that she was every inch Mrs. Gower, and very well she wore her matronly honours, and promised to chaperon Agnes and myself as soon as ever her mamma's health would permit us once more to cultivate society. For we had lived a life of unbroken retirement since our arrival at Nice, neither making visits, nor receiving guests, partly because of the trouble into which Elizabeth's own conduct had plunged us, but chiefly because Lady Ashburner was so exceedingly unwell as to render the most perfect repose essential; and both Agnes and myself found ourselves fully occupied with her.

I had hoped that the restoration of her daughter might work some saving change that would at least prolong the life so fleetly waning to its close, but it was far otherwise. For a day or two after Elizabeth's arrival, Lady Ashburner rallied, and seemed almost herself again. For a whole week we rejoiced in the visible improvement, and then came a sad reaction. A little longer, and we knew that the fiat had gone forth. It was no more a question of weeks, but of days, perhaps of hours. Sir John sent distractedly for every eminent physician for miles around; he would, had it been practicable, have summoned his old friend, Dr. Alickson, from Southam, but all was in vain. Quietly and almost painlessly that gentle life was passing away from earth; and to us, who watched in that still chamber, it was as if for a little while we were permitted to approach the very threshold of the higher world. It seemed to us as if so far we might go with her upon the heavenly way; as if we might see the golden gates unclose, and even catch a glimpse of the brightness therein, and some strains of the great chorus they sing in those celestial courts, and then perforce turn back again to earth, with all its pains, and griefs, and imperfections.

Calmly and serenely she had lived, and calmly and serenely she died. In the sweet April evening, with the breath of violets and mignonette stealing in from the balcony, and the sinking sun flushing the broad

waters of the blue Mediterranean, and rosy lights, and purple shadows, and golden glow among the mountain passes, and on the snow-crowned peaks, far, far away, she closed her tired eyelids, and sank to rest in the arms that had been her surest, sweetest, resting-place in this world for more than twenty years.

And so another dear friend was called away. We had heard of Sally Hawkes' death only three weeks before; and I felt for the second time in my life that I was motherless. It is most blessed for those who go, but oh how sad for those who stay behind! How sad the vacant place, the blank, the void, the passionate yearning that will awake again and again, even when long years have rolled upon their way since the hour of parting came and passed in all its bitterness! And yet it is better so, better that our treasures should be safely housed where tempests never come, where the wild storm-wind never blows. Better far that they should be safe in port, though we yet are rocked upon the billows. Better they should swell the hallelujahs of the skies, though still we chant our requiems and penitential psalms in "sad perplexed minors." Ah, yes, better than

"Wander back to life, and lean

On our frail love once more;

'Tis sweet, as year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
How grows in Paradise our store.'

In that fair burial-ground where so many sons and daughters of our own happy England have found their final resting-place, we laid Lady Ashburner, or rather, we left there the worn-out garment of the flesh to the safe keeping of its mother earth, till the voice of the archangel shall wake the dead in Christ, on the resurrection morning.

These thoughts came into my mind naturally enough, after reading that exquisite poem, "Below and Above," which Agnes put into my hand the day after the funeral. I had never seen it before, but I have

read it many and many a time since then, and made it all my own, especially those lines which comforted me most, as I sat under the blooming orange-trees, looking out so mournfully upon the misty, snowy ranges, and listening with heavy heart to the monotonous plash of the wavelets of a tiny stream that flowed beneath our terrace :

"Down below, a sad, mysterious music,

Wailing through the woods and on the shore,
Burdened with a grand, majestic secret,
That keeps sweeping from us evermore.

Up above, a music that entwineth

With eternal threads of golden sound;

The great poem of this strange existence,

All whose wondrous meanings hath been found.

Down below, the church, to whose poor window
Glory by the autumnal trees is lent,

And a knot of worshippers in mourning,
Missing some one at the sacrament.

Up above, the burst of hallelujah,
And (without the sacramental mist
Wrapt around us, like a sunlit halo),

The great vision of the face of Christ."

Elizabeth was wild and passionate in her grief, frantically accusing herself of shortening the beloved life she would have given her own to preserve. There was so much truth in her bitter self-reproach that no one could gainsay it. We could only comfort her, or try to comfort her, by speaking of the weariness and pain all past, and of the perfect rest and everlasting joy remaining for evermore. Sir John's sorrow was quiet, but very, very deep. He is living still, a widower, at Forest Range, but though cheerful always, and full of kindness and tenderness towards others, he is never gay; for his light of earthly life went out on that fair Italian shore, and it can never be rekindled. And calmly, and in patient trust, he waits for the hour when God shall restore all precious things that the waves of time have swept into eternity.

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CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE MORNING STAR.

AGAIN it was the month of May, and the London season was setting in most brilliantly. The bleak east winds of early spring had blown themselves away, and gentle southern breezes fanned the gay laburnum tresses, and ruffled, as if in kindly sport, the silvery balls of the snowy Gueldres roses. Lilac and hawthorn blooms scented the air, and half the people in town went out to Bushey to see the famous avenue in all its floral beauty. The squares and parks were looking their very fairest in their rich liveries of tender green, as yet undefiled by dust or London smoke; and not only were the horse-chestnuts gorgeous with their delicate, rich spirals, but the sycamore was hanging out its emerald tassels, the mountain-ash was brilliant with its many creamy cymes, the poplar showered upon the fresh upsprung turf his crimson stamened catkins, and the noble plane cast green and golden lights through his leafy branches on happy children playing in the shade.

And carriages rolled along the busy streets, and Rotten Row was once more in its glory, for it was the annual festival of May fair, and wealth and rank and beauty met to sun themselves once again in the warmth and brightness of "society." But how with those who held no rank, whose purse was nearly empty, whose home was not at the gay West-end, but in the hot and noisy city, or in the dreary eastern suburbs, where pestilence so often alights, and lingers long and fatally? How was it with those who had to toil for subsistence, for common food, from day to

day, and for barest necessaries of mere raiment? What was it to them that the sun shone brightly, that the sweet springtide was blooming into early summer? What to them were the smiling faces, and the high-born beauties in the parks? What to them the delicate robes the modiste furnished forth, or the priceless gems that night after night flashed upon the queenly brows of England's loveliest, proudest daughters? What to them the rose-red heart of the horse-chestnut's pure white petal? What to them the fragrant hawthorn, the perfume of the lilac clusters, and the odour of the lilies? Such blessings are for the favoured children of Belgravia and its lordly environs, for the aristocratic dames and maids of Kensington and Kew, and far-famed Richmond Hill, and not for the sons and daughters of Spitalfields or Bethnal Green, or the pale children of many a sordid region on the Surrey side.

Something like this Cyril Denham had written for an ephemeral "weekly" that had suddenly sprung into existence, and was boasting great things of its powers and prospects, and rising circulation. Cyril had had the good fortune to be retained on the staff of this new bantling of the fourth estate, and he was thankful indeed for the engagement, which had been secured quite unexpectedly, for this was all the regular work he had, for which he was duly and regularly paid. It kept the wolf just outside the doorway still, albeit the grim beast often howled so ominously that Cyril's heart sank within him, and his pen fell from his tired fingers, while he bowed his head in all the desolation of despair. He had left Arundel Street by this time, Mrs. Stalker's chambers being far too expensive for his reduced resources. He had taken one room only in a dingy house, in a dull and dingy street in Clerkenwell; and he was living most abstemiously, working hard, and practising all kinds of self-denial, such as he had never dreamed of in his happier days.

He was very weary now, for he had been working