itself. The wind blowing softly through the trees, and over the fields of fern and brambles, was cool and fresh. The sky was still as blue as in summer, and the leaves were only beginning to change their dark green for brilliant hues of yellow or crimson. Hollyhocks and sunflowers and some late roses were blooming in the cottage garden. It seemed a Paradise to Pansy after two months of dreary solitude in the stifling streets of London.

Pansy fought bravely against the heartsickness and home-sickness that were pressing her hard, and undermining her strength. She laughed as often as she had done in her old home, but it was no longer the merry impulsive laughter, which could be traced to no cause except that of girlish mirthfulness. The servant, who had been recommended to them by the wife of the friendly editor, never saw her smile when her father was away. The absence of all familiar objects wounded Pansy's eye. The utter newness of the furniture, which she helped to choose herself, contrasted painfully with the dear old house hold chattels at home, as she still called Herford. All was strange, and to Pansy strangeness was terrible. Very soon her father was necessarily occupied with his new engagements, which were many and various. Some of his work he could bring home, and Pansy was never so happy as when he was busy among his papers, in the little room which was called his study. She could give him no help, but she could look in from time to time, or bring her sewing and sit opposite to him, watching him with wistful eyes, and ready to smile if he glanced up at her. What would become of him if anything happened to her? she sometimes thought. She was all that was left to him, as he was all that was left to her, by this wild storm that had wrecked all their former life.

But very little of Justin's work could be done at home. Usually he kissed her and bade her good-bye soon after eight o'clock in the morning, and she saw him no more till after sunset, often not till late at night, when he had any meeting to attend in the city. Oh! the long, silent, creeping hours! They were horrible to Pansy. She had never been accustomed to the indoor pursuits of girls of her age and station. She could drive, and row, and fish, and ride over the farm; she could spend hours in gossiping kindly with the villagers over their affairs, or she could teach classes of red-faced lassies in Mr. Cunliffe's school; but she could take no interest in solitary needlework, or

painting, or music, when there was no one near to listen, or to look at what she was doing. She had been suddenly uprooted, and she could not take root again in this strange spot, and amid the chill and gloom of these strange circumstances.

But when her father was compelled to quit her for a whole fortnight's journey, on a deputation from his missionary society, the solitude and gloom grew insufferable. It was November, and rain and fogs had set in. The forest glades were a swamp, and the bare branches of the trees were dripping with heavy rain-drops. The little green before the windows held pools of shallow water, and the stillness surrounding the place was profound. It was utterly unlike any experience Pansy had ever had. There was nothing she could do, but lounge in the easy-chair before the fire in their little drawing-room, amid the brand new furniture, with a piece of needlework in her fingers. The London servant resented all interference from her uninformed young mistress, and hardly made a pretence of consulting her. It was scarcely daylight in the middle of the day, yet the long nights seemed worse to Pansy, when the lamp was lighted, but shone upon no happy faces, as it had always done at Herford Court. Everything had faded out of her life; joy, and sunshine, and companionship. Love was almost gone too, thought Pansy, for there was no one to love her now, except her father. Her heart cried out bitterly yet tenderly for Robert Fortescue. he, could he, be so false to her?

How could

These lonely, laggard, brooding hours were the worst mischance that could have befallen Pansy. Justin, when he opened his little daughter's letters, did not suspect how hardly his absence was telling upon her. She kept out of them the dejection she was suffering, and made the most of what she had to tell. It seemed not unlikely to him that her attachment to young Fortescue was but a passing fancy, which was dying out naturally and easily now she had proved him so unworthy of it. How gaily the child wrote of her new home, and even the gloomy weather! He might throw himself into his work with an unburdened spirit, and go home when it was finished with no anxiety to mar his pleasure.

Yet all the while Pansy could hardly endure her life. The courage and cheerfulness she assumed, when she was writing to her father, forsook her the instant the letter was ended. She knew well where her father would tell her to seek for comfort; and she

sought it in long hours of voiceless prayer, kneeling until her limbs were cramped, but her heart no lighter. The poor child wanted her days of careless happiness back again; and these could never return. That which is crooked cannot be made straight. It could never be that Justin had not yielded to temptation; that Robert Fortescue had not been unfaithful. These were no sins of Pansy's; but at present she was bearing the heaviest penalty for them. Every hour of her sadness cried to God, though there was no desire for vengeance in her heart. Rather, if she had thought her sadness made God angry with them, she would have striven hard to conquer it, as she strove hard to conceal it from her father.

CHAPTER XXXVI.--MRS. CUNLIFFE

DEFEATED.

THERE were very gay doings at Herford, as Richard had promised. Where his new friends came from nobody knew; but they flocked from every part of the country, as though there had been an universal longing for Richard's re-appearance. But they were all men of the same stamp; and the life they brought to the little fishing-village was turbulent and boisterous. There was a constant coming and going of scampish-looking horse dealers, or rollicking seamen, and dissipated townsfolk, who lounged about the village street and the beach, and were a grief of mind to all the sober-minded people of the place; and especially to old Fosse and Mr. Cunliffe.

Mrs. Herford, though fond of stir and change, did not quite approve of her younger son's choice of friends, who were in the habit of treating her with a rough familiarity very offensive to her. She was an old woman, very often in the way; and they were not over-careful to conceal that this was their opinion. Richard himself was apt to regard her from the same point of view, when she insisted upon taking the head of his hospitable but noisy table. He hinted to her that she would be better in her own room; but she could not brook the idea of superannuating herself at the age of sixty, before her hair was grey. Keep to her own room! Not as long as she could drag herself down to the rooms where she had been so long mistress. Though she did not feel that she was mistress now, as she had been in Justin's time, when every one treated her with perfect courtesy.

Until this boisterous stream of life had set in, Jenny Cunliffe had remained with Mrs.

Herford; whilst her mother awaited with fear and trembling the moment when Mr. Cunliffe should wake up to the consciousness that his daughter was dwelling under the roof of the alien. Mrs. Cunliffe was building a splendid castle in the air. If only the master of Herford would propose to Jenny before her father interfered! She could make Jenny accept him; and in that case she felt that she could stand as firm as a rock against her husband, and insist upon Jenny becoming the mistress of Herford. She watched nervously, and angled as skilfully for Richard as any fashionable mother could have done. But on the other hand Mrs. Herford was quite alive to the snares that were laid for her son. She did not care to lose Jenny, especially now Pansy was gone; like Richard she was pleased to see pretty, light-hearted girls about the house. So she kept Jenny with her; but she was careful to thwart all the mother's deep-laid schemes.

Possibly Mrs. Cunliffe might have won the field if it had not been for her husband. She heard his solemn voice ringing through the house late one evening, after all the children were in bed, calling her into his study; and she obeyed it with a quailing heart, and a sense of an impending crisis. He was standing at his open window, and across the narrow valley came the sound of very noisy music, and of a boisterous chorus, from the terrace under the windows of Herford Court. Mrs. Cunliffe took her place quietly at his side, and listened with him, as she braced herself up for a stern conflict.

"How soon is Jenny coming home?" he asked in a tone that thrilled through her.

"I can hardly say, my love," she answered meekly. "Poor Mrs. Herford misses Pansy so much, it would be cruel to take her away too soon."

"She must come home to-morrow," he said.

"To-morrow!" she rejoined; "why tomorrow, my dear? It would be impossible to take her away so abruptly; and I know Mrs. Herford cannot part with her at present. No, no, my love; we cannot have her at home again just now."

'Louisa," he replied, "it seemed to me but now that I heard a voice asking me how I was sanctifying the lives of those pertaining to me, so as to make them godly examples and patterns for my people to follow; and behold! I looked up, and saw the glitter of many lights, and I heard the sound of wild and godless mirth, in the house where my child is dwelling. It may well be my