"And shall you?"

nating, formed for admiration, and craving for | panelled, that when shut, the door was not excitement as she is, she is a being that can obvicus, and it was like being in a box, for only exist in society. She would be miserable there were no wardrobes, only shelves shut in homely retirement. I mean she would by doors into the wali, which the old usage prey on herself I could not ask it of her-if of the household tradition called awmries she consented, it would be without knowing (armoires). The furniture was reasonably her own tastes. No, all that remains is to modern, but not obtrusively so; there was a find out whether she can submit to owe her delicious recess in the deep wind w, with a wealth to our business." seat and a table in it, and a box of mignonette along the sill. It looked out into the little high-walled entrance court, and beyond to the wall of the warehouse opposite, and the roar of the great city thoroughfare came like the distant surging of the ocean. Seldom had young maiden's bower given more satisfaction. Phoebe looked about her as if she hardly knew how to believe in any thing so unlike her ordinary life, and she thanked her friend again and again with such enthusiasm, that Miss Charlecote laughed as she told her she liked the old house to be appreciated, since it had, like Pompeii, been potted for posterity.

"I could not but defer it till I should meet her here," said Robert. "I shrink from seeing her with those cousins, or hearing her name with theirs. Phoebe, imagine my feelings, when going into Mervyn's club with him, I heard Rashe Charteris and Cilly Sandbrook' contemptuously discussed by those very names, and jests passing on their independent ways. I know how it is. Those people work on her spirit of enerprise, and she-too guileless and innocent to heed appearances-Phoebe, you do not wonder that I am nearly mad!"

"Poor Robin!" said Phoebe, affectionately. "But, indeed, I am sure if Lucy once had a hint-no, one could not tell her, it would shock her too much; but if she had the least idea that people could be so impertinent," and Phoebe's cheeks glowed with shame and indignation," she would only wish to go away as far as she could for fear of seeing any of them again. I am sure they were not gentlemen, Robin."

"A man must be supereminently a gentleman to respect a woman who does not make him do so," said Robert, mournfully. "That Miss Charteris! Oh! that she were banished {o Siberia."

Phoebe meditated a few moments, then looking up, said, "I beg your pardon, Robin, but it does strike me that if you think that this kind of life is not good for Lucilla, it cannot be right to sacrifice your own higher prospects to enable her to continue it."

"I tell you, Phœbe,” said he, with some impatience, “I never was piedged. I may be of much more use and influence, and able to effect more extended gooi as a partner in a concern like this, than as an obscure clergyman. Don't you see?"

Phoebe had only time to utter a somewhat melancholy "Very likely," beture Miss Charlecote returned to take her to her room, the promised brown cupboard, all wainscotted with delicious cedar, so deeply and uniformly

"And thank you, my dear," she added, with a sigh, "for making my coming home so pleasant. May you never know how I dreaded the finding it full of emptiness."

"Dear Miss Charlecote!" cried Phoebe, venturing upon a warm kiss, and thrilled with sad pleasure as she was pressed in a warm, clinging embrace, and felt tears on her cheek. "You have been so happy here!"

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'It is not the past, my dear," said Honora. "I could live peacefully on the thought of that. The shadows that people this house are very gentle ones. It is the present!"

She broke off, for the gates of the court were opening to admit a detachment of cabs, containing the persons and properties of the new incumbent and his wife. He had been a curate of Mr. Charlecote, since whose death he had led a very hat-working life in various towns, and on his recent presentation to the living of St. Wulstan's, Honora had begged him and his wife to make her house their home, while determining on the repairs of the parsonage. She ran down to meet them with gladsome steps; she had never entirely dropped her intercourse with Mr. Parsons, though seldom meeting, and he was a relic of the past, one of the very few who still called her by her Christian name, and regarded her more as the clergyman's daughter of St. Wulstan's, than as lady of the Holt. Mrs. Parsons was a thorough clergyman's wife, as acitve as himself, and much loved and esteemed

There they were, looking after luggage, and paying cabs so heedfully as not to remark their hostess standing on the stairs, and she had time to survey them with the affectionate curiosity of meeting after long absence, and with pleasure in remarking that there was little change. Perhaps they were rather more gray, and had grown more alike by force of living and thinking together; but they both looked equally alert and cheerful, and as if fifty and fifty-five were the very prime of years for substantial work.

Their first glances at her were full of the same anxiety for her health and strength, as they heartily shook hands, and accompanied her into the drawing-room, she explaining that Mr. Parsons was to have the study all to himself, and never be disturbed there; then inquiring after the three children, two daughters who were married, and a son lately ordained.

"I thought you would have brought William to see about the curacy," she said.

"He is not strong enough." said his mother; "he wished it, but he is better where he is; he could not bear the work here."

"No, I told him the utmost I should allow would be an exchange now and then, when my curates were overdone," said Mr. Par

sons.

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"A Miss Mendoza, an immense fortune, something in the stockbroker line. He had spent a good deal, and wanted to repair it, but they tell me she is a very handsome person, very ladylike and agreeable, and Lucy likes her greatly. I am to go to luncheon at their house to-morrow, so I shall treat you as if you were at home."

“I should hope so,” quoth Mr. Parsons. "Yes, or I know you would not stay here properly. I'm not alone, either. Why, where's the boy gone? I thought he was here. I have two young Fulmorts, one staying here, the other looking in from the of fice."

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Fulmort!" exclaimed Mr. Parsons, with three notes of admiration at least in his voice. "What! the distiller ?"

"The enemy himself, the identical lord of gin shops at least his children. Did you not know that he married my next neighbor, Augusta Mervyn, and that our properties touch? He is not so bad by way of squire as he is here, and I have known his wife all my life, so we keep up all habits of good neighborhood, and though they have brought up the elder ones very ill, they have not succeeded in spoiling this son and daughter. She is one of the very nicest girls I ever knew, and he, poor fellow, has a great deal of good in him."

"I think I have heard William speak of a Fulmort," said Mrs. Parsons; "was he at Winchester ?"

"Yes, and an infinite help the influence there has been to him. I never saw any one

"And so you are quite deserted;" said Honor, feeling the more drawn towards her friends. Starting afresh, with a sort of honey-more anxious to do right, often under great moon, as I tell Anne," replied Mr. Parsons, disadvantages. I shall be very glad for him and such a bright look passed between them to be with you. He was always intended for as though they were quite sufficient for each a clergyman, but now I am afraid there is a other, that Honor felt there was no parallel notion of putting him into the business, and between their case and her own. he is here attending to it for the present while his father and brother are abroad. I am sorry he is gone; I suppose he was seized with a fit of shyness."

"Ah! you have not lost your children yet," said Mrs. Parsons.

been.

"I went to dress," he answered.

"They are not with me," said Honor, quickly, "Lucy is with her cousins, and Owen However, when all the party had been to -I don't exactly know how he means to dis- their rooms and prepared for dinner, Robert pose of himself this vacation, but we were all re-appeared, and was asked where he had to meet here." Guessing, perhaps, that Mr. | Parsons saw into her dissatisfaction, she then assumed their defence. "There is to be a grand affair at Castle Blanch, a celebration of young Charles Charteris' marriage, and Owen and Lucy will be wanted for it." "Whom has he married ?"

"Ah! where do you lodge? I asked Phoebe, but she said your letters went to Whittington Street."

"There are two very good rooms at the office which my father sometimes uses."

entirely lost his hold, had become intolerably worse. Improvements in other parts of London, dislodging the inhabitants, had heaped them in festering masses of corruption in these untouched byways and lanes, places where honest men dared not penetrate without a policeman, and report spoke of rooms shared by six families at once.

Phoebe and Miss Charlecote glanced at | streets which had been a grief and pain to each other, aware that Mervyn would never Mr. Charlecote, but over which he had never have condescended to sleep in Great Whittington Street. Mr. Parsons likewise perceived a straightforwardness in the manner, which made him ready to acknowledge his fellow Wykehamist, and his son's acquaintance; and they quickly became good friends over recollections of Oxford and Winchester, tolerably strong in Mr. Parsons himself, and all the fresher on "William's" account. Mr. Parsons had not taken the cure unPhoebe, whose experience of social intercourse knowing of what he should find in it; he said was confined to the stately evening hour in nothing, and looked as simple and cheerful as the drawing-room, had never listened to any if his life were not to be a daily course of thing approaching to this style of conversa- heroism. His wife gave one long-stifled sigh, tion, nor seen her brother to so much advan- and looked furtively upon him with her loving tage in society. Hitherto, she had only be-eyes, in something of anxious fear, but with held him neglected in his uncongenial home far more of exultation. circle, contemning and contemned, or else subjected to the fretting torment of Lucilla's caprice; she had never known what he could be, at his ease, among persons of the same way of thinking. Speaking scarcely ever herself, and her fingers busy with her needle, she was receiving a better lesson than Miss Fennimore had ever yet been able to give. The acquiring of knowledge is one thing, the putting it out to profit another.

Gradually, from general topics, the conversation contracted to the parish and its affairs, known intimately to Mr. Parsons a quarter of a century ago, but in which Honora was now the best informed, while Robert listened as one who felt as if he might have a considerable stake therein, and indeed looked upon usefulness there as compensation for the schemes he was resigning.

The changes since Mr. Parson's time had not been cheering. The late incumbennt had been a man whose trust lay chiefly in preaching, and who, as his health failed, and he became more unable to cope with the crying evils around, had grown despairing, and given way to a sort of dismal callous indifference; not doing a little, because he could not do much, and quashing the plans of others with a nervous dread of innovation. The class of superior persons in trade, and families of professional men, who in Mr. Charlecote's time had filled many a massively built pew had migrated to the suburbs, and preserved only an office or shop in the parish, an empty pew in the church, where the congregation was to be counted by tens instead of hundreds. Not that the population had fallen off. Certain

Yet it was in no dispirited tone that she asked after the respectable poor-there surely must be some employed in small trades, or about the warehouses. She was answered that these were not many in proportion, and that not only had pew rents kept them out of church, but that they had little disposition to go there. They did send their children to the old endowed charity schools, but as these children grew up, wave after wave lapsed into a smooth, respectable heathen life of Sunday pleasuring. The more religious became dissenters, because the earnest inner life did not approve itself to them in church teaching as presented to them; the worst sort, by far the most numerous, fell lower and lower, and hovered scarcely above the depths of sin and misery. Drinking was the universal vice, and dragged many a seemingly steady character into every stage of degradation. Men and women alike fell under the temptation, and soon hastened down the descent of corruption and crime.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Parsons, "I observed gin palaces at the corner of every street."

There was a pause. Neither her husband nor Honor made any reply. If they had done so, neither of the young Fulmorts would have perceived any connection between the gin palaces and their father's profession; but the silence caused both to raise their eyes. Phoebe, judging by her sister's code of the becoming, fancied that their friends supposed their feelings might be hurt by alluding to the distillery, as a trade, and cast about for some cheerful observations, which she could not find.

Robert had received a new idea, one that

must be put aside till he had time to look at it.

There was a ring at the door. Honor's face lighted up at the tread on the marble pavement of the hall, and without other announcement, a young man entered the room, and, as she sprang up to meet him, bent down his lofty head and kissed her with half-filial, half-coaxing tenderness.

"Yes, here I am. They told me I should find you here. Ah! Phoebe, I'm glad to see you. Fulmort, how are you?" and a wellbred shake of the hand to Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, with the ease and air of the young master, returning to his mother's house.

"When did you come ?"

"Only to-day. I got away sooner than I expected. I went to Lowndes Square, and they told me I should find you here, so I came away as soon as dinner was over; they were dressing for some grand affair, and wanted me to come with them, but, of course, I must come to see if you had really achieved bringing bright Phoebe from her orbit."

His simlie conveyed the astronomical compliment at once to Honora and Phoebe who were content to share it. Honora was in a condition of subdued excitement and anxiety, compared to which all other sensations were tame, chequered as was her felicity, a state well known to mothers and sisters. Intensely gratified at her darling's arrival, gladdened by his presence, rejoicing in his endowments, she yet dreaded every phrase lest some dim misgiving should be deepened, and watched for the impression he made on her friends as though her own depended upon it.

those easy movements never cramped, nor the manners restrained by bashfulness.

The contrast was not favorable to Robert. The fair proportions of the one brought out the irregular build of the other; the classical face made the plain one more homely, the erect bearing made the eye turn to the slouching carriage, and the readiness of address provoked comparison with the awkward diffidence of one disregarded at home. Bashfulness and depression had regained their hold of the elder lad almost as the younger one entered, and in the changes of position consequent upon the new arrival, he fell into the background, and stood leaning, caryatid fashion, against the mantle-shelf, without uttering a word, while Owen, in a half-recumbent position on an ottoman, a little in the rear of Miss Charlecote and her tea equipage, and close to Phoebe, indulged in the blithe loquacity of a return home, in a tone of caressing banter towards the first lady, of something between good-nature and attention to the latter, yet without any such exclusiveness as would have been disregard to the other guests.

"Ponto well? Poor old Pon! how does he get on? Was it a very affectionate parting, Phoebe ?"

"I didn't see. I met Miss Charlecote at the station."

"Not even your eyes might intrude on the sacredness of grief! Well, at least you dried them? But who dried Ponto's ?" solemnly turning on Honora.

"Jones, I hope," said she, smiling.

"I knew it! Says I to myself, when Henry opened the door, Jones remains at home for the consolation of Ponto."

"Not entirely-" began Honora, laughing; but the boy shook his head, cutting her short with a playful frown.

Admiration could not but come foremost. It was pleasant to look upon such a fine specimen of manly beauty and vigor. Of unusual height, his form was so well moulded, that his superior stature was only perceived by com- "Cousin Honor, it grieves me to see a parison with others, and the proportions were woman of your age and responsibility making those of great strength. The small, well-set false excuses. Mr. Parsons, I appeal to you, head, proudly carried, the short straight fea- as a clergyman of the Church of England, is tures, and the form of the free, massive curls it not painful to hear her putting forward might have been a model for the bust of a Jones' asthma, when we all know the true Greek athlete; the coloring was the fresh, fact is that Ponto's tastes are so aristocratic, healthy bronzed ruddiness of English youth, that he can't take exercise with an under serand the expression had a certain boldness of vant, and the housekeeper is too fat to wadgood-humored freedom agreeing with the dle. By the by, how is the old thing?" quiet power of the whole figure. Those "Much more effective than might be supbright gray eyes could never have been posed by your account, sir, and probably daunted, those curling, merry lips never at a wishing to know whether to get your room loss, that smooth brow never been unwelcome, | ready."

"My room, thank you, no, not to-night. Owen let fall. She answered shortly, that I've got nothing with me. What are you go- she could not suppose it serious. ing to do, to-morrow? I know you are to be at Charteris' to luncheon, his Jewess told me 80."

"Who? Why that's the best of it! Who, but my wise sister and Rashe! Not a soul "Ah! it's the fashion to deny it, but mind besides," cried Owen, giving way to laughter, you don't mention Shakspeare."

"Did you never hear of the Merchant of and do more than any crack fisherman going, Venice 2"