HENRY DUNBAR.

Bruce Herald, Volume III, Issue 65, 6 July 1865, Page 6

HENRY DUNBAR.

By the Author of ' Aurora Floyd,' *' Lady Audley's Secret/ &c. } &c. {Continued from our last.}

CHAPTER XX. .

New Hopes may bloom. He was a very cheerful young man, and perhaps that cheerfulness was the greatest charm he possessed. He was a man in whom no force of fashion or companionship would ever engender the peevish blase-ness- so much affected by modern youth." Did he 'dance ? Of course he did) and he adored dancing. Did he sing? Well, he did his best, and had a fine volume of rich bass voice, that sounded remarkably well on the water, after a dinner at the Star and Garter, in that dim dewy hour, when the willow-shaded Thames is as a southern lake/ and ; the slow dip of the oars is in itself a kind of melody. Had he been much abroad ? Yes, and he gloried in the Continent ; the dear old inconvenient : • inns, and the extortionate land lords, and the insatiable commissionaires —lie revelled in the commissionaires ; and the dear drowsy slow trains, with an absurd guard, who talks an unintelligible •patois, and the other man, who always loses one's luggage ! Delicious ! And the deai v little peasant girls with white caps, who are so divinely pretty when you see them in the distance under a sunny meridian sky, and are so charming in colored chalk upon tinted paper, but such miracles of ugliness, comparatively speaking, when you behold them at close quarters. And the dear jingling diligences, with very little harness to speak jof, but any quantity of old rope; and the bad wines, and the dust, and the cathedrals, and the beggars, and the trente-et-quar-ant tables, and in short everything. Sir Philip Jocelyn spoke of the universe as a young husband talks of his wife. ; and was never tired of her beauty or impatient of her faults. The poor about Jocelyn's Bock idolised the' young lord of the soil. The poor like happy people, if there is nothing insolent in their happiness. Philip was rich, and he distributed his wealth right loyally : he was happy, and he shared his happiness as freely as he shared his wealth. |He would divide a case of choice Manillas with a bed-ridden pensioner in the Union, or carry -a bottle of the Jocelyn Madeira- — the celebrated Madeira with the .brown seal — in the packet of his shooting coat, to deliver it into the horny hands of some hard working mother who was burdened with a sick child. He would sit for an hour together telling an agricultural laborer of the queer farming he had seen abroad ; and he had stood godfather — by proxy — to half the yellow headed urchins within ten niiles radius ol Jocelyn's Rock. No taint of vice or dissipation had ever sullied the brightness of his pleasant lifo. No wretched country girl had ever cursed his ! name before she cast herself into the sullen water of a lonely mill scream. .People loved him ; and he deserved their love and was worthy of their respect. He had taken no high honors at Oxford; but the sternest officials smiled when they spoke of him, and recalled the boyish follies that were associated with his- name; a sickly bedmaker had been pensioned for life by him; and the tradesmen who had served him testified to his merits as a prompt and liberal paymaster. Ido not think that ia all his life Philip Joycelyn had ever, directly or indirectly, caused a pang of pain or sorrow to any human being, unless it was, indeed, to a churlish heir at law, who may have looked with a somewhat evil eye upon the young man's vigorous and healthful aspect, which -gave little hope to his possible successor. The heir at law would have knashed his teeth in impotent rage had he known the crisis which came' to pass in the baronet's life a short time after Mr Dunbar's return from India ; a crisis very common to youth and very lightly regarded by youth : but a solemn and fearful crisis notwithstanding:- . The master of Jocelyn's Rock fell in love. All the poetry of his nature, all the best feelings, the purest attributes of an imperfect; . character, concentrated themselves into one passion. Sir Philip Jocelyn fell in love. The arch magician waved liis wand, and all the universe "was transformed into fairy land : a lovely Paradise,

a modern Eden, radiant with the reflected light that it received from the lace of a woman. I almost hesitate to tell this old, old story., over again — this perpetual story of love at first sight. j It is very beautiful this sudden love,, which is born of one glance at the wonderful face that has been created to bewitch us : but I doubt if it is not, after all, the baser form of the g-reat passion. The love that begins with esteem, that sfowly grows out of our knowledge of the loved one, is surely the purer and holier type of tion. This love, whose gradual birth we rarely watch or recognise' — this love, that steals on us like the calm dawning of the eastern light, strikes to a deeper root and grows into a grander tree than that fair sudden growth, that marvellous far-shooting butterfly blossoming orchid, called love at first sight. The glorious exotic flower may be wanting, but the strong root lies deeply hidden in the heart. The man who loves at first sight generally falls in love with the violet blue of a pair of tender eyes, the. delicate outline of a Grecian nose. The' man who loves the woman he has known and watched, loves her becav.se he believes her to be the purest and truest of her sex. To this last, love is faith. He cannot doubt the woman he adores, for he adores her because he believes and has proved her to be above all doubt. We may fairly conjecture that Othello's passion for the simple Venetian damsel was love at first sight. He loved Desdemona because she was pretty, and looked at him with sweet maidenly glances of pity when he told those prosy stories of his — with-full. traveller's license, no doubt — over Brabantio's mahogany. The tawny visaged general loved the old man's daughter because he admired her, and not because he knew her ; and so, by and by, on the "strength of a few foul hints from, a'soonndrel, he is ready tp believe this gentle, pitiful girl the basest and most abandoned of women. • Hamlet would not so have acted, had it been his fate to marry the woman he loved. Depend upon it, the Danish Prince had watched Ophelia closely, and knew all the ins and outs of that young lady's temper, and had laid conversational traps, for her occasionally, I ' daresaj', trying to entice her into some bit of toadyism that should betray any latent taint of falsehood inherited from poor time serving* Polonius. The Prince of Denmark would have been rather a fidgety husband perhaps : but he would never have had recourse to a murderous bolster, at the instigation of a lowborn knave. Unhappily, some women are apt to prefer passionate, blustering^Othello to sentimental and' metaphysical Hamlet. The foolish creatures are carried away by noise and clamor, Jand moss believe him who protests the loudest. Philip Jocelyn and Laura Dunbar met atthat dinner party which the millionaire g-are to his friends in celebration of his return. They met again at the ball, where Laura waltzed with Philip; the young man had learned to waltz upoa the ether side of the Alps ; and Miss Dunbar preferred him to any other of her partners. At the fete champetre they met again ; and had their future lives revealed to them by a theatrical-looking* gipsy imported from London for the occasion, whose arch prophecies brought lovely blushes into Laura's cheeks, and afforded Philip an excellent opportunity for admiring- the effect of dark brown eyelashes . drooping over dark blue ej^es. They met again and again ; now at a steeple chase, now at a dinner party, where Laura appeared with some friendly chaperone ; and the baronet fell in love with the bankers beautiful daughter. He loved her truly and devotedly, after his own mad-headed fashion. He was a true Jocelyn — impetuous, mad-headed, daring ; and from the time of those festivities at Maudesley Abbey, he only creamed and thought of Laura Dunbar. From that hour he iiaunted the neighborhood of Maudesley Abbey. There was a bridle path through the park to a little village called Lisford ; and if that primitive Warwickshire village had been the most attractive place upon this earth, Sic Philip could scarcely have visited it oftener than he did. Heaven knows what charm he found in the shady slumberous old street, the low stone market place, with rusty iron gates surmounted bj the Jocelyn «*cutch*on. j

! The grass grew in the quiet quadrangle : ' the square church tower was half- hidden .by the sheltering" ivy : the gabled cottage roofs were lopsided with age. It was scarcely a place to offer any very great attraction to the lord of Jocelyn Rock in all the glory of his early manhood : and yet Philip Jocelyn went there three times a week upon an average, during the period that succeeded the bail and morning concert at Maudesley Abbey. The shortest way from Jocelyn's Rock to Lisford was by the high road : but Philip Jocelyn did not care to go by the shortest way. He preferred to. take that pleasant bridle path through Maudesley Park, -that delicious grassy arcade . where the overarciiing branches of the old elms made a shadowy twilight, only broken now arid then by sudden patches of yellow sunshine: where the feathery ferns trembled with every low whisper of the autumn breeze : where there -was a faint perfume of pine wood : where ever}' here and there between the lower branches of the trees, there was a blue glimmer of still waterpools, half hidden under flat green leaves of wild aquatic plants : where there was a solemn stillness, that reminded one of the hply quiet of a church : and where Sir Philip Jocetyn had every chance of meeting with Laura Dunbar. He met her there very often. Not alone, for Dora Mactnahon was sometimes with her, and the faithful Elizabeth Madden was always at hand to play propriety, and. to keep a sharp eye upon the interests of her young mistress. But then it happened unfortunately that the s faithful Elizabeth was very stout, and rather asthmatic; and though Miss Dunbar could noc have had a more devoted duenna, she might certainly have had a more active one. And it also happened that Miss Macmahon, having received several practical illustrations of the old adage with regard to the disadvantage of a party of three persons as compared to a party of two persons, fell into the habit of carrying her books with her, and would sit and read in some shady nook near the abbey, while Laura wandered into the wilder region oi the park. Beneath the shelter of the overarching elms, amidst the rustling of the trembling ferns, Laura Dunbar and Philip Jocelyn met very often during that bright autumnal weather. Their met 1 tings were purely accidental of course, as such meetings always are : but they were not the less pleasant because of their uncertainty. They were all the more pleasant, perhaps. There was that delicious fever of suspense which kept both young eager hearts in a constant glow. There were Laura's sudden blushes, which made her wonderful beauty doubly wonderful. There was Philip Jocelyn's start of glad astonishment, and. 'the bright sparkle in his dark brown eyes, as he saw the slender, queenly figure approaching him under the shadow of the trees. How beautiful she looked, with the folds of her dress trailingover the dewy grass, and a flickering halo of sunlight tremulous upon her diadem of golden hair! Sometimes she wore -a coquettish, little hat, with a. tritnmed-up. brim and a peacrck's plume : sometimes a broadleaved hat of yellow stravr, with floating ribbons and a bunch of feathery grasses perched bewitcbiugly upon the brim. , She had the dog Pluto with- her always, and generally a volume of some new novel under her arm. I am ashamed to be obliged to confess that this young heiress was very frivolous, and liked reading* nnyels better than improving her mind by the perusal ol grave histories, or by the study of tha natural sciences. She spent clay after day in happy idleness — reading, sketching, playing, singing : talking sometimes gaily, sometimes seriously, to her i' ithtul old nurse, or to Dora, or to Arthur Lovell, as the case might be. She had a thorough bred hoi'se that had been given to her bj her grandfather, but she very rarely rode him beyond the grounds ; for Dora Macmahon was no horsewoman, having been brought up by a prim aunt of her dead mother's who looked upon riding as an unfeminine accomplishment; and Miss Dunbar had therefore no better companion for her rides than a gray haired .old groom, who had ridden behind Percival Dunbar for forty years or so. Philip Jocelyn generally went to Lisford upon horseback ; but when, as so often happened, he met Miss Dunbar and her companion strolling' amongst the old elms, it was his habit to get off his horse, and to walk by Laura's side, leading th« animal ■by th» bridU. Sometimes he found the two

young- ladies sitting' on a camp-stool at the of one of the trees, sketching- of light and shadow in the deep glades around them. On such ocassions the baronet used to tie his horse to the lower branch of an old elm, and taking- his stand behind Miss Dunbar, would amuse himself by giving her a lesson in perspective, with occasional hints to Miss Macmahon, who, as the young man remarked, drew so much better than her sister, that she really required very little assistance. By and by this began to be an acknowledged thing. Special hours were appointed for these artistic studies : and Philip Jocelyn ceased to go to Lisford at all, contenting himself passing . almost every fine morning under the elms at Mftudesle)'-. He found that he had a very intelligent pupil in the banker's daughter : but I think, if Miss Dunbar had been less intelligent, her instructor would have had patience with her, and would have still found his best delight beneath the shadow of those dear old elms. What words can paint the equal pleasure of giving and receiving those lessons, in the art which was loved alike by pupil and .master : but which was so small an element in the happiness of those woodland meetings?. What words can describe Laura's pleading face when she found that the shadow of a ruined castle would not agree .with the castle itielf, or that a row of poplars in the distance insisted on taking that direction which our transatlantic brothers call < slantindicular ? ' And then the cutting of pencils, and crumbling of bre;id, and searching for mislaid scraps of India-rubber, and mixing of water-colors, and adjusting of pallettes on tha prettiest thumb m Christendom, or the planting a sheaf of brushes in the dearest little hand that ever trembled when it met. the tenderly timid touch of an amateur drawingmaster's fingers; — all these offices, so commonplace and wearisome when a hardworked and poorly-paid prpfessor performs them for thirty or forty clamorous girls/on a burning summer aiternoon, ia a great dust flavored school-room with bare curtitiuless windows, wer« in this case more delicious than any words of mine can tell. t But in September and October are autumnal months ; and their brightest sunshine is, after all, only a deceptive radiance when compared to the full glory of July. The weather grew too cold for the drawing-lessons under the elms, and there could be no more appointments made between Miss Dnabar and her enthusiastic instructor. ' I can't have my young lady ketch cold, Sir Philip, for all the prospectuses in the world,' s^id the faithful Elizabeth. 'I spoke to her par about it only the other day : bufc, lor' ! you may just as well speak to a post as to Mr Dunbar. If Miss Laura comes but in the park now, she must wrap herself up warm, and walk iast, and not go getting the cold shivers for the sake of drawing a parcel of stumps of trees, and such-like torn- foolery.' Mrs .Madden mad_e this observation in rather an, unpleasant tone of voice one morning- when die baronet pleaded for another drawing-lesson. The truth of the matter was that Elizabeth Madken felt some slight pangs of conscience with regard to her own part in this sudden friendship which had arisen^ between Laura Dunbar arid Philip Jocelyn. She felt that she had been rather remiss in her duties as duenna, and was angry with herself. But stronger than this feeling of self-reproach was her indignation against Sir Philip. I Why did he not immediately make an offer of his hand to Laura Dunbar ? Mrs. Madden had expected the young man's proposal every day for the last few weeks : every day she had been doomed to disappointment. And yet she was perfectly convinced that Philip Jocelyn loved her young mistress. The sharp eyes of the' matron had fathomed the young man's sentiments long before Laura Dunbar dared to whisper to herself that she was beloved. Why, then, did he not propose ? Who could be" a more fitting bride for the the Lord of Jocelyn's Rock than queenly Laura Dunbar, with her splendid dower of wealth and beauty ? Full of these ambitious hopes, Elizabeth Madden had played her part of duenna with such discretion as to gire the young people plenty of opportunity for sweet, half- whispered > converse,, for murniu ed confidences soft and low as the cooing of turtle-doves. But m all these conrersa-* tions no word hinting, at an offer of n*ar-

riage had dropped from the lips of Philip Jocelyn. He was so happy with Laura ; so happy in those pleasant meetings under the Maudesley elms, that no thought of qnything so commonplace as a stereotyped pjoposal. of marriage had a place in his mind. Did he lore her ? Of course he did ! more dearly than he had ever before loved any human creature ; except that tender and gentle being, whose image, vaguely "beautiful, was so intermingled with the dreams and realities of his childhood in that dim period in which it is difficult to distinguish the shadows of the night from the events of the day,— that pale, and lov v ly creature whom he had but just learned to call' mother,' when she faded out of his life for ever. . . It was only when the weather grew too cold for out-of-door drawing-lessons that Sir Philip began to think that it was tnne to contemplate the very serious business of a proposal. He would have to speak to the banker, and all that sort of thing, of course, the baronet thought as he gat by the fire in the oak-panelled breakfast-room at the Rock, pulling his thick moustaches reflectively, and staring at the red embers on the open hearth. The young man idolized Laura; but he. did not particularly affect the society of Henry Dunbar. The millionaire was very courteous, very conciliating : but there was something in his stiff; politeness, his studied smile, ;his deliberate speech, something entirely vague and indefinable, which had the same chilly effect on Sir Philip's friendliness, as a cold cellar has on delicate-flavored port. The subtle aroma vanished under that dismal influence. *He is her father, and I would kneel down, like the little boys in the streets, and clean his boots, if he required them cleaned, because he is her father,' thought the young man ; and yet somehow or other I can't get on with him.'. No f between the Anglo-Indian banker and Sir Philip Jocelyn there was no sympathy. They had no tastes in common : or let me ratfier say, Henry Dunbar revealed no taste in common with those of the young man whose highest hope in life was ta be"his son-in-law. The frank-hearted young country gentleman tried in vain to conciliate him, or to advance from the cold outwork of ceremonious acquaintanceship into the inner stronghold of friendly intercourse. But when Sir Philip, after much hesitation and deliberation, presented himself one morning in the banker's tapestried sittiu°"-<roora, and unburdened his heart to that gentleman— stoping every now and than to stare at the maker's name imprinted upon the lining of his hat, as if that name had been a magical symbol whence he drew certain auguries by which he governed his speech— Mr Dunbar was especially gracious. * Would he honour Sir Phiiip by intrusting his daughter's happiness to his keeping ? would he bestow upon Sir Philip the inestimable blessing of that dear hand ? why of course he would provided always that Laura wished it. In such a matter as this Laura's decision should be supreme. He never had contemplated interfering in his daughter's bestowal of her affections : so long as they were not wasted upon an unworthy object. He wished her to marry whom she pleased; provided that she married an honest man.' Mr Dunbar gave a weary kind of sigh as he said this ; but the sigh was habitual to him, and he apologised for and explained it sometimes by a reference to his liver, which jwras disordered by five-and--thirty years in an Indian climate. ' I wish Laura to marry/ he said ; ' I shall be glad when she has secured the protection of a good husband/ Sir Philip Jocelyn sprang up with his face all a-glow with rapture, and would fain have seized the banker's hand in token of his gratitude ; but Henry Dunbar waved him off with an authorative gesture. 1 Good morning, Sir Philip,' he said; I am very poor company, and I. shall be glad to be alone ."with the * Times.' - You don't appreciate the * Times/ Yon want your newspapers filled with prize-fighting and boat-racing, and the last gossip-from ' the Corner.' You'll find Miss Dunbar in the blue drawing-room. Speak to her as soon as you please; and let me know the result of. the interview/It is not often that the heiress of a million or thereabout is quite so readily disposed of. Sir Philip walked p* air as he quitted thi .banket* apartments;

* Who ever would have thought that he was such a delicious old brick V he thought. ' I expected any quantity of cold water; and instead of that, he sends me straight to my darling with carte blanche to go in and win, if I can. If I can! Suppose Laura doesn't love me after all. Suppose she's only a beautiful coquette, who likes see men go mad for love of her. And yet I won't think that; I won't be down hearted; I wont believe she's anything but what she seems — an an&ti of purity truth/ J J But in spite of his belief in Laura's truth the baronet's courage was very low when he went- into the blue drawing-room, and found Miss Dunbar seated in a deep embayed window, with the sunshine lighting up her hair and gleaming, amongst the folds of her violet silk dress. She had been drawing; but her sketching apparatus lay idle by her side, and one listless hand hnng 1 [down upou her dress with a pencil held loosely between the slender fingers. ' She was looking straight before her, out upon. the sun-lit lawn, x all gorgeous with the late autumn flaunting flowers ; and there was something dreamy, not to say pensive, in the attitude of her drooping head. But she started presently at the sound of that manly footstep ; the pencil dropped from between her fingers, and she rose and turned towards the intruder. The beautiful face was in shadow as she turned away from the window, but no shadow could hide its sudden brightness, the happy radience which lit up' that candid countenance, as Miss Dunbar recognised her visitor. The lover thought that one look more precious than Jocelyn's Rock, and a baronetcy that had dated from the days of England's first Stewarts— that one glorious smile, which melted away in a moment, and gave placeto bright "maidenly blushes fresh and beautiful as the dewy heart of an old-fashioned 'cabbage-rose gathered at sunrise. That one smile was enough. Philip Jocelyn was no coxcomb, but he knew all at once that he was beloved, and that very few words were needed. A great many were said, nevertheless; and I do nofc think two happier people ever sat side by side in the late autumn sunshine than those two, who lingered in the deep embayed window till the sun was low in the rosy western sky, and told Philip Jocelyn that his visit to . Maudesley Abbey had very much exceeded the limits of a morning call. Sir Philip Jocelyn was accspted. Early the nexc morning he * called again upon Mr. Dunbar, and begged that an early date might be chosen for the wedding. The banker assented willingly enough to the proposition. * Let the marriage take pla,ce in the first week in November,' he said. 'I am tired of living at Maudesley, and I want to get away to the Continent. Of course I must remain here to attend my daughter's wedding/ Philip Jocelyn was only too glad to receive permission to hurry the date of the ceremonial. .He went at once to Laura and told her what Mr. Dunbar had said. Mrs. Madden was indignant at this unceremonious manner of arranging the matter. ' Where's my young lady's trussanr to be got at a moment's notice, I should like to know ? A deal you gentlemen know about such things. It's no use talking my lord, there ain't a dressmaker livin' as would undertake the wed ding -clothes for a baronet's lady in little better than a month. But Mrs. Maddens objections were speedily overruled. To tell the truth, the honest-hearted creature was very much pleased to find that her young lady was going to be a baronet's wife after all. She forgot all about hex* old favourite, Arthur Lovel.l, and set herself to work to expedite that most important matter of the wedding-garments. A man came down express from Howell and James's to Maudesley Abbey, with a bundle of patn terns, and silks and velvets, gauzes and laces, and almost e*ery costly fabric that was made, were ordered for Miss Dunbar's equipment. West-end dressmakers were communicated with. A French milliner, who looked like a lady of fashion, arrived one morning at Maudesley Abbey, and for a couple of hours poor Laura had to endure the slow agony of ' trying : on ;' while Mrs. Madden and Dora Macmahon discussed all the colors in the rainbow,

and a great many new shades and combinations of colors invented b_v_ aspiring French chemists.

CHAPTER XXI.

A 3STew Life. For the first time in her life, Margaret Wilmot knew what it was to have friends, real and earnest friends, who interested themselves in her welfare, and were bent upon securing her happiness ; and I must admit that in this particular case there was something* more than friendship — something' holier and higher than friendship — the pure and unselfish love of an honorable man. v Clement Austin, the cashier at Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby'b Anglo-Indian banking-house, had fallen in love with the modest hazel-^eyed music-mistress, and had set himself to work to watch her, and to find out all about her, long before he was conscious of the real nature of his feelings. He- had begun by pitying her. He had pitied her because of her hard life, her loneliness, her beauty, which without doubt exposed her to many dangers that would have been spared to a plain woman. Now, when a man allows himself to pity a very pretty girl, he places himself on a moral tight-ropo; and he must be a moral Blondin if he expects to walk with any safety upon the narrow line which alone divides him from the great abyss called love. There are not many Blondins, either physical or intellectual : and the consequence is that nine out of ten of the gentlemen who place themselves in this perilous position find the narrow line very slippery, and before they have gone twenty paces plunge overboard plump to the very bottom of the abyss, and are over head ancl ears in love before they know where they are. Clement Austin fell in love with Margai'et Wilmot ; and his tender regard, his respectful devotion, were very new and sweet to the lonely girl. It would have been vory strange, then, under such circumstances, if his love had been hopeless. He was in no very great hurry to declare himself for he had a powerful ally in his mother, who adored her son, and would have allowed him to bring home a young negress, or a North- American squaw, to the maternal hearth, if she thought such a bride had besn necessary to his happiness. Mrs. Austin very speedily discovered her son's secret, for he had taken little pains to conceal his feelings from the indulgent mother who had been his confidante ever since his first boyish loves at Clapham seminary, within whose sacred walls he had been admitted on Tuesdays and Friday evening?, to learn dancing in the delightful society of five-and-thirty young ladies. Mrs. Austin confessed that sha would rather her son had chosen some damsel who could lay claim to greatar worldly advantages than those possessed by the young music-mistress ; but when Clement looked disappointed the good soul's heart melted all in a moment, and she declared that if Margaret was only as good as she was pretty, and truly attached to her dear noble-hearsed boy, she (Mrs. Austin) would ask no mere. It happened fortunately that she knew nothing of Joseph Wilmot's antecedents, or of tije letter addressed to Norfolk Island, or perhaps she might have made very strong objections to a match between her son and a young lady whose father had spent a considerable part of his life in a penal settlement. ' We will tell my mother nothing of the past, Miss Wilmot,' Clement Austin said, ' except that which concerns yourself alone. Let the history of your unhappy father's life remain a secret between you and me. My mother is very fond of you ; I should | be sorry, therefore, that she should hear anything to shock her prejudices. I wish her to love you better and better every day.' Clement Austin had his wish, for the kind-hearted widow grew every day more and more attached to Margaret Wilmot. She discovered that the girl had a more than ordinary talent for music, and she proposed that Margaret should takß, a prettily furnished first floor in a pleasantlcoking detached house, half cottage half

villa, at Clapham, and at once set to work as a teacher of the piano. 1 I can get you plenty of pupils, my dear,' Mrs. Austin said ; ' for I have lived here more than thirty years — ever since Clement's birth, in fact— -and I know almost everybody in the neighbourhood. You have only to teach upon moderate terms, and the people will be glad to send their children to you. I shall give a little evening- party, on purpose that my friends may hear you play.' So Mrs. Austin gave her evening party, and Margaret appeared in a simple black-silk-dress that had been in her wardrobe for a long* time, and which would have seemed very shabby in the glaring light of day. The wearer of it looked very pretty and elegaut, however, by the light of Mrs. Austin's wax-candles, and the aristocracy ■ of Clnpham remarked that the * young person' whom Mrs. Austin and her son had ' taken up' was really rather nicelooking. Bnt when Margaret played and sang, people were charmed in spite of themselves. She had a superb contralto voice, rich, deep, and melodious, and she played with brilliancy, and what is much rarer, with expression. Mrs. Austin, going- backwards and forwards among her guests to ascertain the current of opinions, found that her protegee's success was an accomplished fact before the evening* was over. Margaret took the new apartments in. the course of the week, and before a fortnight had passed she had secured more than a dozen pupils, who gave her ample employment for her time, and who enabled her to earn more than enough for her simple wants. Ever}'- Sunday she dined with Mrs. Austin. Clement had persuaded his mother to make this arrangement a settled thingy although, as yet he had said nothing of his growing- love for Margaret. v Those Sundays- were pleasant days to Clement and the girl he hoped to win for his wife. The comfortable elegance of Mrs. Austin's drawing-room, the peaceful quiet of the Sabbath-evening, when the curtains were drawn before the bay-window, and the shaded lamp brought into the room j the intellectual -conversation, the pleasant talk about new books and music, all were delightful to Margaret. This was her first experience of a homey a real home, in which there was nothingbut union and content ; no overshadowing fear, no horrible unspoken dread, no halfguessed secrets always gnawing at the heart. But in all this new comfort Margaret Wilm'ot had not forgotten Henry I) unbar. She had not ceased ta believe him guilty of her father's murder. Calm •and gentle in her outward demeanour, she kept her secret buried in her breast, and asked for no sympathy. Clement-Austin had given her* his best . attention, his best advice, but it amounted to nothing. The different scraps of evidence that hinted at Henry Dunbar's guilt were not strong enough to condemn him. The cashier communicated with the detective police, who had been watching the case; but they only shook their heads gravely, and dismissed him with their thanks for his information. There was nothing in what he had to tell them that could implicate Mr. Dunbar. 'A gentleman with a million of money doesn't put himself in the power of the hangman unless he's very hard pushed,' said the detective. ' The motive's what you must always look to in all these kind 'of cases, sir. . Now, where is Mr. Dunbar's motive for murdering this man, Wilmot f 1 The secret that Joseph Wilmot possessed -' * Bah, my dear sir ! Henry Dunbar could afford to buy all the secrets that ever were kept. Secrets are like erery other sort of article, they're only kept to sell Good morning.' - After this, Clement Austin told Margaret that he could be of no use to her. The dead man must rest in his grave: there was little hope that the mystery of his fate would ever be fathomed by human intelligence. :■"_•■ 0 , But Margaret Wilmot did; Anot -cease to remember Mr. Henry Dunbar, 'She only waited. '■ i ~.-'-i:-vl (JTo be continued )