dear fellow, you ought to be in bed yourself. It's no use taking on about the poor little kid: you couldn't help it. Go home to your wife, and tell her she's got you to nurse; and if she's in any fix, tell her to come to me."

Tom went home, but did not give his wife the message. She lay all but insensible, never asked for anything, or refused anything that was offered her, never said a word about her baby, or about Tom, or seemed to be more than when she lay in her mother's lap. Her baby was buried, and she knew nothing of it. Not until nine days were over did she begin to revive.

For the first few days, Tom, moved with undefined remorse, tried to take a part in nursing her. She took things from him as she did from the landlady, without heed or recognition. Just once, opening suddenly her eyes wide upon him, she uttered a feeble wail of “Baby!” and, turning her head, did not look at him again. Then first Tom's conscience gave him a sharp sting.

He was far from well. The careless and in many respects dissolute life he had been leading, had more than begun to tell on a constitution by no means strong, but he had never become aware of his weakness, nor had ever felt really ill until now.

But that sting, although the first sharp one, was not his first warning of a waking conscience. Ever since he took his place at his wife's bedside, he had been fighting off the conviction that he was a brute. He would not, he could not believe it. What! Tom Helmer, the fine, indubitable fellow! such as he had always known himself! he to cower before his own consciousness as a man unworthy, and greatly to be despised! Then chaos was come again! And verily chaos was there, but not by any means newly come. And moreover, when chaos

begins to be conscious of itself, then is the dawn of an ordered world at hand. Nay, the creation of it is already begun, and the pangs of the waking conscience are the prophecy of the new birth.

With that pitiful cry of his wife after her lost child, disbelief in himself got within the lines of his defence; he could do no more, and began to loathe that conscious self which had hitherto been his pride. 1

Whatever the effect of illness may be upon the temper of some, it is most certainly an ally of the conscience. All pains, indeed, and all sorrows, all demons, yea, and all sins themselves, under the suffering care of the highest minister, are but the ministers of truth and righteousness. I never came to know the condition of such as seemed exceptionally afflicted, but I seemed to see reason for their affliction, either in exceptional faultiness of character, or the greatness of the good it was doing them.

But conscience reacts on the body-for sickness until it is obeyed, for health thereafter. The moment conscience spoke thus plainly to Tom, the little that was left of his physical endurance gave way, his illness got the upper hand, and he took to his bed-all he could have for bed, that is—namely, the sofa in the sittingroom, widened out with chairs, and a mattress over all. There he lay, and their landlady had enough to do. Not that either of her patients was exacting; they were both too ill and miserable for that. It is the self-pitiful, self-coddling invalid that is exacting. Such, I suspect, require something sharper still.

Tom groaned and tossed, and cursed himself, and soon passed into delirium. Straightway his visions, animate with shame and confusion of soul, were more distressing than even his ready tongue could have told.

Dead babies and ghastly women pursued him everywhere. His fever increased. The cries of terror and dismay that he uttered, reached the ears of his wife, and were the first thing that roused her from her lethargy. She rose from her bed, and, just able to crawl, began to do what she could for him. If she could but get near enough to him, the husband would. yet be dearer than any child. She had him carried to the bed, and thereafter took on the sofa what rest there was for her. To and fro between bed and sofa she crept, let the landlady say what she might, gave him all the food he could be got to take, cooled his burning hands and head, and cried over him because she could not take him on her lap like the baby that was gone. Once or twice, in a quieter interval, he looked at her pitifully, and seemed about to speak; but the backsurging fever carried far away the word of love for which she listened so eagerly. The doctor came daily, but Tom grew worse, and Letty could not get well.

CHAPTER XIII.

GODFREY AND SEPIA.

WHEN the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at Durnmelling, in the expectation of joining them in London within a fortnight at latest. The illness of Mr. Redmain, however, caused her stay to be prolonged, and she was worn out with ennui. The self she was so careful over, was not by any means good company: not seldom during her life had she found herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of suicide or repentance. This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would even,

occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine, go for a solitary walk-a thing, I need not say, she hated in itself, though now it was her forlorn hope, in the poor possibility of falling in with some distraction. But the hope was not altogether a vague one; for was there not a man somewhere underneath those chimneys she saw over the roof of the laundry? She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she had often talked about him, and often watched him ride-never man more to her mind. In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the haha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of a neighbour whom the family did not visit. To no such folly would Sepia be a victim.

The analysis of such a nature as hers, with her story to set it forth, would require a book to itself, and I must happily content myself with but a fact here and there in her history.

In one of her rambles on his ground she had her desire, and met Godfrey Wardour. He lifted his hat, and she stopped and addressed him by way of apology.

"I am afraid you think me very rude, Mr. Wardour," she said. "I know I am trespassing, but this field of yours is higher than the ground about Durnmelling, and seems to take pounds off the weight of the atmosphere."

For all he had gone through, Godfrey was not yet less than courteous to ladies. He assured Miss Yolland that Thornwick was as much at her service as if it were a part of Durnmelling.

"Though indeed," he added with a smile, "it would be more correct to say, 'as if Durnmelling were a part of Thornwick'-for that was the real state of the case once upon a time."

The statement interested, or seemed to interest Miss Yolland, giving rise to many questions; and a long con

versation ensued. Suddenly she woke, or seemed to wake to the consciousness that she had forgotten herself and the proprieties together: hastily, and to all appearance with some confusion, she wished him a good morning; but she was not too much confused to thank him again for the permission he had given her to walk on his ground.

It was not by any intention on the part of Godfrey that they met several times after this; but they always had a little conversation before they parted; nor did Sepia find any difficulty in getting him sufficiently within their range, to make him feel the power of her eyes. She was too prudent, however, to bring to bear upon any man all at once the full play of her mesmeric battery; and things had got no farther when she went to London

a week or two before the return of the Redmains, ostensibly to get things in some special readiness for Hesper; but that this may have been a pretence appears possible from the fact that Mary came from Cornwall on the same mission a few days later.

I have just mentioned an acquaintance of Sepia's, who attracted the notice, and roused the peculiar interest of Mr. Redmain, because of a look he saw pass betwixt them. This man spoke both English and French with a foreign accent, and gave himself out as a Georgian— Count Galofta, he called himself: I believe he was a prince in Paris. At this time he was in London, and during the ten days that Sepia was alone, came to see her several times-called early in the forenoon first, the next day in the evening, when they went together to the opera, and once came and stayed late. Whether from her dark complexion making her look older than she was, or from the subduing air which her experience had given her, or merely from the fact that she belonged to