved towards her with all the fire of the old love in his eyes—those eyes which had bewildered her like a serpent's, in the old days. But the spell was at an end, and there was no power to bring her once more to his arms. She recoiled from him with a suppressed scream; her colour went and came upon her cheeks; she fought twice with her utterance before she could reply to him.

"Mr. Hinchford, you insult me!"

"No, not that."

"You insult me by your shameless presence here. I told you half a minute ago that I forgave you all the evil in the past. I don't forgive it—no true woman ever forgave it yet in her heart. I hate you!"

The minister round the corner would have collapsed at this, as well he might have done. Only that evening had he begged his congregation to love their enemies, and return good for evil, and Harriet Wesden had thought how irresistible his words were, and how apposite his illustrations. And fresh from good counsel, this young woman who had been unmoved for twelve long months, and during that time been about as animate as the Medicean Venus, now told her listener there that she hated him with all her heart!

"Enough, Miss Wesden. I have but to express my sorrow for the past, and take my leave. Forgive at least the motive which has led me to seek you out again."

"One moment—one moment!" said Harriet.

She fought with her excitement for an instant, and then with a hand pressed heavily upon her bosom, to still the passionate throbbing there, she said:

"You must not go till I have explained also; you have sought out a girl whose young life you cruelly embittered by your perfidy—let her explain something in defence. Mr. Hinchford, I never loved you—as I stand here, and as this may be my last moment upon earth, I swear that I never loved you in my life! There was a girl's vanity, in the first place—almost a child's vanity, fostered by pernicious teaching of frivolous companions—afterwards there was a foolish romantic incertitude—vanity still perhaps—that led me to trust in you, and to give up one who loved me, and for whom I ought to have died rather than have deserted—but there was no love! I knew it directly that I guessed your cowardice, for I despised you utterly then, and understood the value of the prize, my own misconduct had nearly forfeited. I was a weak woman, and you saw my weakness, and hastened to mislead me; but the wrong you would have done me taught me what was right, and, thank God! I was strong enough to save myself! There, sir, if only to have told you this, I am glad that you have sought an interview. Now, if you are a gentleman—go!"

He hesitated for an instant, as though he could have wished, even in the face of her defiance, to tell his story for the third time; then he turned away, and went slowly out of the room, defeated at all points, his colours lowered and trailing in the dust. Outside he found Mr. Wesden, standing with his back to the street door, smoking his pipe, and regarding the hall mat abstractedly. He looked up eagerly as Maurice Hinchford advanced.

"Well?—well?" he asked feverishly.

"Yes, it is well," was the enigmatic and gloomy answer; "I see what a fool I have been, Mr. Wesden. I know myself for the first time—good evening."

Mr. Wesden opened the door for him, and he passed out; the old man watched him for a while, and then returned to his favourite chair in the back parlour.

Harriet ran to him as he entered, and flung her arms round his neck.

"I have you to love, and look to still. Not quite alone—even yet!"

CHAPTER IV.

MORE TALK OF MARRIAGE AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE.

Maurice Hinchford passed away from this story's scene of action. Suddenly and completely he disappeared once more, and they in the humble ranks of life knew nothing of his whereabouts. From Paris his father had received a letter that perplexed and even irritated him, for it was mysterious, and the head of the house of Hinchford detested mystery.

"I have run over here for a week or two—perhaps longer, perhaps less, according to circumstances," Maurice wrote; "you who are ever indulgent will excuse this flitting, which I will account for on my return. If anything calls for my especial attention at the bank, telegraph to me, and I will come back."

No especial business was likely to demand Maurice's return; the bank went on well without him, good man of business as he was when he set his mind to it. His father's indulgence excused the flitting, though he shook his head over his son's eccentricity, after the receipt of the incomprehensible epistle. "Another of those little weaknesses to which Maurice had been subject," thought the indulgent father; "time he grew out of them now, and married and settled, like other young men of his age. If he would only sow his wild oats, what an estimable man and honoured member of society he would be. Poor Maurice!"

Sidney Hinchford, who, from his cousin's hints, had anticipated a second visit from Maurice, felt even a little disappointed at his non-appearance. Sidney was curious; he would have liked to know the result of Maurice's proposal to Harriet Wesden, but he kept his curiosity to himself, and did not even mention to Mattie the advice which he had bestowed upon his cousin. He knew how the matter had ended well enough; Maurice was in earnest, and would beat down all doubts of his better nature developing itself at last; the old love-story would be resumed, and all would go merry as a marriage bell with those two. He congratulated himself upon having done some good even at the eleventh hour, in having helped to promote the true happiness of the girl he had once loved.

Once loved!—yes, he was sure that passion belonged to the past; that it had died out of inaction, and left him free to act. He was not happy in his freedom; his heart was growing heavier than ever, but he kept that fact back for his friends' sakes, and was, to them, a faint reflex of the Sidney Hinchford whom they had known in better days.

He fell no longer into gloomy reveries; he took part in the conversation of the hour; there came, now and then, a pleasant turn of speech to his lips, a laugh with him—the old rich, hearty laugh—was not a very rare occurrence; he believed himself resigned to his affliction, content with his position, and, for many mercies that had been vouchsafed unto him, he was truly grateful.

How to show his gratitude did not perplex him; he had made up his mind after Ann Packet had given him a piece of hers—he had watched for words, signs, sighs—he was only biding his time to speak. But he remained in doubt; it was difficult to probe to the depths; he was a blind man, and far from a clever one; he could only guess by sounds, and test all by Mattie's voice, and he was, therefore, still unsettled.

He resolved to end all, at last, in a quiet and methodical manner, befitting a man like him. He was probably mistaken; he had no power to make any one happy; his confession might dissolve the partnership between Mr. Gray and himself—for how could Mattie and he live in the same house together after his avowal and rejection?

But he had made up his mind, and he went to work in his old straightforward way one evening when Mattie was absent, and Mr. Gray was busy at his work beside him.

"Mr. Gray," said he, "I want to bespeak your sole attention for a few minutes."

"Certainly, Sidney," was the reply. "Shall I put my work away?"

"If you do not mind, for awhile."

"There, then!"

Sidney was some time beginning, and Mr. Gray said—

"It's about the business—you're tired of it?"

"On the contrary, I am pleased with it, and the work it throws in my way. But don't you find me a little bit of a nuisance always here?"

"You know better than that. Next to my daughter, do you hold a place in my heart."

"Thank you. Now, have you ever thought of me marrying?"

"Of you marrying!" he echoed, in a surprised tone, that was somewhat feigned. "Why, whom are you to marry, Sid?"

"Mattie, if she'll have me."

The lithographer rubbed his hands softly together—it was coming true at last, this dream of Mattie and his own!

"If she'll have you!" he echoed, again. "Well, you must ask her that."

"Do you think she'll have me—a blind fellow like me? Is it quite right that she should, even?"

"I don't know—I have often thought about that," said Mr. Grey, forgetting his previous expression of astonishment. "I don't see where the objection is, exactly, Sidney. You're not like most blind men, dulled by your affliction—and Mattie is very different from most girls. If she thought that she could do more good by marrying you, make you more happy, she would do it."

"I don't want a sacrifice—I want to make her happy," said Sidney, a little peevishly. "If she could not love me, as well as pity me, I wouldn't marry her for all the world."

"You must ask her, young friend—not me, then."

"But you do not refuse your consent?"

"No. My best wishes, young man, for your success with the dearest, best of girls. I," laying his hand on Sidney's shoulder for a moment, "don't wish her any better husband."

Sidney had not exhibited any warmth of demeanour in breaking the news to Mr. Gray; many men might have remarked his quiet way of entering upon the subject. But Mr. Gray was of a quiet, unworldly sort himself, and took Sidney's love for granted. How was it possible to know Mattie, to live beneath the same roof with her, and not love her very passionately?

"I think—mind, I only think—that Mattie will not refuse you, Sidney," said Mr. Gray; "she understands you well, and knows thoroughly your character. It's an unequal match, remembering all the bye-gones, perhaps—but you are not likely to taunt her with them, or to think her any the worse for them, knowing what she really is in these days, thanks to God!"

"Taunt her!—good heaven!"

"Hush! that's profane. And the match is not very unequal, considering the help you need—and what a true comforter she will be to you. We Grays are of an origin lost in obscurity; you Hinchfords come of a grand old stock—you don't consider this?"

"Not a bit."

"Nor I; but then, men who don't spring from old families are sure to say so. I'm not particularly struck with the advantages of having possessed a forefather who came over with the Conqueror. William the Norman brought over a terrible gang of cut-throats and robbers, and there's not a great deal to one's credit in being connected with that lot."

Sidney laughed.

"I never regarded it in that light before. What an attack on our old gentility!"

"Gentility will not be much affected, Sidney. Have you anything more to tell me?"

"Nothing now."

"Not that if you marry Mattie, the crabbed, disputatious local preacher may stop with you?"

"I hope he will. He has been a good friend to me, and will keep so, for his daughter's sake."

"And for your own, young man. I'll go back to my work now."

But the work was in his way after that, and all the effects of his strong will could not make it endurable. Sidney's revelation had disturbed his work; he would try a little silent praying to himself—a selfish prayer he felt it was, and therefore no sound escaped him—that this choice of Sidney's might bring comfort and happiness to his daughter and himself.

He was sitting with his large-veined hands spread before his face, and Sidney was wrapt in thoughts of the change that might be in store for him, when Mattie knocked at the door.

"Sit here—I shan't come back yet awhile. We may as well end this part of the business at once."

Mattie entered, found her father busy behind the counter with his stock, said a few words, and passed into the parlour.

It was a second version of the proceedings at Camberwell. The father holding aloof, and giving suitor and maiden fair play.

CHAPTER V.

MATTIE'S ANSWER.

Sidney Hinchford heard the door open, and knew that the end was come. In a few minutes was to be decided the tenor of his after-life. He did not move, but remained with his hands clasped upon the table—a grave and silent figure in the lamp-light.

"What makes you so thoughtful to-night, Sid?"

The more formal Mr. Sidney had been dropped long since; Mattie had resisted the encroachment as long as it was in her power, but the friendship between them had been increased as well as their intimacy, and the more familiar designation was the more natural of the two.

"Am I looking very thoughtful, then, Mattie?"

"Oh! so cross and black!"

"Black?—eh!" he repeated; "that's a singular colour to seize upon a man's countenance, when he is agitated and hopeful. Come and sit here by my side, Mattie, and hear what news I have wherewith to startle you."

"Not bad news?" she asked.

"You shall judge."

Mattie guessed the purport of the news, and there had been no necessity for her last query. She knew all that was coming now, and so prepared herself for a revelation that she had seen advancing months ago. Months ago, she had wondered how she should act on this occasion, what manner she should adopt, and in what way reply to him? She had rehearsed it in her mind, with fear and trembling, and tear-dimmed eyes; she had dreamed of it, and been very happy in her dreams; and now at last she was at fault, and her resources not to be relied on. Very pale, with her mind disturbed, and her heart throbbing, she took her place by his side, shawled and bonneted as she was, and waited for the end.

Sidney broke the ice. The first few words faltered somewhat on his lip, but he gathered nerve as he proceeded, and finally related very calmly—almost too calmly—and plainly, the state of his feelings towards her.

"Your father and I have been speaking of you during your absence; I have suggested to him a change of life for myself and you—if you will only consent to sacrifice a life for my sake! A selfish, and an inconsiderate request, Mattie, which I should not have thought of, had I not fancied that it was in my power to make you a good husband, a true and faithful husband, and to love you more dearly as a wife than friend. But always understand, Mattie, that on your side it will be a sacrifice—that no after-repentance, only my death, can relieve you from the incubus—that for life you are tied to a blind man, and that all natural positions of life are reversed, when I ask you to be my guide, protector, comforter! Always remember, too, Mattie, that without me you will be free, and your own mistress; you, a young woman, to whom will come fairer and brighter chances!"

It was an odd manner of proposing; possibly Mattie thought so herself, for she raised her eyes from the ground, and looked at him long and steadily.

"Sidney, have you well reflected on this step?" she asked.

"I have."

"Thought well of the sacrifice of all the past hopes you have had?—of the incubus that I may be to you some day—that without me you will be free, and your own master—you, to whom the fairer, brighter chance may come, when too late! Sidney, we know not what a day may bring forth!"

"My fate is in your hands, Mattie."

"What I have been, you know—you must have thought of lately. What I am now, a poor, plain girl, self-taught and homely, who may shame you with her ignorance—you know too. Sidney, I have dwelt upon this lately—until this night, now I am face to face with the truth, I thought that I had made up my mind."

"To refuse me?"

"No—to accept you. To be your loving wife through life, aiding you, and keeping you from harm; but, now I shrink back from my answer!"

"Ah!" he said, mournfully; "it is natural."

"Not for my own sake," she added, quickly, "but for yours! For your happiness, not mine! Sidney, you have not settled down; you are not resigned to this present lot in life; there is a restlessness which you subdue now you are well and strong, but which may defeat you in the days to come. Years hence, I may be a trouble to you, a regret—you, a gentleman's son, and I—a stray! I may have made amends for my past life, but I cannot forget it; there will come times when to you and me the memory may be very bitter yet!"

"No, no!"

"Sidney, when I was that neglected child, I think I had a grateful heart; for I appreciated all the kindness that helped me upwards, and turned me from the dangerous path I was pursuing. I did not forget one friend who stretched his helping hand towards me—I have remembered them all in my progress, the agents of that good God, whose will it was that I should not be lost! Sidney, I would marry you out of gratitude for that past, if I honestly believed you built your happiness upon me; but I could not let you marry me out of gratitude, or think to make me happy by a share of affection that had no real existence. I would do all for you!" she said, vehemently; "but you must make no effort to raise me from any motives but your love!"

Sidney started—coloured. Had he misunderstood Mattie until that day?—was he the victim of his own treacherous thoughts after all?—the dupe of an illusion which he had hoped to foster by believing in himself?

"Sidney, I will be patient and wait for the love—hope in it advancing nearer and nearer every day—strive for it even, if you will, and it lies in my power. But I am above all charity."

"Mattie, you are not romantic? You do not anticipate from me, in my desolate position, all the passionate protestations of a lover? You will believe that I look forward to you as the wife in whom alone rests the last chance of happiness for me?"

"We cannot tell what is our last chance," said Mattie; "it is beyond our foresight—God will give us many chances in life, and the best may not have fallen to your share or mine. Sidney, there was a chance of happiness for you once—on which you built, and in which you never thought of me—do you regret that now?" she asked, with a woman's instinctive fear that the old love still lingered in his heart.

"Mattie, I regret nothing in the past. And in the future, I am hopeful of your aid and love. Can I say more?"

"Sidney," said Mattie, after a second pause, "I will not give you my answer to-night—I will not say that I will be your wife, for better for worse, until this day month. It is a grave question, and I ought not to decide this hastily. I must think—I must think!"

"Ah! Mattie, you don't love me, or it would be easy enough to say 'Yes,'" said Sidney.

"No, not easy."

"I can read my fate—eternal isolation!" he said gloomily.

"Patience—you can trust me; let me think for a while if I can trust in you. You do not wish my unhappiness, Sid?"

"God forbid!"

"We have been good friends hitherto—brother and sister. For one more month, let us keep brother and sister still; there is no danger of our teaching ourselves to love one another less in that period. In that month will you think seriously of me—not of what will make me happy—but what will render you happy, as the fairy books say, for ever afterwards? Remember that it is for ever in this life, and that I am to sit by your side and take that place in your heart which you had once reserved for another—think of all this, and be honest and fair with me."

"I see. You distrust my love. You have no faith in my stability."

"I say nothing, Sidney, but that I feel it would be wrong to answer hastily. Are you offended with my caution?"

"No—God bless you, Mattie!—you are right enough."

"This day month I will take my place at your side, and give you truly and faithfully my answer. It is not a long while to wait—we shall have both thought more intently of this change."

She left him, to begin his thoughts anew; her reply had disturbed his equanimity; he neither understood Mattie nor himself just then. What had perplexed him?—what had come over the spirit of his dream to trouble his mind, or conscience, in so strange a manner?

Mattie went to her room and locked the door upon her thoughts, upon that new wild sense of happiness which she had never known before, and which, despite the character she had assumed—yes, assumed!—she could not keep in the background of that matter-of-fact life, now vanishing away from her. She knew that she had acted for the best in giving him time to think again of the nature of his proposition—in restraining that impulse to weep upon his shoulder, and feel those strong arms enfolding her to his breast. The old days had startled her when he had spoken in so firm and hard a manner; that figure of the past which had been all to him flitted there still, and held her back, and stood between herself and him, despite the new happiness she felt, and which no past could wholly scare away.

She believed in her own coming happiness; that he would love her better for the delay—understand more fully why she hesitated. When the time came to answer "Yes!" she would explain all that had perplexed her, arrested her assent midway, and filled her with the fears of his want of love for her, his future discontent when irrevocably bound to her. Twice in life now he had offered his hand in marriage; twice had the answer been deferred, for reasons unakin to each other. It was singular; but this time all would end happily. He would love her with his whole heart, as he had loved Harriet Wesden, and she would be his proud and happy wife, cheering his prospects, elevating his thoughts, doing her best to throw across his darkened life a gleam or two of sunshine, in which he might rejoice.

She was very happy—for the doubts that had kept her answer back, went farther and farther away as she dwelt upon all this. There was a restless beating at her heart, which robbed her of calmness for awhile, but it was not fear that precipitated its action, and the noises in her ears might be the distant clash of marriage bells, which she had never dreamed would ring for him and her!

END OF BOOK THE SEVENTH.

BOOK VIII.

MORE LIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

A NEW HOPE.

Whether Sidney Hinchford gave much ulterior thought to his proposal, is a matter of some doubt. He had made up his mind before his conversation with Mr. Gray and daughter, and had there been no real love in his heart, he would not have drawn back from his offer. His life apart from business was akin to his business life in that; reflection on what was best, just and honourable, and then his decision, which no adverse fate was ever afterwards to shake. He did not believe in any motive force that could keep him from a purpose—it was a vain delusion, unworthy of a Hinchford!

On the morning of the following day, the cousin of whom he had thought more than once entered again upon the scene of action; at an early hour, when Mattie was busy in the shop, and Mr. Gray was absent on a preaching expedition. Maurice Hinchford's first inquiry was if Mr. Gray were within, and very much relieved in mind he appeared to be upon receiving the information that that formidable Christian was not likely to be at home till nightfall. Maurice did not come unattended; he brought a friend with him, whom he asked to wait in the shop for awhile, whilst he exchanged a few words with Sidney.

Mattie looked at the stranger, a tall, lank man, with an olive face, and long black hair, which he tucked in at the back between his coat and waistcoat in a highly original manner. He was a man who took no interest in passing events, but sat "all of a heap" on that high chair which had been Maurice Hinchford's stool of repentance, carefully counting his fingers, to make sure that he had not lost any coming along.

"Good morning, Sidney," said Maurice, on entering. "Not lost yet, old fellow!"

"Good morning, Maurice."

"I have brought the latest news—I have been abroad since my last visit here."

"Abroad again?"

"I'll tell you about that presently. If you're not too busy this morning, and I'm not too unwelcome an intruder, I should be glad to inform you how I fared by following your advice."

"You are not unwelcome, Maurice, though I cannot say that there is any great amount of pleasure experienced by your visit to me."

"Still cold—still unapproachable, after forgiving all the past!"

"But not forgetting, Maurice. You bring the past in with you—I hear it in every accent of your voice; all the figures belonging to it start forth like spectres to dismay me."

"Your past has no reproaches—what is it to mine?"

"A regret is as keen as a reproach."

"Ah! you regret the past!—some act in it, perhaps?" said Maurice, with curiosity.

"We should scarcely be mortal if we could look back without regrets, I think."

"Ah! but what is the keenest—bitterest?"

"That is a leading question, as the lawyers say."

"Then I'll not press it—I'll speak of my own regrets instead. I regret having followed your advice, Sidney."

"We are all liable to err—I meant it for the best."

"I called the following evening on Harriet Wesden—I offered her my hand, as an earnest of that affection which only needed her presence to revive again—I asked pardon for my past, and spoke of my atonement in the future. Could I do more?"

"No."

Sidney was nervously anxious to learn the result, but he merely compressed his lips, and waited for the sequel. He would not ask how this had ended—his pride held back his curiosity.

"And she refused me, as you and I might have expected, had we more seriously considered the matter. By George, I shall never forget her fiery eyes, her angry gestures, her contempt, which seemed withering me up—I knew that it was all over with every shadow of hope, then."

"A man should never despair."

"It would be difficult to help it in the face of that clincher, Sidney. Well, it served me right; I might have expected it; I might have guessed the truth, had I given it a moment's thought; but I put my trust in you, Sidney, and a nice mess I have made of it! Upon my honour, I would rather bear two—say three—of Mr. Gray's sermons, than face Harriet Wesden again."

"Still, you should not be sorry at having offered all the reparation in your power."

"Well, now I come to think of it, Sidney, I'm not sorry. To confess the real plain truth, I'm glad."

"Indeed!"

"Because I have made a discovery, and if you're half a Hinchford, you'll profit by the hint. Harriet Wesden loves you."

Sidney's hands grappled the arms of his chair, in which he half rose, and then set down again. The red blood mounted to his face, even those dreamy eyes flashed fire again—the avowal was too decided and uncompromising not to affect him.

"I do not wish to dwell upon this topic."

"Ah! but I do. It has been bothering me all the way to Paris—all the way back. I have been building fancy castles concerning it. I have been one gigantic, unmitigated schemer since I saw you last, planning for a happiness which is yours by a word, and which you deserve, Sid Hinchford. I feel that your life might be greatly changed, and that it is in your power to effect it."

"Were it my wish, it is too late. As it is not my wish—as I do not believe you," he added, bluntly—"as I have outlived my youthful follies, and am sober, serious, and unromantic—as I have made my choice, and know where my happiness lies, I will ask you not to pain me—not to torture me, by a continuance of this subject."

"Let me just give you a sketch of what she said to me."

"I will hear no more!" he cried, with an impatient stamp of his foot.

"I have done," said Maurice; "subject deferred sine die—or tied round the neck with a big stone, and sunk for ever in the waters of oblivion. By George, Sid, that's a neat phrase, isn't it?—only it reminds one of drowning a puppy. And now to business."

"What more?" asked Sidney, curtly.

His cousin had annoyed him; stirred up the acrimony of his nature, and destroyed all that placidity of demeanour which he had fostered lately. He felt that he rather hated Maurice Hinchford again; that his cousin was ever a dark blot in the landscape, with his robust health, loud voice, and self-sufficiency. This man paraded his own knowledge of human nature too obtrusively, and spoke as if his listener was a child; he professed to have discerned in Harriet Wesden an affection for the old lover to whom she had been engaged—as if he, Sidney Hinchford, had been blind all his life, or was morally blind then! Sidney would be glad to hear the last of him—to be left to himself once more; his cousin was an intrusion—he desired no further speech with him, and he implied as much by his last impatient query.

"It's something entirely new, Sidney, and therefore you need not fear any old topics being intruded on your notice. I have brought a friend to see you."

"Take him away again."

"No, I'd rather not, thank you," was the aggravating response; "I made my mind up to bring him, and he's waiting in the shop."

"Maurice—you insult me!"

"Pardon me, cousin, but the end must justify the means. He has come from Paris to see you; he would have been here before, had not illness prevented him."

"Who is this man?"

"The cleverest man in Europe, I'm told—an eccentric being, with a wonderful mine of cleverness beneath his eccentricity. A man who has made the defects of vision his one study, and has become great in consequence. Sidney, you must see him!"

"You bring him here at your own expense, to inspect a hopeless case; you will shame me by being beholden to you—to you, of all men in the world!"

"I thought we had got over the past—forgiven it?"

"Yes, but——"

"But it can't be forgiven, Sid Hinchford, if you hinder me making an effort to atone to you in my way."

"With your purse?" was the cold reply.

"No; with my respect for you—my regret for a friend whom I have lost."

"A strange friend!"

"And I have faith in this man. I remember a case similar to yours, which——"

"Stop! in the name of mercy, Maurice—this cannot be borne at least. I am resigned to despair, but not to such a hope as yours. Let him come in, and laugh at you for your folly in bringing him hither."

"Bario!" called Maurice.

The lank man came into the parlour, set his hat on a chair, and looked at Sidney very intently. His vacuity of expression vanished, and a keen intelligence took its place.

"Good morning, sir," he said, in fair English; "you are the blind gentleman Mr. Hinchford has requested me to see?"

"The same, sir."

"You are sure you're blind?"

"Maurice, this man is a——"

"Yes, very clever. You have heard of Dr. Bario—he has been resident in Paris some years now."

"Ah!" said Sidney, listlessly.

"There is a blindness that be not blindness, sir—that's my theory," said the Italian; "a something that comes suddenly like a blight—the off-spring of much excitement, very often."

"Mine had been growing upon me for years—I was prepared for it by a man as skilful as yourself."

"May I put to you his name."