leave. "That is all right, at least," Mrs. | leaped forward to a future of her own, in Eastwood said as they left the office; but it may well be supposed that to wait ten days for any news whatever of the absent son, and at the end of that period, when they began to expect his return, to hear that he had been ill all the time within reach of them, was not pleasant. The mother and daughter could talk of nothing else as they drove home. "If he had but written at first, when he felt himself getting ill, you or I, or both of us, might have gone to him, Nelly. I cannot think of anything more dreary than being ill in an inn. And then the expense! I wonder if he has money enough, poor boy, to bring him home?" "If he wanted money he would have told you so," said Nelly, half uneasy, she could not quite tell why. "I don't know," said Mrs. Eastwood, "boys are so odd. To be sure, when they want money they generally let one know. But there never was anything so tiresome, so vague, as men's letters about themselves. I have been ill.'- Now if it had been you or me, Nelly, we should have said, 'I took cold, or I got a bad headache,' or whatever it was, on such a day and how it got worse or better; and when we were able to get up again, or to get out again. It is not Frederick alone. It is every man. They tell you just enough to make you unhappy never any details. I suppose," she added, with a sigh. "it is because that sort of meagre information is enough for themselves. They don't care to know all about it as women do. They don't understand what it is to be really anxious. In a great many ways, Nelly, men have the advantage over us-things, too, that no laws can change." "I don't think it is an advantage not to care," said Nelly, indignantly. "I am not so sure of that," said her mother. "We care so much that we can't think of anything else. We can't take things calmly as they do. And they have an advantage in it. Frederick is a very good son, but if I were to write to him, I have been ill, and I am better,' he would be quite satisfied, he would want nothing more. Whereas I want a great deal more," Mrs. Eastwood said, flicking off with her finger the ghost of a tear which had gathered in spite of her in the corner of her eye, and giving a short little broken laugh. The path of fathers and mothers is often strewn with roses, but the roses have very big thorns. Even Nelly, who was young, whose heart which brothers had but little share, did not here quite comprehend her mother. For her own part, had she been left to herself, it is possible that Frederick's “I have been ill, but I am better," would have satisfied all her anxieties: but as the girl by force of sympathy was but half herself and half her mother, she entered into the feelings which she did not altogether share with a warmth which was increased by partisanship, if such a word can be used in such a case. "It is wicked of him not to write more fully," she said. "No, Nelly dear, not wicked, only thoughtless; all men are the same," said Mrs. Eastwood. And to be sure this large generalization affords a little comfort now and then to women, as the same principle does to men in different circumstances; for there is nothing about which the two halves of humanity are so fond of generalizing as each other. It seems to afford a certain consolation that "all men are just the same," or that "women are like that everywhere explanation which, at least, partially exonerates the immediate offender. an Mrs. Another week elapsed, during which the Eastwoods carried on their existence much as usual, unmoved to appearance by the delay, and not deeply disturbed by the prospect of the new arrival. Eastwood spoke to Mr. Brotherton, her rector and adviser about "the boys," on the subject, but not much came of it; for Mr. Brotherton, though fond, like most people, of giving advice, and feeling, like most people, that a widow with sons to educate was his lawful prey, was yet shy of saying anything on the subject of Frederick, who was no longer a boy. Whether any more serious uneasiness lay underneath her anxiety for her son's health, no one, not even Mrs. Eastwood's chief and privy councillor, could have told; but when appealed to as to what he thought on the subject, whether another messenger or the mother herself should go to the succour of the invalid, Mr. Brotherton shook his head and did not know what to advise. "If he has been able to go on to Leghorn, I think you may feel very confident that he is all right again," he said. "You must not make yourself unhappy about him. From Leghorn to Pisa is but a step," added the Rector, pleased to be able to recall his own experience on this subject. But Mrs. Everard, the Privy Councillor, was of a different opinion. She was always for action in every case. To sit still and wait was a policy which had no attractions for her. She was a slight and eager woman, who had been a great beauty in her day. Her husband had been a judge in India, and she was, or thought she was, deeply instructed in the law, and able to be of real service" to her friends, when legal knowledge was requisite. It is almost unnecessary to say that she was as unlike Mrs. Eastwood as one woman could be to another. The one was eager, slight, and restless, with a mind much too active for her body, and an absolute incapacity for letting anything alone; the other plump and peaceable, not deficient in energy when it was necessary, but slightly inert and slow to move when the emergency did not strike her as serious. Of course it is equally unnecessary to add that Mrs. Everard also was a widow. This fact acts upon the character like other great facts in life. It makes many and important modifications in the aspect of affairs. Life à deux (I don't know any English phrase which quite expresses this) is scarcely more different from the primitive and original single life, than is the life which, after having been à deux, becomes single, without the possibility of going back to the original standing ground. That curious mingling of a man's position and responsibilities with a woman's position and responsibilities, cannot possibly fail to mould a type of character in many respects individual. A man who is widowed is not similarly affected, partly perhaps because in most cases he throws the responsibility from him, and either marries again or places some woman in the deputy position of governess or housekeeper to represent the feminine side of life, which he does not choose to take upon himself. Women, however, abandon their post much less frequently, and sometimes, I suspect, get quite reconciled to the double burden, and do not object to do all for, and be all to, their children. Sometimes they attempt too much, and often enough they fail; but so does everybody in everything, and widows' sons have not shown badly in general life. I hope the gentle reader will pardon me this digression, which, after all, is scarcely necessary, since it is the business of the ladies in this history to speak for themselves. "I would go if I were in your place," said Mrs. Everard, talking over all these circumstances in the twilight over the fire the same evening. "A man, as we both know, never tells you anything fully. Of course you cannot tell in the least what is the matter with him. He may have overtasked his strength going on to Pisa. He may break down on the road home with no one to look after him. I suppose this girl will be a helpless foreign thing without any knowledge of the world. Girls are brought up so absurdly abroad. You know my opinion, dear, on the whole subject. I always advised you instead of taking this trouble and bringing her here with great expense and inconvenience, to make her an inmate of your own house- I always advised you to settle her where she is, paying her expenses among the people she knows. You remember what I told you about poor Adelaide Forbes ? — what a mistake she made, meaning to be kind! You know your own affairs best; but still, on this point I think I was right." "Perhaps you may have been," said Mrs. Eastwood, from the gloom of the corner in which she was seated, "but there are some things that one cannot do, however much one's judgment may be convinced. Leave my own flesh and blood to languish among strangers? I could not do it; it would have been impossible." "If your flesh and blood had been a duchess, you would have done it without a thought," said Mrs. Everard. "She is happy where she is (I suppose). You don't know her temper nor her ways of thinking, nor what kind of girl she is, and yet you will insist upon bringing her here "You speak as if Frederick's illness was Mamma's doing," said Nelly, with a little indignation, coming in from one of her many occupations, and placing herself on a stool in front of the fire, in the full glow of the firelight. Nelly was not afraid of her complexion. She did everything a girl ought not to do in this way. She would run out in the sunshine unprotected by veil or parasol, and she had a child's trick of reading by firelight, which, considering how she scorched her cheeks, can scarcely be called anything short of wicked. This was a point upon which Mrs. Everard kept up a vigorous but unsuccessful struggle. "Nelly, Nelly! you will burn your eyes out. By the time you are my age how much eyesight will you have left, do you think?" "I don't much care," said Nelly, in an undertone. She thought that by the time she reached Mrs. Everard's age (which was under fifty) she would have become indifferent to eyesight and everything other matter here are the facts of the else, in the chills of that advanced age. "Nelly, you are not too civil," said Mrs. Eastwood, touching the toe of Nelly's pretty shoe with her own velvet slipper, in warning and reproof. The girl drew her toes out of the way, but did not make any apology. She was not fond of Mrs. Everard, nor indeed was any one in the house. case. Frederick is ill, you don't know "Well, not dangerous if you please, but long and fatiguing, and troublesome to a man who is ill. He has gone on to Pisa in a bad state of health. You know that he has reached so far; and you know no more. Of course he will be anxious to get home again as quick as possible. What if he were to get worse on the road? There is nothing more likely, and the torturing anxiety you would feel in such circumstances I need not suggest to you. You will be terribly unhappy. You will wait for news until you feel it impossible to wait any longer, and then when your strength and patience are exhausted, you will rush off to go to him- most likely too late." "Of course, I don't mean that your decision had anything whatever to do with Frederick's illness," Mrs. Everard resumed, "that I don't need to say. He might have been ill at home as much as abroad. I am speaking now on the original question. Of course, if Frederick had not gone away, you would have been spared this anxiety, and might have nursed him comfortably at home. But this is incidental. What I am sorry for is that you are bringing a girl into your house whom you know nothing of. She may be very nice, but she may be quite the reverse. Of course one can never tell whether it may or may not be a happy "I can't stop my thoughts," said Mrs. change even for her but it is a great Everard, not without a little complacency, risk for you. It is a very brave thing to" and I have known such things to hap do. I should not have the courage to pen before now. What more likely than make such an experiment, though it would that he should start before he is equal to be a great deal simpler in my house, the journey, and break down on the way where there is no one to be affected but home? Then you would certainly go to myself." him; and my advice is, go to him now. Anticipating the evil in that way you would probably prevent it. In your place I would not lose a day." "I don't see where the courage lies," said Nelly; "a girl of sixteen. What harm could she do to any one?" "Oh, a great deal of harm, if she chose," said Mrs. Everard; "a girl of sixteen, in a house full of young men ! One or the other of them will fall in love with her to a certainty if she is at all pretty "Oh, please!" said Mrs. Eastwood; "you do think so oddly, pardon me for saying so, about the boys. Frederick is grown up, of course, but the last young man in the world to think of a little cousin. And as for Dick he is a mere | boy, and Jenny! Don't be vexed if I laugh. This is too funny." "Oh, have a little pity upon me! Don't talk so don't think so. "But I could not reach Pisa," said Mrs. Eastwood, nervously taking out her watch, "I could not reach Pisa, even if I were to start to-night, before they had left it; and how can I tell which way they would come? I should miss them to a certainty. I should get there just when they were arriving here. I should have double anxiety, and double expense "If they ever arrived here," said Mrs. Everard, ominously; “but indeed it is not my part to interfere. Some people can bear anxiety so much better than others. I know it would kill me." Mrs. Eastwood very naturally objected to such a conclusion. To put up with the imputation of feeling less than her friend, or any other woman, in the circumstances, was unbearable. "Then you really think I have reason to be alarmed," she said in a tremulous voice. "I hope you will always think it as funny," said the Privy Councillor solemnly, "but I know you and I don't think alike on these subjects. Half the ridiculous marriages in the world spring out of the fact that parents will not see when boys and girls start up into men and women. I don't mean to say that harm will come of it immediately but once she is "I should not have any doubt on the in your house there is no telling how you subject," said her adviser. A young are to get rid of her. However, I sup-man in delicate health, a long journey, pose your mind is made up. About the cold February weather, and not even a doctor whom you can rely upon to see must certainly fall on the culprit's own him before he starts. Recollect I would head. not say half so much if I did not feel quite sure that you would be forced to go at last and probably too late." CHAPTER X. THE ARRIVAL. "Oh don't say those awful words!" said the poor woman. And thus the con- To the reader who is better acquainted versation went on, till Brownlow ap- with the causes and the character of Fredpeared with the lamp, interrupting the erick Eastwood's detention on his jouragitating discussion. Then Mrs. Eve-ney than either his mother or her Privy rard went her way, leaving her friend in Councillor the fears entertained by these very low spirits with Nelly, who though ladies in respect to his health will scarcekept up by a wholesome spirit of opposi-ly appear deserving of much consideration, was yet moved, in spite of herself, tion. His health, indeed, very soon came by the gloomy picture upon which she had right again. Two days' rest at Pisa, the been looking. They sat together over the substitution of the vin du pays for chamfire for a little longer, very tearful and mis-pagne, and the absence of other exciteerable, while Mrs. Everard went home, strong in the sense of having done her duty, "however things might turn out." "Must you really go, Mamma?" said Nelly, much subdued, consulting her watch, in her turn, and thinking of the hurried start at eight o'clock to catch the night train, and of the dismal midnight crossing of that Channel which travellers hate and fear. "It will be a dreadful journey. Must you really go?" "What do you think, Nelly?" said Mrs. Eastwood, beginning to recover a little. "I have the greatest respect for Jane Everard's opinion, but she does always take the darkest view of everything. Oh, Nelly, what would you advise me to do?" was ments, made him quite equal to contemplate the journey home without anxiety, so far as his own interesting person was concerned. He had difficulties enough, however, of another kind. He obliged to stay a day longer than he intended, in order to fit out his cousin with various things pronounced by Mrs. Drainham to be indispensable. She had to be clothed in something more fit for a journey than the thin black frock which Niccolo had ordered for her at her father's death. Pisa did not afford much in the way of toilette; but still the dress and cloak procured by Mrs. Drainham were presentable, and the fastidious young man was extremely grateful to the physician's pretty wife for clothing his companion so that he should not be ashamed to be seen with her, which would have been the case had the poor child travelled as she intended in her only warm garment, the velvet cloak. "It must have been a stage property its day," Frederick said, looking at the many tints of its old age with disgust. This was an infallible sign that the mercury had begun to rise. "Pressure had decreased," to use a scientific term. The mother and daughter made up their minds, after much discussion, that to catch the night train would be impossible, and that there might perhaps be fur-in ther news next day. "If that is your opinion, Nelly?" Mrs Eastwood said, as they went upstairs, supporting herself with natural casuistry upon her child's counsel. The fact was that she saw very clearly all the practical difficulties of the question. She loved advice, and did not think it correct for "a woman in my position" to take any important step without consulting her friends; and their counsel moved her deeply. She gave all her attention to it, and received it with respectful conviction; but she did not take it. It would be impossible to overestimate the advantage this gave her over all her advisers. "I knew she had made up her mind," Mrs. Everard said next day, with resignation. Whatever might happen she had done her duty; and the consequences Innocent hid it away instantly in the depths of her old trunk, and sat proudly shivering with cold in her thin frock through all the long evening, the cold, long, lingering night which preceded their departure. She thought her cousin would have come to her; but Frederick wisely reflected that he would have enough of her society for the next few days, and preferred the Drainham's comfortable drawing-room instead. Poor Innocent! she stood in the old way at the window, but not impassive as of old. looking for some one this time, and trying with a beating heart to make him out among the crowd that moved along the Lung' Arno. This expectation engrossed her so much that she forgot to think of the change that was about to come upon " cried "I have put it away. It is ugly; it is not fit to wear," cried Innocent. "It is a thing of the theatre. Why did you let me wear it?" and she put off his hand gently enough, but coldly, and continued her watch. "A thing of the theatre!" cried Niccolo, indignant, "when I bought it myself at the sale of the pittore Inglese, who died over the way; and you looked like a princess when you put it on, and warm as a bird in a nest. But I know who it is that turns you against your old dresses and your old way of living and your poor old Niccolo. It is the cousin. I hope he will be to you all we have been, Signorina. But in the meantime my young lady is served, and if she does not eat, the maccaroni will be cold. Cold maccaroni The cousin will not her life. I do not know, indeed, that she | solitary meal. He touched her shoulder was capable of thinking of anything so caressingly with his hand. complex as this change. She had wan- "Santissima Madonna!" Nicdered from one place to another with her colo, "you will die of cold, my poor father, living always the same dreary, se- young lady; you have nothing but this cluded life, having such simple wants as thin dress, which cannot keep you warm. she was conscious of supplied, and noth- Where in the name of all the saints is ing ever required of her. I believe, had your cloak?" it been suggested to her unawakened mind that thenceforward she must do without Niccolo, this would have been the most forcible way of rousing her to thought of what was about to happen. And, indeed, this was exactly the course which was about to be, taken, though without any idea on the part of Niccolo of the effect it would produce. He came in as usual with his little tray, the salad heaped up, green and glistening with oil just as he liked it himself. Beside it, as this was the last evening, was a small, but smoking hot, dish of maccaroni, a morsel of cheese on a plate, and a petit pain, more delicate than the dry Italian bread. The usual small flask of red wine flanked this meal, which Niccolo brought in with some state, as became the little festa which he had prepared for his charge. is good for no one. Tears were in the good fellow's eyes, come to-night." though his beard was divided in its blackness by the kind smile, which displayed his red lips and white teeth. He arranged it on the little table close by the stove, placed the chair beside it, and "But I do know," said Niccolo; "he trimmed the lamp before he called upon went to the house of the English doctor his Signorina, whose position by the win- half an hour ago, and bid me tell the Sidow he had immediately remarked with a gnorina to be prepared at ten to-morrow. shrug of his shoulders. He had taken Come, then, to the maccaroni. When care of her all her life; but I am not everything else fails it is always good to quite sure that the good Niccolo was not have maccaroni to fall back upon. Chi ha glad to be relieved of a charge so embar-buon pane, e buon vino, ha troppo un mirassing. His own prospects were cer- colino." tainly brightened by her departure. He "I do not care for maccaroni," said had served her father faithfully and long Innocent. She turned from the window, with but poor recompense, and now the however, with a dawning of the pride of reward of his faithfulness was coming to a woman who feels herself slighted. Niccolo in the shape of a better place, "Niccolo, I do not want anything: you with higher wages and a position which can go away." was very splendid in his eyes. Never was heart more disposed to entertain a romantic devotion for the child he had nurtured; but it is difficult for the warmest heart to give itself up in blind love to an utterly unresponsive being, whether child or man, and as Innocent did not love Niccolo or any one else the separation from her was less hard than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, there were tears in his eyes, and his heart was softened and melting when he arranged her supper for her, and went to the cold window to call her to her "You do not know," said Innocent, turning a momentary look upon him, which was half a defiance and half a question. 66 "And this is how she parts with the old Niccolo!" he cried. "I have carried her in my arms when she was little. I have dressed her, and prepared for her to eat and drink all her life. I have taken her to the festa, and to the church. I have done all for her-all! and the last night she tells me -'I do not want anything, Niccolo; you may go away.?" "The last night?" said Innocent, moved a little. She shivered with the cold, and with the pang of desertion, and with that new-born sense of her loneliness which had never struck her before. |