Frederica and her Guardians; Or, The Perils of Orphanhood

Margaret Robertson

"Frederica and her Guardians"

"The Perils of Orphanhood"

Chapter One.

The Perils of Orphanhood.

The house in which the Vanes lived stood in a large and beautiful garden, and both were enclosed by a high brick wall, over which only the waving tops of the trees could be seen from the street. There were a good many such houses in M. at the time my story opens. They were originally built in the country, amid green fields and orchards, where, on summer days, one might sit and look at country sights and listen to country sounds, and quite forget that the hum and bustle of a great town sounded close at hand.

As time went on, and commerce prospered, the town extended itself in all directions. Houses, some large and some small, were built near those pleasant country homes, and in a few years stretched far beyond them. Sometimes the gardens were encroached upon, and streets were opened, and building lots laid out and occupied close to the house itself, till only a narrow strip of dusty lawn was left. But in some streets the high brick garden-walls made a blank between great blocks of stores and terraces of dwellings for a good many years, and in some streets there are high brick garden-walls still.

The house in which the Vanes lived was a long time before it yielded up a foot of its large garden which the wall shut in. This wall was broken on two sides by gates. In a narrow street which led down towards the river were two heavy wooden doors, one large enough to admit a carriage, the other smaller, for the convenience of those who entered on foot. On another side, from one of the great thoroughfares of the city, the grounds were entered by handsome iron gates. A clump of evergreens and ornamental shrubs in part hid the house, even when the gates, were open, and a low cedar hedge and a fence of iron network separated the lawn and the carriage-drive from the more extensive grounds behind the house.

The house itself had no particular claim to be called handsome, except that it was large and well built of grey hewn stone. It was high and square, and on one side a wing had been thrown out, which rather spoiled the appearance of the original building; but, standing back from the bustle and dust of the street, behind the green, lawn and pebbly carriage-drive, and partly hidden by the trees and shrubs, it looked a very pleasant and pretty place for a home.

This house was built and occupied many years by Mr St. Hubert, an immigrant from France, and at his death it was left to his only child, Mrs Vane, with a condition that neither it nor a foot of the land about it should be sold during her life-time. A great many tales might be told of what happened in that house from first to last—most of them sorrowful tales enough—but it is only the story of poor Mrs Vane and her children that is to be told here.

Almost every one spoke of this lady as “poor Mrs Vane.” Her friends had all said, “Poor Theresa,” when it was first known that she was to be married to Mr Vane; for he was a poor man, and a widower with three children, who, they all said, wished to marry her because she was the daughter of a man who was supposed to be rich. Her father would have given half of what he possessed, rather than that she should have married Mr Vane; but he had never crossed a wish of hers during all the eighteen years of her life, and it was too late to begin then. So, though he did not like him, he gave his consent to the marriage, on condition that he should leave the army, and accept a situation in a public office, which he, being a man of wealth and influence, was able to obtain for him. It did not cost Mr Vane much self-denial to do this—though he used afterwards to declare that it did—for he was a man who first of all considered what was for his own ease and pleasure. Nor did it trouble him much to send his children from him. His eldest daughter was adopted by his first wife’s mother, who resided in the town of M.; and his other children—a boy and girl—were sent home to be cared for and educated by their father’s friends in England; and he took up his residence in the luxurious home of his father-in-law with very good will.

It did not prove a happy marriage. It might have done so, perhaps, if after a few years Mrs Vane’s health had not failed. If she could have continued the gay life to which she had been introduced, and could have shone a belle among her husband’s friends, as she had done in her own smaller circle while a girl, she might have had a sort of happiness, while it lasted, and so might he. But after awhile her health failed, and at the time of her father’s death, which happened when her eldest child was thirteen years of age, she was a confirmed invalid.

She was “poor Mrs Vane” indeed then. A suffering, solitary, forsaken woman she felt herself to be the day her dead father was carried away from the house he had built. Not that her husband had ever been unkind to her, or even openly neglectful. But he had never cared for her as she had cared for him; and it was not in his nature to understand the wants or cravings of a sick unsatisfied heart like hers, much less to minister to them. He was sorry that she could no longer go into the society she had always adorned, and he often told her so; but he never gave up a pleasure which society could offer to him for her sake. He grieved for her sufferings, and did what might be done during a brief visit or two each day to relieve them; but long before her father’s death she had come to feel that his grief was of a kind that could very well be left in her chamber when he went away. After a time the vain craving for his sympathy, which made the first years of her illness so miserable, wore away, and a kind of dull content, growing gradually out of an interest in other things, took its place; but she was “poor Mrs Vane” still to the few friends who had not forgotten her already in her enforced retirement.

And her husband was “poor Mr Vane” to himself and everybody else when Mr St. Hubert died. The old man had treated him shamefully, he thought and declared, for his name was not mentioned in his will. The house and a certain income was insured to his wife while she lived, and at her death all the property was to be divided between the children, and given up to them as each came of age. But he had nothing; and even his wife’s income was not allowed to pass through his hands.

It was not a very large income. It would not have sufficed for her and her children, had they been living in the gay world, entertaining and being entertained. But living quietly, as her health obliged them to live, it might be considered ample for them all. At any rate, she knew it would have to suffice; for Mr Vane, having always spent his own income on his own pleasures, was ill prepared to give up any part of it.

They did not grow happier together after this. Some time before Mr St. Hubert’s death the care of household affairs had been committed by him into the hands of a relative of his own—a widow of the name of Ascot; and during his life-time nothing transpired to occasion any doubt as to her entire fitness for the position he had given her. She was a French woman by birth, and spoke English very imperfectly, though her deceased husband had been an Englishman. She was a very quiet, firm person, faithful in the performance of all her duties, and careful and exact in the management of the household expenses. She never presumed on her relationship in any way that was disagreeable to Mr St. Hubert, and, by her attention to himself and her kindness to Mrs Vane, won his confidence entirely; and his anxiety as to the future of his daughter and her children was in a great measure allayed by the promise she made never to leave them while they needed her care.

But after his death matters were not so well managed. At least, they were not managed to the satisfaction of poor Mrs Vane. In a very short time an entire change was effected in the household. Mr Vane found it an improvement as far as his comfort was concerned, or probably Mrs Ascot’s stay in the house would have been short. But it was not so with Mrs Vane. Mrs Ascot was very quiet, very reasonable, and, above all, very firm. “Nothing was so necessary for Mrs Vane as entire quiet,” she declared; and the poor mother had not the strength or courage to carry on a battle with her stronger will. So her two little daughters were sent to school, and her two little sons, with their nurse, were banished to the part of the house most distant from their mother’s room, and were only permitted to visit it at certain times. They would have been sent to school, too, if Mrs Ascot could have accomplished it; but, as the eldest was only four years of age at the time of his grandfather’s death, this she could hardly do.

Only one thing saved Mrs Vane from falling into hopeless fretfulness or helpless imbecility—this was the constant presence of her eldest and dearest child, Selina. Even Mrs Ascot’s cold-heartedness could not separate these two. Even Mr Vane’s selfishness was not equal to planning or permitting anything that could come between the mother and her child. For the little girl was blind,—had been blind from her seventh year, and since that time she had never once been beyond the sound of her mother’s voice.

A great many of God’s best blessings come to us disguised as sorrows. It seemed to this mother, when she could no longer doubt that the light of heaven was to be denied to her child, that God could deal no harder blow, and in her wild angry way she prayed that the little creature might die. She thought of all that had made life sweet to herself, from all which her child must be shut out for ever, and she utterly refused to be comforted.

And yet, as the years went on, the affliction of the child did more for the mother than all the blessings that had been showered on her youth, than all the trials that had fallen on her later years—it made her forget herself. In seeking to brighten her little daughter’s life, her own was brightened. She suffered herself to be beguiled into exertions for her sake, that would have seemed impossible for her own. She welcomed the few visitors that came, because Selina liked to hear new voices and make new friends. The daily walk in the garden or the drive in the carriage sometimes seemed a weariness to her; but they deepened the rose on the little girl’s cheek, and she went for her sake. She recalled the little songs and tales of her childhood for her pleasure, and took pains to learn such simple fancy work as the blind child could be taught to do.

In her little daughter the mother found solace for many a sorrow. She was a fair, slender child, more like her father than her mother, but like neither in disposition. She was sweet and cheerful always, even merry in her quiet way. She knew her blindness was a great misfortune, but it did not press upon her as such. She never repined under it, nor murmured that she was not like the rest; but rather comforted herself and her mother, saying that no schools nor visits could ever take her from her and from home; and after a time her mother was comforted and reconciled to her affliction.

“For after all,” she thought, “what has life to give to any one? Far better that she should live here always, safe, and ignorant of the world and its ways, than that she should taste of pleasure only to have it turn to bitterness on her lips, as it has done on mine. If she could only be always a child! What will become of my darling when I must go and leave her?”

Poor Mrs Vane! She sought refuge in the present, from the griefs of the past, and the fears for the future; for she was one of those who have no safe place to which they can flee from trouble. She had scarcely even a form of religion. She had been altogether untaught as regards sacred things. Her mother had been a Jewess, and had died young, and her father had had no religion. Her husband troubled himself very little about these things, either for her or himself. He had chosen godfathers and godmothers for his children, and had them baptised, and then his duty was done. And the poor, solitary, suffering mother knew not where to betake herself in her time of need. Her fears for the future of all her children pressed on her heavily often, and she longed sadly and earnestly for some true friend to whom she might trust them.

And so the months and years passed, with nothing to break the monotony of their life but the monthly visits of the two school girls, Frederica and Theresa. Very pleasant breaks they were. The girls always came into the still sunshine of their mother’s pretty room like a fresh sweet breeze from the outer world, bringing health and fragrance on its wings. They were bright days indeed. Selina lived another life in the tales told by the school girls; and even their mother forgot her cares and ailments for the time as she listened to their merry talk. They were not at all alike: Selina was growing up tall and fair, like an English girl, her blind beautiful eyes clear and cloudless as the summer heaven; Frederica was small and dark, as much a Jewess in appearance as ever her grandmother had been; Theresa was more like Frederica than Selina, but plainer than either. But they were all alike in one thing: they loved each other and their mother dearly, and longed earnestly for the time when their school days should be over, and they should be happy together.

So poor Mrs Vane, who had comfort in so few things, had much comfort in her daughters and their love. And she needed all their comfort, poor soul! for some troubles, hard to bear, fell to her lot at this time—troubles which she could not let them share with her, and which need not be told here.

Chapter Two.

A whole week of holidays!—unexpected, unhoped-for holidays! For Mrs Glencairn was a Scotch lady, and had small respect for days “appointed by men.” All the days in the year were good days to a Godfearing people, said she; and as a general thing, Easter passed in their school just like any other time. But this year there was to be a whole week of holidays, whatever might be the reason. The pupils who stayed wearied themselves with conjectures as to why it had so happened; but the happy little girls who could go home to enjoy them, accepted the boon without a question, content with the fact itself.

Content! That hardly expresses the feelings of the little Vanes as they went dancing down the street, unconsciously jostling the many church-goers in their joyful excitement. Perfect happiness was in their hearts, shone in their faces, and rang out in their voices, and people as they passed turned again to look at them, so charming was the sight to see. They were happy in their own holiday, and happy in the thought that their coming home would make a holiday for their mother and Selina and their little brothers.

“And I am sure there will be some flowers out in the garden,” said Theresa,—“hyacinths or snowdrops, at least. And all the walks will be so neat and the borders. That is one good thing about Mrs Ascot, she does see that the garden is beautifully kept.”

“Yes, very. But I only hope mama will be well. It is so lovely to-day; and we must have a drive. It will make no difference though Dixen be busy in the garden, because I shall drive myself.”

“But will mama like that, do you think?” asked Theresa doubtfully.

“Of course she will like it, and Selina too. They have perfect confidence in me,” said Frederica firmly. “And as for Prickly Polly,”—she shrugged her shoulders.

“But no, my children! What shall I say to your papa when you shall be brought home in little morsels, and the carriage, and your dear mama!” And Theresa clasped her hands, and threw back her head with an air so ludicrously like Mrs Ascot, that her sister laughed merrily.

“She will go to church to-day. What if we should meet her?”

“Oh! she would be sure to go back with us. Let us go down the other way!”

Laughing and running, the girls turned into a narrow street. In their haste they ran against a little old gentleman just stepping out from an office door. They did not quite overturn him, but they startled him out of his good manners, and he uttered an angry exclamation in French. Then, as they turned to apologise, he exclaimed, “The young ladies Vane! What next, I wonder?”

“Mr St. Cyr! a thousand pardons.” They had been speaking English all the way down the street, but they spoke French to him, and both the girls dropped their very best curtseys.

“It must be that my little cousins have come to get their wills made, or their marriage contracts drawn, in all this haste.”

Mr St. Cyr was the gentleman to whom their grandfather had committed the arrangement of his affairs; it was he who still managed the property; and through his hands their mother’s income came still.

“I was going to church this morning, but I shall be happy to defer it for you. You need not have been in such haste, however.”

The girls laughed, and apologised again.

“We were running away from Prickly Polly,” said Theresa.

“From Madame Marie Pauline Precoe Ascot,” explained Frederica.

“Is she coming after you? You had much better come in here,” said Mr St. Cyr, pretending great fright.

“Oh, no! But she is sure to go to church today, and we thought we might meet her. And if she knew we were going home, it might shorten her devotions.”

“If she knew we had a holiday, she would want to come home to vex us. We are not among her favourites—especially Fred.”

“Ah! that is it, is it?” said Mr St. Cyr. “She is hard on you, is she? I hope you do not let her trouble you too much.”

“By no means,” said Frederica with dignity. “On the contrary, I think I trouble her far more.”

“I can conceive it possible,” said Mr St. Cyr with a shrug. “But are you sure you can find your way home by these streets? See, I will go with you, and show you past the corner below. And let us hope that Madame Pauline will confess all her sins to-day; and I fancy that might ensure her absence till nightfall at least. And my young ladies, the next time you come to me in your troubles, pray don’t begin by knocking me down.”

“Pardon us, Cousin Cyprien. It was very careless,” said Frederica, eagerly. “But really and truly, may I come to you with my troubles? I mean, of course, when I have any. I have none now,” she added, laughing.

Mr St. Cyr did not laugh. He looked gravely into the bright face before him, so gravely that the laughing eyes looking up at him grew grave too.

“I hope it will be a long time before you need my help in trouble, little cousin. How old are you now? Let us see.”

Instead of turning at the corner, as he meant to do, he walked on with them.

“I shall be fifteen my next birthday. It comes in August,” said Frederica.

“Fifteen!” repeated Mr St. Cyr. “But what a little creature you are! It is a pity.”

“I am as tall as mama,” said Frederica with dignity.

“Yes, I suppose so. She was just such another child. Ah! how the years pass!”

“I shall grow yet, I have no doubt,” said Frederica.

“Ah! well! we will hope so. And be quick about it. If you were only as tall as your sister at home now, we might strain a point, and call your education finished, and send you home to your mother. You must have learned quantities of things all these years, eh?”

“Oh! quantities!” said Frederica gravely. “But, Mr St. Cyr, I am not very big, I know. Still I could be a comfort to mama all the same.”

“And she needs comfort you think?”

“It gives her pleasure to have us at home.”

“And she has not so many pleasures, these days,” said Mr St. Cyr. “But it would not do, I fear, not yet. Why, you are a mere child! I had no idea! Not nearly so mature as her mother was at her age,” continued he, not to her, but to himself. “Well, so much the better. The more a child the better. The longer a child the better. She is so like her mother, too. The same sweet smiling eyes. Ah! there are so great mistakes made in this life!”

“Mr St. Cyr,” said Frederica in a moment, “I am very little, I know, but Mrs Glencairn says I have a great deal of good sense, if I would only use it; and I daresay if you were to tell papa that I have learned enough of things, and that I ought to stay at home with mama and Selina, I don’t think he would object.”

Mr St. Cyr only answered by that wonderful shrug of his shoulders, which he could make to express anything—surprise, doubt, utter disbelief; and Frederica went on:

“Indeed, Mrs Glencairn thinks I am very sensible, and so does Miss Robina. Will you tell papa to let me stay at home, Mr St. Cyr?”

“And you think he would do it for me?” said he with an odd smile. “You are too young—much too young. If I had my way, you should remain a happy child for years and years yet—no millinery, no balls, no admiration, for seven years at least. Ah! when I think of your mother, and see you looking at me with her happy eyes! But what is the use of going over all this? I shall, be late for church, and I must bid you good day. And if I shall see—what is this you call her, little one?—Prickly Polly!—I shall send her wool-gathering, shall I? And then you can pass the day without her.”

They all laughed.

“Oh! I am not the least afraid of her; though I am not very big,” said Frederica.

“But you may send her to gather wool, all the same,” said Theresa.

Then they went quietly on their way. There was no dancing along the street after that, as Mr St. Cyr saw when he turned at the corner of the square to look after them.

“She is like her mother,” said he to himself, “but more like her grandmother, that shrewd little Jewess, with her ‘good sense,’ as madame the schoolmistress says. Ah! if she had lived, that poor foolish child would not have been suffered to make that great mistake in life. But I must go to church. How many times have I said that I would not permit myself to care for her children as I have cared for her, to have my heart torn by ingratitude, or by indifference, which is as ill to bear. If, indeed, through them I could wound the self-love and vanity of their father, and so avenge the wrongs of my friend’s child, the poor Theresa—ah! then I might care for them, and fight for them against him to the death.” And with this Christian sentiment in his heart, the little man went up the great cathedral steps to pray.

In the meantime the two girls were walking slowly down the street.

“I like Cousin Cyprien very much,” said Frederica, gravely.

“Yes, so do I,” said her sister. “But then he is not our cousin, you know.”

“Well, he was grandpapa’s cousin; and if he is not ours, we have none. I like him.”

“Madame Ascot is our cousin quite as much as he.”

“Madame Ascot, indeed! Don’t be silly, Tessie;” and she shrugged her shoulders in Mr St. Cyr’s fashion. “I wish I had gone to church with Mr St. Cyr. I mean I wish I had offered to go. He would have been pleased.”

“But papa would not have been pleased, Fred.”

“He would not have cared about my going to church. He would not have been pleased that I should go to give pleasure to Mr St. Cyr. He does not like him; I wonder why.”

“Oh! you know very well. It is because of grandpapa’s will.”

“Mama likes him. She says he is a good and just man. He is very religious.”

“So is Madame Ascot,” said Tessie. “I don’t admire religious people.”

“But then there are so many ways of being religious. Miss Baines’ religion made her strong and patient to bear pain. And she was good and kind always.”

“Miss Pardie is very religious—the cross thing,” said Theresa, “and so is Fanny Green. But she listens to the girl’s conversation while she says her prayers. And Mattie Holt tells tales, and is very disagreeable. I don’t admire religious people.”

“But then their religion cannot be of the right kind. There must be some good in the right religion, if we only could be sure what the right is.”

“Oh, I daresay they are all good after a fashion. One kind is good for one, and another kind for another.”

“But, Tessie, that is nonsense. How can things be equally good that are exactly opposite? And I know that Mrs Ascot thinks papa and the rest of us all wrong. And you should have seen her scornful look, when I told her once that Miss Baines was a religious woman. And I know that Mrs Glencairn and Miss Robina, among themselves, call Mrs Ascot ‘a poor benighted creature.’ They cannot all be right.”

“Oh! well! what does it matter?” said her sister, impatiently. “Why should you care what Mrs Ascot thinks, or Mrs Glencairn either?”

“Still, one would like to know. Mr St. Cyr is good, but then Mrs Ascot is not; and they have just the same religion, though I don’t suppose Mr St. Cyr goes so often to church, or to confession, as she does. And Miss Baines was good, and her religion was quite different. As for papa and the rest of us, I don’t think we have any at all.”

“Well, that shows that it doesn’t matter about religion. I am sure mama is much nicer than Madame Ascot, and she has no religion at all you say, and Madame says the same.”

“Mama is a Jewess, at least her mother was,” said Frederica; “but she is certainly not religious in her way. One ought to have a religion of some kind, only how is one to know when one has that which is right?”

“There is the Bible,” said Tessie, hesitating.

“Yes, Miss Baines says it is the book of books, and mama approves of it too. She has one, you know, only it is in Hebrew. I shall ask some one about it,—which is the right kind I mean.”

“Papa, for instance, or Mr St. Cyr. But one would tell you one thing, and the other another, and you would be just in the same place. Only I think papa would just laugh at you.”

“I suppose so. But there must be some way of finding out the truth.”

“Better go and ask the bishop,” said Tessie, laughing. “But then there are two bishops, and which is the right? Don’t be a goose, Fred.”

“I am quite serious, I assure you, for the moment,” added she. “And indeed, it is a thing to be quite serious about.”

“If we had gone to the convent, as Mr St. Cyr and Madame Ascot wished, instead of to Mrs Glencairn’s, we should have known all about it. But then it is quite right that we should be of the same religion as papa. Still I think he did not care himself, only he wished to vex Mr St. Cyr.”

Frederica said nothing for a minute, and her sister added—

“We ought to learn about it in church: that is what we go to church for, I suppose.”

“Yes, and I like to go very well, but I get very sleepy during the sermon, especially when we go with Miss Robina. I try to listen sometimes; but of course all that is meant for grown-up people, and I don’t understand it.”

“Were you not just telling Mr St. Cyr that you are grown up? But I think you are very stupid to bother about it. If people say their prayers and are nice and obliging, and all that, I think that is quite enough. I am sure mama is good, and so is Selina, and what is the use talking so much about religion, as though that would make any difference?”

“Yes, mama is good, and Selina, but I am not, at least very often I am not. And there must be some way of finding out what is wrong and what is right.”

“Of course there is—your own conscience,” said Tessie, triumphantly. “Hasn’t Mrs Glencairn often told you?”

Frederica shook her head.

“But there must be something more than that. I wish I knew.”

“Say your prayers and go to church, that is religion, everybody knows. But to be good and nice is something quite different. I think you are very silly, with all your wishes and talking, and I beg you won’t say anything to Selina about it. She thinks of things afterwards, and you are not to vex her. And don’t look like that, or I shall wish you had gone to church with Mr St. Cyr. But you will forget all about it before to-morrow. That is one comfort.”

“Very likely; but that does not prove anything;” said Frederica. “Everybody ought to have some kind of religion; and sometimes, when I used to see Miss Baines so happy in the midst of all her pain and trouble, I thought of poor mama, and wished that she could know all about it. But I won’t say anything to Selina just yet.”

“No, nor ever, unless you are a goose. Here we are at home. Won’t they be glad?” And the little girl ran up the broad stone steps, and danced out her impatience while she was made to wait for the opening of the door.

“No,” said Frederica, as she stood at her side; “I am not going to spoil our visit with religion, at any rate; and I daresay you are right, Tessie, and I may forget all about it before the week is over.”

Chapter Three.

Easter fell late this year. The grass on the sheltered lawn was already green, and there were many budding things in the borders; and with the sunshine falling on them so warm and bright, it almost seemed to the children like a summer day. Tessie could not resist the temptation to run down the steps again, to peep through the wires and over the low cedar hedge at the crocuses and snowdrops beyond:

“We shall have cold days enough yet,” she said as she came back; “but I need not spoil to-day thinking about them. It is just like summer to-day.”

“We shall make a summer day in the house to mama and Selina, that is—and to the children—and to Madame Marie Pauline Precoe Ascot, too, if she will let us; to the rest, whether she will or not.”

The coming in of the two children brightened their mother’s dim room like sunshine, and the more this time that they were not expected. It was early yet, and their mother was not dressed; but their sister sprang to meet them with a glad cry, and in a minute they were all rejoicing round their mother’s couch.

“A week of holidays, mama! Think of it, Lina! a whole week. I don’t in the least know how it happened. Somebody is going away or somebody is coming. It doesn’t matter; here we are. Isn’t it nice?”

And so they chattered on for a time, while their mother listened.

“Lina,” said Frederica, in a little, “stand up, and let me see how tall you are.”

Seeing her there in her mother’s room, you would never have supposed that Selina Vane was blind. Her eyes were a clear and lovely blue, well opened and bright. She walked about the room, not rapidly, but still lightly; not at all like one afraid. While going about the house and garden, she bent slightly forward, and walked with one hand held a little out before her; but here, in her mother’s dressing-room, she had no look of blindness. Her face was as bright and happy as her sister’s, and she rose at Frederica’s bidding, laughing and wondering a little. Her sister placed herself beside her, and measured the difference in their height with her hand. She shook her head gravely.

“There is a dreadful difference. I am a shockingly little creature; am I not, mama?”

She put on such a face of ludicrous dismay, that her mother could not but laugh.

“Mama, I am nearly fifteen. I ought to be a woman by this time, and really I am nothing but a child.”

She stood before a large dressing-glass, and surveyed herself discontentedly.

“These curls have something to do with it, and this short dress. That can be remedied, however.”

In a moment she had obtained a dressing-gown of her mother’s, and, drawing the silken cord tightly round her waist, she walked up and down, looking over her shoulder to see herself in the glass. The whole thing was done in a manner so childish, and so amusing, that her mother laughed merrily; and her little brother who had come in with Tessie, clapped their hands. Frederica laughed too.

“I am afraid it is not the dress, mama; I am only a child.”

“My darling! a happy child is a very good thing to be. I hope it will be a long time before you are anything but a happy child. The longer the better,” added she, with a sigh.

“That is what Cousin Cyprien said, mama,” said Frederica, gravely.

“Yes; it was Mr St. Cyr that put all that nonsense in her head about being a woman and grown up,” said Tessie, severely; “and she told him she had a deal of sense, though she was so little. For my part, I am very well content to be a child.”

“But you have a child, you know, dear; only thirteen, or is it twelve, mama? A precocious child certainly, but still a child,” said Frederica, with an air.

“Mama, look at her. She must be forty, at least,” exclaimed Tessie. “She must be considerably older than Mrs Ascot—ever so much older than Lina.”

“What is it all about?” asked Selina, gently.

“Never mind. Don’t ask her, Lina. She is so dreadfully wise and clever that she is quite too much for me sometimes. I should not wonder if Mrs Glencairn would wish to engage her to supply Miss Robina’s place when she is married.”

“Tessie, that is a secret. You promised not to tell—about Miss Robina, I mean.”

“How prudent, too?” said Tessie. “Mama, we are not crazy; only we are so glad to get home.”

“And indeed, mama, I am very willing to be a child for a long time yet,” said Frederica, and seizing her little brother Hubert, she danced with him round the room to music of her own making. Catching Charlie’s hands, Tessie followed, while Selina, laughing, joined in the music, though not in the dance.

“Mama,” said she, softly, “is it the same house do you think?”

The boys might have grown too noisy, but Frederica brought their play to an end presently.

“Mama,” said she, “it is the loveliest of spring days. You think it cold, I daresay, as you have a fire, but it is just like summer, and I am going to drive you and Selina; and afterwards I will drive the boys, if they are very good. We will go very slowly; not in the streets, but away in the country. Mama, you are not afraid of my driving?” Mrs Vane shook her head. “No, love; I am not afraid. I am sure you can drive the ponies; but it is a long time since I was out. Selina will like to go, however.”

“And you too, mama—just a little way. Are you not so well, mama? You are tired. Something has tired you. Ah! these papers. I see. She could not have gone to church, and said her prayers quite happily, unless she had left you something to vex yourself with while she was away. Where are they? Why, mama, these are the very same I saw at Christmas—some of them at least,” added she, after turning over a bundle of papers that lay on the dressing-table. “I see butcher’s bill—baker’s bill—grocer’s bill. What quantities you and Selina must eat, mama! I don’t understand them in the least. Were not all these things paid before, mama?”

“Some of them must have been,” replied Mrs Vane, wearily; “but I do not understand them.”

“And why should you be vexed? Is not Mrs Ascot here for no other reason than to save you all this trouble? And surely papa—”

Mrs Vane made a sudden impatient gesture. “Papa can do nothing. There is nothing to be done but pay the bills, and he cannot pay them.”

“Has anything happened since we were at home?” asked Frederica anxiously. “Have we grown poor?”

“No, no. Everything is as usual. Indeed, Mr St. Cyr gave me more money than usual. Rents have risen, he says. He was here not a month since, but the money has all gone—‘to pay servants’ wages and old debts,’ Mrs Ascot says. I do not understand how it can be.”

“But, mama, there must be some mistake. I wish I knew about bills and things. Papa ought to examine these. He would understand them. Why should you be vexed about them?”

“My love, there is nothing to understand, he says, but that the bills must be paid; and he says I must ask Mr St. Cyr for more money—that we have not enough to live upon. I cannot do it. It is not in his power to increase it. He gave me more once, but I think, it was his own. It was for Mrs Glencairn. I could not bear that she who is so good to you should be without her money. But I could not ask him again.”

“But, mama,” said Frederica, hesitating, “has papa no money? He goes to the office, and all that—and has he no salary, like other gentlemen?”

“There is many a family kept on less than his income, Mr St. Cyr told me; but the keeping up of the place is expensive; and I cannot ask him. And oh, darling, to think that I should have spoiled your holiday with all this!”

“Mama, don’t you remember how you put these bills away at Christmas, not to vex yourself and us? And here they are again. It is right that I should be vexed with what vexes you, although I am a child.”

“Yes, if you could help me, dear.”

The children had gone out to the garden by this time. Selina sat holding her mother’s hand, listening with a grave face to all that passed.

“Mama,” said she, “Frederica ought to know. She is a child, but she has sense; and, with her to help us, we might be able to understand. Have you the papers, Frederica? Mama read them all at Christmas after you went away, and she gave Madame Ascot money to pay some of them at least, and it cannot be right that they all should come back. There must be some mistake.”

Frederica opened a great many papers and read patiently through long household accounts, and in a little while became utterly bewildered. Nothing but the grave looks of her mother and Selina prevented her from bursting into childish laughter, so comical did the going over and over the same thing seem to her. The grocer’s bill was the most amusing. “Tea, sugar, coffee, soap, candles, salt,” and so on, over again.

“Dear me, mama, how many things people need?”

Then there were other bills, the butcher’s, the baker’s, and then a wine merchant’s bill. There was one which had “paid M. Leroy” at the end of it, and Frederica said—

“Madame Ascot did not intend you should have this, mama. However, we may as well put it with the rest.”

Selina listened earnestly, but said nothing. Indeed, when they had all wearied themselves, they were no wiser, and no nearer the end of their trouble.

“Mama, ought people to have bills?” said Frederica; “ought not people to pay when they buy things? It would save a great deal of trouble.”

“I think they ought; but Mrs Ascot seems to have fallen into this way. It was not done when I was well. Oh, if I were only able to attend to these things myself! It is quite wrong that things should have fallen into such a state. I do not believe there is any need that it should be so. Everything is wrong, and I can do nothing. I do not trust Madame Ascot: and your father,—there is no use speaking to him.”

She was getting excited, and would be ill soon, her daughters knew, unless this could be put out of her mind.

“I will tell you what we must do, mama. We will take all these papers to Mr St. Cyr—not to ask more money. But he will understand them, and he will help us. Mama, he was quite nice to-day, not at all cross, though we nearly knocked him down; and he said I was to come to him when I was in trouble, and I am sure this is dreadful trouble. Selina, don’t you think we might go to Mr St. Cyr?”

Selina waited for her mother to speak.

“I don’t think Mrs Ascot would like it, nor papa. He says Mr St. Cyr must advance the money to pay the bills, that is all.”

“Oh! as for papa, he won’t trouble himself; and I think I should rather like to vex madame. She need not be vexed if she has made no mistakes, and if she is quite to be trusted,” said Frederica, with some hesitation.

“There is no good in struggling against Mrs Ascot,” said Mrs Vane hopelessly; “I have tried often, and there is no use. I have not the strength nor the courage.”

The papers fell to the floor, as Frederica started up suddenly.

“Mama, I have strength and courage to tear Madame Ascot into fifty thousand little pieces, if she dares to trouble you,” cried she; and then, as she saw her mother’s face, she hung her head, adding, “I beg your pardon, mama: that was very foolish and wicked.”

“My darling, there is no use in doing anything that Mrs Ascot will not like. I have tried to bring things right often.”

“Because you are not strong. Papa ought to do it,” said Frederica.

“And, mama, this cannot go on always. There must come an end some time, and I think Frederica is right, and these papers should be sent to Mr St. Cyr.” Selina spoke very quietly.

“And why should Madame Ascot care?” said Frederica. “I hope she will care. I should like to see her face when she knows Mr St. Cyr has got those disagreeable papers. I have a fancy that their only use is to make you uncomfortable, you and Selina. Now I shall put them away, and you must promise not to think of them again, till Cousin Cyprien shall make them all right. And I will order the ponies, and drive you first, mama, and Lina, and afterwards Tessie and the boys, if they are very good.”

“Mama,” said Selina, “I think this is quite the best way—about the papers, I mean. You know you have thought about giving them to him before. And he will be quite willing to take the trouble, and he will know what to do; he is wise. Say that this is right, mama.”

“Indeed, love, I do not know what is right; but we will send them: I can do nothing else.”

“And it will all be made easy, mama. I only wonder we have not sent them long ago. And you are really not to think about them—promise, dear mama.”

And so the disagreeable subject was put away for that time.

Chapter Four.

The orders were given, and all preparations made, and in a little time the pony carriage stood at the door. It was a carriage which Mr St. Hubert had had made for his daughter’s use, after she became an invalid. It was open and quite low, and large enough to hold two persons, besides the fortunate ones who should occupy the luxurious chief seats. But the boys were restless, and sometimes noisy, and Tessie was to stay at home with them, so that their mother and Selina might sit in state and comfort. Frederica, on the high front seat, acted as driver, and enjoyed it well. Dixen was there beside her, so that her mother need not have the least cause for being frightened or nervous, and so lose the pleasure of the drive.

Dixen had once been a soldier, and Mr Vane’s servant while he was in the army, and had lived with him since his marriage in various capacities. Lately he had been called the coachman; but to take Mrs Vane and Selina out to their unfrequent drives, was only a small part of what was expected from him. He waited on Mr Vane, he worked under the gardener, and held himself ready to do whatever else might be found for him to do. The other servants had got into the fashion of calling him old and good for little; but none of them all worked so faithfully for their wages as he.

He did not feel affronted that the reins were taken out of his hands on this occasion; for the young lady had been taught to drive by him, and he was proud of her skill and success in the art.

They left the city streets, and passing the toll-gate, soon found themselves with the river on one side and the dull grey fields and leafless trees on the other, with nothing to hinder the putting of the ponies to their speed. It was a summer day for brightness and mildness, but Mrs Vane drew her fur cloak close around her, as the breeze from the river reached her; for she had made herself a prisoner in the house for a long time, and the keen air made her shiver. Selina smiled with pleasure as she felt the wind on her face, and drew in long breaths of the sweet refreshing air.

“Is not this nice, mama?” asked she, laying herself back among the cushions with a sigh of satisfaction.

“Very nice and pleasant,” said her mother, touching her hand gently. This stood to the blind girl for a smile.

“And you are glad you came, mama?”

“Very glad, love. You have quite a colour already.”

“And so have you, mama,” said Frederica, glancing round. “When were you out last?”

“Not for a long time—not since we went in a sleigh,” said Selina, answering for her. “We thought the roads could not be quite good yet. And mama is afraid of the cold.”

“Not since sleighing!” exclaimed Frederica: “you don’t know your privileges. Dixen, I am surprised at you.”

“It has no’ been my fault, Miss Frederica, I can assure you,” said Dixen gravely.

“I have not felt inclined to go out,” said Mrs Vane; “and, indeed, there is little pleasure in going when one has to be so muffled from the cold.”

“But, mama, you thought you could not come to-day. You thought it would be too much for you, and now you enjoy it. It is just what you need, and Selina too. You want me to be at home to take care of you both.”

“And indeed, Miss, that’s a true word of yours,” said Dixen in a whisper.

Frederica looked up quickly.

“Mama, I am going to ask Dixen. He is a man of sense. Dixen, don’t you think it is quite time that I should be considered a grown-up young lady? I am fifteen, and mama needs me at home. I am very little, I know,” added she, deprecatingly, as the old man let a queer glance rest on her. He answered with great gravity, however.

“Good gear is ay in small bundles; and one does not need to be a giantess to be a comfort to one’s mother.”

“Just so,” Said Frederica, nodding well pleased. “I am fifteen, and one ought to have some sense at fifteen. Mama, are you keeping your promise? You know you are only to think of pleasant things. You are sure you are glad you came?”

“Very glad, dear.”

“And not all for Lina’s sake?”

“No,” said her mother, laughing; “a little for your sake.”

“Oh, I hope it will be fine every day while we are at home. We shall drive every day. Do you like it, Lina?”

“Yes,” said Selina softly. Selina’s “yes” said more than other people’s protestations.

It was very pleasant to them all. It was not in appearance only that Mrs Vane had put away all unhappy thoughts; she had really put them away. It was not that she had much hope that her cousin could put everything right, as Frederica had said, or that she had much faith in her little daughter’s “good sense.” But she had great faith in her loving heart and happy temper, and it was a wonderful break in the dull life led by her and Selina to have the merry little creature with them, and she yielded entirely to the charm of her lively loving ways, and for the time was well and happy. They only reached home in time for their two o’clock dinner, which they enjoyed all the more for their drive, and then Mrs Vane and Selina were left to rest, while Frederica went out with Tessie and the children.

“It will not be too much for Jack and Jill, I hope,” said Frederica, as she stood stroking the ponies before they set off.

“Not if you drive gently,” said Dixen. “And I think, Miss Frederica, the mistress would be more at her ease if I were to go with you. Not that there’s any need of it, but she’s nervous-like, you know.”

“And can you be spared? You seem to be in such demand.”

“We’ll no’ ask,” said Dixen. “If you’re wanting me, that is all that need be said. Duty doesn’t call two ways at once, they say; and if it’s for pleasure, why should not I have a holiday as well as the rest? And madame’s no’ here to hinder or to try it even.”

Frederica laughed.

“And besides, Miss,” continued Dixen, “it is more seemly for a young lady like you to have your servant with you. It may do for children and common folk to go here and there by themselves, but a young lady like you—”

Frederica opened her eyes. This was a new light to see the matter in; she was by no means sure that it was a pleasant one. But if it pleased Dixen to be responsible for her dignity and propriety, she would not object, at least on this occasion.

So away they went through the streets first, and then round the mountain, to the great enjoyment of them all. Not one of them enjoyed it less, and Dixen I am assured enjoyed it all the more, that they met Mrs Ascot not far from the house, and knew by the look she gave them that she would have liked to turn them back.

“Her smile was out of the wrong side of her mouth,” muttered Dixen. He knew that she had ordered the carriage for herself at four, and they could not go for her pleasure that afternoon.

“I only hope she will not disturb mama till we come home,” said Frederica.

The drive was charming, but even Frederica confessed to being a little tired when they reached home. It was five and after. Madame Ascot met them at the door. It puts the best-tempered people out to be kept waiting, and her face was not an agreeable one to see at the moment.

“Did you not understand that I said four?” asked she sharply.

“Miss Frederica,” began Dixen, touching his hat to the young lady.

“Did I not say four?” repeated Mrs Ascot.

“But, madame, it would have been quite impossible. We did not leave home till nearly three,” said Tessie.

“Don’t let it happen again,” said Mrs Ascot; taking no notice of the child.

Frederica was patting her favourites, calling them, all sorts of pet names. She turned as Mrs Ascot attempted to pass her.

“It is a pity, madame. You should have sent, for a carriage. It is quite impossible that the ponies should be taken out again to-night, you know,” she added as Mrs Ascot seemed to be preparing to enter the carriage. It is likely madame would have proved it quite possible, had not Mr Vane entered the garden at the moment Tessie ran down the steps to meet him.

“Oh, papa, we are to have a whole week of holidays. Are you not glad?”

“Papa, I am so sorry we did not drive round by the office and take you up. I thought you must have been home. Yes, they are rather warm, and tired too, but they will be none the worse, will they, Dixen? And I am to drive mama every fine day and you must come too, papa. I shall be charmed to drive you.”

Mr Vane laughed.

“My neck is too valuable,” said he:

“Not more valuable than mama’s; and we can take Dixen if you are afraid. Now you must be kind to them, Dixen, and rub them well down,” added she, as the old man prepared to lead them away.

“Never fear, Miss Frederica,” said Dixen.

“But I thought Mrs Ascot was going out;” said Mr Vane.

“It is too late now,” said that lady angrily.

“Quite too late, and the ponies are tired. It is quite impossible,” said Tessie, with irritating dignity.

“All right,” said Mr Vane, indifferently.

“Papa, we are going to have a party in the drawing-room to-night. We are all going, and mama and Selina and you must come too, just after dinner. Will you come, papa?” pleaded both girls, hanging on his arms.

“Certainly, with great pleasure,” said their father, pleased to be thus entreated; “but you must let me go now.”

“It is not summer to madame to-night,” whispered Tessie, laughing.

“We will invite her to our party, and that will comfort her,” said her sister, and then she went upstairs to give private instructions to the boys’ maid, that they were not to be put to bed at their usual early hour.

Mrs Ascot did not honour them with her presence, but the party was very successful notwithstanding. Mr and Mrs Vane were becoming quite indifferent to each other by this time; that is to say, no part of the happiness of either was of the other’s giving. Mrs Vane was long past resenting the open indifference that had hurt her so much at first, and her husband never brought so much brightness with him in his brief visits, as to cause her to regret his absence very bitterly. She had quite resigned herself to the knowledge that it could not be otherwise now.

Still they had one interest in common. They cared for their children, each in a different way, and took a little pleasure in each other’s society when their children were with them. Mr Vane was not a fond father, but his children were pretty and bright, and he had the selfish man’s satisfaction in the possession of what other people admired. They were fond of him, and not in the least afraid of him. He never reproved or punished them, and was rarely impatient with them, for they were never long enough in his presence to weary him, or to interfere in any way with his comfort. So when the girls welcomed him to the drawing-room, he was quite prepared to enjoy an hour or two with them.

They all enjoyed it. They had much to say for awhile, and then they danced and sang, that is, the little boys danced with Tessie, and then they all sang, and doubtless a much larger and more discriminating audience would have been delighted with this part of the entertainment; for they all had sweet voices, especially Selina, and her sisters had been well taught; and two hours passed away very quickly, Mr Vane thought.

After the little boys went to bed, the conversation somehow turned again on the subject of Frederica’s young-ladyhood, and she once more suggested the question whether she had not learned “enough of things,” and whether it was not time that she were leaving school.

“For indeed, papa, I have gone through all the books the girls ever go through at Mrs Glencairn’s, and she has given me quite new books lately, French history, and a book about animals; but I could read these just as well at home.”

“How very clever you must be!” said her father.

“No, papa, not particularly clever? at least, cleverness has nothing to do with it. But you know their French takes the other girls for ever to learn, and French is nothing to us who speak it at home. So I have just the dictation now, and learning poetry and easy things like that. Indeed, I think it is just wasting money for me to go longer to school,” added she, instinctively feeling that that argument her father might be brought to consider.

“I am afraid it would lead to wasting much more if you were to leave school,” said her father, laughing. “To be sure you are such a child you could not be taken into society for a while yet, school or no school.”

“Oh! as to that, I am in no haste about going into society; I only wish to be at home to take care of mama and Selina. Would it not be nice, mama?”

“It would not be nice for me to be left at school alone,” said Tessie; “and as for you, I am afraid you would not have everything your own way. Madame Ascot would spoil your pleasure a little.”

“Oh! we could dispense with Mrs Ascot, if I were at home,” said Frederica with dignity. “I could take charge of the house, and make less fuss about it than she does. Papa, won’t you take it into your serious consideration? I have had enough of school.”

“You have had enough of Mrs Glencairn I daresay. I think I must take into serious consideration whether it will not be better to send you to England for a year or two. I think it is the best thing I can do for you.”

That was the last word spoken on the subject Mrs Vane was too startled by her husband’s words to reply to them, and she touched Selina’s lips to stay the exclamation that rose to them. Frederica and Theresa exchanged looks of dismay, but admonished by a look from their mother, neither of them spoke, and in a little time their father bade them good-night and went out.

“He did not mean anything, mama,” said Frederica.

“He had not thought of it a minute before he said it, and he will forget it in a day. He often does forget things,” said Tessie.

“We must not say anything to make him remember it,” said their mother; “and for the present we may hear no more about it.”

“And I must stay at school,” said Frederica, pouting a little. “Mama, you don’t know how nice it would be for you and Lina, if I were always at home.”

“I can imagine it, dear. But we will not speak of it, lest I should have to lose you altogether for years to come.”

Chapter Five.

The happy holidays passed all too soon away, and it was not till the very last of them that Frederica went with her bundle of papers to the office of Mr St. Cyr.

“Mama could write a note and send Dixen, of course,” said she to Theresa. “But in a matter so troublesome every care should be taken, and I shall go myself.”

She almost wished she had not, however, when she reached his house. The outer door was standing open, and instead of ascending a step or two as to most other houses in the street, one went down a step to the threshold, and when that was passed, the dark and gloomy hall looked not at all inviting to Frederica’s eyes. It was too late to think of running away now, however, and she sat down in the dingy outer office to wait till her name was taken in to Mr St. Cyr. Her courage revived when he came out to her; for he welcomed her warmly, and asked her into his private office with great ceremony, quite as if she had been a grownup young lady, she told Theresa afterwards.

He took the papers, which the made haste to present as an excuse for her coming, and examined them carefully for a minute or two. He nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders, and said mademoiselle should have no more trouble with them, unless he were much mistaken. And then Frederica knew that the right thing for her to do would be to rise and thank him, and go away. But she did not. She sat looking round the dim room upon the numberless shelves and drawers and pigeon-holes, and then through the dusty window into a narrow court shut in by high Walls—as dismal a place as one could imagine. Her eyes were very grave when they came back again to Mr St. Cyr’s face.

“Well, my little cousin, what do you think of it all?” asked he. “Do you live here always, Mr St. Cyr?”

“Yes; here by day, and upstairs at night.”

“And do you live alone? Have you no one else in this house?”

“I have old Babette, whom you saw at the door.”

“And no one else?”

“Is not that enough?”

“And has there never been any one else? And are you happy here?” asked Frederica, wonder struggling with the gravity in her face.

“Ah, well! as to that—like the rest of the world, I suppose,” said Mr St. Cyr, with his wonderful shrug; but there came a look of pain over his face that startled the little girl, and made her wish that she had gone away before, so she rose hastily, and said,—

“Adieu—and—pardon me, Cousin Cyprien.”

“To meet soon, my little cousin,” said he, bowing over her offered hand, “as if I were quite grown up,” thought Frederica again, in the midst of her confusion.

He went with her through the outer room and through the dim hall to the street door, and then a new thought seemed to strike him.

“You will think I am a wicked old spider sitting here in the dark to catch unwary flies, if I let you go so. You shall come upstairs to see that the sun shines here too, and that I am not altogether unlike my fellow-men, though I am quite alone. Come upstairs, my child.”

Frederica gave one glance upward, and another into the sunny street. She would much rather have gone away, but Mr St. Cyr was half-way up by this time, and so she could only follow. The stairs were as dim as the hall, and she saw nothing distinctly till she found herself in a large but not very lofty room. Mr St. Cyr drew aside the heavy curtains, and let in the sunshine.

“And now you shall sit here till I see what my Babette can find for your refreshment;” said he.

There were a great many beautiful things in the room. Though the furniture was dark and old-fashioned, it was very rich and handsome of its kind. The curtains were of the richest damask, of a shade between crimson and brown, and the carpet was of the same colours, and so thick and soft that never a foot-fall could be heard in the room. There were vases and other ornaments on the mantel-piece, and a quaintly carved cabinet opposite, whose open doors showed many strange and beautiful things. There were pictures on the walls which made Frederica think of the great churches in which she had sometimes been.

It was not a pleasant room, notwithstanding all these beautiful things; but quite as gloomy, though in a different way, as the office downstairs. She did not move about to examine any of them, but sat looking at a lovely picture of a woman with a child in her arms, over which the morning sunshine fell. By-and-by Mr St. Cyr came in, followed by a little old woman in an odd dress, who carried a silver tray in her hand. On the tray was a china plate, with a bunch of grapes, which she set down on a little table at her master’s bidding, and then left the room.

“And so you do not think it well to be alone, my little cousin,” said Mr St. Cyr, when he had given the grapes into Frederica’s hand. “Will you not come and stay with me then?”

Frederica did not answer for a moment. “You have learned enough of things you know,” said he, with his odd smile. “If we can persuade Mr Vane to let you leave school, will you come and stay here with me?”

Frederica shook her head.

“I could not leave mama. She needs me.”

“But she has your sisters, and I am quite alone. Your mother used to come here when she was a child.”

“Did she? Yes, she told us so. That must have been a long time ago.”

“A long time ago! And so you will not come?”

“Papa says he will send me home to England to school for a year or two, after I am done with Mrs Glencairn.”

“And would you like that?”

“No, not at all. Mama would miss me so much, and Selina. But I don’t intend to make myself unhappy about it. Very likely papa may forget all about it again.”

“He forgets with ease some things,” said Mr St. Cyr: “let us hope he may forget this.”

“I should not like to go, because of mama,” repeated Frederica.

“And that is a good reason why you will not come and stay with me. Ah, well! I do not blame you. This is not the place for a bright little flower like you to bloom in. I must still be alone, I suppose.”

“But I will come sometimes and see you, and so will Tessie, if you would like us to do so,” said Frederica, rising to go: “and I shall certainly come if I fall into any more troubles. You said I was to do so, did you not, Cousin Cyprien?”

“Surely, I shall expect you.”

“And I have come already with these tiresome papers. And ah! I had forgotten. There were several things I wished to say about them.”

“You need not say them,” said Mr St. Cyr: “I shall understand them perfectly, I do not doubt, and they shall not trouble you any more, nor your mama either. I only wish all her troubles could be as easily ended as these shall be.”

“But, Mr St. Cyr,” said Frederica, pausing at the door, and growing very red, “mama does not wish that you should pay these things. Has not mama enough of money?”

“Assuredly, she has ample means. I have no thought of paying these debts. Do not alarm yourself.”

“You are not angry with me, are you, Cousin Cyprien?” asked Frederica, wistfully.

“Angry! By no means, my little cousin. Why should I be angry? And now, remember you are to come again, you and your sister. Ah! how bright the sunshine is!” added he, as he opened the door.

Yes, it was almost dazzling at first, after the dimness within. Frederica walked slowly home, not able, even in the bright sunshine, to shake off the quieting influence of the old man’s solitary home.

“I wonder why it seemed so strange?” said she to herself, “it must have been the silence. I wonder if any other voice is ever heard in that room. He must have visitors. And mama used to go there when she was a little girl, with grandpapa, I suppose. If I were to do anything wrong, or were afraid of an enemy, I think I would go there to hide myself. But to live there always!—no, I could not do that; it is too silent and sad.”

“Mama,” she asked that night when she had told them of her visit, “was it always so still and gloomy at Cousin Cyprien’s when you used to go there? Was he always alone in those days?”

“I do not remember it as gloomy or silent. Mr St. Cyr’s mother lived there then, and there were a great many beautiful things in the house. His brother was there too sometimes, but he was not a cheerful person.”

“There are beautiful things there now. The cabinet is full of them, and there are the pictures on the walls,” and she went on to name other things she had seen: “but still I wonder that he can content himself there, it is so solitary and silent.”

“Mama,” said Tessie, “I don’t think it says much for Fred’s good sense that she should talk in that way about Mr St. Cyr and his home. Very likely there are crowds of visitors there every night, though there was no one there then.” Frederica shook her head. “No, you would not say so if you went there. Only very old people or shadows could ever be content there.”

“Mama, listen to her! Is she sensible?”

“Well, perhaps it is foolish,” said Frederica candidly. “But all the same I cannot help being sorry for Cousin Cyprien. What does he take pleasure in, mama?”

“My dear, a man like Mr St. Cyr has many sources of interest and pleasure that a young girl like you cannot be supposed to know anything about, or even to understand, if you knew them. I do not think he needs your pity or sympathy very much. He is very religious, I believe.”

“And religion is enough to content some people,” said Tessie flippantly. “You know you told me the other day that Miss Baines’ religion made her quite patient and happy, even when she was in great suffering, and not afraid even of death; and perhaps it suits Mr St. Cyr to be religious too.”

“Yes; but then his religion must be quite different from Miss Baines’.”

“Oh, well! it may be just as good, or it may suit him just as well. I think you are very foolish, and so does Selina.”

But Selina said nothing. She listened always to her sister’s talk, and “thought about it afterwards,” as Tessie had said. Now she was repeating to herself, “Patient and happy even in great suffering; that must be a good and beautiful thing.” And many thoughts did she give to Miss Baines and her sufferings, and her patience, before she saw her sisters again.

It was a beautiful sight, if there had been anyone to see it—the mother and her daughters as they sat there together on that last night before Frederica and Theresa went back to school. And yet it would have been a sorrowful sight to one who knew their history and their affairs, and who loved them and wished them well. For, except the dear love they bore to one another, there was not a single element of permanence in the happiness they enjoyed together.

That the hour of separation was drawing near, none who looked in Mrs Vane’s face could fail to see. It was coming slowly, so slowly that she, who had almost forgotten what it was to be quite well and free from pain, had come to think that her illness was not of a kind that sooner or later ends in death. The thought that it might be so—that she must leave her children, young, without experience, every danger doubled by their own beauty and their grandfather’s wealth, was a very painful one, but she put it from her, whenever it could be put away. Death was terrible to think of for their sakes. Yes, and terrible for herself too; for of the hope which sustains the Christian alike in life and in death, she knew nothing.

It is difficult to conceive of ignorance so utter as hers on all religious subjects. Her mother had not lived long enough to teach her the little that she herself understood of the religion of her people, and her father had had no religion. During the first years of her married life, she had sometimes gone to church with her husband, but she had never been much interested in what she heard, or tried to understand it. It had been a mere form with her; as indeed it had been always with her husband. She knew nothing of the way in which a sinner must be prepared for death, that must come some time, and which might be near, and there were times when the thought of this made her afraid.

Her daughters knew little more than she did. When the idea of sending them to school was first proposed, Mrs Ascot desired that it should be to one of the convents of the city, and probably there they would have been sent, had not Mr St. Cyr earnestly desired it too. His wish was enough to make Mr Vane decide against it, so bitter was his dislike, and they were sent to Mrs Glencairn’s instead. Their religions teaching while there was, at their father’s request, committed to the charge of the English teacher, Miss Pardie, and her instructions were not of a kind to make much impression on the minds of volatile girls, with whom she was not a favourite. The Scripture lessons which they shared with the other pupils, were too often learned and repeated as a task, and forgotten.

So neither the mother nor the children had any knowledge of the true way to find happiness, either in this world or the next. A vague dread and fear had come to Mrs Vane now and then during all the years of her illness, but she had tried to put them from her. They had come oftener of late, but she strove to put them from her still.

“Patient and happy in the midst of great suffering, and not afraid even of death.” Many, many times in the days when the two girls had gone, and she was left to the quiet of their solitary days, did these words come back to her again.

Chapter Six.

The reluctance with which the sisters always left home to return to school, was usually forgotten by them as soon as they found themselves among their companions, and busy with their lessons again. But this time it was not so with Frederica. She was restless and unhappy, finding it quite impossible to interest herself in her school-work, or to settle quietly to anything.

It was all the more difficult for her to do so, that she was in few regular classes in the school. It was quite true as she had told her father, she had gone through and through all the books generally used by Mrs Glencairn’s pupils. This was not saying much, for few of the girls stayed in school so long as they ought to have done—none had been so long as Frederica. Under the guidance of Miss Robina Glencairn, a clever and cultivated woman, she had gone far beyond the usual routine of school lessons, and had taken much pleasure in her reading, though she had read alone, but she could not interest herself in it now. It seemed foolish and wrong for her to be at school, learning things that she could very well do without, when her mother and Selina needed her so much at home. They did need her, she was sure; and she grew irritable and impatient under the restraint that kept her from them, till she was in danger, her sister told her, of losing the reputation for politeness and amiability, which she had been all those years acquiring.

“And where is the good of fretting? If you can end it at the summer holidays, you may be very glad. You may be sure that Prickly Polly will not hear of your coming home just now. If I were you, I would learn the dictionary from the beginning to the end, or do something else to pass the time. Or you might ask Miss Robina for a story-book. She will give you one—you are such a pet of hers, I’m sure.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” said Frederica.

There was to be no walking that day, because of the rain, and her book would have been little pleasure to her in the large schoolroom, where the girls usually passed the recreation hour on rainy days. But she knew where to find a refuge, to which, without special permission, even Tessie could not follow her. Frederica, because of Miss Robina’s favour, and for some other reasons, was permitted to go to it if she chose, provided her presence was not required elsewhere. So she was soon knocking at the door of a room at the head of a dim staircase that led to no other room in the house.

“May I come in, Mistress Campbell?” said she, pausing on the threshold.

“Is it you, missy?” said a voice from behind a great basket of clothes that was standing on the floor. “Who would have expected to see you at this hour? Have you no’ got the play? It canna be that you have a lesson to get over again!”

“No,” said Frederica. “This is not a lesson book. But I have got a headache, and I am cross, and I can’t be bothered with the girls; but I shall be very quiet and good, and not be in the way, if you will let me stay.”

“Well, if you’ll promise no’ to fash me with your foolish talk while I am busy, you may stay.”

“Shall I fash you here?” said Frederica, laughing, and springing up into the wide seat of one of the large dormer windows by which the room was lighted.

“Whisht now, and no’ put me out of my count,” said Mistress Campbell.

She was sitting on a low stool, sorting and laying out on large trays at her side the clothes of pupils and teachers that had just come up from the laundress, a work which needed both patience and care, and Frederica knew that she must not be disturbed. Instead of opening her book, she sat for a moment watching her. She was a small, bowed woman, crippled by rheumatism, with a thin brown face, and deep-set, sharp, grey eyes. She wore a dark linsey gown, with a shawl of Campbell tartan over her shoulders, and she had a “mutch” with two or three rows of stiff borders on her head. She sung at her work, or rather chanted an old ballad which Frederica had heard before; but every now and then, as she counted and folded, and laid the different garments aside, she put their numbers and the names of their owners, and her thoughts about them, into the tune, without a pause; and Frederica knew by this that she had quite forgotten her presence in the room.

“A droll little person,” she called her to herself, and then she thought how strange a being “old Eppie” would seem to her mama and Selina, and wondered how it was that she had never told them about her. She had mentioned her to them, but now she looked at her, and around the low, wide room, with eyes that meant to see everything for their benefit. It was a large room, which yet did not seem very large, because of the many things crowded into it, and because of the sloping roof which on three sides came almost to the floor. It was the attic of the wing in which the large classroom and dining-room were. The walls were roughly plastered and whitewashed, and underneath were arranged old bureaux and boxes and chests of drawers, filled with such clothing as was not often needed, and under Eppie’s particular care. Besides these, there were articles of furniture, broken or out of use, such as will accumulate in a house where many people live—chairs and tables, pictures, and faded ornaments of all kinds.

There was a bed at that side of the room where the roof did not slope, but at this moment it was almost hidden by the great piles of linen arranged upon it. There was a small open stove, in which a coal fire smouldered, and over that part of the floor which was unencumbered by furniture a faded carpet was spread. There was not one beautiful thing in the room, Frederica thought, except a rose tree covered with buds and blossoms, that stood in the window opposite.

The windows were pleasant, but from them Eppie could only see the sky, they were so high above her. From the one on the high seat of which she sat, Frederica could see thousands and thousands of city roofs, with bits of open space here and there, and the river beyond. But it was not a fair sight under drizzling rain and a leaden sky, and so she turned her eyes into the room again. Order was gradually coming out of the confusion of the innumerable white garments by which the little old woman had been surrounded. One after another the great trays were carried and emptied, into the many drawers beneath the eaves; and then coming back to place her empty baskets in a recess made beneath the high window, Eppie saw Frederica.

“Preserve us a’ lassie! I had no mind o’ your being here. It is time for playing yourself now. Why should you be here at this hour?”

“I don’t care to play with children any more,” said Frederica gravely.

“Eh, sirs! You’ll be growing ower-womanly for the like of that, I suppose. Weel, weel! But you shouldna sit so quiet as to make me forget that you are here. I might be saying things that it wouldna be wise to say in your hearing. Are you no coming down out of that?”

“Yes, I am coming, Mrs Campbell. Don’t you ever get tired of this place? Is it not awfully dull?”

“Dull!” repeated Eppie, “and tired of it! Is it this chamber you mean? Where could I go if I tired of it? I am very thankful to bide in it, I can tell you.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But don’t you get tired of it all the same? What do you look forward to? There is nothing in your life but mending, and keeping count, and—”

“Hear the disrespectful lassie! Folding and keeping count, said she. That’s but for one day in the week. The mending whiles takes two or three, and there’s many a thing besides that I canna be speaking to the likes of you about.”

“Yes; but not pleasant things, Eppie.”

“Pleasant things, quo’ she! They’re my duty. What other would I hae?”

“But, Mistress Campbell, dear, if I thought I had to live all my life here, even in this house, I should be miserable.”

“But then it’s no your duty to live here all your life, and that makes the difference. If I were to make myself miserable as you call it, it would be for fear that I mightna get leave to bide here all my life, but I daresay it will be time enough to fret when I’m bidden go.”

“That will never be. What would Mrs Glencairn and Miss Robina do without you?”

“There’s no telling,” said Eppie, nodding her head many times; “but we’ll say no more about it. Are you no coming down from that cold window when I bid you?”

“Yes, I’m coming. But, Eppie, how can you be content? Are your father and mother dead? Have you any brothers and sisters? Will it be just the same all your life till you die?”

“Now, missy, come down this moment when I bid you. That’s an unwholesome book you’ve been reading, to put thoughts like that into your mind. It’s no me that’s like to grow discontented, it’s you. And I was just thinking of inviting you to tea.”

Frederica sprang down from the window so suddenly as to make the old woman start.

“Oh, do, Eppie dear,” cried she eagerly, “that is just the thing I should like. I want to speak to you, and I don’t want to go down to that rubbishing history; and I’ll read to you. I have not read a page yet, and it’s a very nice book they say.”

“Is it a story book? But I would far rather hear about the wee beasties out of your lesson book. And I’m no just sure that Miss Robina would be pleased that you should take tea with me so soon again, and I’m no sure that I hae scones enew.”

“Oh! Miss Robina will be sure to let me; and never mind the scones. I’ll go down for whatever we need, and I’ll ask Miss Robina. Let me stir the fire.”

Frederica had forgotten the gloomy day, and the nun, and all imaginable subjects of discontent. She urged her petition eagerly; for she knew that Eppie liked to be entreated.

“Let be the fire, missy. You’ll do mischief, and spoil your hands. You may bide if you get leave. But I doubt your sister will no be well pleased. It is ‘making fish o’ the one and flesh o’ the other,’ I doubt.”

But Frederica did not stay to listen. It was a great honour and an exceptional one, to be asked to tea by Mrs Campbell. No other girl now in school, except Tessie and one or two of the elder pupils, had ever been asked to drink tea in the garret. Except for the fun of the thing, or for the sake of a change from the dreary school routine, few of them would have cared to do so. For Eppie was only a little old woman, bowed and lame, who even in her best days had only been a sort of upper servant in Mrs Glencairn’s house. The present race of girls did not often see her. Some of them had never seen her; for her daily journey to the lower part of the house to get what she needed was accomplished with much labour and effort at time when the girls were sure to be in school.

Frederica was often in the garret. Miss Robina, whose pet, as Tessie had said, she was, seldom refused her permission when she wished to escape from the other girls, few of whose lessons she shared, either for work or amusement. But taking tea there was another matter; and Frederica, rather tired of being dismal, entered eagerly into the preparations. Miss Robina did not object; on the contrary, she was very glad to let her have the pleasure, heartily wishing that she might share it. She did share it for a little while, and added to it. For she came upstairs, carrying in her own hands a tray, on which were some fresh “scones” and a bit of “paddie,” each wrapped up in a snowy napkin, as was absolutely necessary to their perfection. She could not stay long—only long enough to be thanked and petted, and called “bonny bird” and “good bairn” by Mistress Campbell. She had a beautiful and good face, though it was rather pale and tired-looking, Frederica thought, as she sat for a moment smiling in the flickering firelight; and the first thing she said, when she and Eppie were left alone, was,—

“How pretty and nice Miss Robina is! What a pity it is that she has to keep a school?”

To this no reply was given.

“It must be so tiresome to do the same thing over and over again every day of the year,” added she.

“There are worse things than that in Miss Robina’s life, I’m thinking,” said Eppie gravely.

“Are there? Tell me about them,” said Frederica, eager for a story.

“I doubt you are no speaking with your usual discretion,” said Mistress Campbell gravely. “We’ll take our tea, and not meddle with what doesna concern us. There are few lives in which there are no troubles. Let us be thankful for our mercies.”

It was a very nice tea. Scones and fresh butter and honey, to say nothing of “paddies” and other nice things. And such delicious tea made in a funny little black teapot with a broken spout. Everything was charming, Frederica thought and declared. The novelty would have made it charming to her, though there had been nothing else to do so. They did not fall out of talk. Eppie asked questions about the holidays they had enjoyed; and entered with great interest into all the details Frederica gave her about her mother and Selina, and the drives they had had, and all they had enjoyed together. She grew grave as she went on to tell that her mother was not strong, but easily tired and troubled, and to wish that she could leave school, and stay at home with her always. Eppie was grave too, and occupied with her own thoughts for a little while; and as Frederica sat looking into the fire in silence, the unhappy feeling that had passed away in the interest of tea-drinking in such pleasant circumstances came back again.

“Are you no going to wash the cups?” asked Eppie in a little.

This was always in the evening’s entertainment, and to-night it was happily accomplished, inasmuch as it dispelled the cloud which had hung for a moment over them.

“It must be nice to have things to do—useful things I mean,” said Frederica.

“I doubt it is a liberty in me to let you wash my cups, or even to ask you to your tea,” said Eppie. “For you are no longer the wee missy that came creeping up the stairs the first day you came to the school. You are growing a young lady now.”

“That is just what I was telling mama,” said Frederica eagerly. “I ought to have done with school now, and stay at home, ought I not? I don’t suppose I should wash cups; but there are a great many things I could do for mama and Lina. Do you really think I am growing a young lady, Eppie? I am such a little thing, you know,” said Frederica; “but I am nearly fifteen.”

An odd smile flickered for a moment on Eppie’s small wrinkled face.

“You needna be in any great hurry about being a young leddy. I doubt you’re but a bairn to the most o’ folk yet,” said she.

“Not for myself—I am in no hurry to be grown up for myself; but for mama’s sake.”

“But there must be a heap o’ things for you to learn yet,” said Eppie gravely. “There’s time enough.”

“But I don’t see the good of learning so many things, and I have gone through all the books the girls learn here. And mama does need me, I am sure of that.”

Then Eppie went on to say how important the season of youth is, and how she had no doubt but Mrs Vane would rather deny herself the happiness of her little daughters’ company for the sake of having them become wise and accomplished women, and so on. But Frederica did not seem to be noticing what she was saying; for she asked suddenly,—

“Eppie, do you know where Miss Baines is now? Will she ever come back again, do you think?”

Eppie shook her head.

“Have you not heard? She is dead, my dear.”

“Dead!” repeated Frederica.

“Yes. She has gone to a better world, I have little doubt.”

“To heaven!”

“Ay, I am sure of it, as far as a body can be sure of such a thing. She was a good woman. She had some curious notions about things, but she was a good woman.”

“She was very religious,” said Frederica.

“Yes, she was religious. She was a good woman.”

“But then there are so many kinds of religion,” said Frederica.

“But there is but one right kind I doubt,” said Mistress Campbell gravely.

“And Miss Baines’ was the right kind? It made her patient and gentle with us girls, even when we were naughty. And after her fall, when she suffered so much, it made her patient to bear her pain. And once she told me that she was not afraid to die. I wish I had asked her more about it. I don’t know, but I am almost sure mama would be afraid to die.”

Eppie gave her a startled glance; but Frederica did not look as though she had said anything to excite surprise.

“But your mama is a good woman. I have always heard you say that.”

“Yes. She is very good and dear. But then we have no religion in our house—except Mrs Ascot; and I am afraid hers is not the right kind. It is not at all like Miss Baines’, at any rate. But then how is one to know?”

“But I hope there are good people among all kinds,” said Eppie, not knowing very well what to say.

“Yes. Mr St. Cyr is good, though Mrs Ascot is not. That is true. And it does not matter so much, so that we have a religion of some kind. Though, of course, one would wish to have the best.”

“You are wrong there, missy. It matters much. And you should be thankful that you were sent here to the school, where the Bible is read, and where you may learn your duty to God and man. That is the best religion.”

“But I have not learned it very well,” I fear.

“Maybe that is your own fault. I have heard you say that you are not very fond of going to the kirk and reading your Bible.”

“That is quite true. And that is the right way, is it? Were you fond of going to the kirk when you were young? We go to the church, you know.”

“I would be very thankful to be able to go to the kirk,” said Eppie evasively:

“And is your religion just like Miss Baines’? Hers must have been right, because it made her happy when she was in great trouble, and it made her not afraid to die. Is yours the same, Mistress Campbell?”

Eppie looked at her, wondering a little at her persistency, and then she said, “Ay is it—the very same. The same in kind, though not in degree. Miss Baines was a good woman, a far better woman than the like of me.”

“Tell me about it,” said Frederica.

Mistress Campbell looked sadly at a loss.

“How did they teach you to be religious when you were young?”

“We were taught to read our Bibles and to say the catechism, and to go to the kirk. And my father had worship morning and evening, and we were bidden do our duty, and be content with our lot.”

Eppie hesitated, by no means satisfied with her attempt to make the matter clear, and then she said,—

“To be religious is to be good, and to do our duty to God and our fellow-creatures. Don’t you mind what the Bible says? ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.’ And in another place it says, ‘Pure religion and undefiled is this, to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction.’ That is religion,” said Eppie, with a pleased sense of having got well out of a difficulty.

Frederica nodded.

“Yes, I have read that. That is the way is it? Do good people all do that? But then they must begin at the very beginning of their lives.”

Eppie shook her head.

“We are poor imperfect creatures at the best,” said she. “But God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. We are unprofitable servants. If we got what we deserve, it would go ill with us. But He is merciful and gracious, and full of compassion, and of tender mercy.”

Frederica considered gravely for a little while.

“And is that all? I think I could manage to do all that, except perhaps to love my neighbour as myself,” said she, thinking of Prickly Polly.

“But you would need to do that too, I doubt,” said Eppie, not wishing to make religion seem a thing too easy. “And you would need to say your prayers, for the best of us need to be forgiven, and the strongest and wisest need to be helped and guided, and the Lord is good.”

“And if I don’t know very well at first. He will help me. But, Eppie dear, I think Miss Baines must have had something more than this. I wish I had asked her about it,” said Frederica, regarding the old woman with wistful eyes.

“Dear me, lassie,” said Eppie, at a loss what to say to her; “what has putten such like thoughts into your head? you are not an ill bairn, and you will learn as you grow older. You have no call to vex yourself with such thoughts more than usual.”

“But, Eppie, it is for mama. She is ill, and suffers a great deal, and she has only Selina with her; and if I only knew what made Miss Baines so happy, I could tell mama. But mama could not begin at the beginning, and go to church, and visit poor and sick people. There must be some other away for her. For, Eppie, I am almost sure that mama would be afraid to die.”

There were no tears in the great wistful eyes turned towards her, but there was something which the old woman found it quite as hard to meet.

“Poor body,” murmured she; “the Lord help her!”

“And, Eppie, Miss Baines said something about the Lord Jesus caring for her. And He died, you know. It is in the service, ‘Crucified, dead, and buried,’ and in the Bible there is something about it.”

“Surely,” said Eppie, eagerly, “that is just it. We are sinners, both by Adam’s fall and by actual transgression. And God sent His Son to die in our room and stead. And we must lippen to Him. He will save us.”

“And it would not make any difference because mama is a Jewess, would it?”

“Preserve us a’! What will the lassie say next?” muttered the bewildered Eppie. “No difference but what would be in her favour, I would think. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, the Word says, and the apostles were bidden begin at Jerusalem,” said she, the long-forgotten words coming back to her in the exigency of the moment. “And they are all to be gathered in, Paul says. I mind weel my father and our minister ay used to pray for the ingathering of the Jews. No, I’m sure it would be in her favour rather than the contrary,” repeated Eppie confidently, growing more assured as she went on. “They were a grand people, the Jews—God’s own chosen people. They did ill things. They killed our Lord, and I canna just reconcile it all, but I’m sure the Lord loves them yet.”

Frederica did not reply, but sat gazing in among the dying embers in the grate. As she sat watching her abashed but anxious face, a great longing to help and counsel her came over the poor old woman’s kind heart, but there came also sharply a sense of her utter inability to do so, a vague but painful doubt whether she had ever seen clearly the way of safety herself.

“I’m but a poor ignorant sinfu’ woman, my dear bairn,” said she humbly; “I havna lived up to the little light I have, and it’s no for me to teach you. But one thing I can tell you: read your Bible, and ask the Lord Himself to teach you, and you’ll need no other teaching, or if you do He’ll provide it. But see, the fire’s near out, and it’s more than time you were down the stair, and I must go to my bed. So good night to you, and mind your prayers.”

“Good night,” said Frederica, and she went downstairs pondering many things.

Chapter Seven.

Attached to the large old-fashioned house in which Mrs Glencairn lived were a garden and orchard of very large old apple trees, which now in the spring time were full of wonderful possibilities for enjoyment and amusement to children who had for the most part been obliged to find amusement within doors during the long winter. And so no wonder that Frederica, without whom no game was complete, should forget her serious thoughts, and her troubles, and even her mother’s doubtful state, unless something particularly recalled them to her mind. She was such a little creature, that, though she led the elder girls in their lessons, and was indeed far before them, she did not seem to be at all out of place when she led the plays and games of the little girls too.

Even in her visits to the garret, with her “Animated Nature” in her hand, she and Eppie kept to the safe subject of beasts and birds and creeping things, in the discussions into which they fell. She had taken up botany, too, in a less elementary form than had been given her before, and her interest was greatly quickened, and her attention happily given to it. And strange to say, Eppie, the recluse of the garret, who had not set her foot on a green thing growing beyond the orchard for many a year and day, even she gave eager interest and stimulus to the girl’s pursuit, and with spectacles on nose peered into triticums and anemones brought from the mountain, and into apple blossoms, and even into dandelions and buttercups gathered in the orchard, for want of rarer flowers.

“And what for no,” said Eppie, “when Solomon himself, the wisest of kings and men, spoke about green growing things from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall? And God made them a’. They mind me of my father’s house and the fir belting, and the heather hills beyond. And they mind me o’ the days o’ my youth, that are gone like a blink,” added she with a sigh.

“Yes,” said Frederica, turning compassionate eyes on the kindly wrinkled old face.

“I’m no complainin’ you’ll understand. I hae had my day as you’ll have,” said Eppie, nodding her head gently a great many times. “But I was ay fond o’ flowers. I liked to notice their likeness, and their difference, though I didna ken that they were a’ written down in books. Eh! it’s just wonderful how true nature is to herself. That bonny yellow flower might be the one that grew on the bush beside my father’s door, and yon rosebush that Miss Robina brought up the stairs to-day is the very marrow o’ the one that Sandy Gow the laird’s gardener brought down and gave to my sister Annie more than fifty years ago. It’s like a dream to look back upon.”

“But, Eppie, I have often wondered that you only care for one or two flowers at a time, when you are so fond of them; you could have quite a greenhouse of them in this south window. I could bring you dozens of them,” said Frederica.

But Eppie shook her head.

“I tried it, my dear, when sore against my will I had to betake myself to this place—a dismal place it seemed for a while. I tried having many flowers. Miss Isabel was here then, and she and Miss Robina took great pains to get me the best and the bonniest. But I soon saw that it wouldna do. I couldna get them kepit to my mind without troubling somebody. They were ay needing something done, and I couldna even get a spadeful of earth without another pair of hands. I was more helpless then than I am now, and even the bringing of water for them up the stairs was more than I could ay manage; so I just gave them up; for unless a body can do justice to the bonny things, they are more pain than pleasure. And I couldna bide to fash other folk. So now Miss Robina brings me one as it blooms, and I hae been few days without a flower all the seven years I have been in this room. I aye hae my wallflowers, and once I had heather, but it didna thrive, and I thought a pity to have it dying before my eyes, so I got no more.”

It was growing too dark by this time to pore over either books or flowers. Eppie had had her tea, Frederica knew, because she saw the tray with the dishes standing near the door, and she knew that she would be welcome to stay till the school bell rang again for prayers. So she sat in the window watching the clouds that were still bright, though the sun had disappeared. By-and-by she said,—

“Tell me something that happened when you were young, something that you never told me before.”

Eppie took up the stocking on which she could work as well in the dark as in the light.

“There was many a thing happened to me when I was young that I never told anybody, but I might happen on an old story that you have heard before, as is the way with old bodies like me. And I hae no feast o’ tellin’ bits out o’ my own life just for folk’s diversion.”

But Frederica knew that she would have a story for all that; she was not so sure that it would be a new one.

“Were there many flowers in your garden when you were a little girl?” asked she after a pause.

“Weel! there were na just so many, but eh, missy! they were awfu’ bonny flowers. But I mind the flowers among the hills, and by the burn sides best. The names of them? I canna mind a’ the names, and if I could they would seem like common flowers to you, but they gave us just a wonderful delight. And there were other things besides the flowers. We got many a day’s pleasure out of the rushes by the burn, and the brackens in the wood, and we ay had the heather. And, oh! wasna it a bonny sight to see when the summer began to wear over! Flowers! High above the glen where my father’s house stood, there whiles were miles and miles o’ the purple blossom. I can see it now when I shut my eyes,” said Eppie, leaning back in her chair, and letting her stocking fall upon her lap.

“And then there were the daisies that you told me about,” suggested Frederica in the pause that followed.

“Yes, the gowan, and the blue bell, and many a one beside. And I hae seen the hills in a bleeze o’ gold with the yellow broom. Though a broom bush is no’ to call a bonny thing, except a bit away. But a’ things are bonny to young happy eyes, and I daresay they are bonnier to me now, looking back to them over all the long years.”

And on she rambled, as she had done many a time before, on the very same theme, and if there had been an hour to spare, or if Frederica had been inclined, this was the time when she would have asked for a song, and the chances were she would have got ten of them chanted in a voice that had once been sweet, but which failed now both in sweetness and in power. Frederica always liked the songs, though she did not always like the singing, but there was something else in store for her tonight—something which she had ceased to expect, a bit out of Eppie’s life. She knew it was coming when the old woman went on to speak about the hills, and the grassy nooks hidden between them, and the days when she used to go out with her father, who was a shepherd, among them.

“And I mind one day we were sitting on the lowne side o’ a hill, and there came over it and down upon us, two lads with packs on their backs, and one of them with a book in his hand. When they saw us, they stopped to ask the road to the next town, for they had got in among the morning mists, having risen early for their journey, and so had lost their way. I mind how they both looked, as well as if I had seen them yesterday, and maybe better. One of them was shame-faced about having lost the way, which he said he had been over many a time before; but the other only laughed and said it was a good thing to be mistaken whiles, and for his part he was glad to lie down and rest. And so he lay down among the heather, and turned a thin fair face to the sky. He was an English lad, I think. His tongue was English any way. My father bade me take a plaid I had brought with me, and spread it over him, for there was a cold breath creeping now and then round the hill; and when I went and did what I was bidden, the lad gave me first a surprised look, and then a smile that made his eyes and his whole face beautiful. I see it now, though I have hardly thought of it these thirty years,” said Eppie with a sigh. “And I mind his deep sweet voice, and the sound of the smooth English words he used when he thanked me, and bade me sit down beside him, and tell him my name. I sat down as he bade me, but he took little heed of me for a while. For he looked sore weary and spent with more than just the tramp over the hills, and his eyes had a look as if they were seeing things far, far away.

“The other was a fine lad too, I daresay, though o’ a commoner nature. He and my father got very friendly together, he telling and my father listening to all they were doing out in the great world, whose voice came to our glen, not like a real voice, but like an echo casten back from the hills. And by-and-by the English lad’s eyes came back to mine, and what he saw in them I canna say, but he gave me the same smile that lighted his face in a way that was just wonderful—I can see it now—and he bade me look up to the sky, and see a ship that was sailin’, sailin’ away to the west, and what did I think it was carrying there? There was nothing in the sky that I could see, but a long trail of grey cloud, with here and there an edge of light upon it, and he only gave a bit laugh when I looked back at him again wondering. And then he plucked a wee curled head o’ the bracken that grew at his hand, and bade me look at it. Naught could I see but just a bit o’ bracken. I said not a word, only looked from it to his fair smiling face. But then he took out of his pouch a case, and out of the case a glass, and put it between the bracken and my eyes. And I thought, surely a great magician had come to our hills, for it was a bit o’ bracken no longer, but a wonderful network of cells, and veins, and feathery fringes, like nothing I had ever seen before. And next it was a bit of brown heather he took, and then a nodding bluebell, and then the wing of a May fly that had lighted on his hand.

“I looked and looked, and at last I cried out to my father to come and see. Even my father wondered. Ilken leaf and blade o’ grass, and even the wee stones that we took from the path were wonderful to see. And then he put the glass on my mother’s plaid, and on his own fine kerchief of lawn, and bade us see the difference between God’s works and man’s—how poor, and coarse, and common was the best that man could do, and how the more and the closer we looked into the works of God, the more worthy of admiration we should see them to be.

“And then him, and my father, and the other lad had things to say that I couldna make much of. He was a man of excellent understanding, my father. But just one thing I mind. It was the English lad that said it with a smile, and a great longing in his bonny een. ‘It may be,’ he said, ‘that when we get home to heaven, our glorified eyes shall see the mysteries of beauty hidden in even the least of the things that God has made without a glass between.’ And when my father shook his head, saying that there was no such word in the Bible, and that there was such a thing as being wise above what is written, he smiled, and ‘Ah well!’ he said, ‘our eyes will be opened to see the wonders of grace and the beauty of holiness, for we shall see our Lord Himself, and that will be enough.’

“I mind the words, because I heard my father telling them to my mother that night as they were sitting by the fireside. They come back to me now, as other words come, that I havena thought of for many a year and day, a sure sign that I am no’ far from the foot o’ the brae.”

“And was that all?” asked Frederica softly, after a long pause, in which Eppie had taken up her knitting again.

“That was all, except that they wouldna go to my father’s to bide all night, because they were expected elsewhere, they said; and then I ran home as my father bade me, and brought them milk and oaten cakes, which they ate to their refreshment, doubtless, and to our pleasure, and then they went away.”

“And who were they? And did you never see them again?”

“We never saw nor heard of them, though doubtless they crossed our hills again. They were just two lads on their way home from the college in the north. We used whiles to see such, though our glen was a bit out of the way for most of them. But we never saw them again. It must be fifty years and more since then. It had gone clean out of my head, till your flowers and your pleasure in them brought it all back again.”

There was nothing heard for a while but the “click, click,” of Mistress Campbell’s “wires,” as she went on with her knitting. The old woman and the little girl were thinking their own thoughts.

“Eppie, dear,” said Frederica, as she slipped from her high seat to the floor, “I like that about ‘glorified eyes,’ and one seeing hidden things; I mean things that are hidden from us now.”

“Ay, the eyes o’ man are never satisfied with seeing, nor his ears with hearing,” said Eppie: “I doubt that is but a carnal notion o’ heaven. This is what David says about it—

“‘But as for me, I Thine own face
In righteousness shall see;
And with Thy likeness when I wake,
I satisfied shall be.’”

“Satisfied!” repeated she; “ay, doubtless, they’ll be satisfied that win there. But, eh me! ‘Strait is the gate, and narrow the way, that leads to life,’ and I doubt there will be some awfu’ disappointments at that day.”

“If one only knew just what to do,” said Frederica gravely.

“Be a good bairn, and ay read your Bible, and mind your prayers,” said Eppie. “But there’s your bell, and you will need to go.”

And so Frederica went downstairs with the grave thoughts that Eppie’s words had awakened, stirring at her heart again. She read her Bible as Eppie had bidden her, and sometimes she read it with delight, because of the elevation of the thoughts and the beauty of the language; but she came upon nothing in these readings that touched her heart, or that she felt to be suited to her. She read the Old Testament, as the history of her mother’s people. She had been often told of late that she was a Jewess in appearance, like her mother, and she took a real interest in the history of her people, and began to feel pride in being descended from a “nation of heroes.” But pre-occupied with thoughts of this kind, she read on from day to day, seeing nothing in the wonderful words she read to enlighten her on all that she so much needed, and which she believed she so much desired to know.

She listened now with attention to such Bible lessons and readings as entered into the regular routine of school work, but the instructions connected with them were often of a kind to influence the reason and affect the imagination, rather than to touch the heart; and though her attention and interest enlarged her knowledge of the letter of Scripture, and won her many good marks and the chance of a prize at the end of the year, the lessons brought her no answer to the question as to which was the right religion, or how one was to get the good of it in the time of trouble, as Miss Baines had done.

Indeed, if it had not been for one thing, the grave and anxious thoughts that had been for some time occupying her mind might have passed away, as they pass from the mind and heart of so many of the young and thoughtless, leaving no trace in her life, no influence for good, either to herself or to others. If her mother had been well and happy, if there had been no shadow of dark days and painful nights hanging over her future, if she had not longed so earnestly to learn for her sake the secret of peace and joy, over which these have no power, she might have put all anxious thoughts away from her. But all her thoughts of her mother were anxious thoughts now; for in the only visit they had made since Easter, they had found her no better, but rather worse.

Chapter Eight.

Spring was passing into the loveliest part of summer. The school girls were beginning to count the days that must pass before the midsummer holidays; and none counted them more earnestly than did Frederica and her sister. What was to follow the holidays they did not know. There had been nothing more said about sending them to England. But whether they were to be sent there, or to come back again to Mrs Glencairn’s, there were two months of holidays on which they might safely count, and no one knew what might happen before they were over.

Their one short visit since Easter had not been a very successful one. Their mother had been ill and Mrs Ascot had been cross, and there was to be no other visit till holiday time. Dixen had come once or twice with a message from Selina, but the tidings he brought were neither very cheerful nor very definite; and no wonder that Frederica longed for more, and would not lose a chance to get them.

And so one morning, as Mr Vane and some of his friends were riding through one of the wide upper streets, which at that time looked more like the country than the town, they were startled by a voice calling, “Papa, papa,” and out from a straggling line of school girls there sprang a little figure gesticulating eagerly. Mr Vane turned round, and so did the others.

“It is you, Fred, is it?” said he in surprise.

“Yes, papa, I beg your pardon for calling you, but it is so stupid walking along all in a row, and I want to ask you how mama is, and Selina.”

“Oh! they are very well—just as usual. But what will madame the schoolmistress say to your escapade?”

“I am very naughty I know, papa, but I did so want to hear about mama. Is she really better? Why! here she is,” said Frederica in surprise. “Here are Jack and Jill at any rate.”

Yes, there were Jack and Jill, but there was not Mrs Vane nor Selina. A very pretty lady—two of them indeed—leaned back in the carriage. Frederica turned astonished and indignant eyes from them to her father as the carriage stopped.

“Your mama gave herself the pleasure of lending her carriage to Mrs Clifford to-day,” said Mr Vane, and Frederica knew by his tone and manner that he was annoyed, though it would not have done to show it to the rest of the party.

“Let Miss Vane come with us,” said one of the ladies. “We can easily make room for her, can we not, Mrs Clifford?”

Mrs Clifford was not quite sure, but Frederica declined the invitation with a stately little curtsey, and turned to her father again.

“Do come with us, Miss Frederica,” said Major Hargrave, a gentleman whom Frederica had several times seen before: “the day is lovely, and you will enjoy it.”

“Is it a pic-nic? Thank you. It would be very nice, I daresay, but I would rather not. Good-bye, papa; I am afraid Miss Pardie will be very angry with me.”

“And no wonder,” said her father, laughing. The admiring glances which he saw exchanged quite dispelled his momentary vexation.

“We could manage to soothe her, I think,” said he. “Would you like to go, Fred? Where is Tessie?”

“Tessie is not walking to-day. She was naughty, and remained at home. No, I thank you, papa. If there were no other reason, I could not go because of Tessie. It would be too cruel to go and leave her.”

“Naughty! what has she done? It would serve her right to leave her if she has been naughty.”

“Oh! as to that, yes. She was very wrong. She was playing Madame Bulbat for the girls, and Madame heard her, and was in a rage of course. And Miss Robina was obliged to be very severe with the child to keep the peace. I cannot go, papa; but I daresay, if you were to ask her, Miss Pardie would let me go and see mama for a little while.”

But Mr Vane shook his head with sufficient decision.

“No: mama is all right. You are far better at school. She does not need you.”

But pleased with the whispered admiration of the foolish people who were with him, and willing to prolong the pleasure, he moved away with his little daughter in the direction of the line of returning school girls, saying he must make the child’s peace with her teacher; and he quite won Miss Pardie’s heart by his manner of entreating it at her hands.

“Was that your mama in the carriage, and your sister?” asked one of her companions, as they went on together. “I think they might have asked you to go with them.”

“My mama, indeed! That great red woman!” said Frederica scornfully.

“She was very pretty,” said her friend. “That is because she did not ask you to go with them.”

“She did ask me. I did not choose to go.”

“Because of your print dress? Of course you could not have gone in that.”

Thus her friend chattered on, and Frederica answered at random or not at all, thinking of other things. For it did not make her sure that her mother was well again, that her father had said so. And though it was no new thing to her knowledge that her father should seek his own pleasure, without giving a thought to her mother in her enforced retirement, it struck her with new and sharp pain to-day, and her anxious and unhappy thoughts came back again with double force.

“I have a great mind to go home without asking anybody,” she said to herself. But she knew she must not.

She was, for the moment, very unhappy, and it was with a slow step and a sad face that she went to make her confession to Miss Robina. For though Miss Pardie had graciously accepted Mr Vane’s apologies for his daughter’s behaviour, that was only as far as he was concerned. She had her confession to make to Miss Robina all the same; and it is possible that Miss Pardie was not without hope that, for the moral effect of the thing, she would not be permitted to escape without punishment, or at least without reproof. She got no punishment, however, and Miss Robina’s reproof was of the gentlest, when it was explained to her that “she had been so anxious to hear about mama.”

“And I am afraid it was not good news you heard, from the sad face I see,” said Miss Robina, kissing her.

“Papa said she was well, so I suppose she is at least not worse. Am I to be punished, Miss Robina? I think Miss Pardie expects it.”

“You mean you think you deserve it. Well, you must be sent upstairs for a while. Take these strawberries to Eppie, and save me the stairs, and you need not hasten down again.”

So Frederica went slowly upstairs, believing herself to be very unhappy, little thinking how much more unhappy she was to be before she came down again. Eppie was not in her room, which was an unusual circumstance at that hour of the afternoon, and Frederica set down the tiny basket of strawberries on the table, and went to her favourite seat in the west window, with her lesson-book in her hand. In a little while she heard the slow, unequal steps of Eppie on the stairs, and saw her come in with a great bundle in her arms, and watched her as she carefully laid each garment in its place. She did not speak, and in a minute there were other footsteps on the stairs, and Mrs Glencairn came into the room.

Frederica ought to have spoken then. She ought to have made them aware of her presence in the room. But almost the first words she heard startled her so much, as to take away her power of speech, and to make her forget how wrong it was for her to listen to that which was not meant for her ears.

She did not hear all that was said, nor did she know how long it had taken to say it, but when she saw the door close, and heard Mrs Glencairn’s footsteps going slowly down the stairs, she slid from her seat on the window, and confronted Eppie with a white face and angry eyes. The old woman uttered an exclamation, and drew back with uplifted hands.

“Tell me what she meant, Eppie.”

“Miss Frederica! Who would think that you would come and frighten a body out of their wits in that wild way? You have given me a turn that I winna get over this while.”

“Tell me what she said,” repeated Frederica.

But Eppie, hoping that she might have heard little, had no mind to tell her what her mistress had said.

“I would hae thought it o’ any o’ our young leddies rather than of you, pussy. Eh, fie! to be hearkening to what other folk are saying! What think you Miss Robina would say gin I were to tell her?”

But Frederica put her words aside with an impatient gesture.

“Tell me, or I will go to Mrs Glencairn.”

“’Deed you’ll do nothing of the kind. She has had trouble enew already, and it just needs you to go with thae bleezing een o’ yours to upset her altogether. Bide still where you are, like a good bairn.”

Frederica sat down, and neither of them spoke for a while.

“Eppie,” said she at last, “I think I understand, but I am not quite sure. Tell me, so that I need not make a mistake, or bring any one into trouble.”

“Whisht, lassie! It’s a matter you hae nothing to do with, and I counsel you no’ to make nor meddle in it.”

“You are mistaken, Eppie; there is no one but me to put this right, unless mama is to be troubled. And she shall not be troubled. Is this it? For more than a year and a half Mrs Glencairn has received nothing—absolutely nothing—for all that she has done for Tessie and me. She has asked for it more than once, but she has received nothing. I wish to understand.”

Eppie looked at her, but did not answer. The shrewd old woman had seldom been so utterly at a loss before.

“My dear,” said she, “it might have happened to anybody.”

“And we have been living on charity—Tessie and I?”

“Hoot, lassie! dinna speak nonsense. It is all to the fore. And it is a good thing, for it might have been spent, and now it is waiting for Miss Robina to do what she likes with; to go and see her sister, maybe. It’s a good thing that it’s to the fore.”

Frederica looked at her without a word.

“I would advise you no’ to meddle in the matter. It will be all settled as it ought to be, and Miss Robina would be ill pleased that you should ken. And it will be all right, you may be sure,” said Eppie cheerfully.

“It would do no good to go to-day, because papa Is away, and mama is not to be troubled. But to-morrow—Has Mrs Glencairn been very much in need of it; Eppie? Why did they not send us away?”

“My dear, that’s nonsense! What difference would one, or even two, make in a family like this? She would rather have you here than not, though she were never to see the colour of your father’s money. And as for Miss Robina! But the money is safe enough; so just you sit down, and put the thought of it out of your head.”

There was not another word said about it, and Mistress Campbell rejoiced in the readiness with which her counsel had been taken. But Frederica had no thought of “putting it out of her head” in the sense that Eppie hoped. The first sudden shock of anger and shame passed, but it was followed by a pain and doubt not more easily borne. She had only just been able to shut her lips closely, when the name of Mrs Ascot had risen to them; but as she sat there in silence, seeming to read quietly, her thoughts went beyond Mrs Ascot. They followed her father and his gay friends; away into the sunshine of the pleasant fields, and they went to her mother left solitary and suffering, with only Selina to comfort her, and with Mrs Ascot to vex her with cares which she ought never to know.

“It is not kind of papa,” she said, over and over again.

She did not get further than this; for hitherto she had looked at their life and their household ways and cares with the unreasoning eyes of a child. Her father was gay and careless, and apt to forget about things that did not specially concern himself, even a child could see that; but she had never regarded all this as worthy of blame. She had not thought about it in that way at all. But she thought about a great many painful things as she sat with her head bent over her book in Eppie’s garret that night.

There was nothing to be said by anybody. Frederica did not even tell Tessie, as she was almost sure to tell anything that vexed her, in the few minutes that were allowed them for talk before silence was commanded for the night. Tessie could not help her to do as she had determined to do, and Tessie was rather apt to exclaim about things, and to take other girls into her confidence, and such a thing was not to be thought of now.

It would not be easy for her to obtain permission to go home next day, she knew, but she determined to go all the same, whether she got permission or not. But something in the girl’s face made Robina pause before she answered her in one way or the other.

“Has anything happened, love? You have heard no bad news, I hope,” said she kindly.

Frederica did not find it easy to answer.

“Your mama is not worse, I hope.”

“She is not better,” said Frederica huskily. “Won’t you let me go home, Miss Robina? I might go with Nora when she goes to the market, and Dixen will bring me back. Please do, dear Miss Robina, for a little while.”

“I am by no means sure that I ought to say ‘yes,’” said she; but she kissed the sweet pleading face and said it, notwithstanding.

Frederica did not go home first. She took Nora some distance out of her way to her father’s office, and bade her good-bye at the door.

“Thank you, Nora, don’t wait. Papa will take care of me now.”

Her father looked surprised, and not very well pleased to see her. Not that she was interrupting his business, for she saw that he was only reading the newspaper. She did not give him time to express his surprise in words, nor did she greet him in her usual fashion, but said hurriedly, “I came on business, papa.” She did not find it easy to say more for a minute; and something which he saw in her face kept her father silent also.

“Papa, do you know that Mrs Glencairn has not been paid for more than a year and a half? for Tessie and me, I mean.”

Her father stared at her in astonishment, not understanding for the moment what she meant.

“What nonsense, Frederica!” said he: “and what have you to do with it?”

“It is quite true, papa, and of course I have to do with it. Mrs Glencairn must be paid.”

“And did she send you here to say that to me? She has been paid. I cannot say that I admire either her taste or her judgment. I think we have had almost enough of madam the schoolmistress.”

“I think she must have had quite enough of us, papa. But she did not send me. She is not aware that I know about it. I overheard her speaking about it to Mistress Campbell.”

“Overheard! and you have been suffering the usual penalty of listeners.”

“No, papa, and I did not mean to listen. But I was so shocked. Mrs Glencairn and Miss Robina have been very kind to us, papa, and they must be paid.”

“I have not the least doubt that they have been paid, over and over again. Let them alone for that!”

“Did you pay them, papa?”

“No. I did not give the money to them, but I have a distinct recollection of its being provided.”

“So have I, papa. Mama was obliged to ask Mr St. Cyr for more money, and she said it was very painful, and she could not do it again.”

“All that relates to Mr St. Cyr’s connection with our affairs is painful. You are old enough now, Frederica, to understand that it was never with my consent that he had to do with—with our affairs—with your grandfather’s property. I can do nothing. If things go wrong, it is not my fault. I protested against such an arrangement at the time, and—and washed my hands of them. And it is a matter with which you can have nothing to do.”

“Except about Mrs Glencairn’s money, papa. I must have to do with that, you know. Tell me what I must do, papa.”

“You can do nothing. There must be some mistake. A year and a half! It would be a large sum.”

“Yes, indeed! But, papa, don’t you think it possible that—that Mrs Ascot may have made some mistake?”

“She may certainly have made a mistake. I will see that it is put right. But you can do nothing, and you must not try. You will only make matters worse.”

There was silence for some time, and then Frederica said hesitatingly,—

“I am afraid, papa—that Mrs Ascot is not a very good woman.”

Mr Vane looked at her without speaking.

“I mean that she is too clever to make mistakes—that she must know if—if there is anything wrong about the money.”

“She is clever, but she is not too clever to make mistakes. She has made one now—she will find.”

“I think so, papa. Mrs Glencairn could not have been mistaken. She must know, of course. And, papa—it is not pleasant to speak about—but I don’t think Mrs Ascot is nice with mama and Lina. I mean she is not considerate.”

“That will do, Fred. We won’t discuss Madame Ascot. It was not by my will that she was brought into the house. Your grandfather—but I can’t speak to you about all that. Go home, or go back to your school. This matter shall be cleared up and put right.”

“To-day, papa? Papa, I shall be ashamed to look at Miss Robina till this money is paid. Can you not give it to me to take back to-day? Please do, dear papa.”

Mr Vane laughed a very unpleasant laugh.

“Don’t be foolish, Fred. I have not the money to give you to-day, or any day. I must speak to Mrs Ascot: there must be some mistake. She and your mother have always managed these things, with Mr St. Cyr’s help. I can do nothing.”

“But, papa—” entreated Frederica.

“Hush, say nothing more. As Mrs Glencairn said nothing to you, you are not supposed to know anything about the matter. Go back to school at once. Or are you going home for the day?”

“I meant to do so, but I don’t wish to trouble mama. I might speak to Mrs Ascot.”

“Much good that would do,” said her father, with his unpleasant laugh. “No, I will speak to her. Go now, there are people coming in.”

As the door opened to admit some one, Frederica passed out, but she did not turn her face towards home, nor towards school.

“I will go to Cousin Cyprien,” said she to herself. “I cannot trouble mama, and I cannot go back to Mrs Glencairn’s without some hope that it will all be set right. Papa so soon forgets.”

And not giving herself time to lose courage by thinking about the difficulties before her, she hastened away. But when she found herself in the dismal hall into which Mr St. Cyr’s office opened, and from which the staircase to his house led, she wished herself well away again. It was late in the morning by this time, but Mr St. Cyr had not come down to his office, the man who opened the door told her, and Frederica went upstairs with a beating heart. She thought she had come at a wrong time, when she opened the door, and found that Mr St. Cyr was not alone. But her friend hastened to welcome her, and though he expressed some surprise at the sight of her, he expressed pleasure also.

“Only I fear you must be in trouble again,” said he, kindly. “Is it something very serious this time? Ah! yes, your face says so. It is not—is it Prickly Polly? But first let me introduce my brother to you, whom you ought to know. Jerome, this is Theresa’s daughter—Mr St. Hubert’s grandchild.”

“It must be Theresa herself, I think,” said the dark man, who rose and held out his hand.

“No, I am Frederica. Theresa is younger than I.”

“She is very like her, is she not? Just the same bright little creature. But she is not bright to-day. Tell me what is the matter, my little cousin.”

Frederica hesitated. She did not like to speak before Mr St. Cyr’s brother. She would not have liked to speak before anyone, but, as she told Tessie afterwards, the Reverend Mr St. Cyr had not a nice face. It was a face that somehow made her think of a mask, and she looked with a little startled curiosity at him, wondering what might be behind it.

“It brings back your youth, does it not? She is very like what her mother was in those days. But her mother is changed. Ah! so sadly changed,” said Mr St. Cyr, with a sigh.

But the priest did not answer a word.

“Well, what can I do for you?” said Mr St. Cyr, turning to Frederica. “Who has been troubling you this time? Not Prickly Polly, sorely? I thought I had settled her affairs the other day. What is it now?”

“Did you?” said Frederica, eagerly. “And was it very disagreeable?”

“Well, for her, rather so, I fancy. What is it now? Is it a secret? And does Madame the Schoolmistress let you go here and there about the city by yourself? She thinks you ‘sensible,’ I suppose?”

Frederica shook her head.

“I was not alone. Nora took me to papa’s office, and then I came here. It is not a secret, but—”

The Rev. Mr St. Cyr sat down, and took up a book.

“Regard him as if he were made of wood,” said Cousin Cyprien, laughing; “and now tell me all your trouble.”

“I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, but I don’t know what else to do.”

And then she told him all her trouble; how she had heard by accident that Mrs Glencairn had received nothing for their board and education for a long time, and how she had gone to her father, and he had been angry, and said he could do nothing, and then she added,—

“I think Mrs Ascot, must know. Do you think Madame Ascot is a trustworthy person, Cousin Cyprien? Of course she is disagreeable, and cross, and all that; but not to be trustworthy is something quite different. And papa says it was not his fault that she came to our house. Do you think her a good woman. Mr St. Cyr? Is she trustworthy?”

He listened to her story without a word, only smiling and nodding now and then till she came to the end and asked those questions about Mrs Ascot. Then he looked uneasily towards his brother, but his brother never lifted his eyes from his book, nor seemed to hear a word.

“We must not speak evil of her, nor accuse her without sufficient grounds,” said he gravely.

“No,” said Frederica faintly. “But I do not mean because of this altogether. She is not always considerate towards mama, I am afraid, and mama is ill, and—alone. But I need not trouble you about it. Pardon me if I ought not to have come to you.”

“You did right to come to me. I can set right all this mysterious affair. You shall not hear of it again. Of course you are to come to me.”

“But, Cousin Cyprien,” said Frederica, taking courage from his kindness, “ought I to need to come to you always? Is there not something wrong that might be remedied?”

“My dear child, almost everything in the world is wrong, and I very much fear must always remain so. But this can be remedied, and it shall be on one condition. You are not to trouble yourself about it. Are you the little girl who the other day nearly overturned me? You look like an old woman with that naughty wrinkle in your forehead.”

Frederica laughed.

“What should I do, if I might not come to you? And yet I ought not to need to come. There must be something wrong,” added she, the naughty wrinkle coming to her forehead again. “Was it grandpapa who put it all wrong, as papa says? or is it Madame Ascot? or perhaps papa himself?” added she, with some hesitation.

Mr St. Cyr answered her gravely.

“My little girl, we will not ask. I will set this matter right—no, not to-day, but soon, and you must not think of it any more.”

His promise sounded very different in Frederica’s ears, from the promise her father had made. Mr St. Cyr did not forget. Still she lingered as if she had more to say, and as if she were not quite sure whether she ought to say it.

“Do you wish Mrs Ascot to stay in our house, Cousin Cyprien? Papa said to-day it was not by his wish that she ever came. Do you like her, Mr St. Cyr? Have you confidence in her? I am quite sure I could make mama and Selina much happier than she makes them.”

“This terrible Madame Ascot!” said Mr St. Cyr with a shrug. “No, I don’t think I like her very much, or have much confidence in her. But we will not speak of her. When you are old enough and wise enough to take care of your mama and your sister, and the housekeeping, and all that, we shall dispense with madame altogether, I fancy. But this must be a secret till the right time comes, and we shall say no more about it.”

“I am almost old enough, am I not? Well, I will wait patiently.”

“Good child! that will be best,” said Mr St. Cyr.

Then he showed her several curious things that were in the cabinet, and a fine picture he had lately purchased, and then he rang for some fruit, and was very attentive and full of ceremony in serving her; and then he went downstairs with her, when she went away.

“Good day, my little cousin,” said he. “Be sure you come to me always. I wish I could put aside all trouble from you as easily as I can put aside this one. Though, indeed, I may have vexation more than enough, before I am done with it,” he muttered, as he went upstairs to his brother again.

And he did have vexation, and so had Mrs Ascot, and Mr Vane did not escape without his share. But Frederica had no more. In a day or two she gathered from various sources that Mrs Glencairn had been paid in full, and with interest, and that was enough for her. She never heard another word more about the matter.

Chapter Nine.

Mr St. Cyr’s vexation began the moment he went upstairs again into the room where his brother was sitting. A good many years before this time, Mr Jerome St. Cyr had known the St. Huberts, and had looked upon Theresa’s marriage with Mr Vane, as almost all her friends had done, as a terrible sacrifice. He had been a young man then, he was much younger than his brother. He had gone to Europe to pursue his studies soon after that, and had remained there after they were finished. His correspondence with his brother had not been very regular or frequent, and he knew little of what was passing among his friends all that time. He had only lately returned home, and he showed great interest in the Vane family, and asked his brother many questions concerning them. Mr St. Cyr gave him some particulars of them and their manner of life; of Mrs Vane’s ill-health, and the quiet way in which she and her blind daughter lived together.

“But, my brother,” said Jerome St. Cyr, “I do not understand how you should have permitted affairs to take such a course, you who have so long had the power in your own hand. Why should these girls be losing their time at a second or third-rate school, as seems to be the case? Why have they not been all these years with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart? And the boys, too! Think of them wasting their time with some foolish young person who goes to them daily! It is little less than disgraceful.”

“You mistake,” said Mr St. Cyr quietly. “I have had the management of their grandfathers property for their mother’s use, but I have had no power—no, nor the shadow of power, nor of influence, where Mr Vane’s children are concerned.”

“Then permit me to say that you have been very culpable in this matter, I should have obtained influence and power too.”

Mr St. Cyr shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.

“And all this immense property that has been accumulating since Mr St. Hubert’s death, this rascally Englishman is to have?”

“No, his children are to have it—Theresa St. Hubert’s children. It has made the Englishman sufficiently miserable thus far—the sight of I mean, without the power to use it. Not but that he has had some good of it too.”

“But to think of these poor children growing up without Christian instruction! Did Mr St. Hubert make no condition as to their education—their religion? I cannot imagine how you and Pauline Precoe can reconcile it to your sense of duty, to your conscience, that it should be as it is with them. With Pauline Precoe’s help, I should have made it quite otherwise.”

Mr St. Cyr laughed in a way which was not pleasant to hear.

“You have not forgotten Pauline Precoe, it seems,” said he.

“I must see her,” said Jerome. “It may not be too late yet. These children must be saved.”

“It is too late to think of availing yourself of Pauline Precoe’s help in your good work, however. She is now in Mrs Vane’s house, but she shall not be there long. I have no influence with Mr Vane—he hates me like poison; but I think he may be made to see that it will not be for his interest that Madame Ascot should stay much longer in his family.”

“Why? What has she done, poor Pauline? You did not use to hate her so.”

“I never respected her. She was never worthy of respect. She was and is an utterly unscrupulous person. I say to you what I mean to say to her soon—she is a dishonest person. I might even say worse than that.”

“She has not been under right direction,” said his brother.

“And you would like to be her director henceforth. I wish you joy of the office. But you must not hope through her to gain influence over Theresa St. Hubert and her children.”

“And they and their wealth must be lost to the Church? You are not so good a Christian as you once were, Cyprien,” said his brother.

“That is as may be. I do not think it is my Christian duty, or yours, to seek to obtain possession of Mr St. Hubert’s wealth, or any part of it, by any means, or for any purpose whatever.”

“I seek nothing for myself,” said his brother; “and we will discuss the subject no more.”

“There is just this to be said more,” said Mr St. Cyr, gravely and firmly: “Do not meddle with their affairs, my brother. No good can come of it, to you or to any one. You wish none of it for yourself? To wish for it for any purpose—yes, even to build churches, or to feed and clothe your orphans—is covetousness. To obtain possession of it would be dishonesty. Put it altogether from your thoughts.”

There was a silence of several minutes, and Mr St. Cyr rose to leave the room.

“Brother,” said Jerome, meekly, “I had hoped that after all these years of separation we might at least have lived in peace together—the last of our race as we are.”

“With all my heart, let it be peace. Only there must be no meddling with this matter, or with any matter in which my honour as a gentleman and a man of business is involved. That must be clearly understood.”

“I must be faithful with you,” said Jerome, still speaking softly: “I consider that you have been Culpably negligent with regard to these children. It is their souls for which I am anxious, not their wealth. It is for you to render an account of them—not me.”

“So be it! I will answer,” said Mr St. Cyr. After a moment he added, “Do not, my brother, let us become unfriendly over this matter. When Mr St. Hubert left his property to me, in trust for his daughter and her children, I did all that was permitted me to do to have these children placed under Christian influence and teaching. In fact, I would have confided them to the care of the ladies of the Sacred Heart, as you suggest, if I had been consulted. Mr Vane had other plans, and I had no right to interfere. I cannot say that I now regret that my plans for them failed. They are good and sweet children, frank and loving, and conscientious, with far more strength of character and truthfulness, than would have been developed in them had they been educated within convent walls. And they will need these qualities, poor children.”

“All that sounds strangely from the lips of one who has the reputation of being a religious man,” said his brother gravely.

“Have I that reputation? Well, we will say no more, lest your next word be not so flattering. And now I must leave you to amuse yourself, while I without loss of time attend to this unpleasant business. We shall see each other again soon.”

It truly was an unpleasant business to all concerned; and all the more so, that instead of shutting his eyes, and seeming not to see what was wrong, as he had often done before, in matters where Mr Vane was concerned, he was determined to search to the bottom the affair of the misappropriated money. He had no expectation that it would be restored; he did not care about that: the result he desired to bring about was the departure of Mrs Ascot from the house. She would have been sent away long before, if Mrs Vane in her ill-health could have found courage to dissent from the will of her dead father who had placed her there, or to oppose the expressed will of her husband, whose ease and interest Mrs Ascot in all things studied.

So Mr St. Cyr did his best to make it unpleasant business to both Mrs Ascot and Mr Vane, and they did the same for each other. With the details our story has nothing to do, but the result was matter of rejoicing to the Vanes. The very first thing that Fred and Tessie heard when they came home for the holidays was that Madame Ascot was going to be married! It was madame herself who told them. She was to many her own cousin, Mr Joseph Precoe, who was a merchant in the city. It would have happened long ago, only she had never been able to induce herself to forsake dear Mrs Vane, who had been so much in need of her. But now in justice to Mr Precoe, who had waited so long, she must wait no longer.

Madame was determined to part in friendship with everybody, it seemed, and she would not see the joyful looks the girls exchanged, nor any other indications of delight at the prospect of her departure. She not only did not resent these things, but took the utmost pains to conciliate the young people and their mother as well. There was to be a fine wedding, and Mrs Ascot’s earnest wish was that she should go directly from Mrs Vane’s house to the church, and that her dear little cousins should go with her as bridesmaids; and she had so much to say about the charming dresses and ornaments that would be required, that they desired it too.

Their mother did not desire it and their father, with more decision than he usually displayed in matters that did not particularly affect his own comfort, put an end to the discussion of the subject at once. Madame Ascot, an inmate of their house, had been a person of some importance, but Madame Precoe would be like any other common person with whom they had nothing at all to do. This was made quite clear to the children by him, and there was no reason, except the pretty bridesmaids’ dresses, why they should regret his decision. Madame was disappointed and angry. She showed her disappointment, but she did not show her anger. She was determined to part in friendship with them all, and she promised to come and see them often, and to render them assistance in all matters where assistance was needed.

“There must be none of that, however,” said Mr Vane, when Frederica told him of Mrs Ascot’s kindness. “It would suit her purpose, I daresay, to make good her position here, and it would suit other people’s also; but it will not suit me; and she is not to be encouraged; remember that, Fred.”

Frederica opened her eyes in astonishment at her father’s unwonted warmth.

“It would not suit mama, if that is what you mean, papa—nor any of us. We are very glad to part with her, and Mr St. Cyr does not like her at all, I am sure.”

“He may wish to make use of her, though he does not like her. But she is not to be encouraged to come here.”

“Very well, papa,” said Frederica: but she by no means understood what her father meant, nor did it matter much that she did not.

The girls saw the wedding after all. They went to the church in the early morning, and saw madame in her fine dress and veil, and her bridesmaids, who were much better suited to the office than they would have been. Madame did not see them. They kept out of sight, and watched the ceremony with great interest, rather pitying the good-natured-looking bridegroom, and exchanging serious doubts as to his chances of good times in madame’s hands. The usual carriages drawn by white horses awaited them at the door; and as they watched them driving away, Tessie said,—

“There! she has really gone at last. I have been afraid all along that Mr Precoe would repent, or that somebody would do something to put a stop to it, and that we should have Prickly Polly back again. I should like to dance and sing for thankfulness.”

But Frederica had no thought of dancing and singing.

“There is always, some drawback,” said she gravely. “If everything does not go on well in the house,—dinners, and servants, and all that,—papa will not be pleased.”

“Oh, well! Why should they not go on well? You are so sensible, you know,” said Tessie, laughing. “You are equal to Mrs Ascot, surely.”

“I mean to be good, and try to do everything right, and then all will go well. That is what Miss Robina said to me—at least, she said I must always try to do right, whatever happened. If one could always know what is right!”

Tessie laughed.

“I wonder if it was right for us to come and see the last of Madame Ascot, after what papa said.”

“Oh! our coming in this way was quite different. We were not guests, and she did not see us. And after the first moment I daresay papa did not think about it.”

“That is true. Papa does not mind about things.”

“But he minds about his dinner, and about everything being right when his friends come to the house, and all that; and perhaps he might mind about our coming here too. I think I shall tell him that we were in the church.”

Tessie said he would be sure not to care, and Frederica thought so too, or perhaps she would not have been so ready to tell him about it. It is possible he did not care very much; but he was rather cross about it, Frederica confessed, when she told Tessie afterward. His comfort had already been interfered with since Mrs Ascot’s departure, for the affairs of the house did not go on very well for a while, and he had other causes for embarrassment which he could not tell to her. He only said it was not a proper thing for her to be going about the streets alone, or with no one but Tessie, and insisted that an end should be put to it.

“You are no longer a child,” said he; “you are almost a woman.”

“But surely, papa, I should be all the fitter to go about for that,” said she, laughing.

“That is your idea, is it? Well, it is not mine. You must amuse yourselves within the bounds of the garden, while your vacation lasts.”

“But, papa,” said Frederica, with dignity, “it is not a question of amusement: you forget that I am housekeeper.”

“No, I am not likely to forget that,” said her father drily. “If you must go out, you must go in the carriage, or take Dixen with you. I cannot have you going here and there by yourself.”

“Very well, papa: I will remember.”

It was very agreeable to her that her father should acknowledge that she was no longer a child, but she was by no means sure that all the consequences of being almost a woman would be agreeable. However, she was determined to make the best of it.

“I am going to be very busy,” said she. “You shall see what a housekeeper I shall be. I shall have no time to be going here and there. I shall like it, I am quite sure, better than school.”

But Frederica had all her housekeeping to learn yet. She did not know what she was saying when she was speaking in this way to her father. It is not to be supposed that an inexperienced young girl like her could at once have rightly governed and guided so large a household, even had she set herself to the work with a full sense of its responsibility and difficulty. She had some misgivings in the direction of “papa,” but all the rest seemed easy and pleasant. Indeed, she considered it “great fun” to keep the keys, and order dinner, and hold consultations with the cook over courses, and dishes, and sauces, of which she knew nothing at all.

It was “great fun” to the cook too, but she tired of it after a while, and so did Frederica. As a general thing, the cook heard the orders and took her own way about obeying them, which, on the whole, answered everybody’s purpose best. But sometimes the young mistress forgot her orders, or did what was worse, issued orders which were contradictory or impossible to obey. And sometimes, in her ignorance, she was arbitrary and unreasonable, and assumed dignified “airs,” and asserted her authority at wrong times, and made “no end” of trouble. “And as for standing the like of that from a child that didn’t know white sauce from butter, it was not to be thought of for a minute,” cook said, with sufficient emphasis.

It was the cook who was Frederica’s greatest trouble, because she was the only servant in the house, except Dixen, who could in any measure interfere with the comfort or temper of her father; and in trying to keep things right for him, she put them often woefully wrong. So domestic affairs were in rather a troubled state for a while. Tessie was not altogether wrong, when she asserted that it would have been much more comfortable for everybody if she had left the servants of the house to do things in their own way, and of course it came to that at last.

Frederica grew tired of being anxious, and dignified, and out of temper, and by-and-by let the cook and all the rest of them take their own plans, and fell into the usual holiday ways, and devoted herself to her mother and Selina. She kept the keys still, and ordered dinner; but very often the store-room door was open, while the keys were safe in her little basket, and her orders for dinner were very apt to degenerate into amiable and undignified coaxings for certain favourite dishes at the cook’s hands. This was a great deal more agreeable for all concerned, and was quite as well every way. For the servants had been well trained by Mrs Ascot, and they sufficiently appreciated the advantages of a good place and good wages, to be reasonably faithful in the performance of their duties. And besides, in a little time they grew quite fond and proud of their merry and pretty young mistress, and took pains to please her, when it did not involve too much trouble to themselves.

And so Mrs Ascot was less missed in the house than she would have believed possible. Even “papa” ceased to be critical and vexatious when he found that his dinner, and his boots, and his fine linen seemed to make their appearance at proper times with no trouble to himself. Household affairs settled into their new grooves quietly and regularly, and the young housekeeper gave herself not much trouble about them for a while. She had enough to do without them. Even in the busiest of housekeeping times, the sisters had never neglected their mother and Selina.

The presence of the girls in the house made a joyful difference to them. The sound of their voices, as they danced out and in the rooms, usually so silent and lonely, was music and medicine to their mother. She grew better and stronger in these weeks, and made efforts that she would have believed impossible before they came home.

Mr Vane’s desire that the girls should confine themselves to the garden for their walks and amusements was not so disagreeable to them as it might have been. For the summer proved to be hot and dry, and the streets were dusty and close, and the large and beautiful garden, with its walks, and soft green turf and shady trees, was as pleasant a place as could well be imagined in which to pass the sultry days.

From the first day of her return home Frederica had been faithful with regard to the reading of the Bible with her mother and Selina. Eppie had said that this was one of the ways by which she had been taught to be religious. She knew that other good people valued the Bible for the wisdom it contained, or for the comfort it could give. She had heard it spoken of as the rule of life, and as the guide to heaven, and she determined to know what it contained, and to get the good of it for herself and for those she loved. So, beginning at the beginning, she read regularly a portion every day. She might have grown tired of it after a while, for though she found some of it full of interest, it was not all so, and she did not find in it what she had hoped to find. It did not tell her directly and plainly what she must do. She did not see the way to be good and serve God pointed out in words that she could understand, and she might have been tempted to betake herself to other books for instruction and amusement, if it had not been for Selina. But there was no doubt about her interest in what she heard.

Selina’s life had been quiet and untroubled. There had been her mother’s ill-health, and the occasional irritability and despondency consequent upon it, and there had been the vexations that from time to time had come on them through the agency, direct or indirect, of Mrs Ascot. But there had been nothing else to disturb in any painful way the uneventful days to her. And there had been as little to heighten beyond its usual quiet flow the contented current of daily occupation and pleasure. There had been her little brothers’ daily visit to their mother’s room, and the infrequent joyful holidays of her sisters, but her life had been still and monotonous. Her interests and occupations had not been of a kind to take her thoughts out of the house where she had always lived. Their few visitors brought little to her but the usual commonplace talk and superficial sympathy, and even the books that were read, and the tales that were told her, were not of a kind to move the unawakened heart and mind of one withdrawn by her blindness and isolation from a young girl’s interest in the world around her.

And so when Frederica came with her eager interest in the reading, and her vague but joyful hopes of all that might spring out of it, Selina did not know what it meant, but prepared herself to take pleasure in the pleasure of her sisters, as she had often done before. But this state of mind did not survive even the first day’s reading. All the wonderful new things to which she listened were for her, as well as for Frederica and the rest. They were not new to Frederica. She had often read before how in the beginning the heavens and the earth were made. The mother, too, had some vague remembrance of what the Book contained, for during the first years of her married life she had gone to church with her husband. But strange as it may seem, all was new to Selina, and to all that her sister read she listened eagerly, and thought and spoke of it afterwards with a wonder and delight that encouraged her sister to persevere in the reading; and whatever else was neglected or hurried over, to the reading was always given its full share of time and attention.

This was the beginning of a new life to Selina. If her beautiful blind eyes had been suddenly opened on the world around her, it could hardly have made a more entire change in her thoughts and feelings and enjoyments, than did this daily reading of the Bible. She did not say much about it. It had always been her way to listen to the others rather than to speak, and it was her way still. But a great many new thoughts came to her, and the knowledge of many wonderful truths. Her thoughts were often confused, and her reception of truth partial and imperfect, but her interest and enjoyment were real and deep. All that came to her through the reading did not come at once, and the best did not come first. The blessing for which Frederica hoped, and looked, and sometimes prayed, did not come in its fulness to any of them for a good while after that, but from the first the reading was a source of happiness to them, and most of all to Selina.

Mrs Vane’s enjoyment of it was in the enjoyment of her children. To be sitting, free from pain, in the garden, where she had played as a child, with her own children around her, and with no care or fear pressing immediately upon her, was enough to satisfy her. Their delight in the reading, and in the talk that often grew out of it, she did not share. She did not understand it, nor cared to do so at first. To watch her blind darling’s bright absorbed face, and to see her sisters’ tender affection, and their desire to give her a part in the pleasure from which her affliction tended to debar her, was happiness to the mother, who had grieved so much over her in the past.

Mrs Vane was not a very wise mother, nor indeed a very wise woman in any relation of life, and she wished nothing more for herself nor for her children than a continuation of just such days as these. She felt so safe and at rest in the sunshine of the dear old garden, shut in from the world, where trouble was, and danger. It was a new experience to her to have them all around her, with no one to interfere with their plans and pleasures, and she desired nothing beyond.

Mr Vane had gone away, as he always did for a month or two in the summer, and there were few interruptions in the quiet of their lives. Once or twice Frederica and Tessie went to visit their half-sister Mrs Brandon, who lived in a pretty house near the mountain. They went because they knew their father wished them to go, but they did not enjoy going very much. Their sister Caroline was very pretty and good, they thought, and she meant to be very kind to them; but she had a way of looking at them and listening to them as though she thought them odd little creatures, different from other young girls, which was not agreeable to them; and she had a way of speaking of their father as “poor papa” or “poor dear papa,” which was especially distasteful to Frederica, and which she resented, not for her father’s sake, but for her mother’s, and she did not always conceal her displeasure. So they did not go often, nor stay long.

They drove out in the carriage when the days were clear and cool, and once or twice they had a visit from Madame Precoe. Mr St. Cyr’s brother came several times; but for the most part they were alone, and the days passed quietly away. They read other books as well as the Bible. Selina took pleasure in them all, and Frederica promised, when her holidays were over, seriously to attend to her sister’s neglected education, and even now favoured her with scraps of information remembered from her own lessons, historical and geographical facts, and bits of botany, and even grammatical rules. Selina declared herself ready to be taught all that her sister knew, but in the meantime it was the reading of the Bible about which she cared most.

Many grave discussions grew out of the reading. They made mistakes often, and said foolish things, and any one listening to them must have been sometimes amused and sometimes pained by the ignorance they displayed, and by the opinions they expressed; but no one could have failed to discern in them an eager desire to know the truth and to obey it. And they who earnestly desire to know the truth have an infallible teacher and guide, and it is certain of such, for He says it, that “they shall know the truth, and the truth shall make them free.”

“I have heard that before, more than once,” said Selina one day, when Frederica had read the promise of God to Isaac in Gerar: “And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

“Yes, we have had it before,” said Frederica. “The same promise was given to Abraham, you know.”

“What does it mean, I wonder?” asked Selina. “Oh! it means that the children of Abraham were to become a great people, as they did afterwards. They were God’s own chosen people. All the Bible is written about them, you know.”

“Yes, but how are all the nations of the earth to be blessed through them?”

“I have heard something about it,” said Frederica meditatively. “Let me think a minute. Oh, yes! it was because the Saviour was to come among them. The Bible is all about the Jewish people, because Jesus was a Jew.”

“Was He?” said Selina wistfully.

“Yes, and of course that is what it means. Jesus died for all men. Jesus is the Son of God, and the son of Mary, you know.”

“No,” said Selina gravely; “I don’t know.”

“Well, never mind, we can read about it,” said Frederica, turning the leaves of the Bible till she came to the first chapter of Matthew. “It is all here, and we will read it.”

Going rapidly over the first verses to herself, till she came to the eighteenth, she then read, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise,” and so on. “Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins. And they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”

Frederica lingered over these passages, reading them many times, and trying to remember all that she had heard about them.

“Jesus is God, you know, and He became man that He might die for us, and save us from our sins, as the verse says; and we ought to love Him, and obey Him, and serve Him.”

“Yes,” said Selina, “if we only knew the way. If we had any one to teach us.”

“We are going to learn the way. It is all here; in the Bible, I mean,” said Frederica.

“They all say that—Miss Robina, and Miss Pardie, and all of them. And the clergymen say it in church. And Mrs Glencairn said always that we must not mind what people say about religion, unless it is in the Bible. And Eppie told me once that God Himself would teach us.”

“And do you think He will?”

“Yes, if we ask Him—when we say our prayers, you know.”

“When we say ‘Our Father,’ you mean?”

Every night and morning since she was a little child, Selina had said “Our Father.”

“Yes, and we may ask for other things, and God will give them. We learned texts about it once, only I can’t quite remember them. This is one—‘Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you.’ Jesus Himself says that.”

“And will He?” asked Selina.

“Yes,” said Frederica, with a little hesitation, “if we ask right things, I suppose.”

“And would He make me see, if I were to ask Him? Oh, mama I only think if He would!”

Mrs Vane clasped the eager little hand that touched hers, and sighed.

“But, mama, He could do it. He opened blind eyes many times while He was on earth, and His being in heaven now would make no difference. He could do it, I suppose,” said Frederica, not knowing very well what to say.

“And will He, do you think, if I ask Him? Mama will ask Him too, and you and Tessie.”

“He could do it if He chose. But perhaps it means not such things we are to ask for, but that He would teach us, and make us wise and good, and forgive us our sins, and take us to heaven when we die,” said Frederica. “And you are very happy as you are, dear! You don’t care very much about it, do you?” said she, kissing softly the beautiful blind eyes that were wet, though they were smiling, too.

“Frederica, love, you are making your sister unhappy, I fear,” said her mother anxiously. “My darling, come to me!”

Selina kissed her mother gently two or three times. “Unhappy! no, mama. It was only for a moment, and it was for you that I wished it, mama, more than for myself.”

Her mother could only murmur fond words over her, as she caressed her tenderly.

“But it cannot be true, all that Fred has been saying,” broke in Tessie. “It is a pity. But it is only one of Fred’s ideas.”

“But it must be true, because Jesus said those very words, only I suppose we do not understand it yet,” said Frederica. “We will read more. And, mama, Selina will see when she gets to heaven.”

Mrs Vane uttered an exclamation of impatience and astonishment.

“Frederica! why do you say such things?”

“Let us read more,” said Selina, for she saw that her mother was troubled at the discussion.

And so they read on. Not in the Old Testament, but in the New. They read of the wonderful words and deeds of our Lord, and Selina drank in the strange glad tidings with awe and delight. She never in her mother’s presence said anything more about her wish to see. She spoke of it to her sisters, and for a little while the desire disturbed the gentle current of her thoughts and enjoyments. But it passed away, and the sweet content that had brightened all these years to her mother came back again. She listened, and mused, and wondered at all she heard, and by-and-by, as her mind opened, and she understood better the nature of those things that are promised without reserve to those who ask for them aright, she never ceased to ask humbly yet undoubtingly that to her and to those whom she loved, they might be given in due time.

Chapter Ten.

And so the untroubled days passed, till Mr Vane came home again. They were glad to see him, and indeed made a jubilee of the day of his return. But there was an unconfessed fear in the heart of each that a change was at hand, and that their untroubled days were at an end.

But the holidays were over, and nothing was said about the girls’ return to Mrs Glencairn’s. If Mrs Ascot had been among them, that would have been settled long ago, but there was no one now eager to get them away, and no one to make the necessary arrangements, except their father, and so Tessie comforted herself with the thought that “there was always a chance that he would forget all about it.” Still she rejoiced with trembling, and went softly through the house, and kept out of sight, that he might not be unpleasantly reminded of his neglected duty. This was not difficult to do, for their early breakfast was over before he came down in the morning, and he did not return to dinner till the hour at which the children took tea in their mother’s parlour, and except during his brief visit after dinner, there was little chance of his seeing any of them. And when one week was safely passed, and then another, Tessie began to think the danger of going back to school was over.

Frederica had not shared her anxiety as far as being sent to Mrs Glencairn’s was concerned, and the possibility of going to England involved so much more that would need consideration, and care, and expense, that she was not much afraid that her father would decide upon it at present. So she took no pains to keep out of the way, but, on the contrary, assumed again the responsibility and dignity of housekeeper, and wore her key-basket at her waist, and made grave suggestions about housekeeping matters for his benefit. She tried to amuse him, too, on such evenings as he did not go out after dinner, and had no one with him, and she succeeded so well that he missed her greatly when she did not come to him; and if it had not been for one unfortunate circumstance, a quiet winter might have followed the pleasant summer, and they might have all been at home together for a little longer.

One night Mr Vane told Frederica that there was on the next day to be a grand review of troops at L— farm, and to her delight he promised to take her with him. Unfortunately, however, as had happened before, the promise of the night was forgotten in the morning. Frederica was disappointed of course, and a little angry, but she recovered her good temper immediately when Tessie suggested that she might go still, and take them all with her. To be sure she could, and she congratulated herself on her father’s forgetfulness; for now the pleasure would be doubled, and more than doubled; for not only Tessie and Selina could go, but their little brothers as well. So Dixen, nothing loth, had the carriage at the door in less time than usual. They did not even have the thought of leaving their mother alone to mar the prospect of their enjoyment; for Miss Grant, having given the boys a holiday, kindly offered to stay with Mrs Vane till they all came home again.

It never came into their minds that they might be doing wrong, or that their father might be displeased with them for venturing into such a crowd, or they might have placed themselves in a less conspicuous position, and at a greater distance from that part of the grounds where many of the fashionable people of the town had stationed themselves. It never occurred to them either, that while they found so much interest and amusement in watching and commenting upon the people and the equipages crowded so closely round them, others might find the same interest in regarding them. Indeed, they made rather a remarkable group, the young girls and their brothers, and old Dixen, and Jack and Jill together, and it is not likely that Mr Vane and his daughter Mrs Brandon, or the party of equestrians who were with them, would have passed without observing them, even if little Hubert had not at the sight of them called out,—

“Papa, papa, here we are! come this way, papa.”

The little boy had clambered up on the high seat of the carriage beside Dixen. Tessie was leaning over them, and Frederica was standing on the low step of the carriage, eagerly describing to Selina all that was going on around them. But it was Selina who was the central figure of the group, to which all eyes turned. The younger girls were simply and quietly dressed in proper school-girl fashion, but they had decked their fair blind sister in beautiful and costly things; and her bright serene face, and her long golden curls shading it, made a very lovely picture. No one would have imagined that those clear sweet eyes were blind, except that she sat so still and so unconscious of the looks that were bent upon her.

“Hush, Hubert?” whispered Tessie. “Do not call again. Papa does not look pleased.”

He looked by no means pleased. Unfortunately for his good temper, he did not hear the murmur of surprise and admiration that rose from some of the party, because he was listening to Mrs Brandon, who was saying,—

“How foolish and wrong, and what bad taste, for these girls to be here alone! Papa, I am surprised that you should allow it! The horses are not taken from the carriage. There will be an accident certainly.”

Mr Vane laughed.

“With Jack and Jill! Hardly, while old Dixen is by them.”

“But they ought not to have come without a gentleman to take care of them. You should send them home.”

“Through this crowd? They are safer where they are at present.”

A movement in the throng of people permitted a nearer approach to the carriage. Tessie, who had seen her father’s face, seated herself to watch him as he came near, but Frederica was still talking rapidly and eagerly to Selina. She started as he touched her on the shoulder with the end of his riding-whip, but she did not look at all as if she expected to be reproved. She smiled and nodded gaily to him and Mrs Brandon.

“You see we are all here, papa. I wish they would begin.”

There was some delay in the bringing up of the soldiers. The crowd was getting impatient, and moved to and fro about them; and in the movement, some of Mr Vane’s friends, having dismounted and given their horses into safe keeping, came round the carriage, and, as Mr Vane whispered to Mrs Brandon, there were soon gentlemen enough about them. Frederica had seen most of them before, but they were not people that she cared for, and she whispered to Selina that she was sadly afraid their pleasure was to be spoiled. She greeted them politely, however, and mentioned their names to Selina.

“But you need not mind them,” added she, in a whisper. “They’ll go away directly, I daresay. Now the soldiers are ready to begin, and I will tell you what they do.”

And so she did. Standing on the seat where her sister sat, that she might see the better, she described in a low rapid voice the marching and countermarching, and all the movements of the men; and when she became silent, Tessie spoke, and the boys sometimes broke eagerly in. And through all, Selina listened and smiled with a face of such sweet content, such seeming unconsciousness of misfortune or loss, that tears came to the eyes of some that were looking on. Even her father saw her wonderful beauty and sweetness, and her affliction, with a new sense of surprise and pain, and sighed as he regarded her.

It grew tiresome at last to those who did not understand the movements of the soldiers, or the skill and drill needed to ensure success in all the wonderful evolutions through which they were put; and so, when at length a clear space was made near the carriage, they began to speak of going home.

“Mama will be getting anxious,” said Selina softly to one who urged them to stay longer.

“And there will be nothing more. It will be the same thing over and over again,” said Tessie. “There will be music, I suppose, and you will like that, Lina.”

“Still, if Hubert and Charlie are ready, I think we should go,” said Selina.

The boys were by no means ready to go, but their indignant outcry was interrupted by their father.

“Now that the way is clear you must go,” said he, “or you may get entangled among the carriages and be hurt.”

And then the misfortune of the day happened. Mrs Brandon, meaning to be very kind, and meaning also to gratify the curiosity of some of her friends, who had been expressing a wish to see more of her young sisters, invited them all to luncheon before they should return home. Frederica politely but promptly declined for them all.

“We said we should be home to dinner, and mama will be anxious,” said she.

“But the boys can tell her that you have stayed with me. Papa is coming, and several others. She will not care.”

“No, I suppose not, but we are tired, and it will be much nicer to visit you some time when you are alone. Excuse me. It is quite impossible,” added Frederica, as Mrs Brandon continued to urge her.

Her last words were spoken in an air and manner “not in the least like Fred,” her father said to himself, as he listened. But Mrs Brandon thought it was exactly like Fred—“the naughty little thing.” She had more than once noticed this disagreeable manner in her intercourse with her younger sister, and had spoken of it to her father, and to him she now turned her disapproving eyes. So Mr Vane interposed.

“Nonsense, Fred! What difference can it make? Stay of course—not you, Tessie, nor the boys! Dixen can come for you later. Now, Dixen, take care.”

Frederica was indignant, and said quite enough to her sisters on their way down, but to her father she only said, “Very well, papa,” with an air of offended dignity that made him laugh.

“However,” added she, when she had said all that was necessary, and a little more, “I may as well make the best of it, and amuse myself as well as I can.”

So when Mrs Brandon arrived a little while afterwards, they found her walking about on the lawn, quite ready to amuse, and to be amused. But her troubles were not over. It was Selina especially, it seemed, whom Mrs Brandon had wished to stay, and she had gone home. There were many regrets expressed by her and by the others. They had been so desirous to know Miss Vane, and to hear her sing, and so on.

“It is a pity you were not more explicit, Caroline,” said Frederica. “However, it would have made no difference. Selina’s staying was quite out of the question.”

“I am sure I can’t understand why,” said Mrs Brandon.

“Can you not? It is quite true, however.”

Mrs Brandon turned her eyes on her father, who had just entered the room. It must be acknowledged that Fred was not behaving well. Her manner was by no means respectful to her elder sister, and her tones and the flash of her eye showed that she was out of temper.

“What is the matter, Fred?” asked her father.

“We are all disappointed that Miss Vane did not stay,” said some one, with the kind intention of smoothing matters for Fred.

“Fred thinks Selina would not have enjoyed it,” said Mrs Brandon.

“Mama would not have wished it,” said Frederica, walking away, as though there was nothing more to be said.

Of course, it was all a failure after this, as far as Frederica was concerned. At another time she would have looked and listened, and amused herself with all that was going on. But she felt cross; and what was worse, she knew that all these people must be thinking her very rude and ill-bred. No one noticed her much nor spoke to her, and though she knew she deserved it, she was indignant at being treated like an ill-tempered child. Especially was she indignant with her sister for bringing all this upon her. So at the first possible moment she excused herself from the table, at which the rest seemed inclined to linger, and went out into the garden.

Her ill-temper and discomfort did not trouble her after that. She forgot it utterly; for here she found the nurse with her sister’s beautiful baby, and every trace of annoyance vanished at the sight. Here her sister found her in a little while. She had come in search of her, intending to speak a few serious words to her about her foolish conduct. But when she saw the girl’s bright face as she kneeled on the grass, clasping and kissing the pretty boy, she too forgot her vexation.

“O Caroline I was there ever so lovely a child before? How happy you must be?”

And then she wondered over him—his beauty, his murmuring and cooing, and pretty baby ways, and her delight was perfect, when he refused to go to his mother from her arms. Was there ever such a triumph? The baby was a very pretty baby, and the young girl’s delight over him was pretty too, and in the midst of it Dixen came for her, and Mrs Brandon had no time for the serious words which she felt it to be her duty to speak, “for poor papa’s sake.” But she set her conscience at rest by saying all the more to papa himself, and the immediate result of her advice was that Tessie was sent at once back to Mrs Glencairn’s, and Frederica was advised to prepare herself to be sent elsewhere very soon.

Poor Tessie thought it rather hard that she should be made to suffer for Fred’s faults. That was the way she put the matter to herself, but it was a very good thing for her to be sent to school again. She begged hard to go with her sister, wherever she should be sent, but this could not be; and her dissatisfaction did not continue long after she was fairly back at school, for Mrs Glencairn’s house was a very good place to be in, and Tessie was reasonable, and by-and-by content.

As for Frederica, it would have been as well for her if she had been sent to Mrs Glencairn’s too, for she and her mother and Selina made themselves unhappy in their uncertainty as to where she was to be sent. But when week after week passed, and nothing more was said on the subject, they began to take courage again, and to hope that she might not be sent away at all. And she was not, but it would have been much better for her if she had.

For this was not a profitable winter to Frederica. They had a happy month or two, she and her mother and Selina; they lived the same uneventful quiet life that the summer had brought them, and every little pleasure they enjoyed was doubled to Mrs Vane and Selina, because Frederica enjoyed it with them. They went on faithfully and regularly with their reading of the Bible, and for a time Frederica fulfilled her promise; and went over her old school lessons with her sister, and took great pride and pleasure in the progress that she made. They practised their music together, and a teacher came to give them lessons; and Frederica assured her father, that instead of losing her time, as Mrs Brandon had declared, she had never been so well and so happily employed as now. Whether he thought so too, or whether he was prevented by other reasons besides indolence from deciding on a proper school for her, could not be told, but the winter was nearly over before another word was said about her going away.

It was near Christmas time that Frederica began to be a good deal at the house of her half-sister, Mrs Brandon, and to go with her a good deal to other houses, and then the tenor of her life for a time was quite changed. It began very naturally and simply. There was a children’s party at Mrs Brandon’s house, to celebrate the first birthday of her little boy. Frederica was asked, and her brothers, and they all went and enjoyed it. Frederica threw herself into the pleasure of amusing the little people with all her heart. It was a delight to her, and her success was entire. The enjoyment was perfect to them all. The evening passed without one of the unfortunate incidents so likely to occur on such occasions, and no child enjoyed it better than Frederica.

It was called a children’s party, but there were many people there besides children, and it is not surprising that the bright young girl, “with the playfulness of a child and the sense of a woman,” should attract admiring attention. She threw herself so heartily and prettily into the amusement of the little ones, they said to one another and to Mrs Brandon. She was so clever and charming, and so unconscious of it. A great many foolish things were said, and some of them were said to Frederica. Of course she thought it all very agreeable, and showed herself equal to the entertainment of grown people as well as children, and enjoyed it all.

This “children’s party” led to others, and to parties of grown people as well, and by-and-by the character of these gay doings changed altogether. The simple dresses and ornaments that had at first been considered quite sufficient were laid aside for dresses of a different kind. Her mother’s long-neglected treasures of laces, and silks, and other fine things, were turned over in search of materials for her adornment, and even her jewel cases were examined, and certain of their contents appropriated for the same purpose.

Frederica had always taken pride in knowing that Mrs Glencairn spoke of her as “sensible” and as “a discreet young person,” and she had been very much in earnest to prove to her father and mother that Mrs Glencairn was right. But notwithstanding her sense and her discretion, no one will be surprised to hear that for a time she enjoyed greatly the excitement and gaiety of her life. For though it is quite true that no real and lasting happiness can be obtained in the pursuit of pleasures such as these, yet it cannot be denied that to a young girl like Frederica, the first experience of a life of this kind gives a delight which seems real, and sweet, and satisfying, and which, in a certain sense, is so while it lasts. And so she threw herself into all these things with all her heart, and enjoyed them, without a thought that she was in danger from such a life.

Her mother, remembering her own youth, her brief triumphs, and long disappointments, sent her thoughts after her into those gay scenes with vague but painful anxiety. But this always vanished in Frederica’s presence. If she made a feeble attempt now and then to remonstrate with her, or with her father, against such constant gaiety, it was only because the child was so young, and not at all because she thought such a life of pleasure wrong in itself. She knew of no other kind of life for the rich and well-born; and though she could not look forward to such a life for her daughters without anxiety, yet she was incapable of planning, or even of imagining, any other for them. If they all could have remained together content with the quiet enjoyments that had come to them in the past summer, while their father was away, she would have sought no other life for them. But that was quite impossible, she thought with a sigh.

There was no one to tell Frederica that she was in danger. All her mother’s fears were vague and indistinct. They seemed to her daughter, and even to herself, when she spoke of them, to be nervous fancies, natural enough in her state of illness and seclusion, a natural shrinking from any possible cause of change or pain. And so they both put away such thoughts, and the mother strove to take pleasure in the many costly and beautiful things brought for her approval for the adornment of her daughter.

Even Selina listened happily to her sister’s merry recitals of all she saw and heard and enjoyed, and offered her soft touch to the rich and delicate fabrics, to the laces and flowers and jewels that she wore, without a thought of trouble or danger to the sister whom she loved so well.

But Frederica was in danger all the same. She was in danger of losing that sweet naturalness and girlish simplicity which even to the worldly people with whom she mingled made her chief charm; she was in danger of growing vain and frivolous and foolish, of forgetting all the serious views of life that had so filled her thoughts, of ceasing to strive for, or to value, a knowledge of those truths which were to bring such peace and patience; such blessed hopes to her suffering mother, and such happiness to them all. Nay, she was in danger even of neglecting her mother and her blind sister, of giving up the sweet office so eagerly coveted and claimed, of being their comforter and guardian, and of living to herself and her own selfish enjoyment.

All this has happened to others who have given themselves up to a life of worldly pleasure, and this must have been the end to Frederica, if such a life had continued long.

Chapter Eleven.

In the beginning of March, there came a letter to Mr Vane, announcing the approaching marriage of his second daughter Cecilia, and begging him to be present at the ceremony, which was to take place at the end of April. Something had been said by Mr Vane, every year for the last ten, about going home to England; but sometimes for one reason, and sometimes for another, he had never carried out his design. This announcement and invitation induced him to take the matter into serious consideration this time, and Mrs Brandon’s suggestion that the opportunity would be a good one to take Frederica home for the completion of her education, decided him to make arrangements at once for going. Indeed, he by-and-by convinced himself, and endeavoured to convince others, that it was for Frederica’s sake, and not at all for his own pleasure, that the voyage was to be undertaken, and thus especially was it represented to Mr St. Cyr.

Frederica was not so pained by her father’s sudden determination as she would have been in the autumn. Of course, the thought of school was not quite agreeable to her after the winter she had spent, but there was the voyage, and possibly a gay wedding to come first; and if it had not been for the thought of leaving her mother and Selina, the prospect would not have been disagreeable. And she could not help thinking that they would miss her less than they would have done six months before.

But it did not seem so to them. The thought of losing her was almost more than her mother could bear. But there was nothing to be said: discussion would make no difference to Mr Vane’s decision. There was little time for discussion or preparation. All that Frederica needed, could be got as well in England, her father said, and there was no time to lose.

A suitable person to take charge of the home, and of all household matters during the year, had to be sought, and through the kind exertions of Mr Jerome St. Cyr, such a one was found, a very pleasing person she seemed, and she came highly recommended. She was a large fair woman, with a pale face that was very pleasing when she smiled, and her eyes were at the same time kind and searching. Her voice in speaking, and her manner and movements, were very soft and gentle, and she was, Frederica though the very opposite of Mrs Ascot in all respects.

But her gentleness did not give one the idea that she was weak. On the contrary, she was very strong and firm, as well as gentle, as they all had an opportunity of seeing, even the first day of her coming among them. For the two boys were ill when she came. They had taken cold, it was supposed, and little Hubert, from his persistent refusal to take his medicine, seemed to be becoming very ill indeed. But there was an end to all this, as soon as ever Miss Agnace understood the matter. In a moment the refractory little lad was placed in her lap, and by some extraordinary exertion of skill and will on her part, the bitter draught was swallowed by him, and he was laid quietly and comfortably in bed again. Frederica looked on with mingled astonishment and admiration.

“I have been accustomed to be with sick children,” said Miss Agnace quietly.

“I wonder if that is the way she would take with mama or Selina,” said Frederica to herself. “I can easily imagine her taking me up and dealing with me in that peremptory way; but mama, who must be so gently managed—oh! how can I ever go away, and leave her? oh! I cannot?” and though she knew her tears were vain, she wept bitterly for a long time.

She had an opportunity very soon of knowing how Miss Agnace would deal with her in little Hubert’s place. For the illness of her brothers proved to be not mere colds, as was at first supposed, but a severe form of one of those diseases of childhood, which generally pass through a whole household when one has been seized. In a few days Frederica was very ill, much more ill than either of the boys had been, and helpless, and miserable, she was entirely given up to the care of Miss Agnace; for neither her mother nor Selina was permitted to enter her room.

Gentle and firm. That exactly described her nurse’s treatment. She was taken entirely out of her own hands, which was indeed the very best thing that could have happened to her, and found herself yielding in all things to the firm and gentle rule of Miss Agnace. She was not always quite herself, and slept and woke, and tossed and murmured, with the vaguest possible idea of what was happening around her, or how the time was passing. She had the strangest dreams and fancies, and said things, and asked questions, which her nurse could only meet by her calm surprised look and silence.

Once she saw, just within the door of her room, some one whom she at first supposed was the doctor, but then it seemed to be Mr St. Cyr’s brother who was speaking with Miss Agnace, and she thought she heard him say that she must not go to England with her father, and that God had sent this sickness to keep her at home. She said to herself she was surely dreaming, and shut her eyes; and when she opened them again, there was only Miss Agnace offering her the bitter medicine with a smile.

And so one day passed after another, till the day fixed for their departure drew near. Nothing could be clearer, however, than that no departure was possible for Frederica. Nor was there much hope of her being so far recovered as to be able to leave at the latest day that would admit of their reaching England in time for the wedding. So Mr Vane spoke rather vaguely of making arrangements for her to go by some other opportunity, and set out alone. Frederica did not know whether she was glad or sorry at being left at home. She was too restless and weak to take pleasure in anything, and longed so for a change of some kind, that she could very easily have persuaded herself that she was disappointed at being left. But she had no thought to think about it or about anything for a time. She could only toss restlessly on her bed, or sit listlessly in the large easy-chair, when she was at last permitted to rise.

Her little brothers were well and strong by this time, and came to see her every day. They tried to wait upon her, and to amuse her gently and quietly, but they tired her inexpressibly, and she could not endure them long. Her mother came ice a day to see her, but she was only allowed to remain a few minutes with her, and Selina was not permitted to come near her, lest she also should take the disease. So she was left almost entirely with Miss Agnace, who was very kind to her, she told her mother, who never failed to ask the question when she came.

Yes, she was very kind; that did not prevent the days from being long and tedious; and Frederica, forgetting that she had been counted a young lady all the winter, grew childish, and petulant, and ill to please. But Miss Agnace never lost patience, and was never otherwise than gentle with her, even when she was most firm in making her do all that the doctor desired.

Books were entirely forbidden. The doctor said her eyes were quite too weak to be used, and that her sight might be permanently injured if she were to read much now. Miss Agnace in this matter obeyed the doctor to the letter, and carried every book—even little Hubert’s large-print Testament—away.

Now and then, as she grew stronger, Miss Agnace told her stories, to which she liked to listen. They were almost all about very good people who lived a great many years ago—wonderful stories some of them were, “If one only could believe them,” Frederica used to say to herself. One day she said it to Miss Agnace, and for the first time her fair still face lost its calm, and looked angry.

“Well, but that does sound rather like a fairy story, now doesn’t it?” said Frederica, moved from her usual indifference by the unwonted sight of the nurse’s indignation. “Of course it does not really mean that the loaves of bread all turned to roses in the lady’s lap, when her cruel husband made her afraid. It is an allegory, is it not? Not exactly to be received as having really happened. It is a very pretty story, and you must not be angry, because I did not mean to offend you.”

All this was not said at once, but with a pause now and then.

“Angry! no, why should I be angry? You know no better, poor child, poor unhappy child!”

Frederica did not consider herself particularly happy just at this time, but it was not at all for the reason that Miss Agnace seemed to intimate.

“Why do you say so? Why am I so unhappy?” asked she.

“Because you have no religion,” said Miss Agnace solemnly; “because you do not believe.”

It was perfectly true, and Frederica acknowledged in her heart, but not in the sense or for the reason that Miss Agnace seemed to imagine; so she said lightly,—

“A great many religious people refuse to believe such tales as these. They are very pretty, you know, and perhaps they have valuable lessons, but as for having, really happened! Such things don’t happen now.”

“That is not true. Such things do happen still. Not frequently, but when God has a purpose to accomplish, a blessing to convey.”

“Tell me something that has happened lately,” said Frederica, forgetting all else in her eagerness for a story.

And so she did, and sometimes Frederica was interested, and sometimes she was amused. She heard of lame people who had been made to walk, of pictures which had spoken, of images which had wept, and many more of the same kind.

“But I don’t quite see the good of it, even if these things were all true,” she said at last.

“My child,” said Miss Agnace gravely, “they are true. We have for their truth the authority of men to whom a lie is impossible. Do not say, ‘If they are true.’”

“And does it make you happy to believe these things?” asked Frederica.

“Happy?” repeated Miss Agnace; “can any one be happy who does not believe? Are you happy? Were you happy when you were so ill, when you thought you might die? Were you not afraid?”

“Was I so ill as that?” asked Frederica, startled. “I never thought of dying. If I had, I daresay I should have been afraid. Did mama think so, and Selina? How sorry they must have been! And papa went away all the same.”

She had no heart for any more wonderful stories that day. She lay quite silent for a long time after that, but she was not resting or at ease, for her face was flushed, and she grew restless and impatient; nothing pleased her, and she thought the day would never be done. She had all the impatience to herself, however, for Miss Agnace was as gentle and helpful as ever, and bathed her hot hands and head, and soothed her till she lost the sense of her troubles in sleep.

But another day came after that, and many days that had to be got through somehow. Her mother could not be much with her, and her brothers tired her. The cold March winds made it not safe for her to drive out, and poor Fred longed for Tessie, and would have given half her treasures to be transported to Mistress Campbell’s garret for a single day. And thus thinking of Eppie, and of “the days of her youth,” of which she used to tell her, it came into Frederica’s mind to wonder what had happened to Miss Agnace when she was a child. For though she had talked much with her, both by night and by day, she had a way of falling back on one theme—the good deeds which the saints had done, and which all people ought to strive to do: and all this grew tedious when it was repeated over and over again, and Frederica longed for something else, and so she asked her,—

“When were you born, Miss Agnace? Have you brothers and sisters? Tell me about the days when you were young, as Eppie used to do. Has anything wonderful ever happened to you?”

Miss Agnace looked at her in smiling surprise.

“I have nothing to tell. Nothing wonderful ever happened to me.”

“But still tell me about your childhood.”

Miss Agnace told her a good many things, but certainly nothing wonderful. She was one of a large family. She had been sent to a convent school at the age of nine, and remained a pupil till she was nearly seventeen. There had been no incidents in her school life. Everything went on quietly, and happily that was all. Yes, she had favourite companions. One died, and one married, and the best loved one of all was lost on a steamer on one of the great lakes. She could tell no more than that.

“And since you left school?” asked Frederica.

“Nothing has happened to me since then. I have had a busy life, and have been content with it,” said Miss Agnace, rising to leave the room. She was away a good while; but when she came back, carrying Frederica’s tea on a tray, the young girl said, as though there had been no pause,—

“Well, and what have you been busy about and content with since then?”

Miss Agnace did not answer immediately. It was evident that she did not wish to continue the conversation, only she did not know how to help it. She was not a clever person, and she could not “make up” an answer in a moment. So she said,—“I have been nursing sick people much of the time—sometimes in one place and sometimes in another. Yes, I have been a good deal in St. P.’s Hospital.”

“Oh!” said Frederica eagerly, “you are one of the sisters?”

“I am a nursing sister, yes.”

“And were they willing to let you come here? You do not wear the sisters’ dress. It was a very good thing you came here. What should we have done all this time? Was it Mr St. Cyr who sent you? Do you like to stay here, better than in the Hospital?”

Frederica could not expect that all her questions should be answered. Miss Agnace looked relieved as she listened to her.

“Yes, it was Mr St. Cyr who sent me. I like to stay here very well. I am glad to be of use.”

“You are very kind. I ought to call you Sister Agnace, ought I not? or ‘Ma tante,’ as the convent girls do? How odd that you should be here! And have you been nursing sick people all your life? You must have seen a great many sorrowful sights.”

“Yes, a great many sorrowful sights,” repeated Miss Agnace gravely; “but not all sorrowful. I have seen the joyful ending of many a troubled life, which is a happy thing to see.”

And she told her that night, and afterwards, about many sorrowful and joyful things, sickness and pain, grief and disappointment, and the blessed endings of all these; and a new view of life was presented to Frederica as she listened. She was getting better by this time, but not rapidly, and she did not grow cheerful and bright, as she ought to have done, when she was able to go out with her little brothers in the fine April days. Mrs Brandon came to see her, and would have taken her home with her for a few days, for a change, but because of baby it was not considered safe to do so, and she was obliged to content herself with the company of Miss Agnace and an hour’s reading now and then.

She was not very happy these days. She did not look back with much satisfaction on the winter. It had been agreeable enough in passing, and she had not been taught that such a life was wrong, or might lead to wrong—that “she who liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” But somehow she was not content with herself. She had a feeling that she had “been weighed in the balance, and found wanting;” that she had not proved herself wise, or sensible, or discreet, as she had sometimes been called; that she had been seeking her own pleasure rather than the comfort of her mother and Selina. She had even been able to look forward to the prospect of leaving them for a long time, not without pain, certainly, but still with a vague expectation of enjoying the change for herself. She had failed them, and thinking about it made her more unhappy than she had ever been in all her life before.

But the root of her trouble lay deeper than any of these things. A year ago she had pleased herself with the thought that she wished to become religious, to become a Christian, not in name merely, but in reality. She then wished this less for herself than for her mother. She had felt the need less for herself, because she was young, and strong, and happy. But she had been near death, they told her, since then; and now, as her thoughts went back to that time, she could not but ask herself, What if she had died? would it have been the end of all trouble to her, as Miss Agnace said it was to so many of the suffering poor creatures, whose eyes she had closed? She hoped so. She had never done anything very wrong. She wished to be good.

But she was not religious. At least, she had not the religion that would make her happy in the midst of suffering and in the prospect of death. And when she thought of it in this way, she was not so sure that it would have been well with her if she had died.

“But how am I to know?” said she, as she had many times said before. “People think so differently. Eppie said, If I asked Him, God would teach me, or send me a teacher. I have asked Him, though not so often as I might have done. But I will ask Him. Perhaps He has sent Miss Agnace.”

She sat up in the easy-chair in which she had been reclining.

“Miss Agnace, tell me about your religion. There are so many different sorts, you know; and I want to know about yours.”

Miss Agnace shook her head gravely.

“There is only one true religion—one true Church. There are many sects, but there is but one Church.”

“And that is yours? Eppie thought it was hers. But tell me about yours.”

She had plenty to tell her, such as it was. She told her about the only true Church, the only place of happiness and safety. She told her about its ceremonies, and worship, and sacraments. She told her about confession and penance, and of the blessedness of those who have their sins forgiven. She told her about Mary and the saints in heaven, and about our blessed Lord who may be approached through them. She said a great deal about the good works of all kinds that would win the favour of these. Above all, she insisted on the necessity of submitting implicitly to the requirements of the Church, of having no will of one’s own in such matters, and spoke severely of the pride and folly of those who ventured to take the law of God, and interpret it for themselves, without availing themselves of the teaching of those whom God had appointed for the work. She grew very earnest as she went on, but she did not speak very wisely. She certainly did not say anything that touched the heart, or gave light to the eyes of Frederica.

It is possible that if the Rev. Mr St. Cyr had known the state of Frederica’s mind, or if he could have contemplated the possibility of such an opportunity occurring for influencing her heart or her opinions, it would not have been Sister Agnace who would have been sent to Mrs Vane’s house. It would have been some one whose natural powers and acquirements better fitted her for the work of proselytism, which was, indeed, the work he had in view. But that was to come later, as time and events might permit. In the meantime Miss Agnace was a perfect instrument for the work he had given her to do. She was a born nurse, with strong nerves and a tender heart, gentle, patient, and firm. She was disciplined, experienced, and skilful, just the nurse to make life tolerable, even pleasant, to a confined invalid like Mrs Vane, and this was the office for which she was intended.

She was not clever, nor intelligent, nor very devout, but she had learned obedience. She was not her own. She had no will or judgment of her own on many matters. Her confessor was her conscience. Her idea of right was implicit obedience to him, and to the Superior of her order. Whatever they required her to do was right in her esteem, and hitherto nothing had been required of her likely to suggest questions to her mind. Her life had hitherto been so busy and so useful as to leave her no time for questioning; and in coming to Mrs Vane’s, she was conscious only of a wish to do her duty to her employer on the one hand, and to those who had sent her on the other, without an idea that it might be difficult to do both.

She grew very fond of Frederica during these days. Frederica was impatient often, and grew tired alike of her silence, and of her soft voice murmuring on about the blessed saints; but Miss Agnace never lost patience with her. She saw that the young girl was not at rest, and that she wished for something else, even more than she longed for health or society; and she longed to lead her into those paths where alone, she believed, true happiness could be found—the paths of entire submission of heart and will and judgment to the only true Church. But she did not succeed, and she was not surprised. She was a humble woman, with no wise words on her tongue, by which she might convince or teach one brought up in error, or bring her into the right way, and one day she told her so, and added,—

“But you should let me send for some one who is wise, and who has authority; and when you are well, you must go with me to church, and tell all your troubled thoughts to the blessed Mother. You should let me ask the Rev. Mr St. Cyr to come and talk with you.”

“I should like to see almost any one, it is so dull,” said Frederica with a sigh, “but I don’t like the Rev. Mr St. Cyr. Oh! I daresay he is very good and all that,” added she, as she saw that Miss Agnace looked displeased, “but I don’t know him, and he certainly has not a nice face.”

“But that is a small matter,” said Miss Agnace severely. “He is wise, and he has authority, and he would know what to say to you. He would show you the truth.”

Frederica was by no means sure that she cared about having the truth shown to her by Mr Jerome St. Cyr, or that her father would be pleased to have him visit her.

“I like you to teach me far better than I should like Mr Jerome St. Cyr,” said Frederica, “because, I know you believe what you say; and besides, I can trust you. And I always feel uncomfortable with Mr Jerome.”

“You may trust Mr Jerome. He loves you dearly,” said Miss Agnace, but she said no more at that time.

She quite believed that Mr Jerome loved them, and sought their good. Was he not interested in all that took place among them? It never came into her thoughts that she was betraying confidence, or acting in any way unworthily, by telling him every incident of their daily life. She was not always aware how much, in answer to his apparently careless questioning, she made known; for there was little to tell—trifling details of their daily life, incidents that had no significance, except as they tended to show the tastes or tempers of the children of the house, which could only interest one who loved them, as she was sure he did.

By-and-by he permitted her to see that he had a definite motive and plan in listening to all the details which seemed so trifling. He wished to gather from them some means of judging in what manner they might best be influenced in the right direction, should an opportunity to do so present itself at some future time.

Miss Agnace strongly desired for these children and their mother, that they should be brought to a knowledge of the truth, and she assented when the priest told her that it was a blessed thing for her to be permitted to aid, even indirectly, in this good work. She did not doubt the excellence of his motives, or his right to claim her help, and she never thought of refusing obedience to his lightest word. But when Frederica said, “I can trust you,” a painful sense of being not worthy of the girl’s confidence came upon her for a moment. It was only for a moment, however; at least, it was only till she spoke to Father Jerome about it—then she believed, as he told her, that it was a temptation of Satan to hinder her from doing God’s work, and she prayed and strove against it with success.

Soon after this Mr Jerome came to see Frederica, but he brought none of the strong arguments, none of the words of wisdom, that Miss Agnace had promised. He made himself very agreeable to the young girl, told her amusing tales of the lands in which he had travelled, and made an attempt at teaching her the interesting game of “Tric trac,” before he went away. Frederica acknowledged that he was agreeable, and that his face was not so bad when he was speaking and smiling, as when it was quite at rest. He came often after that; but Frederica was soon able to leave her room and become one of the family again, so that she only shared his visits with the rest. He made himself very agreeable to them all. He was a fine musician, and proposed to teach Selina to play, as he had seen the blind taught in Europe; and of course this gave pleasure to them all. He laid himself out especially to please the boys, Charles and Hubert, and succeeded. Even Tessie who was inclined to be critical and even rude to him at first, yielded to his determined attempts to please.

Frederica would have liked him too, if it had not come into her mind that he was taking all this pains for some other reason than the mere wish to be agreeable. And the same thought came into the mind of her mother. Mrs Vane had some unpleasant remembrances of him, in the days when she had known him better than she did now, and his visits did not give her unmingled satisfaction. But they did not speak to one another about him for a long time. They enjoyed Selina’s pleasure, and the pleasure of the little boys, who shared his attention, and went with him on expeditions of various kinds. They had a very quiet time till Tessie came home for the holidays. Frederica was not long in throwing off all invalid habits, and growing well and strong again, but she was quieter and graver than she used to be before her illness, and the summer did not, even after Tessie’s returning, promise to be so merry or so idle as the last had been.

Chapter Twelve.

Mr Vane’s first letter brought an account of the wedding, and of the gaieties attending it, and his next told them that he had made up his mind to pass the summer on the Continent, returning to spend a month in England in the autumn, before he went home. They heard afterwards from Paris, and then from Rome, but for a time nothing more was said about Frederica’s going to England.

As for Frederica, she said less than she used to do about being “grown up” and “sensible,” but she was more thoughtful and quiet than she had ever been before; and, with the advice and assistance of Miss Robina, laid out for herself a regular course of reading, which she pursued with praiseworthy diligence, considering all things. The reading of the Bible with her mother and Selina was commenced again, and nothing was permitted to interfere with it. She began also to take her little brothers regularly to church, and to listen and try to understand all that she heard there. She did not get discouraged, though there was not much to interest or to instruct in the sermons she often heard.

There was little hope of a happy summer to them, as the days went on. The heat which last year seemed to bring healing to Mrs Vane, brought this year weakness and nervous prostration painful to see. And something even worse than these came with them, to make the days and nights terrible to her—the fear of death,—death, which she knew to be drawing near. It had come to her in former illnesses, but never as it came now.

Mr Jerome. St. Cyr never spoke many words to her in private, but they had been strong words that she could not forget, about her godless marriage and her godless life, which had brought on her, he said, the double curse of ill-health and neglect, and which must end in still deeper misery. She could not forget them, and they woke terrible fears for the future. She told her fears to her children, hoping that they might chase them away as they had chased so many troubles of hers in past years, with playful or loving words, but they knew not what to say, for they too were afraid.

“God is good, and Christ died for us,” repeated Selina many times. “Surely that is enough, mama.”

They read the Testament daily to her still, and Frederica searched it carefully for her sake, bringing to her such sweet words as these:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

“For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.

“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory? The sting of Death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The clergyman of the church they attended came to see her, and read prayers solemnly and tenderly, and answered the appeal of her anxious eyes with vague words about God’s goodness and compassion, and how He would save all who came to Him. But his words did not comfort her.

“How can I come to Him? I do not know the way.”

“Mama, Jesus is the way—He says it,” said Selina, who never seemed to forget the words she heard.

“But I do not know Him; I have not thought about Him all my life; I have done nothing good, and it is too late now.”

“But the thief on the cross had done nothing good, even to the very last, and yet Jesus says to him, ‘To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise,’” said Selina.

“Yes; let me read it for you,” said Frederica eagerly.

“But he could do nothing, and Mr Jerome says I could give money to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, and that I could give my children to the Church, and then I should be safe. But I never trusted Mr Jerome; I am afraid of him; and yet he may be right.”

“Miss Agnace says something like that too,” said Tessie, “and I think we ought to ask Mr St. Cyr to give some money, if it would set mama’s mind at rest.”

“But it does not say that is the way in the Bible,” said Frederica gravely.

“Yes, it says something like that. Some one was told to sell all his goods to give to the poor. Don’t you remember?”

“But it says, ‘Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory!’” said Selina. “And there must be some people so poor that they have nothing to give Him back.”

“Yes, and in another place He says, ‘I give unto my sheep eternal life,’” said Frederica. “It cannot be that one can buy it.”

“And in another place it says, ‘He that believeth shall be saved,’” said Selina.

The mother’s eyes turned eagerly from one to another. They knew little, but they knew far more than she did about that which she was so anxious to learn.

“Miss Agnace always says I must send for a priest, and confess to him, but my father hated all that, and your father would be very angry.”

“But mama, if it would make you happy, he need not be told,” said Tessie; “and we might send for some one else than Mr St. Cyr’s brother.”

“But that would be giving up what the Bible says; for it does not tell us to confess to priests, or that they can pardon us,” said Frederica.

“It says something, I think,” said Selina, “‘Whosesoever sins ye remit, they shall be remitted.’ Oh, if we only had some one to tell us what we ought to do?”

And was there no one among a whole cityful to tell these children and their mother how they might be saved? Doubtless there were many who would gladly have pointed them to Jesus as the only hope of the sinner, if they had made known their need to such. But it was quite true of those with whom they came in contact, the way was not clear to them.

“I spoke to Caroline about it,” said Frederica, “and she said we must be good, and say our prayers, and go to church, and do our duty always. But there must be some other way; for mama can do nothing now. She cannot even give money, unless Mr St. Cyr is willing; and it would do no good, if she could.”

“Miss Agnace says that she knows a sister who Is very good and wise, and who would gladly teach us. Mama, shall we send for Sister Magdalen?” asked Selina.

But Mrs Vane was less able to say what should or what should not be done, than the youngest child among them. No one sent for Sister Magdalen, unless Miss Agnace did, which was very likely; for she seemed always to know what they wished for, whether they told her or not; but she came. A very different woman she was from Miss Agnace. A thin, dark, thoughtful woman, with a face which was calm now, but which suggested thoughts of troubles passed through, and struggles encountered in past days.

She came to see Miss Agnace at first, or she said so; but she had some beautiful specimens of needlework which she wished the young ladies to see, and while they were admiring it she was speaking gentle and sympathising words to their mother.

She came a good many times after that, and by-and-by she had much to say to them all about the peace and rest that were to be found in the bosom of the true Church, and of the safety and happiness that were to be purchased by the performance of such good works as the Church commanded. She told them how, by penance, and prayer, and the confession of sin, pardon might be obtained, and how, through the intercession of Mary and the saints, they might hope to get safe to heaven.

She was a wiser woman than Miss Agnace, and knew how to put all these things in the fairest light, so as not to startle them. But she was as grieved and indignant as Miss Agnace had been at the pride and self-will of children who ventured to read, and who strove to understand, the Bible for themselves. It was just Miss Agnace’s teaching over again, except that all was more clearly and firmly announced, and more decidedly pressed home, by Sister Magdalen.

If Mrs Vane had been left a little while to her instructions and influence, she might have led her where she would, and induced her, in the hope of finding peace, to give herself altogether into the guidance of those who believe that they have the keys of heaven in their keeping. But her children never left her side when Sister Magdalen was there, and there was no assent in Frederica’s anxious watchful eyes, and Selina was always ready with some word from the Book, which even Sister Magdalen could not but acknowledge was the very word of God. Nor did it avail for her to say that God had other words than were written there, and other ways of teaching those who wished to know His will. If Frederica had learned little else from the Scriptural lessons of Mrs Glencairn and Miss Pardie, she had learned this, that the Bible is the only source of our knowledge of God as the Saviour of sinners, and to distrust all other teaching.

“What you say may be true, I cannot tell, but it is not here in the Gospels. And surely there is all here that is necessary, if we could only understand,” said Frederica gently. And Selina added,—

“I know we are very ignorant; but I do not think it is wrong in us to read and to try to understand God’s Word for ourselves, and I believe God will teach us, and mama too. We will not fear.”

In the meantime Mr Jerome had still been making frequent visits to Mrs Vane’s house, where he made himself very agreeable to the children. Selina’s music progressed rapidly, and she had increasing pleasure in it. The boys and even Tessie welcomed him with the indiscriminating liking which children bestow on those who take pains to please and win them. Frederica said to herself, that this liking and Selina’s progress ought to be sufficient reason for her liking him too. And it might have been so if the priest had been content to treat her as a child.

But she was not a child, and he touched with her on graver matters than a child could comprehend. He was aware of her reading the Bible with her mother and the rest, and of her anxious questionings of Sister Agnace, and her wish to be religious and do right, and he was more than willing to give counsel and direction with regard to these matters. But on these things Frederica would never enter with him. At first she could give no better reason for this, than that “he had not a nice face,” which she acknowledged was a very foolish reason. But afterwards she had a reason which was all-powerful with her: he made her mother unhappy. He spoke softly and soothingly to her, as far as words and manners went: but he never came but he said some words that left her anxious and troubled either for herself or her children. He intimated his belief that she had forsaken the true Church—the Church of her fathers—when she married Mr Vane, and that all her ill-health and unhappiness had come upon her as a punishment for this wrong step. He never said all this to her in words at one time; but he uttered a word now and then, breathed a sigh, spoke a soft regret, or as soft a warning, that left the poor soul never quite at ease. He never spoke thus to her in the presence of her children. Without them there is little doubt that he could easily have bent the poor broken-spirited woman to his will—brought her to repentance and a better mind, he would have called it. But Selina’s gentleness, and Frederica’s sense of her mother’s helplessness and dependence, were a strong defence to their mother. At this time Frederica saw that she was unhappy a good while before she knew that the priest had anything to do with it. When she did know it, she resented it angrily, and told him with more than sufficient warmth, that it was neither kind nor wise of him to come with his hard words and harder judgments, to unsettle and perplex the mind of one so tender and delicate.

“Perhaps you mean it kindly, but it is not real kindness to make poor mama unhappy and afraid. You have your religion, and we have ours. We will not interfere with each other,” said Frederica, with trembling dignity.

“Have you then any religion?” asked the priest. “Because it has been intimated to me that you are in search of one, and know not where it is to be found. Is your mother then happier than you?”

Frederica looked at him in amazement and anger, yet other feelings also were in her heart.

“Mama is good,” said she. “One does not need to be very wise, or to have fine words to offer, in order to be a Christian.”

“And you? are you a Christian, dear?”

“I am not good,” said Frederica humbly; “but I wish to be, and God will teach me, and mama also.”

“And how long will it take you to learn? a year? two years? And the chances are your mother will not live many months. Will it be well with her, do you think, when she shall go away into another world alone?”

Frederica turned upon him a white face and wide-open eyes of horror.

“Yes,” said Selina’s soft voice behind them, “it will be well. God is good, and Christ has died.”

Frederica uttered a glad cry, and clasped her sister in her arms.

“Yes,” said the priest, “God is good, and Christ has died. This is our only hope. But then all these years have you been thinking of this? You have been forgetting God, and even now you are trusting to your own wisdom to find Him. You are refusing counsel. You are walking in your own ways. Oh! poor ignorant erring children, it is because I love you so much, you and your mother, that I dare to make you unhappy by telling you the truth. I would gladly lead you in the right way.”

“Is mama so very ill?” said Frederica, forgetting everything else, in the misery that his words had suggested.

“Do you not see yourselves that she is very ill? Dear children, death is a happy change to those who have the care and blessing of the Church. Death is nothing of which a Christian need be afraid.”

He spoke gently and tenderly, and laid his hand softly on the blind girl’s head; but his eyes were hard and angry, and Frederica shrank from him with a repugnance which she did not try to conceal.

“I would so gladly help you,” said he again. “It is your happiness I seek, and the happiness of your dear mistaken mother.” And in a little he added, “God bless you with humble minds.” And then went silently away.

And he left two very unhappy girls behind him. Could it be that their mother was going to die; and that she had cause to be afraid?

“I never wish to see him again,” said Frederica. “He shall never see mama again, if I can prevent it.”

But her anger went away with the departure of the priest, and now she was very miserable.

“But, Fred, if it is true that we are all wrong, and that mama is going to die before—”

Selina shuddered.

“Selina! God is good, and Christ has died; you said it yourself.”

“Yes, God is good. He will teach us.”

“And He will take care of mama and all of us. And if mama does not go to heaven, I am sure I do not care to go there either,” said Frederica, with a great bout of weeping.

“God is good, and Christ has died,” repeated Selina softly. “He will teach us.”

“But I never wish to see Mr Jerome St. Cyr again,” said Frederica.

But he came again, just as usual, in a day or two. Mr St. Cyr was there with the mother and the children when he came in, and the brothers exchanged looks of surprise at the encounter, for they had never met in Mrs Vane’s house before. Mr St. Cyr looked on with a little amused curiosity to see how his brother would be received.

Very cordially by the young people it seemed, but he noticed a troubled look pass over the face of their mother; and Frederica rose and went over to her sofa, and took her seat beside her, with an air that seemed to say she needed protection, and she was there to give it. Mr Jerome took no notice of the movement, but occupied himself with Selina and her music, and with the little boys, who soon came in.

Mr St. Cyr asked Frederica about her illness, and her employments and amusements, and she told him about Miss Agnace, and how much nicer she was than Mrs Ascot used to be.

“And we all hope she will stay,” said Tessie. “But they don’t usually let the sisters stay long out of their convents. Do you think they will let her stay?” asked Tessie, addressing Mr Jerome. “Fred did not know she was a sister at first, but she found it out from something she said. She is very nice, however, and we all hope she may stay.”

Mr St. Cyr asked no questions about Miss Agnace; but when his brother rose to go, he rose also. He had something to say to him.

“Who is Sister Agnace? and why is she here?” asked he. “It is not wise in you to wish to make any change in Mrs Vane’s family affairs, my brother. You will not succeed.”

“I have succeeded already. Miss Agnace has made a great change for the better in this ill-regulated household, especially in the comfort of Mrs Vane. Your little friend is a clever child, but she cannot be expected to act with sense or judgment in certain affairs. She has not been complaining of Miss Agnace has she?”

“By no means. On the contrary, they seem to value her highly. But who is she? Why is she here?”

“Do you not know! Mr Vane advertised for a housekeeper, and she applied. She has excellent references, and he was fortunate in getting her.”

“Still you have not answered my question. The sisters are not permitted to answer advertisements, and take situations, without some special purpose in view. What was your motive in placing her among these children?”

“A desire to serve them would not seem to you a sufficient motive, I suppose?”

“No,” said Mr St. Cyr, with a shrug, “not in your case. You may wish to serve them, but you have another motive. Who is Sister Agnace?”

“A simple, pious, affectionate creature, just the nurse for a nervous invalid like Mrs Vane. See her, and satisfy yourself with regard to her.”

“I shall do so,” said Mr St. Cyr; “and, my brother, let me say one word to you. Nothing good will come of your trying to gain influence in this house. Mrs Vane has nothing in her power as to the disposal of her father’s wealth. All that is quite beyond her power.”

“Don’t you remember you told me all that long ago? Is it not conceivable that for other reasons I might wish to influence that unhappy woman, who is so near death, and who is so unprepared to meet it? What is her wealth to me, who am not permitted to possess aught beyond the necessaries of life? Why should I wish to influence her, except to turn her thoughts to the God whom she must soon meet, and of whom she knows nothing? And these poor neglected children! Brother Cyprien, it is terrible to me to see you so indifferent to their highest interests, and your own.”

“Let all that pass. What I wish to say is this—No influence that you may bring to bear on her can possibly make any change in the arrangement of her affairs. The guardians of her children’s interests are already chosen by my advice, and with her husband’s consent, and they are such men as will not please you. She might change them, it is true, but she will not without my advice. You have already made her unhappy, I think. It is cruel, and will avail you nothing. This is what I wish you to understand.”

“I clearly understand. You will not see that it is only their good I wish for. They have no religion. They are ignorant of the first principles of truth. These young girls are neither fit for this world nor the next. And St. Hubert’s grandsons are losing the best years of their life, under the foolish teaching of an ignorant woman.”

“That is your opinion,” said Mr St. Cyr coldly. “Well, you are not responsible, and need not interfere. No good can come of it to any one concerned.”

But he had no fault to find with Miss Agnace when he saw her. She was simple and affectionate, and as far as he could judge, faithful. She was eager for the spiritual good of Mrs Vane and her children, and prayed for them, and told them tales of the saints, and of miracles performed by their relics even at the present day. She took the children with her to mass, on high days and holidays, and evidently had full faith in the success of her efforts in their behalf at last. But of all this Mr St. Cyr had no fear. Indeed, he might have rejoiced over the prospect of the spiritual change, for which Sister Agnace and his brother were so anxious, in poor Mrs Vane and her children, provided it were a real change, and that no wrong influence were brought to bear upon them to bring it about.

But though Mr St. Cyr was looked upon as a very religious man, he was far more liberal in his opinions, and charitable in his judgments, than the greater number of those who admired his devotion. It did not seem impossible to him that beyond the pale of his own church there might be truth and safety. He knew that Mr Vane was not a religious man. He gave him no credit for religious motives, or even for conscientious motives, in the care with which, in the education of his daughters, he had tried to keep them away from Roman Catholic influence; and it would have troubled him very little on his account that they should leave their father’s church. He would not have pitied him, but he would have dreaded the pain to them, the discomfort which their father’s anger would bring upon them.

But he was not anxious for them to change. They were good little things, he thought, desirous to do right, and quite as likely to do right by themselves as they would be under such guidance as a change might involve,—such guidance, for instance, as that of his brother Jerome. He did not wish to be hard on his brother, even in his thoughts, but he did not trust him. He did not trust him, either as regarded the means he might use to influence the delicate nervous mother and her children towards a change of faith, or as regarded the end he had in view in desiring such a change.

He cared for their souls, doubtless, and believed them to be in danger, but he cared for something else more. He knew that he coveted some part of the wealth that Mr St. Hubert had left, and which had been accumulating since his death, for his own purposes; that is, for the purposes of the Church; and he feared that he would not be scrupulous as to the means he made use of to obtain it.

So he went oftener to see them than he had been accustomed to do, and assured himself of the good faith of Miss Agnace, and listened to the earnest talk of the sisters, and sometimes even to the reading of the Bible. He was amused sometimes, but oftener he was moved and interested, and in his heart prayed to Him whom he believed to be the God of all who sincerely sought to serve and honour Him, that He might guard, and guide, and keep safe from all evil, these children whom he was learning to love so well.

Chapter Thirteen.

September was not a pleasant month this year. There were not the usual clear, bright days, all the lovelier and more enjoyable that the frost in the morning air, and a tinge of brilliant colour here and there among the trees, gave warning that there could not be many more of them in the season. They were hot, oppressive days. The air was close, and the sky was hidden by a thick haze, which told of the coming of a storm.

It was no wonder, the children said, that their mother was worse than usual. Every one felt dull, and languid, and out of sorts. They would all feel better when the rain which had been gathering so many days should come, and it could not be long now. This was what Frederica said to her sister, Mrs Brandon, when she came to see them after her return from the seaside, where she had passed the summer. Mrs Brandon assented, and regretted for baby’s sake that she had returned home so soon. She regretted it for another reason. She did not know how to tell the business that had brought her to them that day. Their father had decided not to return home till spring, and had written to her to say that there would be an opportunity for Fred to travel with a Mrs Bury, who was about to return to England, and he wished her to hasten her preparations. Mrs Brandon was to tell Mrs Vane of the change of plan, and to help Fred in all necessary arrangements.

She did not like the task he had assigned her, and she liked it less when she saw the mother and her daughters together. She could not but feel that her father was exposing himself to remark—nay, to just censure—by remaining away so long in the circumstances of his family; and she felt the greatest unwillingness to say a word to Fred about leaving home. But Fred did not even take the matter into consideration. She dismissed the subject with a single word.

“I’m not going,” said she quietly. But an angry spot burned on her cheek. She would not say to Mrs Brandon, or even to Selina, that she thought it unkind of their father to ask such a thing—more than unkind to remain longer away. She checked the hasty words of blame that rose to. Tessie’s lips in Caroline’s presence. But she was grieved and vexed too.

“I am not going,” said she, “and nobody must tell mama that papa, wished it. He ought to know that—”

She stopped suddenly, not sure of her voice.

“She has been ill so long,” said Mrs Brandon. “I suppose papa thinks she is as she always has been, now a little better, now worse. He thinks you are over-anxious, and I am afraid he does not understand. What does Dr Gerard say?”

“If you were to tell him, Caroline, he might understand,” said Selina. “Will you not write and tell him how we all want him home?”

“I will write certainly, and I will also see Mrs Bury. It would make you too unhappy to leave now, though I trust your mother is not really worse.”

“Thank you. No, I could not go now. Even Mr St. Cyr is ill, and they have no one but me—” said Fred, speaking with difficulty.

“My darling,” said Mrs Brandon, moved to unwonted tenderness by the sight of Frederica’s tears, “you are not to be discouraged. Remember how often your mother has been worse than she is now; and papa will be sure to come when I write and tell him how much you all want him. And, dear, if you break down, what will become of the rest?”

“I am not going to break down,” said Fred, swallowing her tears, and trying to smile. “Be sure and bring baby next time, and hasten now, for the rain is near. Good-bye?”

She went to the gate, and stood looking after the carriage for a minute or two. Then, instead of going into the house, she walked round the garden several times, telling herself that there was no one but her to care for the rest, and that she must be strong and not discouraged for their sake. But for the moment she was utterly discouraged and afraid.

Though it was still early in the afternoon, it had grown very dark, and there was first the silence, and then the low sighing of the wind among the trees, that tells of the near approach of a storm; and the sudden recollection that her little brothers had not returned from their walk hastened Frederica’s footsteps again to the gate. A few large drops of rain fell before she reached it, and as she looked out a cloud of dust and leaves came whirling down the street, and a strong gust of wind made it necessary for her to cling for a moment to the gate, lest she should be thrown down.

There was nothing to be seen of her brothers; but, fighting against the wind, and shielding his eyes from the clouds of dust which it bore, came a slender bowed figure that made her forget them. For just a moment she thought it was Mr St. Cyr, but even before he came near, she saw it was not he, but an older man. His hair was snowy white, and he walked with a great effort, bowing his head low to meet the blast. Opposite the gate, a sudden gust nearly overthrew him. He let fall a book which he carried in his hand, and in stooping to recover it his cane slipped from his grasp. Frederica sprang forward to lift it for him; and when she met the sweet, grave smile that thanked her, she quite forgot that the face was the face of a stranger.

“Come in,” said she eagerly. “You are not strong enough to meet this terrible wind. And see, the rain has begun to fall already. Come in and rest.”

“I shall be glad to rest,” said the stranger; and so, at Frederica’s bidding, there passed over their threshold an angel unawares.

The brothers came home with a run and a shout, only in time to escape the rain that soon fell in torrents. In the house it grew as dark as night for a little while, and then the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke over the roof with a peal that seemed to shake the foundations. The servants of the house, awed and anxious, flocked into the hall where the stranger sat, and where the children had gathered. Their mother was there too, trembling and white with nervous terror. For a minute or two the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled continuously, and for a time not a word was spoken. Then that cloud passed, and it grew light.

“You are not afraid,” said Hubert, looking up into the face of the stranger.

“No,” said he gently, “I have no cause.”

“But we are afraid, except Selina,” said the boy, looking round on the terrified faces. “Selina does not see the lightning. But why are not you afraid?”

“‘God is our Refuge and Strength, a very present Help in trouble. Therefore shall not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.’ No, I am not afraid.”

“But the lightning might kill you.”

“Yes, it might kill me.”

“And yet you are not afraid! Why are you not afraid?”

“Because I hope—yes, I believe, that when death shall come to me, it will be as God’s messenger, not to hurt, but to take me beyond all reach of hurt for ever and for ever. Truly, my little lad, death is the last thing of which one whom God loves need be afraid.”

Another cloud was passing, and Hubert’s face was hidden in his sister’s lap as once more the thunder broke over them. But the worst of the storm was over. There were now longer pauses between the gradually receding peals, and in the silence of one of them Selina asked softly,—

“Frederica, who is he that is not afraid of death?”

And Frederica answered in the same tone, “One whom God loves, he says.”

“And surely He loves us all.”

Gradually the storm passed over. The servants went away to their duties, and Miss Agnace took the little boys to change their coats, which she only now discovered were quite wet. The girls helped their mother into her room again, and Tessie opened the window. There were clouds heavy and dark still in the sky, but beyond the clouds there was brightness, and the cool sweet air brought refreshment to them all. The stranger stood on the threshold, regarding with grave, compassionate eyes the group which the mother and daughters made.

“Mama,” said Frederica, answering her mother’s look of surprise, “I brought him in because of the rain.”

“Who is it?” said Selina eagerly. “Is it he whom God loves, and who has no cause to be afraid of death? Frederica, ask him why he is not afraid. And does not God love us all?”

“God is our Father. Truly He loves all His children.”

Drawn by his voice, Selina approached, and took in both hers his outstretched hand. Not once in a hundred times did the blind girl seek to get by the sense of touch a knowledge of strangers. But now she gently passed her hand over his, and over his face, and his soft white hair; and then she drew him gently into the room, and over towards her mother’s chair.

“Come and tell mama why you are not afraid.”

“Because ‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ No one need fear death, who has the promise of life everlasting.”

“No,” said Selina. “And have you that promise? And is it for us too? for mama, and all of us?”

For answer, the old man repeated the text again, “God so loved the world,” and so on to the end.

“It is the world He loves; and the promise is to whosoever believeth.”

“Do you hear, mama? It says, ‘Whosoever believeth.’ Are you listening, mama?” said Selina eagerly.

“My darling, I know not what to believe, or what to do,” said Mrs Vane sadly. “I have never in all my life thought about these things.”

“No,” said Selina, turning her eager face towards the stranger. “We have never thought about these things. Could we begin now, do you think? and what must we do?”

Frederica and Tessie looked and listened in amazement. It was so unlike Selina to have anything to say to a stranger. Their mother looked as eager as she did, and very anxious; and she said, before the stranger could reply,—

“Yes, the children might begin now. As for me, I can do nothing.”