"He's pretty, isn't he? It was after-you know what-Bob took up suddenly with a girl in the village, and though we never knew it until she was dead (she died last October) he was married to her, and Arty is his heir. Bob dotes on him, and my mother too; she insisted on having him brought home to the Grange, and if ever you go to our church again you'll see 'Alice, the faithful wife of Robert Livingstone' on the family monument. She was quite a common person, and Bob would never have acknowledged her in my mother's lifetime; but there's the story, and not so bad as it might have been. She was handsome, and she loved Bob, or she would never have borne being looked down on as she was for his sake, or have kept his secret. However, it is out now, and she is gone

Hasn't Arty eaten sweeties enough for once ?" insinuated Polly, caressing the child, but making no response to Maggie.

"Yes: give the box to aunty to put in her pocket," Maggie said, and Arty with a little unwillingness yielded it up.

Then the spring coats were looked at, and one chosen, and a garden hat, and Arty was put to sleep for an hour on Miss Wiggins's bed, while Polly and her friend took a walk by the river, and continued their conversation. All the news was on Maggie's side. Polly had none-literally none.

"And you never will have any while you go on living to yourself your interests will lessen every day you live. Oh! Polly, it makes me sad to look at you, and to think what might have been," said Maggie, tenderly.

"Never mind! Let bygones be bygones;" said Polly, but there were tears in her eyes, and almost a sob in her throat.

Then they discussed Fanny and Laura and Maggie's private concerns which were in a promising way, and the time went so swiftly that they were five minutes behind the hour agreed on for Bob to take his sister and little son up at Miss Wiggins's shop to go home. The dog-cart, however, was not at the door, and Maggie said she was glad, for Bob did not like the mare to be kept standing. They ascended to the show-room to wait, and he was not long in coming; he was too soon, indeed, for half they had to say. At the sound of the wheels in the street, Polly offered herself for a last hug of her friend's kind arms, and Maggie was all in tears.

for a minute ?" said she, and Polly suffered her"You'll come down and speak to Bob, just self to be entreated, and went with all her heart in her face.

It is a calm life at the Warden House," said she, quite with a shaken voice. "And so you are going all the way to Ger. many-going by yourself?"

"Yes." She had to stand aside for Maggie and the child to reach their places, and from the step of Miss Wiggins's shop she waved them all her good-byes. She was still standing gazing after them when Bob looked round before turning the corner of the street, and told Maggie to dry her eyes and not fret.

"I can't help fretting when I think I shall perhaps never, never see her again; dear little thing that she is! Oh! Bob, if you had only waited to ask her till now that she's come to a right sense of things."

Bob made no answer to his sister's rueful adjuration; he was lost in thought of Polly's beauty and Polly's sweetness, as they were once and were still, and wondering whether she would have anything to do with him now. Perhaps you can guess how it all ended, and I need tell you no more.

Yes. Bob asked Polly again, and Polly gave him a prettier answer this time. Mrs. Curtis cried at the wedding, and foreboded many evils, but they have not befallen yet. While waiting for them, she is, however, blessed in a standing grievance-namely, that Polly's one boy, is not the eldest son, and will not inherit the Livingstone Manor. But she is not aware that she is herself to blame for this, her pet mortification, and Polly is not likely to tell her.

FAREWELL SERIES OF READINGS

time.

All communications to be addressed to MESSES.

I think."

On the 12th instant was published, bound in cloth, price 5s. 6d.

THE NINETEENTH VOLUME.

THE MOONSTONE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," &c. &c.

SECOND PERIOD. THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH. (1848-1849.)

THIRD NARRATIVE.

THE NARRATIVE OF FRANKLIN BLAKE.

CHAPTER IX.

THE doctor's pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street-door open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning light fell full on the face of Mr. Candy's assistant when I turned, and looked at him.

It was impossible to dispute Betteredge's assertion that the appearance of Ezra Jennings, speaking from the popular point of view, was against him. His gipsy complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old and young both together-were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger's mind. And yet-feeling this as I certainly did-it is not to be denied that Ezra Jennings made some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible to resist. While my knowledge of the world warned me to answer the question which he had put, by acknowledging that I did indeed find Mr. Candy sadly changed, and then to proceed on my way out of the house-my interest in Ezra Jennings held me rooted to the place, and gave him the opportunity of speaking to me in private about his employer, for which he had been evidently on the watch.

65 Are

you walking my way, Mr. Jennings ?" I said, observing that he held his hat in his hand. "I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite."

Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was walking my way.

We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl who was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning on my way out-received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings, relating to the time at which he might be expected to return, with pursed-up lips, and with eyes which ostentatiously looked anywhere rather than look in his

[PRICE 2d.

face. The poor wretch was evidently no favourite in the house. Out of the house, I had Betteredge's word for it that he was unpopular everywhere. "What a life!" I thought to myself, as we descended the doctor's doorsteps.

Having already referred to Mr. Candy's illness on his side, Ezra Jennings now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the sub

ject. His silence said significantly, "It's your turn now." I, too, had my reasons for referring to the doctor's illness; and I readily accepted the responsibility of speaking first.

"Judging by the change I see in him," I began, "Mr. Candy's illness must have been far more serious than I had supposed?"

"Yes."

It

"His memory of events, at that past time, is hopelessly enfeebled," said Ezra Jennings. is almost to be deplored, poor fellow, that even the wreck of it remains. While he remembers, dimly, plans that he formed-things, here and there, that he had to say or do, before his illness-he is perfectly incapable of recalling what the plans were, or what the thing was that he had to say or do. He is painfully conscious of his own deficiency, and painfully anxious, as you must have seen, to hide it from observation. If he could only have recovered, in a complete state of oblivion as to the past, he would have been a happier man. Perhaps we should all be happier," he added, with a sad smile, "if we could but completely forget!"

"There are some events surely in all men's lives," I replied, "the memory of which they would be unwilling entirely to lose ?"

"That is, I hope, to be said of most men, Mr. Blake. I am afraid it cannot truly be said of all. Have you any reason to suppose that the lost remembrance which Mr. Candy tried to recover-while you were speaking to him just now-was a remembrance which it was important to you that he should recal ?"

In saying those words, he had touched, of his own accord, on the very point upon which I

VOL. XX.

480

was anxious to consult him. The interest I felt in this strange man had impelled me, in the first instance, to give him the opportunity of speaking to me; reserving what I might have to say, on my side, in relation to his employer, until I was first satisfied that he was a person in whose delicacy and discretion I could trust. The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture to describe as the unsought self-possession, which is a sure sign of good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere else in the civilised world. Whatever the object which he had in view, in putting the question that he had just addressed to me, I felt no doubt that I was justified- -so far-in answering him without reserve.

"I believe I have a strong interest," I said, "in tracing the lost remembrance which Mr. Candy was unable to recal. May I ask whether you can suggest to me any method by which I might assist his memory ?"

Ezra Jennings looked at me, with a sudden flash of interest in his dreamy brown eyes.

"Mr. Candy's memory is beyond the reach of assistance," he said. "I have tried to help it often enough, since his recovery, to be able to speak positively on that point.'

This disappointed me; and I owned it. "I confess you led me to hope for a less discouraging answer than that," I said.

Ezra Jennings smiled. "It may not, perhaps, be a final answer, Mr. Blake. It may be possible to trace Mr. Candy's lost recollection, without the necessity of appealing to Mr. Candy himself."

"Indeed? Is it an indiscretion, on my part, to ask-how ?"

"By no means. My only difficulty in answering your question, is the difficulty of explaining myself. May I trust to your patience, if I refer once more to Mr. Candy's illness; and if I speak of it this time, without sparing you certain professional details ?"

"Pray go on! You have interested me already in hearing the details."

My eagerness seemed to amuse-perhaps, I might rather say, to please him. He smiled again. We had by this time left the last houses in the town behind us. Ezra Jennings stopped for a moment, and picked some wild flowers from the hedge by the roadside. "How beautiful they are!" he said, simply, showing his little nosegay to me. "And how few people in England seem to admire them as they de

serve!"

"You have not always been in England ?" I said.

"No. I was born, and partly brought up, in one of our colonies. My father was an Englishman; but my mother- -We are straying away from our subject, Mr. Blake; and it is my fault. The truth is, I have associations with these modest little hedgeside flowers-It doesn't matter; we were speaking of Mr. Candy. To Mr. Candy let us return."

Connecting the few words about himself which

thus reluctantly escaped him, with the melancholy view of life which led him to place the conditions of human happiness in complete oblivion of the past, I felt satisfied that the story which I had read in his face was, in two particulars at least, the story that it really told. He had suffered as few men suffer; and there was the mixture of some foreign race in his English blood.

"You have heard, I dare say, of the original cause of Mr. Candy's illness ?" he resumed. "The night of Lady Verinder's dinner-party was a night of heavy rain. My employer drove home through it in his gig, and reached the house, wetted to the skin. He found an urgent message from a patient, waiting for him; and he most unfortunately went at once to visit the sick person, without stopping to change his clothes. I was myself professionally detained, that night, by a case at some distance from Frizinghall. When I got back the next morning, I found Mr. Candy's groom waiting in great alarm to take me to his master's room. By that time the mischief was done; the illness had set in."

"The illness has only been described to me, in general terms, as a fever," I said.

"I can add nothing which will make the description more accurate," answered Ezra Jennings. "From first to last, the fever assumed no specific form. I sent at once to two of Mr. Candy's medical friends in the town, both physicians, to come and give me their opinion of the case. They agreed with me that it looked serious; but they both strongly dissented from the view I took of the treatment. We differed entirely in the conclusions which we drew from the patient's pulse. The two doctors, arguing from the rapidity of the beat, declared that a lowering treatment was the only treatment to be adopted. On my side, I admitted the rapidity of the pulse, but I also pointed to its alarming feebleness as indicating an exhausted condition of the system, and as showing a plain necessity for the administration of stimulants. The two doctors were for keeping him on gruel, lemonade, barley water, and so on. I was for giving him champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine. A serious difference of opinion, as you see! a difference between two physicians of established local repute, and a stranger who was only an assistant in the house. For the first few days, I had no choice but to give way to my elders and betters; the patient steadily sinking all the time. I made a second attempt to appeal to the plain, undeniably plain, evidence of the pulse. Its rapidity was unchecked, and its feebleness had increased. The two doctors took offence at my obstinacy. They said, 'Mr. Jennings, either we manage this case, or you manage it. Which is it to be? I said, 'Gentlemen, give me five minutes to consider, and that plain question shall have a plain reply. When the time had expired, I was ready with my answer. I said, 'You positively refuse to try the stimu lant treatment?' They refused in so many

ther, I found the superior faculty of thinking going on, more or less connectedly, in my patient's mind, while the inferior faculty of expression was in a state of almost complete incapacity and confusion."

One word!" I interposed, eagerly. "Did my name occur in any of his wanderings ?" "You shall hear, Mr. Blake. Among my written proofs of the assertion which I have just advanced-or, I ought to say, among the written experiments, tending to put my assertion to the proof-there is one, in which your name occurs. For nearly the whole of one night, Mr. Candy's mind was occupied with something between himself and you." I have got the broken words, as they dropped from his lips, on one sheet of paper. And I have got the links of my own discovering which connect those words together, on another sheet of paper. The product (as the arithmeticians would say) is an intelligible statement-first, of something actually done in the past; secondly, of something which Mr. Candy contemplated doing in the future, if his illness had not got in the way, and stopped him. The question is whether this does, or does not, represent the lost recollection which he vainly attempted to find when you called on him this morning?"

"Not a doubt of it!" I answered.

"Let us

go back directly, and look at the papers!" "Quite impossible, Mr. Blake." "Why?"

"Put yourself in my position for a moment," said Ezra Jennings. Would you disclose to another person what had dropped unconsciously from the lips of your suffering patient and your helpless friend, without first knowing that there was a necessity to justify you in opening your lips p

I felt that he was unanswerable, bere; but I tried to argue the question, nevertheless.

"My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe," I replied, " would depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature to compromise my friend, or not."

"I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the question, long since," said Ezra Jennings. "Wherever my notes included anything which Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes have been destroyed. My manuscript-experiments at my friend's bedside, include nothing, now, which he would have hesitated to communicate to others, if he had recovered the use of his memory. In your case, I have even reason to suppose that my notes contain something which he actually wished to say to you—”

"And yet, you hesitate ?"

"And yet, I hesitate. Remember the circumstances, under which I obtained the information which I possess! Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that there is a reason for doing so. He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and he was so helplessly dependent upon Me! Is it too much to ask, if I request you only to

hint to me what your interest is in the lost recollection-or what you believe that lost recollection to be ?"

To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond. Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest which I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable reluctance to disclose the degrading position in which I stood. I took refuge once more in the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared myself to meet the curiosity of strangers.

This time, I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the part of the person to whom I addressed myself. Ezra Jennings listened patiently, even anxiously, until I had done.

"I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to disappoint them," he said. Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy's illness, from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his lips. The matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can assure you, no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the recovery of Miss Verinder's jewel."

We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along which we had been walking, branched off into two roads. One led to Mr. Ablewhite's house; and the other to a moorland village some two or three miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the village.

"My way lies in this direction," he said. "I am really and truly sorry, Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you."

His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes rested on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest. He bowed, and went, without another word, on his way to the village.

For a minute or more, I stood and watched him, walking farther and farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him what I now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search. He turned, after walking on a little way, and looked back. Seeing me still standing at the place where we had parted, he stopped, as if doubting whether I might not wish to speak to him again. There was no time for me to reason out my own situation-to remind myself that I was losing my opportunity, at what might be the turning point of my life, and all to flatter nothing more important than my own self-esteem! There was only time to call him back first, and to think afterwards. I suspect I am one of the rashest of existing men. I called him back-and then I said to myself, "Now there is no help for it. I must tell him the truth!"

He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.

"Mr. Jennings," I said, "I have not treated you quite fairly. My interest in tracing Mr.