curiously enough, was born not twenty miles from Endlestone." "I've heard say, many a time, that Canada isn't exactly America." "It is America, certainly, Barnes; but it is not part of the United States, any more than France is part of Russia. America is a big place, it's more than half the world, and there are all sorts of peoples in it, and different races, and opposing religions, and every kind of climate, from the frozen regions where Sir John Franklin and his company perished, to the tropical heat that only the natives can endure." "Yes, ma'am, I know! Me and my old woman got a map book when you went away, just to see where you really were, for at first it was all one to us as if you'd gone to the moon! And the schoolmaster at Endleside, he explained things to us, and we got to know a lot. If I was a young man, I'd go in for learning-I would! Oh! to read about them American rivers, and them lakes, and the big trees in California, and the dark cold winter in the Fur-country, and the plantations in Carolina, and the fever at New Orleans, and the gold mines of Peru, and the miles and miles of railway everywhere, and the volcanoes, and the earthquakes, and the swamps, and the prairies, and our choicest hothouse flowers and fruits growing wild in the woods and hedges out-of-doors-it's stu-pendious-that's what it is, and nothing less, ma'am !" "You seem to have been reading quite extensively this winter, Barnes! We must come to you for information, I see, when we are at fault; that's clear." "No, no, ma'am; it's only just the bare outside of things that I know; the skimmings of American geography, I call it. But I got interested, and the more I knew the more I wanted to know; and I told Mrs. Arnison, and she lent me some delightful books, and some large maps, and explained all about latitude and longitude, which I couldn't exactly make out from the schoolmaster's explanation; I'm not sure he rightly understood himself. I wish I'd had the luck to go with you; I want now to see America with my own eyes-a little piece of it, that is. I wouldn't have grumbled like that silly Barker, who can't see a speck of good out of her own country, or, for the matter of that, in anybody but herself! If Mr. Rivers should ever want a little business done for him in Canada, or in New York, I'm his man." And so the new order of things was quietly established at the Grey House, and Mr. Rivers became the popular man of the neighbourhood. Hilda and he got on together delightfully; she willingly accepted him as a relation, and very soon found herself talking confidentially to him about her past and present life, and upon many subjects, national, social, political, and theological. "Walter will be charmed with him," she said one day to Mrs. Dorothy. "I know they will be great friends. William has just the keen, practical mind and the bright, genial temperament that he so much admires; and William cannot fail to be charmed with Walter." "I'll tell thee what, Niece Hilda, thou didst a fine stroke of business for thyself, while I was away in Canada! All sorts of things seem to have happened while I was absent. Dost thou guess, I was a little afraid thou mightest set thyself against William as an interloper ? " "You know, I thought, before I saw him, that he was only a great boy-such another as Theodore Arnison, perhaps, but certainly not a man grown. Most certainly not such a man as he turns out to be-so good, so pleasant, so superior in every way." "If thou hadst not been already engaged, I think I should have been tempted to try my hand at a little matchmaking. Thou and he would have made a fine couple, and reigned happily at the Grey House when I was laid low." "It is a good thing, then, that I am engaged, Auntie Dorothy, for I think match-making never prospers." "The truth is," said Mrs. Dorothy, rubbing her nose, "that I was, for awhile, not quite easy in my mind. I have never said I would leave the Grey House and its lands to thee-indeed, I had always led thee to believe to the contrary. But still, I felt that thou hadst a claim, and a strong one; for thou art of my own blood, and we Capels have always held that blood is thicker than water,' as the old Scotch proverb puts it. And I had found out that thou wast a good girl, and would do justice to a fair inheritance. So when I had said that William should be my heir, I felt pricked in my conscience, and I wished that he should be benefited, and thou none the worse ; and it came into my head that you two might become man and wife, and so set all quite straight. Then came news of thy engagement to Walter Braden, and I said to myself, 'What is done is done, and all is for the best, Dorothy Capel!' As lady of Bradenshope and Arnheim, thou wouldst have all that heart could wish; but should this wretched little Paolo and his mother make good their claim, thou wilt be-a comparatively poor man's wife." "Dear aunt, do not trouble about that. We shall not be really poor, only comparatively so; but for Walter's sake and his parents-for they naturally dislike the idea of an Italian heir-and that I do love Arnheim, I should not care a jot. Luckily for me, I loved the man and not the heir, and so I am content. Why, auntie! I would marry Walter, and think myself happy, if we had to work for mere bread and cheese, and a bare, decent shelter." "Bless thee, child, thou art quite right; thou art a true woman in spite of thy worldly bringing-up. That is the only right union between man and woman, the one sacred union which God approves. My life has been a tangled skein, Hilda, and now it has run out smooth, and I understand much which, till very recently, was a vexatious puzzle. Let me speak to thee freely, child-the same sentiments and a strong fellow-feeling bring rich and poor, old and young, gentle and simple, together. I will tell thee-I did not own it to myself-I believe I may say I did not know it—but I had a grudge against thee! Yes, I had; I am sure of it now. Forgive me, Hilda! I tried to do my duty by thee, but I could not love thee as my own, because thou wast thy father's daughter-and thy father had been my cruel, relentless foe. He had sundered me and the love of my life; he had taken from me my heart's treasure; he had made me a solitary woman; he had stepped into my paradise, and been there as the deadly, fabled upas-tree. And I looked at thee, and thou wast his very flesh and blood !-and I could not take thee to my bosom, and be to thee all I might have been." "I do not wonder! I know now all that my father did. Aunt, I think you did your duty bravely; I wonder, though, if I should have been as good? It makes all the difference when one knows what true love is-and I do know now, thank God.” "My dear, all is forgiven now. It came right at last, you see. It was God's will that I should live a solitary life, that I should never know the bliss of wedded love nor the delight of children at my knee. But in His great mercy He gave me the sweetness of those last days; and how sweet they were only I, and he who is gone, and the dear Lord Himself, can ever know! And all was explained, my dear; heart to heart was laid bare, as before God; and though earthly union was impossible, our souls became one; we married each other for ever and ever, our hands stretched across the grave. And he is gone before, and in a little while I shall go to him. And, Hilda, I am very happy." "I am so glad. I think you must have felt like 'Evangeline."" "That I did! I had not been seeking my lover all those years as she did, but my heart had never ceased yearning over him, and I thought, especially as I grew older, that if I could but see his face, and clasp his hand once, only in friendship, only for the old love's sake, I should be content-ay, more than content-to die. And when at last we met and greater blessings than Evangeline's were ours, for we spent days and weeks together in full and perfect communion of heart and soul-I could only repeat her words, 'Father, I thank Thee.' So now all repining has vanished, every harsh feeling has died away. But I must just say this-though William will be lord of the manor of High Endlestone when I am gone, just as if his father had been my own son, there will be something left for you; for Mr. Rivers, whom I thought so poor, was, after all, tolerably wealthy. And William brings over with him to this country a very handsome fortune of his own. He will for the future be at all expenses for the estate; his money, not mine, will be invested in the farming processes, and what I can save, and all that I have laid by already a nice little sum, my dear!-shall be yours." "That is very, very good of you, auntie; but I hope it will be many years before there is any question of inheritance. And if Walter's rights are sustained, we shall not want anything; and the money and the land had better go together." "Well, child! that will be as things turn out. And if Paul Braden were not dead and buried, I should scarcely find any terms too severe in which to stigmatise his unworthy conduct. Oh dear! Oh dear! It is enough to make one tremble to think how our evil deeds live after us, and bear bitter fruit when we are dust and ashes." CHAPTER XLIV. GIACINTA. "She was Italy's daughter, I NEED scarcely say that Hilda heard regularly from Walter, reporting such progress as had been achieved-a progress which scarcely deserved the name, inasmuch as it was only just one remove from standing still, and sometimes hardly that. Mr. Warwick had at first received the news with amazement and incredulity; he had almost pooh-poohed it, and pronounced it a bare-faced conspiracy of the women with whom the late Mr. Braden had been so unfortunate as to entangle himself. It was so easy to assume a foreign marriage, and bring forward a child of the proper age, and the Bradenshope estates were well worth intriguing for! And it was not at all impossible that it was a plot of the priests, who would be delighted to secure a Roman Catholic heir for the succession! This was a new light to Sir Paul, but he was not much inclined to dwell upon it. His own convictions lay in the same |